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Latest from Chris Jones

Chris Jones
Entertainment Editor

Chris Jones, from Washington, Illinois, is the Mail Entertainment Editor covering Movies, Television, Books, and Music topics. He is the owner, writer, and editor of Overly Honest Reviews.

Wealth, Status, and the Slow Erosion of Control

The Gilded Age: The Complete Third Season

The third season of THE GILDED AGE offers the confidence of a series that has settled into its identity. The world is grounded, the characters established, and the show is no longer working to convince the audience of its worth. Instead, this season focuses on escalation. The aftermath of the Opera War leaves the old order weakened, and the Russells step into the vacuum with a level of determination that transforms the social landscape of 1880s New York. The tension between tradition and progress has always been the backbone of this series, but Season 3 pushes those contrasts further, showing how ambition can reshape an entire community.

A Biography Made Out of Shattered Glass

Yes Repeat No

Stories about identity often pretend clarity exists. YES REPEAT NO doesn’t. It opens in a rehearsal space—blank walls, no escape—and immediately confronts you with the impossibility of its own assignment. Three actors arrive to audition for one role: Juliano Mer-Khamis, a Palestinian-Jewish actor, director, activist, and political contradiction who lived his life refusing to fit into a narrative easy to summarize. Instead of shaping a linear biopic, the film traps its cast in a room where identity becomes something volatile, argumentative, and agonizingly fragile. The goal isn’t to recreate Mer-Khamis; it’s to force each performer to collide with the truths he embodied.

A Christmas Eve Story With Real Human Warmth

Stationed at Home

STATIONED AT HOME feels like one long exhale—the kind of film that settles into its own early and never forces its way into sentimentality. Set across a single frostbitten Christmas Eve in 1998, it follows Ralph, a quiet night-shift taxi driver who wants one simple thing: to finish his shift in time to witness the International Space Station glide overhead at 5:47 a.m. It’s a small wish, almost painfully modest, but the film treats it like something sacred. That decision defines the entire experience. Rather than turning Christmas Eve into a hectic, fate-changing night, the movie allows its stillness to become its center. It’s aimless in a purposeful way—reveling in humanity, unexpected intersections, and the kind of fleeting connections that add up without ever announcing themselves.

Entertaining in the Most Chaotic Way Possible

Speed Train

SPEED TRAIN throws everything it has — and everything it can imagine — straight at the viewer, hoping the combined chaos will be enough to propel it across the finish line. It’s not the worst thing out there, far from it, but it’s also not the streamlined, high-concept sci-fi thriller it’s clearly dreaming of being. Instead, it becomes a chaotic mashup of competing tones and clashing genres: part futuristic action movie, part hyper-stylized cyberpunk thriller, part super-cheerleader fight flick, part prison-break sci-fi, and occasionally something that weirdly resembles a cheer-themed remix of GAMER on a train. It’s a lot. Sometimes too much. But there’s also an earnestness beneath the excess that keeps it from derailing completely.

A Monster Film More Focused on Mischief

Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy (4KUHD)

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE MUMMY arrives as the final entry in the duo’s long and storied relationship with Universal’s iconic monsters, and you can feel that sense of winding down in its tone. Where earlier films blended horror and comedy with surprising precision, this one leans far more into the gags, misunderstandings, and adventure-tinged silliness. It’s not aiming for atmospheric tension or Gothic moodiness; instead, it embraces the familiarity of its formula and relies on the duo’s chemistry to carry a story that, while thinner than their earlier outings, offers an easygoing, family-friendly charm.

Abbott and Costello Thrive in Detective Mode

Abbott and Costello Meet The Invisible Man (4KUHD)

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE INVISIBLE MAN is the sort of hybrid that surprises you with how well it holds up. On paper, merging hard-boiled noir with comedy and a classic Universal Monster could’ve easily collapsed into chaos. Instead, the film plays like a confident fusion, one where the mystery grounds the slapstick, and the slapstick injects life into the mystery. It’s not as iconic as the duo’s showdown with Frankenstein’s monster, but it stands out as one of their most consistently entertaining team-ups.

Horror Royalty Meets Comedy Legends

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (4KUHD)

There’s a reason ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN remains one of the most beloved films in both Universal Monsters history and classic comedy cinema: it takes its premise seriously enough to let the horror icons shine while never losing sight of what makes Abbott and Costello such an effective duo. This film walks a razor-thin line between tones that should clash but somehow mix into a unified, endlessly rewatchable experience. It’s the rare crossover where everyone involved gives their all, and decades later, that commitment still radiates from every frame.

