The first thing you might notice about the new HBO series, Perry Mason, is that the titular character is not a lawyer, but a lowdown private dick. This could be jarring to those of us who know our television history, seeing that the original CBS series (which aired from 1957 to 1966) was about a razor sharp, courtroom attorney. But the original series was so mired in its formula, you hardly ever saw Mason outside of his offices or courtroom. Starring Raymond Burr, Mason used his inscrutable wit and charm to cross-examine witnesses on the stand until they melted into a puddle of blubbery tears and confessions. Before Law and Order or movies like A Few Good Men, Perry Mason set the bar for the procedural courtroom drama. Mason was the original bad-ass lawyer.

So, who is this demoralized, unshaven, alcoholic gumshoe with the small paunch, Stetson hat and dirty tie in the new eight-part reboot? Well, it’s Perry Mason alright (portrayed with a naturalistic aplomb by Welsh actor Matthew Rhys), but it’s Perry Mason before he cleaned up and gleaned all those fancy judiciary skills. Taking its cues from the original Erle Stanley Gardner novels from the 1930s instead of the TV show, this new Perry Mason drops us into Depression-era Los Angeles with a patience and attention to detail most shows simply bypass. Sure, there are moments that pop and sizzle, but Perry also has the confidence to pull back from story and let the characters percolate in their environment. Although the narrative struggles to encapsulate a full eight hours, Perry Mason is more than just a stale rehash; it’s classic noir sprinkled with revisionist history, pulpy violence and gritty characters.

Like most classic noir stories, Perry Mason starts with the victimization of your everyday citizen, which eventually leads to corruption in the most prestigious stations. Perry Mason opens in downtown Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve as the city rings in 1932. As everyone celebrates outside, a frantic couple is holed up in an empty apartment, pleading on the phone with their baby’s kidnappers while clutching a bag filled with cash. After making the exchange on Angel’s Flight, they find their baby wrapped in a blanket, dead, with his eyes stitched open. Yep, this miniseries starts with a mutilated baby. Right away, you know this isn’t your parents’ Perry Mason. After the baby’s father becomes a suspect, his wealthy church deacon enlists the help of defense attorney, E.B. Jonathan (John Lithgow), who, with his tough-as-nails assistant Della (Juliet Rylance), hire their favorite, alcoholic private eye to find out who the real kidnappers are.

Mason and his curmudgeonly assistant Pete Strickland (Shea Wigham) have their work cut out for them as they go head-to-head with L.A.’s most powerful forces, including smarmy District Attorney Maynard Barnes (Stephen Root), two ruthless LAPD detectives (Andrew Howard, Eric Lange) and even a powerful, albeit creepy religious sect headed by Sister Alice (Tatiana Maslany) and her mother Birdy (Lili Taylor). Meanwhile, a Black police officer, Paul Drake (Chris Chalk) discovers a crime scene related to the kidnapping, and before you know it, these dwindling yarns begin to intertwine.

Perry Mason is not without a couple missteps. Besides some of war flashbacks, which feel slightly melodramatic and out of place in a classic noir tale, the show suffers from a few overindulgent sequences regarding Sister Alice and her Radiant Assembly of God. Although her character is based on real life Protestant evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson (and actress Tatiana Malsany’s portrayal is electric), some of these passages are a little protracted and overwrought.

Still, the casting is spot on and everyone brings their A-game, especially the scruffy and rumpled Rhys who elevates Perry Mason to a new level. With his weary, hangdog countenance and depleted stare, the actor looks as if the world has dealt him one too many shitty hands and he can’t take another. Rhys’ Mason is not your traditional detective. Sure, he’s recalcitrant, boozy and determined like he’s been in past portrayals, but he’s also vulnerable, inconsistent and self-loathing. Living on his family’s dairy farm next to a second-hand runway, Mason drinks with abandon, reeling from his time as a soldier in WWI, a nasty divorce and ongoing estrangement from his son.

In one scene, after drunkenly hanging up on his ex-wife, he takes a baseball bat to his son’s toy firetruck. This scene says it all. As a struggling private detective, he makes pennies on the dollar, taking pictures of cheating spouses or mischievous actors under contract from the studios. His only respite is found in the arms of his Latin lover, Lupe (Veronica Falcon), who calls him, “Papi,” with an almost maternal affection. These scenes are played with a raw poignancy and humor as we become embroiled in his downward spiral.

The other bright spot in Perry Mason is its impressive costume and production design. Perry Mason forgoes the smooth veneer we’ve seen in too many period pieces, and favors a gritty, almost gothic look. From the stifling red and brown murkiness of the offices, bars and diners to the sun-dappled gray streets teeming with desperate souls, Perry Mason’s menacing atmosphere just enhances its narrative tone. This is not a criticism; it’s high praise. Not since Boardwalk Empire has a show’s production design and story fed off each other with such lyrical gusto.

And for those who think that the Perry Mason incarnation is mere nostalgic fluff, well, let’s just say writers and showrunners Ron Fitzgerald and Rolin Jones explore subjects like police corruption, racism and religious hypocrisy set to a historical backdrop where there was a clear delineation between rich and poor. This isn’t escapism, it’s a hard-boiled, revisionist study of human frailty and corruption in the city of broken dreams. Grab your Fedora, slip on your suspenders and get ready to jump on the trolly because Perry Mason is a ride back in time worth taking.

