CineCrossroads: “The End of Oak Street,” “The Shining,” and “Spirited Away”
The weekend is approaching, bringing another chance to escape into worlds where the familiar can quickly become strange, frightening or magical. In this edition of CineCrossroads, we’ll watch an ordinary American neighborhood face an impossible threat, return to one of cinema’s most unsettling hotels, and follow a young girl into a mysterious world of spirits. Qazinform News Agency correspondent wishes you an enjoyable viewing.
Movie of the Week: The End of Oak Street (2026)
What if your house, your neighbors and your entire street suddenly disappeared from the world you knew?
The End of Oak Street begins with the Platt family living an ordinary suburban life. Everything changes when a mysterious cosmic event tears Oak Street from its surroundings and transports the entire neighborhood to an unknown place.
The family soon discovers that their new surroundings are far from safe. Cut off from the familiar world and confronted by prehistoric creatures, the Platts must rely on one another if they hope to survive and understand what has happened.
Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, best known for It Follows, the science-fiction survival film stars Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor alongside Maisy Stella and Christian Convery. J.J. Abrams is among its producers.
The film mixes family drama with science fiction, mystery and dinosaur adventure. Rather than focusing only on the creatures, the story places a family at its center, asking what happens when everyday disagreements suddenly become insignificant compared with the need to stay alive.
Classic Pick: The Shining (1980)
An isolated hotel. A long winter. A family with nowhere to escape.
Jack Torrance arrives at the Overlook Hotel with his wife Wendy and young son Danny after accepting a job as its winter caretaker. With the hotel closed for the season, Jack hopes the isolation will give him time to concentrate on his writing.
But the Overlook is not as empty as it appears. Danny, who possesses a mysterious psychic ability known as “the shining,” begins seeing disturbing visions connected to the hotel’s violent past. Meanwhile, Jack gradually becomes increasingly unstable.
Directed by Stanley Kubrick and based on Stephen King’s novel, The Shining stars Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall and Danny Lloyd.
Kubrick turns long corridors, empty rooms and an ordinary tricycle ride into sources of extraordinary tension. Nicholson’s increasingly frightening performance has become one of the most recognizable in horror cinema, while Duvall gives the film much of its emotional intensity.
Family Choice: Spirited Away (2001)
Ten-year-old Chihiro thinks she is simply moving to a new home with her parents. A wrong turn, however, leads the family somewhere they were never supposed to find.
After entering what appears to be an abandoned amusement park, Chihiro discovers a hidden world inhabited by spirits, witches and strange creatures. When her parents are transformed into pigs, she must find a way to survive on her own and save them.
Her journey takes her to a magical bathhouse ruled by the powerful witch Yubaba. There, Chihiro takes a job, meets the mysterious Haku and slowly learns to replace fear with courage.
Written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, Spirited Away combines extraordinary imagination with a simple story about growing up, identity and compassion.
The film became the first non-English-language animated movie to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Its hand-drawn world remains filled with memorable characters, from the mysterious No-Face to the enormous baby Boh.
You can read last week’s edition of CineCrossroads here.