To celebrate, movie theaters across the country are hosting Scream’s 30th anniversary screenings and V for Vendetta, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary. If you’re planning on staying home, check out our Halloween Countdown, filled with spooky recommendations. If you’re looking for newly available streaming titles on platforms and VOD, we’ve got you covered too.
Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars is out on VOD, following Jacob Elordi in a post-apocalyptic landscape. There’s also Verity, Dakota Johnson and Anne Hathaway’s erotic thriller. Other noteworthy inclusions are Forgotten Island, DreamWorks Animation's most recent feature film, blending ‘90s nostalgia with Filipino mythology.
There’s also Minions & Monsters, which premiered in theaters earlier this year and is finally out on Peacock. Based on Peter Heller’s novel of the same name, The Dog Stars is set in a world that’s been devastated by a global pandemic. It follows a traumatized pilot (Jacob Elordi) who lost his pregnant wife to the disease and is living with his dog and a survivalist (Josh Brolin), apart from the rest of the surviving world.
After a tragic turn, he decides to leave the compound behind to search for other survivors. The best thing The Dog Stars has going for it is that it looks absolutely incredible. Scott teams up with cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt (best known for his David Fincher collaborations) to capture both the pristine beauty of the Rocky Mountains and the haunting beauty of the abandoned cities and towns that dot the landscape.
A good chunk of the film involves watching Elordi pilot his tiny yellow plane through the skies, and it never gets old. Based on Colleen Hoover’s twistiest novel, Verity follows a struggling ghostwriter named Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson), who receives an offer to complete Verity Crawford’s (Anne Hathaway) successful series of novels. She accepts, moving into Verity’s home and starting a flirtation with her husband (Hartnett), only to find that Verity is paralyzed and living in the same house.
Erotic thrillers require a willingness to feel trashy and look ridiculous. Hathaway easily gets there. When Lowen finds a secret manuscript in Verity’s office, showing Verity's true and unvarnished self, we get to watch the character's "true" life story play out onscreen.
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