Karloff’s Shadow Looms Over the Chaos

Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (4KUHD)

There’s a charm to ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE that comes from watching two comedic titans wander into a story that was never designed for their style of humor. It’s a strange collision of tones: the fog-drenched streets of a classic horror tale smashed into a vaudeville-rooted comedy act that refuses to take anything seriously. That tension doesn’t always play out as we hope. Yet, there’s an undeniable fascination in seeing the story unfold, especially when Boris Karloff steps into frame with the kind of gravitas that reminds you how powerful the Jekyll/Hyde legend has always been.

A Martial Arts Time Capsule Done Right

Triple Threat: Three Films With Sammo Hung

TRIPLE THREAT delivers a unique and specific career portrait. What makes this set stand apart isn’t just that it brings together three distinct films from different periods of Sammo Hung’s rise; it’s that each film captures him at a crossroads. You’re not just watching Hung’s growth as a performer — you’re seeing him feel out new territory, sharpen his instincts, and redefine what Hong Kong action cinema could look like at the moment it needed reinvention. Packing THE MANCHU BOXER, PAPER MARRIAGE, and SHANGHAI, SHANGHAI into one release isn’t just a gesture in archiving a legend. It’s a reminder of why Hung became one of the most adaptable and influential artists in the industry.

A Modern Ghost Story

The Wailing (El llanto)

Horror doesn’t always rely on chaos to pull you under, and in this case, it waits patiently and makes you feel the dread creeping in from the edges. THE WAILING embraces that philosophy from its first frame. It’s a film designed around the slow press of fear rather than loud punctuation. By the time its three timelines begin to fold into one another, Director and co-writer Pedro Martín-Calero has built something genuinely unsettling. Not because it tries to scare you every few minutes, but because it treats horror as a symptom of deeper wounds that refuse to close.

A Fever Dream Built From Spy Cinema’s Bones

Reflection in a Dead Diamond (Reflet dans un diamant mort)

This isn’t a spy thriller interested in the usual games of covert operations or gadget-ready theatrics. Instead, Co-Directors/Writers Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani approach the genre in a way we haven’t seen before. The film follows a 70-year-old ex-spy living in a luxury hotel on the Côte d’Azur whose routine shatters when the woman in the adjoining room disappears. Yet the disappearance is only the first card to fold. What follows is a spiral through fractured memories, illusions, and the ghosts of a past shaped by espionage, desire, and fantasy.

A Test of Spirit That Never Pretends to Be Simple

Without Warning

Some documentaries try to shape hardship into something refined and inspirational. WITHOUT WARNING chooses a different path. It presents survival as it actually unfolds: frightening, unpredictable, and shaped as much by instinct and vulnerability as by bravery. Bridgett Watkins’ story has every element of a dramatic adventure, yet filmmaker Steve Scearcy keeps the focus on the human being at the center, not the myth. That approach grounds the film, giving it weight beyond the headlines. It isn’t a tale framed as triumph for its own sake; it’s a chronicle of a woman facing the kind of danger most people will never encounter and pushing forward anyway, even when fear and obligation collide in uncomfortable ways.

Reinvention That Feels Practical

Say Yes to Own Your Success: Twelve Principles to Catapult a Career You Love...at Any Stage of Life

SAY YES! TO OWN YOUR SUCCESS enters the crowded personal-development world with a surprisingly grounded tone. Ron Stein isn’t writing from the mountaintop, preaching at readers through recycled motivational catchphrases. Instead, he builds his guidance out of lived experience—decades of real jobs, real mistakes, sudden pivots, and the kind of unexpected successes that only show up after you’ve stopped waiting for permission. What makes the book stand out is its blend of memoir and framework, creating something more substantial than the usual “new year, new you” fluff. Stein provides structure, energy, and just enough storytelling to keep the lessons anchored in real-world stakes.

The Line Between Persona and Person Softens Over Time

Peaches Goes Bananas

A documentary built over nearly two decades asks the filmmaker to commit not just to a subject but also to the gradual shifts that come with age, loss, reinvention, and the unpredictable changes life throws at someone living unapologetically. PEACHES GOES BANANAS embraces that view and uses it as a core strength, capturing Merrill Nisker — better known as Peaches — at various points where confidence, exhaustion, humor, ambition, and tenderness collide. Director Marie Losier isn’t interested in shaping Peaches into a conventional documentary figure. Instead, she lets the footage accumulate naturally, turning the film into an extended conversation between two artists as they attempt to understand one another across changing landscapes, careers, and personal histories.