Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (2020)

Directed by: Cathy Yan

Notable cast: Margot Robbie, Ewan McGregor, Rosie Perez, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell

Adaptation is a funny game. You have to make a story or property viable for a different audience or medium while trying to balance fealty to the originals and the fans thereof. And if you even kind of manage that small miracle you usually still have to worry about making something entertaining as a stand-alone piece. Birds of Prey is already juggling all of these balls and decides to double down by swapping in the flaming chainsaws of being aggressively feminist in a space that’s so far been unwelcoming to it, and by being a sequel to a movie nobody seemed to like. That the movie came together at all is no small feat, that it did it this well is more or less unprecedented. But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, allow me to channel our subject’s protagonist and backpedal a bit to do this right.

Doctor Sleep (2019)

Directed by: Mike Flanagan

Notable cast: Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Kyliegh Curran, Cliff Curtis

Doctor Sleep has all the ingredients to be either an unmitigated disaster or an unambiguous victory. Positioning itself as a follow-up to both the book and filmic versions of The Shining while having to tell its own, largely unrelated story. That’s a lot of juggling for any film, but add to the metaphor that two of those flying balls are hand grenades, and I mean that in the sense that director Mike Flanagan has to show proper reverence to two masters.

The Shining, as a book, is on the shortlist of absolute Stephen King masterpieces and is unambiguously supernatural in its telling. There is no question that the ghosts that Jack Torrence sees are literal, and the whole thing, although thematically and metaphorically about addiction, is real and is really happening. The Shining, as a film, is on the shortlist of greatest films ever made period, directed by a man who never produced a single dud and is nothing but ambiguous about everything in its telling. Focused almost exclusively with Jack Nicholson’s far less hinged and sympathetic take on Torrence, this movie is an exploration of abuse, isolation and madness, while maintaining the theme of addiction. Suffice it to say, King famously loathes the adaptation, which is the final wrinkle in what makes the concept of a Doctor Sleep movie so wild.