‘THE FAVOURITE’ is the Cattiest Movie of the Year in the Best Way Humanly Possible

November 21, 2018 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged Best of 2018, Deborah Davis, Emma Stone, Nicholas Hoult, Olivia Colman, Out in Theaters, Rachel Weisz, Reviews, The Favourite, Tony McNamara, Yorgos Lanthimos 3 Comments

Vying for the sole affection of Queen Anne – and all the status that comes with it – two cousins from different stations stoke a bitter rivalry in Yorgos Lanthimos exquisitely-mounted The Favourite. Scrumptiously rancorous, Lanthimos’ foray into costume drama is a series of verbal death matches, its characters clawing at one another’s reputation, the performances from its perfectly-cast stars provide each and every syllable of Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara’s wonderfully cutting script a searing eclipse of clever-wit, cunning undercuts and good-humor that never second-guesses going straight for the jugular. Read More

Out in Theaters: ‘HALLOWEEN’

October 18, 2018 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged Andi Matichak, Danny McBride, David Gordon Green, Halloween, Horror, Judy Greer, Out in Theaters, Reviews 4 Comments

The slasher subculture saw its heyday in the 1980s, with franchises like Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street accruing scores of harebrained sequels, spawning a pattern of rinse-repeat horror franchises that rarely held a candle to the greats in terms of turnover quality. Jason eventually went to outer space. Freddy Kruger broke the fourth wall. Michael Myers was revisioned as a force for utilitarian good, destined to kill all of Laurie’s family in order to save all of civilization. To say that these sequels haven’t always been so hot is quite the understatement. In 2018, director David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express) – of all people – has taken the governing principles of the slasher and given it new life through a winning combination of tasteful updates, tactful homage, and gleeful bloodletting and in doing so, he may have just perfected the slasher movie. Read More

Out in Theaters: ‘THE SISTERS BROTHERS’

October 4, 2018 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged Alexandre Desplat, Benoît Debie, Jacques Audiard, Jake Gyllenhaal, Joaquin Phoenix, John C. Reilly, Riz Ahmed, The Sisters Brothers, Thomas Bidegain 1 Comment

Manifest destiny makes no promises of prosperity. Those seeking riches in the wild, wild west were treated to the same pittance of dumb luck and social hierarchy that they were long familiar in the eastern shores. What distinguished the far reaches of the American West in the mid-1800s was the fierce cascade of violence that hung over the land like a raging conflagration and the profit one could seek by exacting that violence. Bounty hunters and criminals pocked the far-flung towns, trading human lives for riches. This is where we meet The Sisters Brothers. Read More

Out in Theaters: ‘MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: FALLOUT’

July 24, 2018 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged Best of 2018, Henry Cavill, Mission Impossible: Fallout, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Simon Pegg, tom cruise, Ving Rhames 4 Comments

I have a confession to make. There’s this thing that happens to people who review movies on any kind of quasi-professional circuit. A kind of numbing of the enthusiasm gland by proxy of the inability to overlook a film’s shortcomings. The more movies one takes in, the more unavoidable it is to not diagnose lazy writing, poor story structure, bland acting, choppy VFX… The collection of pratfalls these XXL “turn your brain off” tentpole films tend to suffer. When you see 200 movies a year, the bar to dazzle becomes impossibly high. What works for general audiences who catch a movie every few months often feels flat and stale for the critic – just another coat of crisp digital paint lazily slathered on poorly recycled narrative – because we’ve already seen this exact story twice this year. Read More

Out in Theaters: ‘HEREDITARY’

June 4, 2018 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged A24, Alex Wolff, Ann Dowd, Ari Aster, Best of 2018, Gabriel Byrne, Hereditary, Horror, Milly Shapiro, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Toni Collette 1 Comment

Every once in a blue moon, there comes a horror movie that’s legitimately capital-T terrifying. One that’ll cause your eyes to dart around the dark stillness of the theater at the smallest creak. One that’ll hitchhike a ride home with you to invade your dreams; an unabortable mental pregnancy. One whose delirious imagery will burn into your cranium as if doused in paint thinner and struck by a match. I am happy to report that A24’s Hereditary, dear readers, is just that kind of movie. It’ll take your damn head off. Read More