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In the modern-day horror film, haunted houses are rarely depicted as large medieval manors with gothic spires and stained-glass windows. That image went out of style when Vincent Price hung up his cape. Today’s haunted house is more than a dark creepy shell; it is complicit in paranormal activities, as if it’s helping ghosts screw with our heads. The walls breath, the carpets grow scales, the hallways stretch into an abyss and the bedrooms transform into relics from the past. This symbiosis of the supernatural and its environment was most famously be seen in Stanley Kubrick’s classic The Shining. When protagonist Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) encounters the spectral bearing of the Overlook Hotel, he’s not just confronting his own disturbing history of alcoholism and abusive tendencies, he’s also becoming a part of the hotel’s tapestry and portentous history. As he trudges through the Native American-styled lobbies and garish ballrooms, The Overlook begins to formulate his identity — an identity he tried to hide, even from himself.

This interplay between repressed anxiety and its physical enclosure is also on display in the new Blumhouse thriller, You Should Have Left, adapted from Daniel Kehlmann’s best-selling novel. As we continue staying indoors for months on end during what seems like an endless pandemic, it makes for a timely kind of terror. We’ve become permanent fixtures in our homes, and psychologically, it can feel as if we’ve become as ineffectual as our coffee table or favorite lamp. In this context, You Should Have Left reminds us that our identities and environments tend to oxygenate each other like fish feeding off algae in an aquarium.

The always reliable Kevin Bacon plays Theo Conroy, a wealthy ex-banker trying to leave a troubled past — which made him tabloid fodder for years — behind him. His wife Susanna (Amanda Seyfried) is not only a revered actress, but three decades his junior. This discrepancy in age and social viability seems to gnaw at Theo, who wrestles with his jealous tendencies by relentlessly writing in a daily journal and listening to a Deepak Chopra-inspired podcast. Their six-year-old daughter Ella (Avery Tiiu Essex) seems to be the only glue keeping the marriage together. The cracks are showing, not only in their relationship but Theo’s psychological composition. Deciding they need a break from their daily routine, they find opt for a getaway to a beautiful vacation home in Wales after finding an ad.

Sitting on a secluded hill in a lush Wales countryside, when the family arrives, the dark gray domicile looks more like a Frank Lloyd Wright prototype than a haunted house. Inside, the design is all bleached wood-paneled halls  leading into facsimile brick bedrooms, all of which has a disorienting effect, as if you never know what room you’re in. Soon enough, the house starts working its mind-bending witchcraft on Theo’s consciousness. On their first night, Theo notices that when he turns one light off, another flickers on in another room. He also discovers mysterious Polaroids of past tenants taped to the walls. Then his nightmares turn a tad disturbing and he starts walking into rooms he didn’t know existed and confronting images reminiscent of his past.

Re-teaming with Bacon after 1999’s Stir of Echoes, writer/director David Koepp ratchets up the tension by taking us through some illusory explorations, featuring elaborate set pieces and grotesque images. Some of these images speak to Theo’s buried secrets, his deep insecurities and his need to control everything around him. The implication is the house doesn’t just mine Theo’s repressed nature, but extrapolates it, as if it’s coloring in the empty spaces of his consciousness. Ultimately, the house becomes a maze of sorts, physically and metaphorically.

You Should Have Left should be commended for trying to do something different with the supernatural horror genre, which at this point, has been beaten to death with innumerable sequels and franchises. Instead of merely popping out of the dark, the phantoms here psychologically dissect the house’s inhabitants. And the performances are spot on. Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried express a quiet turmoil without relying on abrasive melodrama. You almost want to see a whole movie about their disintegrating marriage instead of the ghost story. Still, even with Koepp’s deft directing and Angus Hudson’s textured cinematography, the movie lacks the bite of better paranormal fare like The Changeling or even Koepp’s other work (he is also a prolific screenwriter with credits including Jurassic Park and Mission Impossible). This film has its moments, but overall it feels tenuous and soft. The message is there, but the filmmakers’ style is a little hackneyed.

In what’s becoming a Blumhouse staple of storytelling, there are too many cloying music cues, overly-familiar horror tropes (ghosts physically kicking your ass, for example) and drawn out sequences, where you eventually groan, “OK, what was that all about?” In The Shining, Kubrick realized that an exploration of a man’s mental collapse requires a deliberate and temperate approach. You should melt into someone’s psyche, not kick down their door. Shocking imagery and rapid editing doesn’t speak to a splintered mind; it just feeds a hungry audience. You Should Have Left holds your attention and it is enjoyable especially since we’re stuck inside our own homes much like the characters in the movie, but it has a tough time deciding if it’s a cerebral exploration of a man’s stifled rage or a brash and jolting horror film. It’s almost impossible to be both.

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When Korean director Bong Joon Ho took the stage at last year’s 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards to accept the Best Foreign Film honor for his subversive drama, Parasite (which also swept at the Academy Awards soon after), his speech caused a bit of controversy. Instead of merely thanking his actors and crew, the charismatic 50-year-old director grabbed the moment to encourage Americans to watch more foreign films: “Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films,” Joon Ho told the crowd. “I think we use just one language: the cinema.”

The next morning, Twitter lit up with people reacting to the director’s barbed jab at the average American’s reluctance to read subtitles. “How dare Bong Joon Ho accuse us of not watching enough foreign films!” Offensive or not, Bong Joon Ho called us out! But instead of getting defensive, why not give it a shot and watch more foreign and art films? There’s nothing to lose and a lot to gain, especially thanks to the ease of streaming.

