Top Ten Films of 2020

December 31, 2020 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists, Most Popular Tagged Another Round, Best of the Year, Dinner in America, First Cow, Kajillionaire, New Order, Palm Springs, Possessor, Soul, The Invisible Man, The Painter and the Thief, Top Ten Leave a comment

Even though the theaters were closed for the vast majority of 2020 (at least where I live), I still managed to see nearly as many new releases this year as I did last year. In fact, I only saw five less, despite taking a six-month break from reviewing film. A small silver lining in all the nightmarishness of the year that would not end. Though it concluded rather…inconspicuously, 2020 started with a bang with my attending Sundance Film Festival (for the fifth time) and looking forward to an exciting year of personal and professional growth. Welp, that mostly ended in the gutter but here I am knocking out a Top Ten list because I know it is my sacred duty as a reviewer of film to produce such an annual list so produce I shall. Read More

Heartbreaking ‘PIECES OF A WOMAN’ Kicks the Dead Horse

December 31, 2020 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Benny Safdie, Ellen Burstyn, Kata Wéber, Kornél Mundruczó, Molly Parker, Out in Theaters, Pieces of a Woman, Reviews, Sarah Snook, Shia LaBeouf, Vanessa Kirby 1 Comment

Emotional devastation is something everyone living through 2020 is too well acquainted with but Kornél Mundruczó’s tearjerking Pieces of a Woman suggests that things can always be worse. The Hungarian White God writer and director paints a tumultuous portrait of a husband and wife undergoing an incredible loss with unflinching precision, using a voyeuristic approach to nestle into their most personal, private moments and translating it to the screen in a novel, wholly disturbing manner. Read More

Uninspired ’WONDER WOMAN 1984’ A Careless Sequel I Wish Didn’t Exist

December 23, 2020 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Chris Pine, Gal Gadot, Kristen Wiig, Out in Theaters, Patty Jenkins, Pedro Pascal, Reviews, Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman 1984 1 Comment

An aimless, uninteresting, and frankly deeply disappointing follow-up to 2017’s critically beloved and widely-adored Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman 1984 is a top-down failure of a sequel. Losing nearly all the magic of what made the Diana Prince character work so well in her first solo venture and throughout her tenure in the DCEU, this unintelligible next chapter is a total overstuffed mess that somehow manages to be both too heavy and too thin on plot, one that shambles around for a two-and-a-half-hour runtime without ever truly convincing us that it has much of a story to tell in the first place. Folks, it’s a damn mess. Read More

Anarchy Rips the World Apart Before Comets in Thrilling ‘GREENLAND’

December 22, 2020 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Chris Sparling, David Denman, Gerald Butler, Greenland, Morena Baccarin, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Ric Roman Waugh, Scott Glenn 1 Comment

A disaster movie channeling the apocalyptic vibes of a zombie movie, where the greatest threat is not in fact the people-eating monsters but the desperation of your fellow man, Greenland is a surprisingly thrilling blockbuster about the world coming to an end. Shelved in June due to boarded-up theaters and that whole virus on the loose and finally released to at-home video-on-demand, the Ric Roman Waugh-directed Greenland re-teams the Angel Has Fallen franchise writer-director and frequent collaborator Gerald Butler to rousing effect. Read More

The 25 Best TV Shows of 2020

December 21, 2020 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists, Most Popular Tagged 2020, Best TV, Better Call Saul, Bojack Horseman, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Dark, Dave, I Hate Suzie, I Know This Much is True, I May Destroy You, Mythic Quest, Normal People, Ozark, Pen15, Ramy, Schitt’s Creek, Servant, Ted Lasso, The Boys, The Flight Attendant, The Great, The Haunting of Bly Manor, The Mandolorian, The Outsider, The Queen’s Gambit, The Umbrella Academy, What We Do in the Shadows 2 Comments

What can be said about 2020 that hasn’t already been said? It has been a nightmare year where routines were upended, social outings curbed, vacations put on indefinite hold. And with movie theaters around the country shuttered to slow the spread of COVID-19, the only sense of adventure for many was on the small screen. At home. On the couch. And thank god that the year in television was as good as it was. Read More

Mulligan Shines in ‘PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN’, a Bruising Saga of XX Vengeance

December 14, 2020 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Adam Brody, Alison Brie, Bo Burnham, Carey Mulligan, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Connie Britton, Emerald Fennell, Jennifer Coolidge, Laverne Cox, Max Greenfield, Molly Shannon, Out in Theaters, Promising Young Woman, Reviews, Sam Richardson 1 Comment

