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.

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.