If you’re not the type who comes home after a long day of work and throws on the Criterion Collection version of Seven Samurai for relaxation, don’t worry, you’re not alone! There are a few of us who not only struggle to watch more art-inspired and foreign films but also aren’t well versed in international classics either. Landmark films like Jules and Jim or Amarcord can be intimidating to even the most passionate of film lovers.

So, what do we do? How do cinematic neophytes, who tend to binge on Netflix like it’s a bag of Cheetos, scale the Mount Kilimanjaro that is world cinema? Easy, we find a more inviting path; we discover contemporary voices akin to our own. We unearth interesting filmmakers working in the modern vanguard of cinema. And this is where Filmatique comes in.

Filmatique, a new and inspiring streaming service, skips the classics and instead focuses on contemporary, pioneering filmmakers, mostly unknown, from across the world, including the States. Most of the movies on Filmatique’s platform have not only made their way through the film festival circuit, but get this, they’re also about human beings. You won’t find a robot, superhero or cheesy one-liner in the bunch. Filmatique’s categories include “Docs in Focus,” “Spotlight on Brazil,” “Foreign Language Oscar Submissions,” “Russian Auteur,” “Queer Cinema” and “The Future is Female.” Most of the movies in Filmatique’s catalogue are grounded and engaging.

In other words, subtitles or not, they’re accessible to the average movie-lover. They might be considered art films, so to speak, but most of these unknown gems tackle such universal subjects as the vagaries of love, the complexities of relationships, anxiety, sexual mores and the implications of politics and class in our day-to-day existence. We can all relate. So, with that, let’s take a quick dive into the cinema of the auteur, shall we?

It Felt Like Love (Zeitgeist Films)

After picking four movies at random, this writer (a self-professed Netflix binger) was pretty surprised by the engaging selection. Why dip a toe when you can throw yourself into the fire? This was the mindset in starting the Filmatique journey with a two-hour plus, Brazilian coming-of-age tale called Casa Grande. Fellipe Barbosa’s 2014 directorial debut revolves around 17-year-old Jean, who attends a private school and lives with his privileged family and their servants in a large house in present-day Rio De Janeiro.

While his family seems to be losing their fortune, Jean is more concerned with his budding sexuality. As he hits nightclubs with his friends, and seems to hit every adolescent emotional blockade, Jean starts to question his own masculinity and character. Pretty soon, he turns to the housekeepers and drivers in the house for advice, while slowly becoming disengaged from his family’s sense of propriety. Casa Grande is an at times unnerving portrait of class, hypocrisy and social structures in modern-day Brazil. It was a perfect launching pad and completely immersive. Also, make sure to read the essay featured on Filmatique’s website, The Newer Brazilian Cinema: Subjectivity and Social Change. It’s as cerebral and fascinating as the films it explores.

Russia’s Elena focuses on a middle-aged woman who is married to a controlling and wealthy businessman. Sneaking off to her deadbeat son from a past marriage and his downtrodden family in the Moscow projects, Elena constantly gives them money, much to her husband’s chagrin. After her husband gets ill and his estranged daughter enters the scene, the screws tighten and Elena becomes a story about crime and morality worthy of a Dostoyevsky novel. The film deservedly received the Special Jury prize at The Cannes Film Festival in 2011 and features a haunting score by Philip Glass. It’s gritty, unsettling and an incisive portrait of a society torn apart by hierarchy.

Elena (Zeitgest Films)

After visiting Brazil and Russia, we skip over to “The Future is Female” category, featuring all female directors, and check out Andrea Arnold’s first movie, Red Road from the UK. Filmed in a bleak but beautifully brown and gray tinted Glasgow, Scotland, Red Road opens on Jackie, a blue-collar woman in her early-thirties who works in the security unit at a housing complex where she studies surveillance cameras. One day, Jackie recognizes someone from her past on the monitor, and with an overriding obsession, she soon spends her days following the mystery man and his dodgy friends into the dregs of Scotland’s underbelly. Taking the Cannes’ Jury Prize in 2006, Red Road is a study of paranoia, poverty and revenge. It’s also an indictment of a country’s impoverishment and social ails.

Speaking of countries rife with social afflictions, why not bring it home to the United States, and check out another pick from “The Future is Female” category? We delve into Eliza Hittman’s debut feature, It Felt Like Love. Stark, frightening and emotionally precarious, this coming of age story centers on sixteen-year-old Lila, who spends a summer in South Brooklyn, not only intent on losing her virginity, but also spending her time with the wrong crowd.

Filmatique is new, but it’s an impressive addition to anyone’s streaming service cache and we can’t wait to see what else they have in store. Whether hailing from the States or across the pond,  films here drop you into the lives of their characters. The filmmakers aren’t interested in entertaining you as much as pulling you in.  Everything shares a naturalistic quality, as if you’re walking and breathing in the protagonists’ shoes. Although Filmatique is in its gestation period, the plan is to release one new film a week while removing one older one, maintaining the same amount of content on the site and curating it like a movie theater. You’ll also find a ton of filmmaker interviews and prolific essays. With traveling not really an option right now, foreign films and art films are the next best thing and for a mere $4.95/month, you can start your journey now. Check it out at watch.filmatique.com.

