Summer 2016 Preview – 28 Movies Better than Half-Hearted Suntanning

April 4, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists Tagged Captain America: Civil War, Demolition, Don’t Breathe, Finding Dory, Free State of Jones, Ghostbusters, Green Room, Hologram for a King, Independence Day: Resurgence, Keanu, Kubo And the Two Strings, Lights Out, Pop Star: Never Stop Never Stopping, Sausage Party, Star Trek Beyond, Suicide Squad, The BFG, The Founder, The Infiltrator, The Jungle Book, The Legend of Tarzan, The Nice Guys, War Dogs, Warcraft, X-Men: Apocalypse 2 Comments

Sure it’s not quite summer yet but a few 70 degree days have gone to our heads and we’ve decided to do some spring cleaning. Thus the Summer 2016 Movie Preview! The aim of this comprehensive guide is to get you geared up for the coming sunny months, where you fair reader will holed up inside to watch moving pictures on monumentally-sized screens. As can be expected, there is no shortage of spectacle this summer. You can almost rear the bleating of dump trucks reversing bloated piles of studio tentpoles to dump at our feet as we speak. Will there be a diamond in the rough this summer the likes of Mad Max: Fury Road? We don’t think so but hey, we can dream. With almost 4000 words to delve through below, we won’t stall any longer getting into the 28 films we think might just be worth foregoing a few hours of sun to see. Read More

50 Most Anticipated Movies of 2016

January 8, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists, Most Popular Tagged A Monster Calls, Arms and the Dudes, Assassin’s Creed, Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Bourne 5, Caesar!, Christine, Comancheria, Demolition, Doctor Strange, Everyone Wants Some, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Finding Dory, Free Fire, Green Room, Hacksaw Ridge, Hail, High-Rise, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Julieta, Keanu, La La Land, Leatherface, Mascots, Midnight Special, Neon Demon, Salt and Fire, Sausage Party, Silence, Star Trek Beyond, Star Wars: Rogue One, Story of Your Life, Suicide Squad, Swiss Army Man, The Bad Batch, The BFG, The Circle, The Discovery, The Girl on The Train, The Handmaid, The Jungle Book, The Light Between Oceans, The Nice Guys, Triple 9, Valencia, War Machine, War on Everyone, X-Men: Apocalypse, Yoga Hosers 2 Comments

Last year, we compiled a list of our 50 Most Films of 2015 and though many proved disappointed, the top-tier resulted in a barrage of wins. This year, we return to do the same. Consider yourself in store for a massive compilation of films, including many were already featured on last year’s list for release change reasons. For those curious, you will not find too many big franchise tent-pole movies like the redone Ghostbusters because I’ve not liked Paul Feig‘s work in the past or superhero fare a la Captain America: Civil War because we pretty much know what’s in store there. Some smashing, some joking, then everything’s a-ok in the end.

We’re looking for something fresh. Something that’ll surprise us. That’s why you’ll find very few sequels here and even less junk that you’ve seen on some other anticipation lists. But let’s get down to business. This is an absolutely massive article so I’ll stop wasting time and let you get right to it. Here it is: the 50 Most Anticipated Movies of 2016. Read More

Winter 2016 Movie Preview – 16 Movies We’re Willing To Give the Benefit of the Doubt

January 4, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists Tagged 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Deadpool, Hail Caesar!, Hello My Name is Doris, I Saw the Light, Jane Got a Gun, Lamb, Previews, Queen of the Desert, SOMM: Into the Bottle, The Little Prince, The Witch, Where to Invade Next, Zoolander 2 Leave a comment

We’ve written about the best films of 2015. We’ve written about the worst. And then, it was over. And so came “that” time of year. “That” time of year where the hits of 2015 continue to dominate the box office. Where awards contenders pile back into theaters. Where Star Wars makes another billion dollars. And, most importantly, where new releases are synonymous with shite. Hello 2016 movies. The dumping ground is right over here. Read More

2015 Silver Screen Riot Awards

January 3, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Awards, Lists Tagged Silver Screen Riot Awards 1 Comment

2015 has come and gone as has most of our recap coverage for the year. The one remaining elephant in the room is the 2015 Silver Screen Riot Awards where we pick and choose from the elite and populist alike to make our selection for best director, performer, cinematographer, screenplay, documentary, foreign film, action movie, horror movie and comedy. You’ll see a winner and a runner-up as well as a list of honorable mentions that are sorta ranked but without too much scrutiny paid to that ranking. Our awards (thankfully) don’t come with all too much description (read: none) but you’ll find some nice pictures in place of the words that probably would have gone unread. Because it’s been a long week and we know you’ll probably just scan for the winners anyways. So, concluding 2015 once and for all, here it is: the 2015 Silver Screen Riot Awards. Read More

