Two of Cups 

Happy Halloween! If you were debating capping off Spooky Season with a viewing of Hocus Pocus 2, it is just very clear that this is more for the younger audience as opposed to people who grew up with the original.

On the Road captures the bleak, hyper-masculine world of long-haul trucking in Northern Mexico, where anything can and will happen. A hard-boiled, neon-noir romantic thriller, it shows the gritty reality of roadside diners, truck stops, and truck cemeteries alongside the expansive, breathless beauty of the Mexican desert highways.

The Gates, John Burr’s new thriller film, is a disturbingly realistic portrayal of three Black twenty-somethings - Derek (Mason Gooding), Kevin (Algee Smith), and Tyon (Keith Powers), as they accidentally take a wrong turn into a gated community that’s more like a modern-day sundown town. The three friends witness a variety of crimes in their new surroundings, including an attempted homicide and an attempted rape. As they attempt to alert the authorities and do the right thing, they are thwarted at every turn by the worst horror stories of American conservatism - racist white suburbanites, reckless gun violence, corrupt police, religious mania, and a megalomaniacal pastor. 

The Invitation takes a creeping look at two simple premises: reuniting with forgotten friends and new-age spiritualism. Though one seems a bit scarier than the other, the film heightens social awkwardness to a macabre level that puts an uncomfortable look on when the social taboo of grief is put on public display.

During the third act, the momentum stalls, largely due to the film’s obsession with Kubrick’s visual design. But all in all, Doctor Sleep is a cinematic success, defined by rich characters and high powered emotion.

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.