The Movies – Details, episodes & analysis

Film critic Megan Loucks, better known as Wonder Meg, comes on THE MOVIES to share who she is using only four films.

The Lansing, Michigan native and I chat about an encyclopedia of topics: motherhood, growing up in a tight-knit family, the Snyder Cut fandom (Meg co-founded Justice Con, an virtual charity convention that brought together Snyder Cut, DCEU, and comic book fans to raise money for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention), a lifelong devotion to fantasy stories, pillow fort architecture, the art of physical media collecting and so, so much more.

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Meg's four films:

LA BELLE ET LA BETE (1946) dir. Jean Cocteau (watch on Max or YouTube)

DO THE RIGHT THING (1989) dir. Spike Lee (watch on Netflix)

EXCALIBUR (1981) dir. John Boorman (watch on Internet Archive)

LADY BIRD (2017) dir. Greta Gerwig (watch on Max)

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Follow Meg on Instagram, YouTube. Read her interview with THE PENGUIN production designer Kalina Ivanov on Wonder Watchlist & other reviews on InSession Film.

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Thanks once again to Universal Pictures Home Entertainment for shipping me a review Blu-ray copy of THE WOMAN IN THE YARD!

This has been a good way to catch up on movies I missed in the theaters. The teaser for this movie sucked me in right away because it's simple: a family living at a farm house, with no neighbors as far as the eye can see and almost as far as the foot can walk...but then they see a creepy veiled woman, dressed in all black, sitting at the end of the driveway.

There's the thinnest veneer of civility in our daily lives. All it takes to send us into paranoid or hostile spirals is one uninvited person approaching our space. Shit, we really are just animals, aren't we?

Now imagine this person carries herself with the kind of calm yet firm demeanor reserved only for folks who know they can back up what they say. They can overpower you at any time and the only reason this movie doesn't end in five minutes is strictly due to the fact that they're not just here to rob or pillage or fight. There's something deeper going on.

This Woman (Okwui Okpokwasali) is here for Ramona (Danielle Deadwyler). She's the matriarch of a young family: young teen Taylor (Peyton Jackson) and elementary-aged Annie (Estella Kahiha). Ramona's husband has just died in a car accident; the movie starts with her getting around on crutches.

Taylor's trying to be the man of the house with the limited resources a 14-year-old has: no groceries, no license, no electricity. Bills pile up; Ramona lies in bed, rotting in her own mind. It's within this scenario the Woman arrives, revealing she knows more about Ramona and her family than any stranger ever should.

The movie plays out like a wind-up toy, setting up all the necessary pieces and letting the tension play out, watching Ramona and the kids try to figure a method of escape or deterrence. As the Woman grows closer, almost at the pace of shadows cast by a gliding Sun, secrets are revealed and Ramona's state of mind continues to warp, influenced by the Woman's otherworldly presence. Collet-Serra crafts genre set pieces that work as metaphors for Ramona's deteriorating mental illness, though leave me focused more so on how this works within the movie's world rather than how Ramona's mind is reflected within these scares.

I've always appreciated Deadwyler's gusto in pursuing a wide variety of projects (this to I SAW THE TV GLOW to THE PIANO LESSON, TILL and the upcoming siege thriller 40 ACRES carves a wide swath). She plays so much internal strife within her eyes and expressions; there's a woman who's fighting not only to survive, but also stave off this nagging reminder that she never wanted this kind of life. This isn't the plan she had for herself. It's hard not to wallow in self-pity. Deadwyler carries all of this in a way that never feels maudlin, always relatable.

The movie doesn't overstay its welcome, coming in at a breezy 88 minutes. Some sci-fi elements threaten to overstuff the story and I wish they'd been developed more throughout the movie rather than explained within the climax. Regardless, the movie, much like most of Collet-Serra's filmography sits at a comfortable 5-6 out of 10, perfect for a lazy Saturday afternoon.

The Blu-ray release? I can't understand why I'd pick up a "Collector's Edition" without so much as a commentary. The two featurettes into the making of the movie and design of the Woman are nice, but in 2025, falls below the standard for home video ownership.

Streaming's already made Blu-rays rarer and more expensive; this sparse set of bonus features wouldn't make me feel any better about dropping $20 for the disc. It shouldn't entice you to do the same.

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This week, the Cannes Film Festival announced its lineup for their 78th edition. Taking place in the beachside town of Cannes, France from May 13-24, the festival opens up the movie lover's summer to the widest swath of exceptional global cinema, blockbuster premieres and the first glimpses of next year's Oscars contenders.

This episode sees me fumbling through pronunciations to share the movies announced and highlight the ones that look most rad (Ari Aster! Spike Lee! Julia Ducournau!). Pop a squat and let's look forward to the summer movie season!

For more information on the festival, click here!

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Sean Durkin's THE IRON CLAW got me to a place I've never been. Afterwards, I found myself crying in the movie theater bathroom. Of course, I'd already cried a handful of times in the theater, but this affected me on multiple layers, the ones I find myself hurting over in private.

I'm the oldest of three brothers, growing further apart with time and responsibility. I'm a father building his creative dream into reality while raising a family. I feel hindered by emotional, mental, spiritual? weights that lead me to believe I'll never break free of the behaviors that make me my worst self. Oh, and like the Von Erich wrestling family, I call Denton, Texas home. Sure, I've moved to Corpus Christi, but Denton is still home and I miss it dearly.

