Alise Chaffins 
My introduction to Steve Martin was probably in The Muppet Movie, but I fell in love with him through a copy of The Three Amigos that my parents had recorded during a free HBO weekend. I have not come close to seeing his full filmography – potential goal for 2025, maybe? – but his comedy …
The Indigo Girls are having a bit of a moment right now. I don’t know if there has ever been a time when they weren’t having a moment, but between “Closer to Fine” appearing in Barbie and the documentary It’s Only Life After All that also released last year, the pair has been in the …
Content warning: How to Have Sex and this review touches on the subjects of sexual assault. Please approach both with caution if this topic is triggering for you. I heard very little about Molly Manning Walker’s debut film, How to Have Sex, so I went into it without many preconceptions. What I got …
I need to stop watching movies where there is a significant age gap in a “couple” because it is always upsetting to me. There are enough lecherous people in the real world, preying on the admiration of young people, that I don’t need to see that behavior on screen. But …
The ’90s were the heyday of the action movie. Movies like Simon West’s Con Air, John Woo’s Face/Off, and James Cameron’s True Lies had wholly ridiculous plots that were somehow both fully aware of their absurdity while also being completely serious. It was an art form that felt like it was invented in the ’80s, perfected in …
Both 2013 and 2014 were years of incredible loss for me. My mother was diagnosed with ALS and died from complications related to that. I went through a divorce. I suffered a stillbirth at 35 weeks of pregnancy. It felt like at every turn, there was something to grieve. The …
I live in West Virginia, right in the heart of Appalachia. I love my state, but I don’t always love the way that the people who live here have been portrayed in the media. Poverty porn, like what was featured in both the book and the film Hillbilly Elegy, reduces the …
As a critic, I try not to pre-judge movies before I watch them, but the truth is, I watch trailers just like everyone else, and it can be challenging to avoid forming some opinions before I see the film. I went into A Man Called Otto with low expectations. I expected it …
Alise Chaffins reviews Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving. Here’s the thing about horror comedies: they are either funny or scary, never both. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that if I’m putting on a horror comedy, it’s going to lean one way or the other. Which makes sense. Both horror and comedy rely on the …
One day, I put on a pair of shoes that were too big so I could run outside to grab the mail. I snagged my big toenail in them, and it tore clean off. So I had a visceral reaction to the premise of Christos Nikou’s recent film Fingernails, which is currently streaming …
Spoiler alert: yes, the dog dies in M3GAN. That’s not the only casualty in this 2023 horror-comedy, but you can experience the rest for yourself this Halloween on Prime Video. When Cady (Violet McGraw, The Haunting of Hill House) loses her parents in a freak accident, her aunt Gemma (Allison Williams, Get Out) becomes …