Subpar teen scream. Two little kids disappear when their mom isn't looking, then bunch of teenagers go to get a wheelbarrow from a shed where a body is being kept in liquid nitrogren storage, and all have nightmares or something. I don't get it.

Well-made but difficult-to-follow story about a drifter who rolls through a small southwestern town, gets involved with a local woman and has some sort of intrigue involving people disappearing and lucid dreams becoming real. It felt like a good movie, and yet, I couldn't tell you the story if my life depended on it, even though I just watched it a second ago. The preview blurb said it had something to do with other dimensions, but I didn't notice anything like that.

This movie proves skilled direction and acting can save a movie from ludicrous writing... until they don't.

This movie starts with a family having moved to a rural home to avoid a pandemic. Slowly hints are dropped that it's worse than the pandemic we actually had: "when they turned off the internet" is mentioned in passing.

For the beginning, we just see slice-of-life scenes of family life holed up in this house, and excellent direction and believable acting both keep it engaging and slowly build a not-yet-explained unease—in fact, they keep it engaging and believable enough that when the ludicrous idea of the movie is finally revealed, the production has built up enough credibility to suspend disbelief enough to actually, bettern than might be imagined, pull off the reveal: the "pandemic" is an epidemic of insanity that spreads by using the internet.

Ok, so far, so good. If they had…

Totally amateur, exceptionally long, very-poorly-acted sci-fi story about a man in a hawaiian shirt, not at all believable as a researcher but more likely just whoever they could cast, who does mind control experiments on a group of friends, causing them to act in random ways as they sit around what must be one of the actors' real-life living rooms. Actually probably among the upper echelon of totally amateur, extremely long, very-poorly-acted movies, though, as it gets faintly interesting as they backtrack in the middle and re-tell the story from the experimenter's point of view. So, points for that, it's close to bottom-of-the-barrel but probably sitting on top of the sludge at the bottom of the barrel, not underneath it. But, MAN is the acting bad. Strictly local-theater type.

Odd swing-and-a-miss featuring a miscast Nic Cage as a dorky college professor who begins turning up in millions of people's dreams around the world, bringing him unwanted fame. Starts out plenty entertainingly—of course Nic Cage is always fun to watch even when he's not quite a fit for the role, and certainly a unique idea for a movie.

But about two thirds of the way through, the story just kind of powers down, and the movie turns into simply an excuse to make him a punching bag for no clear reason and with no clear resolution. It's as if the writers had a great idea, but no clue about how to turn it into a story with a rewarding ending. And an odd deus ex machina right near the ending makes it look like some sort of other writing team was called in to try and quickly fix things,…

Seems like a BBC production. "Talky" doesn't cover for this sci-fi "thriller" that is literally entirely talk. Two astronauts wander through a dark fog depicting the surface of a planet they've crashed on, talking to each other, and potential rescues on their radios. And that's it. I suppose there's some sort of plot underneath all the talk, but, boy, is this one dry. Eventually you see some lights through the fog that are supposed to be the aliens, waaaaaaaay towards the end, for a minute.

I bet there's people out there who like this sort of thing. Not me, though.

This movie was listed as "College friends find themselves at the wrong place at the wrong time while visiting a vacant house on the edge of town", which is not very promising on its own, but I've given it 40 minutes and so far it's been nothing but people talking. If anything happens from here, I won't know about it, because I'm turning it off.

Rounding out the list of favorite films I haven't reviewed because I haven't watched them since I started writing capsule reviews, but nonetheless felt need a mention in any list I make of favorites... The Shining.

More has been written about this film than perhaps any other of my favorite movies. Stanley Kubrick's classic adaptation of Stephen King's great novel about a lonely hotel caretaker's descent into madness that may not be his fault. There is way too much here for me to write about, and as with Apocalypse Now, so much has already been written in the intervening nearly 50 years that is so much better than I could write. Let's just say, a huge favorite of mine, a peak moment from one of the greatest directors in history, and my go-to favorite example of how there are great horror movies, and then, very rarely, there is…