SXSW 2021: Floral Horror ‘GAIA’ a Nightmarish Reckoning with Nature

March 17, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged Alex van Dyk, Carel Nel, Gaia, Horror, Jaco Bouwer, Monique Rockman, Reviews, SXSW, SXSW 2021 1 Comment

Eco-horror is having a resurgence of late, as are psilocybin mushrooms as a visual language in film. Jaco Bouwer’s formidable woodland creeper Gaia fits snugly into a recent wave of psychedelic folk horror, a subgenre that binds Ari Aster’s Midsommar, Alex Garland’s Annihilation, Ben Wheatley’s In the Earth (a recent Sundance release that would make a pitch perfect double feature with Bouwer’s entry) and even Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Sparked by an increasing awareness of humanity’s abusive relationship with nature, eco-horror pits the survival of man and earth against one another and in the light of a global pandemic, those themes have never been as prescient. Read More

SXSW 2021: ALS Activism Documentary ‘NOT GOING QUIETLY’ a Devastating, Inspirational Call to Arms

March 17, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged Ady Barkan, Documentaries, Nicholas Bruckman, Not Going Quietly, Reviews, SXSW, SXSW 2021 Leave a comment

Hope is a hammer, Ady Barkan attempts to say. His tongue, lungs, and the rest of his body devastated by ALS (an incurable degenerative disease that paralyzes and eventually kills its victims), Ady tries again and again but just can’t get the words out to the audience of thousands gathered to hear the American healthcare activist speak. This moment, one of many heartbreaking scenes in Nicholas Bruckman’s not-so-quietly devastating documentary Not Going Quietly, perhaps best encapsulates the ironic paradox of Ady’s emergent and often viral voice: the more his body fails him, the less he is physically able to move and speak, the more he has to say and the more people gather to listen to him. Read More

Sundance 2021: Stunning Performances Make ‘MASS’ A Sorrowful Reflection On The Aftermath of Violence

February 1, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged (Jacob Isaacs, Ann Dowd, Fran Kranz, Martha Plimpton, Mass, Reed Birney, Sundance, Sundance 2021 3 Comments

Two sets of parents, Jay (Jacob Isaacs) and Gail (Martha Plimpton), and Linda (Ann Dowd) and Richard (Reed Birney), meet six years after a tragedy that forever changed their lives. A swirling character-focused chamber piece about responsibility, guilt, grief, parenting, and forgiveness, Mass is an incredibly difficult weepy that honestly confronts challenging material. To go into the specifics of those details is to deny the reader of the hard-fought suspense that the filmmaker works to achieve so do try to go into this as blind as you can. Read More

Sundance 2021: Porn Industry Is More Business, Less ‘PLEASURE’ In Phenomenal Star Is Born Cum-Up

February 1, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged Casey Calvert, Chris Cock, Dana DeArmond, Evelyn Claire, Kendra Spade, Mark Spiegler, Ninja Thyberg, Peter Modestij, Pleasure, Reviews, Sofia Kappel, Sundance, Sundance 2021 2 Comments

The porn industry is first and foremost just that: an industry. Pleasure, the stunning expansion of Swedish writer-director Ninja Thyberg’s 2013 short of the same name, takes an unfiltered and decidedly hardcore look at how the porn industry operates through the lens of newcomer “Bella Cherry” (an incredible Sofia Kappel). A Swedish transplant that just arrived in LA with her mind set on being the next big thing in porn, Bella declares at passport control that she’s in the States for pleasure but soon discovers that she’s there for business. And business can be a sticky situation. Read More

Sundance 2021: ‘IN THE EARTH’ Combines Axe Slashers and Lovecraftian Horror With Hallucinogenic Style

January 29, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged Clint Mansell, Ellora Torchia, Hayley Squires, Horror, In the Earth, Joel Fry, Reece Shearsmith, Sundance, Sundance 2021 2 Comments

Creating horror has been and will always be a sociopolitical act and with In The Earth, British auteur Ben Wheatley reflects the reality of the pandemic back at us in startling, disorienting fashion. The result has notes of all kinds of horror, but most distinctly a tent-in-the-woods slasher crossed with Lovecraftian cosmic horror, all set to the backdrop of some airborne viral infection that’s driven the population into quarantine and starved them for a cure. Read More

Sundance 2021: Two Emotionally Wounded BFFs Are Going to Kill Themselves ‘ON THE COUNT OF THREE’

January 29, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged Christopher Abbott, Henry Winkler, J.B. Smoove, Jerrod Carmichael, On the Count of Three, Sundance, Sundance 2021, Tiffany Haddish 2 Comments

Jerrod Carmichael and Christopher Abbott do a high wire balancing act in tragicomic suicide bromance On the Count of Three, a movie that’s sure to leave viewers shaken and maybe just a bit disturbed, but nonetheless absolute certain of what Carmichael came to say. Read More

Sundance 2021: Crowd-Pleasing ‘CODA’ Allows Other “Voices” to Soar

January 28, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged CODA, Daniel Durant, Emilia Jones, Eugenio Derbez, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Marlee Matlin, Reviews, Sian Heder, Sundance, Sundance 2021, Troy Kotsur 1 Comment

Inclusive, funny, original, and genuinely moving, CODA is just about the most wonderful start to the 2021 Sundance Film Festival that you could hope for. This endearing fish-out-of-water coming-of-age story about the only hearing daughter in a deaf family embracing her love of singing feels like a revelatory discovery; not only is it a standout film in and of itself but it’s the kind of movie that uses inclusiveness to tap into new voices and entirely new types of stories. Read More

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

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

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