MOVIES
In the new Netflix film “The Good Nurse,” Jessica Chastain plays an overworked ICU nurse and single mother who, after a patient’s death, starts to suspect things about her new colleague Charlie, played by Eddie Redmayne. Danish filmmaker Tobias Lindholm directed the thriller off of a script “1917” and “Last Night in Soho” screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns.
For something more family-friendly, Netflix also has the stop-motion animation pic “Wendell & Wild,” featuring the voices of Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele as demon brothers. It’s an original idea from director Henry Selick, who also directed the spooky but kid-friendly classics “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Coraline.”
For some fresh Halloween scares, several well-reviewed thrillers are hitting video on demand this week. First up is “Pearl,” Ti West’s technicolor horror prequel starring Mia Goth as a farmgirl in a pandemic-plagued Texas town in 1918 whose dreams of movie stardom drive her a bit mad. There are references to everything from “Singin’ in the Rain” to “The Wizard of Oz,” but with a sinister, murderous edge. Before the film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival earlier this fall, West said, “I just had this interest in making, for lack of a better term, a children’s movie that has a more demented adult story to it.” Goth helped write the script too, which involves an epic monologue at the end done in almost a single take.
Also coming to VOD is “Barbarian,” the low-budget indie horror starring Justin Long that became a sleeper hit at the box office. “Barbarian” stars Georgina Campbell as a woman who is inadvertently double booked with a stranger (“It’s” Bill Skarsgård) in a creepy Detroit-area Airbnb run by Long’s character, a TV actor facing sexual misconduct allegations. Writer-director Zach Cregger said he pitched the movie, which has an unconventional structure that essentially resets itself midway through, to every studio that’s made a horror in the last 15 years and everyone said no. To date, it’s made over $40 million against a $4 million production budget.
—AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr
TELEVISION
Get in the Halloween mood with Netflix’s “Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities,” an anthology produced by the Oscar-winning filmmaker with the aim of challenging “traditional” expectations of horror. The eight stories include “The Autopsy,” based on a Michael Shea short story and starring F. Murray Abraham, Glynn Turman and Luke Roberts; the HP Lovecraft-based “Dreams in the Witch House,” with Rupert Grint and Ismael Cruz Cordova, and “Lot 36,” one of two episodes based on an original story by del Toro and starring Tim Blake Nelson and Elpidia Carrillo. Episodes are being released daily in pairs.
“Putin’s Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes,” debuting on PBS’ “Frontline,” details the toll of Russia’s war on Ukraine and the challenges of holding Russia to account for its actions. The documentary is part of a collaboration between “Frontline” and The Associated Press that includes gathering, verifying and cataloging potential war crimes and co-publishing stories and videos from AP and “Frontline” war reporting. The joint initiative, which includes the War Crimes Watch Ukraine interactive experience, has documented more than 500 incidents involving potential war crimes since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February.
A gunman’s deadly attack on a house of worship, its causes and the aftermath are examined in HBO’s “A Tree of Life: The Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting.” The film, directed by Trish Adlesic, delves into the 11 lives that were lost in the October 2018 tragedy and the effect on family members, survivors and the community at large. The attack also is viewed in the context of rising hate speech and actions. Michael Keaton, Billy Porter and Mark Cuban, the film’s prominent executive producers, are natives of the Pittsburgh area. An original song, “A Tree of Life,” is performed by Broadway and film star Idina Menzel.
—AP Television Writer Lynn Elber
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