Out in Theaters: ’TULLY’

May 3, 2018 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged Charlize Theron, Diablo Cody, Elaine Tan, Jason Reitman, Mackenzie Davis, Mark Duplass, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Ron Livingston, Tully Leave a comment

Parenting is perpetual sacrifice. Or so says Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody, the directing-writing duo behind poppy cult classic Juno, with their comeback collaboration Tully. A dramatic comedy or comedic drama, depending on how you want to look at it, Tully is a soaring success no matter what box you want to put it in; a well-meaning, deeply felt, irreverently mature exploration of growing pains and adulating. Charlize Theron is a knock-one in this deliriously enjoyable feature that has no short supply of wit, bite and verve with a shot of mindfuck mixed in to boot. Read More

Out in Theaters: ‘A QUIET PLACE’

April 5, 2018 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged A Quiet Place, Best of 2018, Bryan Woods, Emily Blunt, Horror, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, Scott Beck 4 Comments

Put your phones on silent bitches. A Quiet Place, a masterfully disquieting creature feature from The Office alum John Krasinski, simply will not stand for interruption. Taking pages from the books of Hitchcock, Argento, and Spielberg, Krasinski skillfully weaves together a sharply intelligent, emotionally involving and blisteringly suspenseful chamber-piece that layers a uniquely “silent” horror film in with a very personal treatise on the challenges of parenthood. Read More

Out in Theaters: ‘ANNIHILATION’

February 22, 2018 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged Alex Garland, Annihilation, Gina Rodriguez, Jeff VanderMeer, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Natalie Portman, Oscar Isaac, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny 2 Comments

Alex Garland, the visionary writer-director behind Ex Machina, obsesses over ideas of what it means to be human. With Ex Machina, he explored the inception of A.I. and how true artificial intelligence blurs the line between human and “other” to dizzying, disorienting and apocalyptic result. In his writing effort Never Let Me Go, Garland posed similar – if less refined – questions, posing an analogous emotional experiment with clones as the test subject, begging his audience to work out what separates “us” from “them”. “If they feel, are they not too human?” was the central thrust and this idea has continue to haunt Garland’s films. Never Let Me Go was a lesser effort but came from a place of ripe ideology and artistic thoughtfulness, traits which Garland has never lacked and has gone on to define to great effect. Read More

50 Most Anticipated Movies of 2018

January 4, 2018 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists, Most Popular, Uncategorized Tagged Most Anticipated Movies, Most Anticipated Movies of 2018 Leave a comment

Ahhh 2018. A year of promise. Of renewed hope. Of unlimited possibility. I advise you do your best to not pay attention to the commander in chief’s tweets and bury your hand in the collective sand that is an unhealthy obsession with movies. Tis the very best medicine and nothing gets me more jazzed about covering the industry than looking at the year ahead and seeing just how many potential gems lay in wait. Each and every year I tell myself I’m not going to bother doing a Top 50 Most Anticipated Movies List. That someone else will do the work for me and I can just retweet it. And yet every year we get the same retreads, boring, blockbuter-loaded lists ad nauseam. Here goes my attempt to right that wrong. Read More

Top Ten Movies of 2017

December 21, 2017 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists, Most Popular Tagged Best of Year, Dunkirk, Get Out, Lady Bird, Raw, The Disaster Artist, The Florida Project, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Shape of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Top Ten, War for the Planet of the Apes 1 Comment

’Tis an annual (w)rite of passage for every film critic to force themselves into a pretzel declaring their top ten favorite films of the year. It’s a stressful, painful experience that almost always ends in regret. Looking back at Top Tens of years past, I always groan with certain inclusions – films that haven’t weathered quite so well – and lament other omissions – films that have grown on me like a fine wine or well-worn pair of slippers. But we toil on regardless, sure to churn out a list loaded with recency bias that we’ll look back on one, two, ten years from now, pockets loaded with exasperated groans. In short, it’s a pain rite of passage even though writing these passages is probably the most fundamental requirement for every critic and inevitably draw the most page views. Read More