​The best kind of horror movies are about some kind of unspeakable impulse or thought embodied by demons or monsters.  So much of David Cronenberg’s work is about a body revolting against its owner.  The slasher movies of the 80’s enact some form of retributive morality on sexual freedom.  Familial bonds aren’t spared from interrogation, whether in a classic like The Shining or the more contemporary Babadook.  Ari Aster’s disconcerting debut Hereditary is in this last vein, stuffed with corrupted relationships to the point of bursting.  It gives explicit voice to taboo feelings, especially about motherhood, as it moves between subgenres of horror in its different acts.  Some of these transitions are more successful than others, but the total package is masterful in its evocation of earlier horror staples while also making its own contribution to the genre.

​Morgan Neville isn’t breaking new cinematic ground with Won’t You Be My Neighbor, a documentary about the life of children’s television host Fred Rogers.  He’s not even as formally inventive as he is with his Oscar winner, 20 Feet From Stardom, in which he used memorable camera tricks to show how one backup singer can now do the work of several.  This film is as straightforward and uncomplicated as its host, and it loses little power by being so.  Sometimes, the choice of a documentarian’s subject is enough to make a film a dead ringer, and Won’t You Be My Neighbor has made that choice.

The title of Matthew Nelson’s Who We Are Now refers to the irrevocable return to one’s earlier self after a life-changing event.  The new person is still walking around in the old person’s body, but they can’t get their brain into the same place no matter how much they might want to or how much the people around them want to get back to normal.  Reconciling that gap is shown to require a level of vulnerability that most people are incapable of, especially when desperation opens up the possibilities of easy exploitation.  Nelson’s actors’ showcase is the ideal form of agitprop, one that resists speechifying and naked political statements for the lived experiences of those on the margins.