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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.

AI Anxiety With Real Stakes

Jitters

JITTERS opens like a grounded procedural and almost dares you to underestimate it. Detective Collymore isn’t introduced as a horror protagonist. He’s introduced as a man, exhausted. A single father. A detective who’s seen too much and carries it on his shoulders. Fabrizio Santino plays him with restraint, leaning into exhaustion rather than melodrama. That choice anchors the film with an idea that’s locked into being something human before it spirals into something darker and disturbing.

A Daughter’s Love Letter to Her Filmmaker Father

The Time it Takes (Il tempo che ci vuole)

Some films are built around extravaganza, while others are built around memory. THE TIME IT TAKES belongs firmly to the second category. Directed by Francesca Comencini, the film is a deeply personal reflection on her relationship with her father, legendary Italian filmmaker Luigi Comencini. What could easily have become a sentimental tribute instead becomes something far more complex and intimate: a story about love, disappointment, reconciliation, and the emotional distance that can exist even within the closest families.

Time Travel As a Metaphor for Youth

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2 Disc Edition)

Before THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME became internationally famous through its beloved 2006 anime adaptation, the story had already made a huge impact in Japan through Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1983 live-action film. For many viewers discovering it decades later, the experience feels strangely familiar. The core premise is nearly identical, seeing a teenage girl who suddenly finds herself slipping backward and forward through time, reliving moments she can’t control. But the way Obayashi approaches that idea gives the film its own personality, rooted firmly in the emotional sincerity of early-1980s Japanese cinema.

A Conspiracy Hidden Inside Forgotten Memories

Recollection

The premise behind RECOLLECTION immediately grabs your attention because it taps into one of science fiction’s most unsettling questions. What happens when technology gives society the power to erase painful memories? In theory, it sounds like mercy. In practice, it raises uncomfortable possibilities about control, identity, and who gets to decide what parts of a life are worth remembering. That idea gives the film an intriguing foundation before a single scene or plot twist begins.

A Supernatural Romance That Feels Comfortably Familiar

Picture Of A Nymph (Hua zhong xian)

The late 1980s were a fascinating moment for Hong Kong fantasy cinema. Filmmakers were experimenting with wild swings that could jump from comedy to martial-arts action to tragic romance without warning. That era produced one of the genre’s most beloved films, A CHINESE GHOST STORY. Once that film exploded in popularity, it didn’t take long for similar supernatural romances to appear. PICTURE OF A NYMPH is one of the most obvious examples. Rather than feeling like a cheap imitation, though, it plays more like a companion piece built from the same creative DNA.

Vodou, Violence, and Visibility

Black Zombie

The zombie you think you know isn’t even the beginning. That iconic imagery, cemented by Hollywood over decades, is only a drop in the bucket of the larger history that has, as per usual, been whitewashed and torn to pieces, becoming a shadow of its origins. The zombie doesn’t, and never has, belonged to Hollywood. That’s the quiet but powerful thesis at the heart of BLACK ZOMBIE, and Maya Annik Bedward wastes no time making that clear. This isn’t a nostalgic genre retrospective. It isn’t a love letter to gore. It’s a cultural excavation. And it digs deep.

A Film Built From Perceived Failure

Zodiac Killer Project

ZODIAC KILLER PROJECT drops us into absence. There’s no dramatic reenactment. No archival bombshell. No grieving family framed in soft focus. Instead, Charlie Shackleton narrates a film that never got made. And somehow, that very documentation becomes the film. The premise is unpretentious. Shackleton had the makings of a traditional true crime documentary, centered around a highway patrolman’s obsessive theory about the Zodiac Killer. He gathered interviews. He shot moody California B-roll of freeways and parking lots where violence once lingered. Then the rights fell through. The project collapsed. What remains is what we see, with a twist, a reconstruction of an unrealized documentary and a dissection of the genre that might have contained it. That concept alone could’ve turned into an indulgent exercise in self-worth, but it doesn’t.

When Loyalty Becomes Lethal

Stalker Jane

The road to stardom is full of obstacles, egos, and opportunists. In STALKER JANE, the most dangerous obstacle doesn’t come from rival bands or industry gatekeepers. It comes from the person who believes in the band the most. Roger Glenn Hill’s low-budget horror thriller leans into a simple yet effective premise, looking at what happens when fandom turns into ruthless ambition. The film may operate within the boundaries of indie horror, but its central performance gives the story a spark that elevates it beyond its modest production.

Enlightenment With a Price Tag

Twisted Yoga

There’s something uniquely unsettling about watching belief unravel in real time. And possibly even more so in watching that belief being wrapped into something that makes you trust in it, just to have it pulled out from under you while you’re still grasping for that trust. TWISTED YOGA isn’t interested in sensationalism. It’s interested in seduction. How does a global tantric yoga movement promise empowerment and belonging, then slowly morph into something coercive, secretive, and allegedly criminal? The series doesn’t rush to answer that. It slowly reconstructs the path and lets you see what broke.

Pain With the Edges Filed Down

Regretting You

There’s a version of this story that could have left permanent bruises on your heart. REGRETTING YOU flirts with that version, but unfortunately never commits to it. Adapted from Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel and directed by Josh Boone, the film centers on Morgan Grant and her teenage daughter, Clara, after a devastating accident exposes not just loss, but betrayal. The premise promises emotional chaos. What we get instead is something far more controlled.

Memory Is a Dangerous Muse

Her Song

There’s something bold about creating a film around a writer who isn’t stuck because she lacks talent, but because she doesn’t know who she is when she isn’t borrowing from someone else. HER SONG opens in a French village that feels untouched and yet layered with ghosts of the past. Olivia, played by Kalki Koechlin, returns to her grandmother’s ancestral home hoping that closeness will unlock the novel she’s been struggling to finish. What she finds instead is inspiration that feels uncomfortably alive.

Burnout Gets a Soundtrack

Vicky Wakes Up

VICKY WAKES UP understands something crucial about the idea of creative frustration; seldom does it feel dramatic from the outside. It looks like fluorescent lighting, awkward small talk, and a calendar invite you don’t care about. Victoria Blade’s indie comedy pilot starts in that exact space, with the focus on a dead-end office job where ambition has quietly dulled into routine. Then it takes that and explodes into an experience you won’t forget.

The Ethics of Exposure

Group: The Schopenhauer Project

A slow-burning psychoanalysis that works, GROUP: THE SCHOPENHAUER EFFECT doesn’t rely on chaos. It doesn’t change locations to manufacture drama. It doesn’t escalate through plot twists or external threats. It plants you in a room with eight people and a real-life psychoanalyst (Dr. Elliot Zeisel) and dares you to sit with the discomfort. Sure, there are unexpected moments throughout the conversation, struggles within the moments shared, but as a whole, the focus is on people exploring what makes them tick.