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There are a lot of interviews spread throughout the new three-part documentary, Time Warp: The Greatest Cult Films of All-Time, but one of the best moments is when the late, great director Tobe Hooper, who died in 2019, talks about the time he called the MPAA to try to garner a PG rating for his new horror film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

“I would make a phone call and say, ‘So, uh, how can I hang a girl on a meat hook and get a PG rating?’” Hooper shrugs with a wry detachment before continuing, “And they said, ‘Well… umm… you can’t.’” With biting perfection and insouciant timing, Hooper’s interview reveals how badly he yearned for his small, macabre gem to be seen by everyone, not just a select few, revealing how one of the nastiest cult films of all time — which played in sticky-floored grindhouse theaters next to porn flicks — was never meant to have “cult” status at all.

ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (20th Century Fox)

It’s a running theme in Time Warp that filmmakers behind these underground classics never actually set out to make cult films at all; most of the films cited in the series were box-office failures when they were released. So, what happened? How did these deranged artifacts of unlikely fanfare become such an important part of our collective mindset, forever cementing them into pop culture? This is a question Time Warp tackles through a slew of interviews, behind-the-scenes anecdotes and ongoing commentary from actors, filmmakers, musicians, professors and critics. The odyssey through this three-part series, which will be shown On-Demand and via several digital VOD platforms, is a little jarring and all over the place, but then again so are cult films.

In an attempt to present a concise and somewhat pedagogical history of the cult film, director Danny Wolf covers the gamut of the genre, starting with films like Todd Browning’s Freaks from 1935 and ending in the early-2000’s with gross-out shitshows like The Human Centipede. Luckily, Time Warp doesn’t cite these films chronologically (that would be a little too didactic), but otherwise categorizes them under their subject matter.

Volume One, which premiered on April 21, dives into Midnight Madness greats like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Pink Flamingoes and The Big Lebowski — phenomenons that have garnered a fanatical fanbase. Volume Two focuses on Horror and Sci-Fi (out May 19), two genres that have cranked out more lurid and strange content than a porn studio in Chatsworth. And finally, Volume 3, which explores the varied, at times deranged realm of Comedy and Camp (out June 23). Each chapter is hosted by Hollywood luminaries Joe Dante, Illeana Douglass, John Waters and Kevin Pollack. After the panel discusses the nature of the cult film, each movie is subsequently dissected, analyzed and celebrated by critics, actors and the filmmakers who were a part of its creation.

Although Time Warp’s subject matter is endlessly intriguing, intermittently the series stalls and sputters due to “talking-head” syndrome. And there are a lot of them. Some of the interviews are electric (Gary Busey is still demented); some of them are pretty bland. Thankfully, Wolf’s directing keeps things moving smoothly. He doesn’t stay with one film for too long, and he simultaneously never rushes us through it. However, some of the interviews pass listlessly and you have to snap out of it to stay engaged.

Frankly, Time Warp would’ve benefited from digging a little deeper into the cult film ouvre. Most of the films featured here are so universally renowned and celebrated (Office Space, Napoleon Dynamite, Spinal Tap), there’s not much left to say. It’s obviously an introductory course into the cinema of strange: Cult 101, if you will. And that’s fine, especially since there are mentions of some lesser known gems such as a section on Liquid Sky, the 1982 drug-induced, post-punk masterpiece. The subtitle says, The Greatest Cult Films of All-Time, and that’s certainly what this collection explores. Still, the series could’ve used a Last American Virgin or Zombie to spice things up, and truly expound on the shock and awe that makes this genre thrive in the first place.

Ultimately, there are enough revealing moments in the series to distinguish it from  similar fare like AMC’s 100 Scariest Movie Moments (talking head syndrome at its drollest). For example, who knew that famed punk rocker Darby Crash from The Germs can be seen rocking in the front row of The Ramones concert in Rock ‘n’ Roll High School? Or that Valley Girl’s director Martha Coolidge originally wanted X as the house band in the Hollywood sequences (an honor that eventually went to The Plimsouls). Or as John Doe from X relates, “We read the script and thought, ‘this is a dumb fucking movie, why would be want to be in that?’”

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You’ve probably heard it a million times in the last month — these are unprecedented times. Whether you call it a quarantine, or just another day in your chill homebody life, our world has changed drastically for the unforeseen future thanks to the coronavirus. Sure, it’s daunting, but we got this. Self-care, isolation and the knowledge that we are loved by family and friends will get us through it. But there are still a lot of hours in a day and we’ve got to keep ourselves occupied. Home entertainment has probably never been this essential. Thank God this isn’t the ’80s, right? We don’t have to watch the same 13 channels on a crappy box and sit through a barrage of bad local commercials. It’s the 21st century and we can watch almost anything with the simple click of a button. Armed with this remarkable technology, we’re ready to battle the spread of coronavirus by staying home. And we will win… with the help of movies.

Since the news hit, the virus has invaded our stratosphere like a flaming asteroid in a bad Michael Bay movie. You’ve probably already checked out a few lists of films relating to horrific viruses and the like. Movies like Contagion or Outbreak seem to be at the top of everyone’s radar since they are literally about the spread of a deadly disease. Or maybe you pulled out that old DVD copy of 28 Days Later, in which the afflicted foam at the mouth and run around deserted cityscapes like zombies on acid. Those are great, and we recommend them as films, but allow us to suggest some equally deserving but less obvious viewing options. Instead of going straight to “disease” movies, try some films that also speak to the undercurrent of emotions we’re all feeling right now — reactions to isolation and resisting a world that is changing before our eyes, life after the apocalypse, light fare like that. You can stream a few of these babies for free on your favorite streaming service while some of them are rentable for a few bucks. Go ahead, rent them — you’re not going to any fancy restaurants or big concerts anytime soon.