So, when you plop me in front of these elements, acted gloriously by a stellar ensemble (Zac Efron, Harris Dickinson, Jeremy Allen White, Stanley Simons, Holt McCallany, Maura Tierney, Lily James), and shot with beautiful glory and pain on full display? It's gonna wreck me and it does.

I haven't stopped thinking about this movie and it's my hope to get y'all to the same place.
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Music:
"Tom Sawyer" - Rush
"Live That Way Forever" - Richard Reed Parry

70 years into the Godzilla franchise, it seems improbable the best installment, of which there are 38, would end up being the newest, but stranger things have happened.

GODZILLA MINUS ONE sees a post-WWII Japan stumbling towards survival. It's not enough to sustain a thankless war and nuclear fallout, but now, a giant radiation-breathing lizard? If framed this way, it almost reads like a cruel joke, but for people like failed kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), it's all too real, a scene on a spiritual loop bathed in trauma and socially-imposed guilt.

You'd then think the movie would follow the MOBY DICK route of having Koichi go through hell and back to kill this creature, to redeem himself in the eyes of his country's leaders and personal shame, but what GODZILLA MINUS ONE avoids is the notion that one is only responsible to their trauma. Sure, he's gonna carry the wounds of the past forever, but life doesn't amount to an endless self-flagellation. There's way more to enjoy under the sun than can ever be numerated or experienced.

For a film whose genre's defined by its level of destruction and explosive, monstrous action to firmly plant its flag in the side of hope and revival is a necessary breath of balance and grace. Did the lizard chomp boats like chew toys? Yep. Did I also find myself crying at the end? You bet your ass. It's a great time to be a Godzilla fan.

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Music:

"Take Me Home" - Sophie Ellis-Bextor (Hi, Resa!)

Tuesday night's alright for sickos, baby! One of my favorite movies of last year is Emerald Fennell's SALTBURN, a sordid descent into glamorous hell, guided by an ill-placed, unfettered id. When you've got such talents as Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Archie Madekwe and Richard "I'm an international treasure" E. Grant, how can this fetishization of beauty not elicit something to keep folks talking?

Judging from the flurry of thinkpieces and TikTok clips derived from this sucker, the answer seems simple: "It won't, simply can't, be ignored."
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I didn't watch a movie in theaters from May 31 to November 25.
This list reflects that reality.
You might think that's a negative, but I don't see it that way. Be honest: did you really wanna hear yet another person talk about OPPENHEIMER, POOR THINGS or THE ZONE OF INTEREST for the umpteenth time? Nah, buds. I'm a different breed. Strap in.
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65 dir. Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (Netflix)
A THOUSAND AND ONE dir. A.V. Rockwell (Amazon Prime)
ARE YOU THERE, GOD? IT'S ME, MARGARET. dir. Kelly Fremon Craig (Starz/Rental/Honestly, just go buy it. What's $15 these days, a lunch and a coffee?)
INFINITY POOL dir. Brandon Cronenberg (Hulu)
JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 dir. Chad Stahelski (Starz/Rental/Honestly, just go buy it. Do it because you love dogs.)
LIVING WITH CHUCKY dir. Kyra Elise Gardner (Amazon Prime/YouTube/MOTHERFUCKING TUBI, HELL YEAH)
M3GAN dir. Gerard Johnstone (Amazon Prime)
RYE LANE dir. Raine Allen-Miller (Hulu)
SALTBURN dir. Emerald Fennell (Amazon Prime)
SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE dir. Joaquim Dos Santos, Justin K. Thompson and Kemp Powers (Netflix)

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Jesus, I'm going into Year 3 of this show? That's wild. Even wilder when you look at 2023 and realize I could visualize my podcast output as a donut: nothing between April and December. I'm not proud nor happy about that, but that's what New Year's Resolutions are for, right?

So here's my annual state of the union. This episode goes into a little more detail about my goals for the show in 2024, along with the inevitable rants I'll fumble through to give this shitshow of an old year some goddamned closure (I type this on Dec. 31, 2023, before the recording, my saltiness influenced by motherfuckers shooting off fireworks in their backyards, surrounded by flammable trees and children).

Here's my first goal: lower my blood pressure. Number 2: Be slower to anger. Or faster to angry action. I don't know; listen to the episode and you'll hear how I wake up tomorrow.---

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Merry belated Christmas, friends! How better to celebrate the season than to talk about a swarm of scaly ne'erdowells fucking up a sleepy American town?

Joe Dante's GREMLINS has only gotten stronger with age, celebrating the hard work necessary to work with a metric fuckton of puppets, the resilience and kindness of the American working class, and our gleefully nasty collective desire to watch a living representation of our id burn our world to the ground.

Just look at this powerhouse trio: Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante & Chris Columbus. How in the world would this NOT have been a banger?

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Making of GREMLINS Part 1:

Making of GREMLINS Part 2:

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"Evil Dead Rise" meets me as a tempered 30-year-old, married with two kids.

Fede Alvarez's "Evil Dead" met me at 20, boundlessly obsessed with what could be achieved with a fire tanker's worth of blood.

Sam Raimi's "The Evil Dead" stunned me at age 11, the gnarliest movie I'd seen up to that point.

I've grown up loving this franchise, so when I say Lee Cronin's installment left me wanting so much more than I got, take those words with a mine of salt. Even a 6/10 Evil Dead installment has the power to grab your sensibilities, stuff them in a burlap sack, alongside a scorpion and starving monkey, and shake the shit out of it until - something - spills out. Dead by dawn, indeed.---

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