Cassie Thomas (Carey Mulligan), much like Emerald Fennell’s splashy debut Promising Young Woman, is out to ruffle feathers. That is the point after all. A scintillating first feature, Promising Young Woman, which earned high critical marks and largely enthusiastic response during its Sundance bow, is a #MeToo revenge thriller that confronts date rape and sexual assault with a fearless, take-no-prisoners approach. Read More

Pixar’s Existential ‘SOUL’ Sparks Curiosity, Purpose

December 7, 2020 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged Angela Bassett, Daveed Diggs, Jaime Foxx, Kemp Powers, Pete Docter, Pixar, Quest Love, Richard Ayoade, Soul, Tina Fey 1 Comment

As life-affirming and unabashedly profound as it is cerebrally curious and gorgeously animated, Pete Docter’s Soul is yet another Pixar masterwork. Easily the best output from the once-flawless studio since 2015’s Inside Out (also directed by Docter), Soul also ranks amongst Pixar’s best work to date, putting it in league with Toy Story 3, Ratatouille, Up, and Wall-E. Since their acquisition by Disney, Pixar has placed an increased focus on franchising, churning out decent-enough sequels but letting the once limitless creativity that once defined them fall by the wayside. As sequels began to dominate their slate, that spark of creativity dimmed. Though he hadn’t changed, that little Pixar light had a little less bounce in him. Expectations of grandeur lowered in sync. With Inside Out, Pixar nouveau reasserted themselves as a house of bold choices that played to the adults in the audience just as much as the children and Soul affirms this direction with its every fiber. Read More

Aching ‘NOMADLAND’ Retires Myth of American Exceptionalism

December 2, 2020 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged Chloé Zhao, Frances McDormand, Jessica Bruder, Nomadland, Out in Theaters, Reviews 1 Comment

Leave it to a Chinese native to cut to the very soul of the American heartland. Inspired by Jessica Bruder’s 2017 nonfiction work “Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century,” Venice Film Festival Golden Lion winner Nomadland sees director Chloé Zhao (The Rider) sharpen her skill as an exposer of marginalized American truths. A ruminant tone-poem about frontierism and the warpath of capitalism on the old and aging, Nomadland uses the visual poetry of the American midwest as a backdrop for her story about Fern, a widowed gig-worker wandering the states in the run-down van she calls home. Read More

Bold and Boundless ‘BLACK BEAR’ Boggles the Brain

November 30, 2020 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Aubrey Plaza, Black Bear, Christopher Abbott, Lawrence Michael Levine, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Sarah Gadon 1 Comment

What begins inauspiciously as a nervy tableau about an unhappily married couple unmoored by the arrival of a duplicitous and tempestuous female boarder soon spins into a bizarre anti-anthology that breaks as many rules of traditional-storytelling as it can in its bewildering and enchanting 104 minutes. Writer and director Lawrence Michael Levine (Wild Canaries) sets out to defy the logic of filmmaking grammar, having his principal cast play variants of different characters without stopping to explain the leaps from one storyline to the next. In essence, Black Bear refuses to be caged. To any one style, to any one genre, to any one story. In a nutshell, it is a relationship drama meets a dark comedy meets an artistic deconstruction meets a survival story. Though certain to confuse and frustrate viewers looking for a more linear and easy-to-define cinematic experience, Black Bear remains a daring and boldly-acted pièce de résistance from a filmmaker disinterested in falling in line and fully committed to braving the wilderness of going it alone. Read More

‘SOUND OF METAL’ a Blaring Ode to Reshaped Identity

November 16, 2020 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Darius Marder, Derek Cianfrance, Lauren Ridloff, Mathieu Amalric, Olivia Cooke, Out in Theaters, Paul Raci, Reviews, Riz Ahmed, Sound of Metal 1 Comment

There is little in the world more violent to your hearing than a drum set. I can attest to that fact from personal experience. Starting from a wee middle schooler on a janky kit and building out my skill and hardware into high school and throughout college, I played drums in too many bands to count. Stuffed into basements, tight rehearsal spaces, and cobbled practice rooms, playing bars, sweaty venues and ill-acoustic’ed house parties, the young musician that I was was nevertheless opposed to earplugs. It muffled the sound. Made it harder to sync with the rest of the rhythm section. Killed the raw unbridled thrash of it all. Of the sprawling army of musicians I have played with over the years, too many have adopted this same misguided mantra: earplugs just aren’t rock and roll. Read More