Misery (Columbia Pictures)

10. Misery

Imagine being plucked out of your day-to-day existence, stripped of your security, and being trapped in a house for an indeterminate amount of time. Can you imagine such a scenario?? Misery, Rob Reiner’s brilliant adaptation of the Stephen King thriller redefines the word, “sequestered.” After psychotic nurse Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates in an Academy Award-winning performance) pulls her favorite romance novelist, Paul Sheldon (James Caan) from a car wreck, he is not only forced to write another novel for his captor, but is subjected to every kind of abuse you could imagine. Although Misery mostly takes place in one house, it’s a cinematic journey. It’s also a strangely gleeful experience as it reminds us that though we’re relegated to our homes right now, at least there’s not a crazy lady watching over us with a sledgehammer.

The Dreamers (Fox Searchlight)

9. The Dreamers

It’s 1968 in Paris. The city feels combustible, ready to crack due to a social and political shift in the air. The three characters that inhabit 2003’s The Dreamers include Matthew (Michael Pitt), an American student studying abroad, Isabelle (Eva Green) and her twin brother Theo (Louis Garrel). After meeting Matthew at the cinematheque, the twins invite him back to their apartment, where their parents have gone on a month-long vacation. For the remainder of the film, the three students insulate themselves in the loft where they exchange ideas, explore sexual mores and reenact their favorite scenes from their favorite films. Director Bernardo Bertolluci’s love letter to movies, revolution and ideas reminds us that sometimes it’s necessary to cut ourselves off from the world in order to know our own importance. The Dreamers is a daring film that never compromises (it’s rated NC-17). As our protagonists come perilously close to overstepping the bounds of their own sanity, a brick is thrown through their window from rioters outside, pulling them back into reality. This film reminds us that isolation is not all gloom and doom, and that it’s possible to create a space where we can understand our role in a world that is constantly fluctuating.

The Road Warrior (Warner Bros.)

8. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior

If you think it’s tough to get a roll of toilet paper at the supermarket, try going to war with a bunch of leather-clad, punk-rock psychos in the vast deserts of the Outback for a simple gallon of gas. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, George Miller’s second (and best) chapter in the Mad Max series, amps up the action and violence in a post-nuclear war future where everyone is desperate for fuel. Mel Gibson is at his baby-faced best as Max, an anti-hero with a muscle car and a mutt, as he helps a clan of citizens protect their cargo of gasoline from a group of marauding bandits, all of whom look as if they fell out of an S&M club or a Gwar concert. Take heed, and please don’t hoard at the market, or one day we’ll all be speeding down empty highways, shooting each other with crossbows and sawed-off shotguns for a pack of Charmin.

Alien (20th Century Fox)

7. Alien

When Alien was unleashed on the world in 1979, it turned science fiction on its interstellar head. What was once a genre focused on intergalactic discovery suddenly became a subgenre of horror regarding infection and exotic ecology. So, why include a classic monster movie on this list? Simple — Alien is both about the effects of isolation (being lost in space) and infection (the alien itself). The crew of vessel spacecraft Nostromo, featuring stellar actors like Tom Skerritt, Yaphet Kotto and Harry Dean Stanton, have unintentionally brought a foreign organism onto their ship. Soon, the tiny organism, aka “chestburster” grows into a malicious entity with thick arachnid-like limbs, a dagger-esque tail and a second set of sharp teeth. The creature soon punctures and ingests each crew member until the breathtaking showdown with a truly bad-ass Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver). With an intricate and dreamlike set design by artist HR Giger and director Ridley Scott’s methodical, stifling tone, Alien will remind us why we’re staying indoors in the first place. Oh, and like Ripley running down corridors with a flamethrower and a pet carrier, keep your kitty close!

Rabid (New World Pictures)

6. Rabid

David Cronenberg’s 1977 Rabid — his fourth outing as one of the most highbrow horror directors in the genre — is a curious dive into the spread of a deadly epidemic. After Rose (porn star Marilyn Chambers) gets into a motorcycle accident with her boyfriend, she is treated by Dr Dan Keloid (Howard Ryshpan), a plastic surgeon experimenting with innovative forms of grafting. Keloid administers Rose with a bizarre new skin graft that turns out to be deadly and ravenous towards others. This embryonic graft resides in Rose’s armpit like a tiny phallus which peeks its head out and punctures its victims. Soon, Rose is walking the streets of Montreal, taking home strange men, piercing them, then sucking their blood like a vampire. Her thirst for blood becomes compulsive like a junkie’s. The bigger problem is before dying, her victims attack their fellow citizens with froth spilling from their mouths, spreading the disease throughout the city. It might sound like familiar territory, but with Cronenberg’s subtle, pragmatic approach, the rise of the infected feels all too real.

The Breakfast Club (Universal Pictures)

5. The Breakfast Club

What do ya say we lighten things up a little? We can almost hear your sigh of relief. Only John Hughes, a filmmaker who singularly validated teen angst, could toss a criminal (Judd Nelson), a princess (Molly Ringwald), a basket case (Ally Sheedy), a brain (Anthony Michael Hall) and an athlete (Emilio Estevez) into a blender and concoct something so timeless and magical. Relegated to a full day of detention in their high school library, these miscreants, who wouldn’t even glance at each other on a typical day, are not only forced to spend eight hours together, but somehow learn to empathize with their differences. Sounds a bit on the gushy side? Not a bit. In fact, John Hughes makes it look effortless to balance edgy humor, heavy drama and even a dash of music video in the same narrative. Since we’re stuck indoors like these brats, we might as well relive this ’80s classic and take inspiration to love our differences like they do. After all, as Nelson’s John Bender says: “There’s nothing to do when you’re locked in a vacancy.”