Silver Screen Riot’s Worst 10 Movies of 2015

January 2, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists, Most Popular, Top Tens Tagged Blackhat, Bound to Vengeance, Dark Places, Fifrty Shades of Grey, Insurgent, Ted 2, Terminator: Genisys, The Boy Next Door, The Transporter Refueled, Wild Horses 1 Comment

Like any year, 2015 was a hotbed for steamy cinematic turds – and I don’t even watch Adam Sandler movies or Friedberg-Seltzer spoofs. Because let’s be honest, neither of the above have been good since I was in diapers. So for all the A+’s of 2015, there were accompanying F’s. For all the sweet, sweet victories, there were pussing, gaping canker sores. For every Leonardo DiCaprio, there is a Ryan Guzman. And a Ryan Guzman always brings the party down. Read More

Silver Screen Riot’s Top 10 Films of 2015

January 1, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists, Most Popular Tagged Creed, Ex Machina, Inside Out, Mad Max: Fury Road, Room, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Steve Jobs, The End of the Tour, The Overnight, The Revenant Leave a comment

Well well well. 2015 has finally reached its end. After 201 films, 25 interviews (including Robert Duvall, Kevin Bacon, Jason Segel, Jason Schwartzman, Greta Gerwig, Jemaine Clement, Alex Garland, and Nick Kroll to name just a few), three massive international film festivals and countless hours spend idly engaged in film banter with my always entertaining gang of colleagues and peers at various Seattle screening rooms, I can finally come to the conclusion that, for what it’s worth, 2015 was an odd duck for film. Read More

The Best and Worst Aspects of ‘STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS’

December 20, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists, Most Popular Tagged Adam Driver, Best and Worst, Best and Worst of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Daisy Ridley, Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, J.J. Abrams, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac 1 Comment

There has been an awakening. With a $238 million opening weekend, the box office roared to live, stoked by the Mustafar-sized conflagration of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, quickly making this seventh Star Wars film the biggest opening of all time and putting it on track to dethrone the highest grossing films ever. But all money aside, the real question on everyone’s lips were, is it good? Thankfully, the answer was a resounding yes. With a 95% score on Rotten Tomatoes, critics and fans alike have rallied around the J.J. Abrams product like Ewoks on a post-Empire Endor. But that doesn’t mean that the film didn’t have its share of lows amongst the highs. Read More

Holiday 2015 Film Preview – 10 December Films We Positively Cannot Wait For

November 30, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists Tagged Anomalisa, Holiday Film Preview, In the Heart of the Sea, Joy, Krampus, Macbeth, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, The Big Short, The Hateful Eight, The Revenant, Youth Leave a comment

Sleigh bells be damned. All we want for Christmas is movies! With cold weather driving us indoors and holidays meaning family time galore – which in turns means escape from family time galore – the movie theater becomes a quiet solace in which to bask in the creativity of other people. We’re cut through the stacks of Holiday offerings to give you the 10 December films we positively cannot wait for. Amongst them are big (and we mean big) blockbusters, a few little indie flicks, an adult stop-motion drama, new films from Alejandro González Iñárritu, David O. Russell and Quentin Tarantino and even a holiday horror for the scary movie fans. And of course, Star Wars. If all of them are as good as we’re hoping, it’ll be a Christmas miracle.

Fall 2015 Film Preview – 22 Films To Buy Tickets for Now

September 1, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists Tagged Beasts of No Nation, Black Mass, Bridge of Spies, Carol, Creed, Crimson Peak, Everest, Fall Movie Preview, Goodnight Mommy, Pan, Sicario, Sleeping With Other People, Spectre, Steve Jobs, Suffragette, The Danish Girl, The Good Dinosaur, The Green Inferno, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, The Martian, The Night Before, The Visit, Trumbo 1 Comment

September is upon us as summer creeps into the rear view. Torrential rains, blistering cold spells and the grotesqueries of changing leaf colors is set to drive the masses into the theaters. But is there anything worth seeing? But of course there is! We’ve compiled our Fall 2015 Film Preview to get the ticket-buying ball rolling and your film nerd anticipation building. Right up until an absolutely action-packed Holiday movie season, there’s a bounty of cinema that’s geared up to do nothing short of blow the doors off. If everything pans out as it should, we ought to be seeing some of the year’s first viable Oscar films as well as some of the year’s biggest blockbusters. Read More

NETFIX: 6 Great New Films That Made No Money (Because You Didn’t See Them)

August 3, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists, Most Popular, Netfix Tagged Faults, Girlhood, Lists, Netfix, The Double, The Guest, The One I Love, Zero Motivation Leave a comment

The great thing about Netflix is that it gives you a lot of TV and movie watching options. The bad thing about Netflix is that it gives you…a lot of TV and movie watching options. To cut down on your Netflix search and discover time, Netfix aims to ease the process of parsing the good from the bad. The great from the not so great. From action films to foreign dramas, we’re raked the catalogs to offer only the finest that the preeminent streaming service has to offer. So settle in, get your remotes ready and prepare for the red wave of Netfix to wash over you.