Lisa Frankenstein

One year after her mother's death, Lisa Swallows (Katherine Newton) is still reeling. Her father (Joe Chrest) has remarried, and while her stepsister Taffy (Liza Soberano) tries to help her, her stepmother (Carla Gugino) has it in for her. Lisa also has a crush on classmate Michael (Henry Eikenberry). Isolated, Lisa spends much of her time in a historical cemetery, often talking to the grave of a young Victorian man (Cole Sprouse) who died after the woman he loved left him. When lightning strikes the grave one night, the man reanimates as a zombie.

Mary Shelley is the Godmother of Goths. She's so Goth, she lost her virginity on her mother's grave, and after Percy Shelley died, she kept his preserved heart, wrapped in poetry.

I suspect Mary Shelley would respect what Lisa does near the end of Lisa Frankenstein. I won't spoil what that action is - other than say it involves some handy needlework - but it is the most Goth thing I've seen on film. Ms. Shelley would appreciate the gesture, I think.

Lady Macbeth

Katherine (Florence Pugh) marries Alexander Lester (Paul Hilton) and moves to his rural English estate in 1865. The older Alexander does not love her and will not consummate their union, but this does not stop his father Boris (Christopher Fairbank) from blaming her for not producing an heir. When father and son leave for business matters, Katherine begins an intense sexual affair with Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis), one of the estate's workers, and doesn't care that housemaid Anna (Naomi Ackie) knows.

I don't know of any other performer today who can convey so much just by sitting still and staring ahead silently as Florence Pugh does. Whether it's in Midsommer or here, she reveals so much just with her eyes and face. We can always tell what she's thinking and feeling, whether it's fear and shattered sanity in Midsommer or ruthless cunning and calculation in Lady Macbeth.

Despite what the title suggests, Lady Macbeth is not an adaptation, traditional or otherwise, of Shakespeare's play. When I sat down to watch it, I assumed it was based on the historical novel by Susan Fraser King, a gritty take reworking of Macbeth told from the point of view of Lady Macbeth. That novel is worth a read and certainly would make for an interesting movie as well.

It Follows

Jay (Maika Monroe) is a young woman living in Detroit. Following a sexual encounter one night with Hugh (Jake Weary), Jay is drugged and bound. When she wakes up, Hugh explains to her that because she had sex with him, a curse he had passes on to her, and a mysterious entity no one else can see will follow her. The entity can appear in the guise of any person, including people Jay knows, and it will follow her everywhere she goes until it kills her or she passes the curse on.

Going into It Follows, written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, I thought I knew how it would play out. Knowing it was about a curse that passes through sex, I envisioned body horror in the tradition of David Cronenberg, graphic imagery and sexuality as the curse passes from person to person, an orgy of blood and depravity.

Instead, It Follows is a much more unconventional thriller, built more on paranoia and unease than on shock effects.

First Blood

Passing through the Pacific Northwest town of Hope, drifter John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is railroaded and thrown in jail for vagrancy by Sheriff Teasle (Brian Dennehy). Abused by the deputies, Rambo, a Vietnam vet, breaks out, which spurs Teasle to launch a manhunt in the wilderness. But Teasle is in over his head. As Rambo's former commanding officer in Special Forces Col. Sam Trautman (Richard Crenna) explains, Rambo was simply the best combat soldier.

Behind Rocky Balboa, John Rambo is Sylvester Stallone's most recognizable role. Overly muscled, swathed in bullet belts and bandanna, carrying a large knife and machine gun, Rambo, like Rocky, is often a down-on-his-luck underdog, a decent man trying to get by life thrown into impossible situations, but against all odds, he triumphs.

Not so in First Blood. The first cinematic outing of John Rambo feels like a repudiation of everything that followed. It's not a glorification of cartoonish machismo; it's an examination of a troubled individual and the homeland he no longer feels welcome in. 

The Iron Giant

Hogarth Hughes (Eli Marienthal) lives with his single mother Annie (Jennifer Aniston) in the small town of Rockwell, Maine. One night, he finds a giant robot that eats metal. The robot (Vin Diesel), which arrived from outer space, looks fearsome but has the personality of a child. Hogarth teaches the giant about life on earth and befriends it. Meanwhile, zealous government agent Kent Mansley (Christopher MacDonald) arrives in Rockwell to investigate rumors of a giant monster. Beatnik scrap artist Dean (Harry Connick Jr.) helps Hogarth hide the giant, but it can't remain a secret forever.

With a premise that is fundamentally E.T. meets Terminator 2 - a boy and his inhuman friend - The Iron Giant could have been a very silly movie. Instead, The Iron Giant, directed by Brad Bird, is a touching story of friendship, love, and understanding in face of fear and prejudice. Regardless of where we come from, we ultimately choose who we are. Even an alien robot, built for war and destruction but redeemed by a child's innocence, can choose love and peace with the right guidance.

The Iron Claw

At the start of the 1980s, Fritz Von Erich (Holt McCallany), a retired pro wrestler, runs World Class Championship Wrestling, a subsidiary promotion in Texas for the National Wrestling Alliance. Although his first-born died young in a freak accident, Fritz promotes three of his sons - Kevin (Zac Efron), David (Harris Dickinson), and Kerry (Jeremy Allen White) - as the company's featured stars while another son, Mike (Stanley Simons) is an aspiring musician. Fritz wants nothing more than for all his boys to become NWA world champion, and they find tremendous success in the ring, but he pushes them hard and tough, even as they struggle with the pressures of stardom and the family is hit with one tragedy after another.

I bring a lot of baggage to The Iron Claw that makes evaluating it difficult. As a wrestling fan, I am familiar with the story of the Von Erichs, their meteoric rise to the top, and their shocking fall from grace.

When I watched The Iron Claw, I was distracted by the changes from real life. I kept thinking things like that didn't happen yet, this person wasn't there, etc. However, when I accepted the movie was not about facts and history, I could appreciate it on its own terms.

The Crazies (1973)

A virus, codenamed Trixie, leaks into the water supply of the small Pennsylvania town of Evans City. The virus leaves its victims dead or incurably mad. The military swoops in to quarantine the area, but the local citizenry resists. As chaos and panic ensue, a small group of survivors tries to escape a town that's become a war zone.

The Crazies, directed by George Romero, asks who are the crazy people. Obviously, there are those infected by the virus, but what about the other townspeople, the ones who aren't infected but who succumb to hysteria, resulting in behavior just as irrational and violent as the infected? 

How about the soldiers who gun down unarmed civilians, rob homes of the people they round up for quarantine, and blindly follow stupid, ill-informed orders? What about the scientists who created such a virus in the first place? Meanwhile, the Washington bureaucrats are more concerned with cover ups and willing to drop a nuclear bomb on one of their own towns.