Children of Men (Universal Pictures)

4. Children of Men

You’ve got to hand it to the Brits, they’ve been through this kind of shelter-at-home crap before. Think of the Blitz in 1941, when the Nazis bombed London and its citizens had to hide underground with hardly any food or water for nearly a year. The post-traumatic effects of this extreme panic and isolation can be seen in post-WWII novels like Lord of the Flies, 1984 and Brave New World; books about a world gone mad due to mass hysteria. You can hear it in later generations’ music. When bands like Joy Division scream about an “Interzone,” they’re not kidding. Now, take Alfonso Cuaron’s 2006 adaptation of British writer PD James’ Children of Men. It’s 2027, women have mysteriously become infertile and the government reacts with an oppressive new regime. It’s up to former activist Clive Owen to help a group of rebels transport the last pregnant woman on earth to refuge, and hopefully, life will continue. Cuaron’s vision of social catastrophe is bleak but laced with humor and honesty. Owen is amazing as a man who’s been numb to his surroundings, but finally heeds the call to do the right thing. Children of Men is great reminder of the humanity we need to excavate during tough times.

Rear Window (Paramount Pictures)

3. Rear Window

So what can you do while being holed up in your apartment for an indeterminant amount of time? Obviously, you can watch television and read books, but really, isn’t it more exciting to spy on your neighbors? Alfred Hitchcock’s fascination with themes like paranoia, voyeurism and self-doubt reached its apex in 1954’s Rear Window. Confined to his apartment with a broken leg, professional photographer L.B. “Jeff” Jefferies (James Stewart) passes his time by peeking into neighboring apartments with a pair of binoculars. Stewart quickly falls down the rabbit hole of his own making when he spies on Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr), who he suspects killed his wife. His girlfriend (Grace Kelly) is concerned about his well-being and soon, Stewart’s curiosity turns into a destructive obsession. The takeaway right now: Stick to the reading and TV viewing, and don’t spy on your neighbors.

THE OMEGA MAN (Warner Bros.)

2. The Omega Man

Sometimes the ’70s version of the apocalypse is a little on the sunnier side, and that’s certainly welcome right now. In 1971’s The Omega Man, Charlton Heston plays Robert Neville, purportedly the last man on Earth who not only survived a biological attack and mass pandemic but who also continues working on a vaccine. Meanwhile a population of mutants donning bleached faces and monk-like robes run rampant through the empty streets of Los Angeles looking to destroy the last vestige of life (Heston — the man who once played Moses). Based on Richard Matheson’s famed novella I Am Legend, The Omega Man is a cool retro, psychedelic voyage into sci-fi, but also an eerie, grotesque vision of life after doomsday.

THE THING (Universal Pictures)

1. The Thing

If any film could be a gore-spewing parable for the underlying paranoia caused by a deadly virus, it’s John Carpenter’s The Thing. Kurt Russell is masculinity incarnate as the head of a station of scientists in the Antarctic fighting to stay alive while a parasitic alien ingests each inhabitant, replicating their biological makeup. Carpenter pulls away from exploring the vagaries of each character simply because they could be replicated at any moment and he wants to keep us guessing. Rob Bottin’s visual effects (a stomach with teeth, a severed head scurrying across the floor like a spider) are so textured, you wonder why CGI became popular at all. Soon, each inhabitant of the station is staring at their best friend, wondering, are you infected? The Thing is the reason we’re not going into the office right now.

Honorable Mentions:

The Crazies (1973, 2010), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956, 1978), Dawn of the Dead (1978, 2004), The Adromeda Strain, Shaun of the Dead, The Shining, 12 Monkeys.

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Black waves crash against a craggy shore as we slowly pan in on a modern fortress standing on the bluffs. Cecilia Kass (Elisabeth Moss) is lying next to her sleeping husband, Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), and her face is etched with dread as she gets up, gathers her things and sneaks out of the strange, high-tech compound. Two things are immediately clear: first, Adrian is an engineer of some sort, perhaps a weapons designer, and second, Cecilia has just escaped with her life.

With this taut and suffocating opening, we enter the newest incarnation of The Invisible Man. Propelled by a portentous soundtrack by Benjamin Wallfisch (Blade Runner: 2049), this revisionist retelling of the H.G. Wells’ classic novella of science gone wrong meshes classic horror movie bleakness with contemporary aesthetics. Unlike some of the recent stabs at this story, particularly Paul Verhoeven’s 2000 mishap, Hollow Man, Australian writer-director, Leigh Whannell (Upgrade) reverses the focus from the existential dread of the inventor and places it on the victim, the inventor’s traumatized wife. Science is not the enemy this time, male toxicity is.

After escaping her spouse’s abusive clutches, Cecelia seeks help from her sister, Emily (Harriet Dyer), eventually finding shelter in the home of her detective friend, James (Aldis Hodge) and his teenage daughter, Sydney (Storm Reid). Two years later, Cecilia still tiptoes around their house, scared to even go outside in fear of Adrian’s retribution. Then she gets the news that he committed suicide. Cecilia’s paranoia is temporarily put to rest when she meets Adrian’s lawyer brother, Tom (a smarmy Michael Dorman), who tells her that Adrian is not only dead (with an urn of his ashes on the conference table), but also left her a $5 million fortune.

Cecilia’s relief doesn’t last long however, as she begins to feel her husband’s malignant presence in every corner of the detective’s house. She hears something, and turns, but there’s nothing there. Strange occurrences occur and Cecilia begins to question her own reason. Suddenly, we’re experiencing the effects of post-traumatic stress — the ethereal presence of evil, extreme paranoia, etc. Or is it something else?

Whannell realizes that horror has the ability to metaphorically expose the human condition, and he uses it to dissect the unique trauma women endure after surviving an abusive relationship. As we walk in Cecelia’s shoes, we question if her husband’s ghost is stalking her or if he is literally doing so by hiding inside an optics suite (a sort of high-tech invisible cloak) he created. Is he really dead? Is this all happening? Or is she merely imagining these things as a result of years of being gas-lighted and beaten?

The first half of The Invisible Man is magnetic, delivering some effective scares and acute psychological insight. Whannel has a knack for squeamish silences, unnervingly pushing his audience to squint, searching for an indiscernible presence in the room. The sound design is pristine and white-knuckled. This is patient and dynamic film-making.

Elisabeth Moss, in particular, continues her reign as one of our most interesting and uncompromising actresses. Frankly, The Invisible Man wouldn’t have been as memorable without her. As we’ve seen in Mad Men, The Handmaid’s Tale and recent turns in movies like Us and Her Smell, Moss is able to emote a rawness and vulnerability without a hint of exaggeration. In some of the best scenes of the movie, her agony is so naked and alarming, as if she’s waiting for the next blow to land.

It would have been more effective however, if the script explored Cecelia’s psychological breakdown a little deeper, delving into what drives her sanity to dwindle and how her situation reflects the tyrannical aspects of a masculine world. The Invisible Man could’ve been Repulsion for the #MeToo era. Instead the movie takes the safe, audience-friendly route, dissolving into some far-fetched scenarios and questionable plot holes. The script could’ve used one more draft and lost some of its bombastic, action-film threads. Nevertheless, the confident directing and excellent performances keep us locked in until the last frame.

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The Rhythm Section — whose title refers to the equilibrium our souls should maintain in order to carry out an execution (or something like that) — should’ve been a fun and raucous affair. It’s got the Bond franchise producers (Barbara Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson), an exciting new director who helmed a few episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale (Reed Morano), and a comely lead in Blake Lively, who’s demonstrated an ability to disappear into problematic characters (A Simple Favor). Mix in some exotic locations and a potentially interesting narrative about international terrorism and British Intelligence, and you just might think to yourself, “Finally, a female Bond!” Nope, afraid not. The Rhythm Section features a whirlpool of talent, but it twirls into a void. Such a waste.

Armed with a convincing British accent, Blake Lively gives it her best as Stephanie Patrick, a former Oxford University prodigy who becomes a crack-smoking hooker after her family is killed in a plane crash. The actress is forced to make this backstory credible in the first 10 minutes, and that’s too much to ask of any actor. Stripping Lively of her beauty and applying sores and a bad haircut helps the believability factor of her character’s debacle, but the script isn’t as convincing as her makeup.

When a fired-up journalist (Raza Jaffrey) informs Stephanie that the plane crash that killed her parents wasn’t an accident, but an act of terrorism, she sets out for vengeance. She starts by tracking down Ian Boyd (an effective Jude Law), a former MI6 operative who lives in the Scottish Highlands like a bearded gnome. For no discernible reason, Boyd trains our heroine in hopes of making her an undercover operative as well. These scenes are played out in an unintentionally laughable montage of Rocky-like vignettes. Soon, Stephanie sheds the heroin-chic guise and travels to places like Spain and Tangier, carrying a gun, kicking ass and speaking in monotonic cadences to other underground operatives (Sterling K. Brown) like a seasoned agent. We’d happily go along for such an implausible journey if the film didn’t take itself so darn seriously. But Holy Moses, James Bond would blush with the amount of sincerity in Rhythm’s universe. Give these filmmakers some dry martinis please!

Mark Burnell’s script (based on his novel) yearns to be both an edgy action flick and a heavy drama. But unlike, say, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, which achieves this objective, Rhythm’s narrative can’t handle the balance and ends up upending itself. Frankly, with a story this histrionic, they should’ve dropped the bathos and gone straight for the explosions (a dash of wit could’ve helped too).

Choreographer-turned-director Reed Morano is adept at staging some solid action sequences (a single-shot car chase, for example), but she overcompensates on the script’s flaws with distracting camera tricks. In almost every scene, the filmmakers struggle to envelop us in a pernicious, unforgiving world characterized by entangled morals. Instead, The Rhythm Section is pure panache and empty flair. We’re talking shaky handheld cameras, bleached-out frames, spectral voices echoing in the periphery, unnecessary flash-forwards and a soundtrack that goes from stock action bombast to snippets of The Velvet Underground or Elvis (oh cool, they’re hip). It’s a potpourri of tactics, which ends up blotting out any discernible character or unique sensibility.

There are worse movies than The Rhythm Section out there (check your January listings; it’s the time of year when studios dump their odds and ends into theaters). However, even awful films like Cats possess a unique character. It’s almost more egregious when a movie is merely adequate. Blake Lively has the goods, and she deserves better.

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Rocketman opens with Elton John (Taron Egerton) strutting down a celestially-lit hallway, donning one of his outrageous stage costumes. When John enters an AA meeting in said wardrobe (a forced comic scenario if there ever was one), we already know we’re in trouble. Where Bohemian Rhapsody at least tried to explore Freddie Mercury’s career with some gravity and authenticity, Rocketman pinballs between an exuberant La La Land-style musical, an MTV videoesque fever dream and a screwball comedy. It possesses a fascinating sincerity, but the narrative feels imbalanced. For a good part of the film, it’s hard to tell if the filmmakers are even taking their subject seriously (which is odd considering John himself was reportedly involved). By the time it’s clear they do, the whole affair is bloated by melodrama.

Taron Egerton in Rocketman (Paramount Pictures)

The over-the-top approach works in terms of production design, wardrobe and look of the film, at least. Rocketman does take you back to the ’70s — a decade imbued with style, ambiguity and excess. And chronology-wise, it hits all its marks (something Rhapsody didn’t). We watch Elton John grow up in a small English town with an obtuse father and belligerent mother, as he takes piano lessons and dreams of stardom. Soon, he meets his lifelong songwriting compatriot Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell). After his breakthrough show at the Troubadour, he skyrockets to fame, enters a torrid affair with his manager John Reid (an excellent Richard Madden), struggles with his homosexuality and hits bottom with alcohol and cocaine.

The film’s trajectory is rushed and farcical, and it all bustles through the years of John’s success much too quickly. Even the concert scenes lack texture, clarity or excitement, and some of the other sequences are so painfully staged and fake-feeling it’s difficult to penetrate the gloss for anything real or human. Though the film has received deserved kudos for being the first major studio venture to include gay male sex scenes, these are as empty as everything else. Egerton is quite good, but he’s left with the task of excavating a discernible persona from a script that simply doesn’t have one. First, John’s a vulnerable lad just trying to make it, then suddenly he’s a snarling, drug-addled rock star. Dropping some of the musical numbers and focusing on his transformation would have been more insightful and more enjoyable for everyone.

Taron Egerton in Rocketman (Paramount Pictures)

OK, but at least we get to hear Elton John’s amazing music, right? Well, sort of. The songs are peppered throughout the movie without a care for when they were actually recorded. And you hardly ever get to hear the real John’s voice. The actors belt out the classics throughout. I found this the biggest disappointment of all.

Music biopics tend to be predictable, but I love them, especially if I love the artist. Like many, I’m an Elton John fan who doesn’t know a lot about the man. I hoped this movie might enlighten me. But when I watch a 12-year-old actor try to sing a classic while the townsfolk dance behind him like a rock ‘n’ roll version of Oliver, I don’t leave the theater any wiser about one of our greatest music artists. Nobody does.

It’s obvious John and the director were trying for something different, and in that sense, they succeeded. But somehow this movie has no heart, even though the filmmakers go to incredible lengths to convince you it does. The subject comes off as more of a cartoon than a real person. Without a grasp of the protagonist, a film that could have soared is just a frustrating and flat portrait, with great looks but no soul, all glitter and no gold.

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You know the story. One day a wily street kid, Aladdin (Mena Massoud), meets Princess Jasmine (Naomi Scott) on the streets of Agrabah. Although smitten with each other, Aladdin is pulled away and forced by the scheming henchman, Jafar (Marwan Kenzari), to steal a sacred lamp in the Cave of Wonders. After Aladdin discovers the lamp and the Genie inside (Will Smith), he uses his wishes to become a prince and win the love of Jasmine.

(Courtesy of Disney)

Action, elaborate music numbers and merriment ensue. There’s genuine joy in this adaptation, but like a lot of recent live-action adaptations (The Nutcracker, Beauty and the Beast), there are also patches of dead air. This occurs in the middle of the second act of Aladdin, which seems to emotionally flatten for a spell, before freeing itself for a hearty finale. However, unlike Tim Burton’s Dumbo, which is so lifeless you wonder what happened, Ritchie loosens the material with some genuinely instinctive, human moments.

Thankfully, Will Smith isn’t trying to emulate Robin Williams’s Genie from the original. He’s creating a new persona, replete with new pop culture references and exuberant imagery. With ripped muscles (genies work out?) and a goofy earnestness, Smith sings, winks and prances about like a court jester in a blue fog. Sometimes it’s endearing, but at times it’s almost too much, a brash CGI explosion that’ll probably make millions of parents need a cocktail afterward. However, Smith brings a lot of heart to what could’ve been a disaster. He’s right for this role, no doubt about it.

For the most part, the musical numbers in Aladdin are the same as its predecessor, and they come to life in Ritchie’s hands — in particular, the “Prince Ali” number, where Aladdin unmasks his identity as he dances through the streets, with elephants and pageantry leading the way. Ritchie has also crafted a visually immersive experience. The costumes and production design pop with beauty, and you can see every vibrant detail of Agrabah in almost every frame.

But what makes Aladdin truly shine are the performances of its two unknown leads. Mena Massoud as Aladdin is a little shaky at first, but soon we’re on his magic carpet ride, as he finds that right balance of innocence and ambition. Even more beguiling is Naomi Scott as Princess Jasmine. With a classic grace and modern strength of spirit, Scott is not merely a sparkling diamond for our hero to gaze upon, but a full-bodied character with ambitions of her own. Her performance grounds material which at times threatens to be pure color and visceral pastiche. A few glitches aside, Aladdin ultimately, is what anyone might wish for in an adaptation. It’s family fun that doesn’t sacrifice its charisma to appease our childhood wonder.

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