A Ratchet Weekend Goes Viral in A24 Sex Work Drama ‘ZOLA’

June 28, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged A24, Colman Domingo, Janicza Bravo, Nicholas Braun, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Riley Keough, Taylour Paige, Zola 1 Comment

If you haven’t read the hysterically unhinged 148-tweet thread that details how the eponymous Aziah “Zola” King (Taylour Paige) and “this white bitch” Stefani (Riley Keough) fell out, fear not: Zola will gladly fill in all the gory deets for you. One of the buzziest breakout splashes from 2020’s Sundance Film Festival, Zola is a kinetic social media-influenced dark comedy that adapts what was deemed “the greatest stripper saga ever tweeted” with visual style and sardonic pizzaz to spare. Exploding with personality and a flair for Gen-Z garishness (with too many tweet-notification audio drops to count), the latest great from A24 traps audience, alongside the titular Zola, in a prison-stay of a weekend as everything goes horribly wrong. Before it all went viral. Read More

There’s Somehow Even More Family And Furious Stupidity in Ridiculous ‘F9’

June 23, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Charlize Theron, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, F9, Fast & Furious, Helen Mirren, John Cena, Justin Lin, Kurt Russell, Michael Rooker, Michelle Rodriguez, Nathalie Emmanuel, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Sung Kang, Tyrese Gibson, Vin Diesel 3 Comments

It might not have been until F9: The Fast Saga that the Toretto crew finally launched into outer space but the long-running Fast & Furious franchise left Earth’s rotations a long time ago. When Fast Five reconfigured what was possible for the crew of once-car-jackers and small-time criminals by making them larger-than-life master-criminals to whom the laws of physics bent the knee in surrender, all bets were finally off. Helmer Justin Lin had reached a pinnacle of the utterly ridiculous, high-octane bombast that fueled the car-based action films and laid the template for all that would follow. Fast would never be the same. Read More

Lively, Diverse ‘IN THE HEIGHTS’ The Best Broadway Musical Adaptation In Years

June 7, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Alice Brooks, Andrew Baseman, Anthony Ramos, Corey Hawkins, Gregory Diaz IV, In the Heights, Jimmy Smit, Jon M Chu, Leslie Grace, Lin-Manuel Mirand, Melissa Barrera, Mitchell Traver Leave a comment

Generally, I’m not the world’s biggest musical fan. I’ll admit it: I often think them overlong, shallow in terms of character development and depth, and find the musical theater standards tend to be mainly forgettable, with a few catchy showstoppers mixed in for good measure. In The Heights, the best straight Broadway stage adaptation in quite some time, falls pray to these shortcomings while managing to remain a highly-engaging, uber-flashy toe-tapper that celebrates the cultural diversity of one of New York City’s last gentrification holdouts. As far as stage-to-screen musicals go, there’s not all that much to complain about.

Muddled Mythology and Tepid Romance Combine to Make ‘UNDINE’ Low-Wattage Erotica

June 2, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Christian Petzold, Franz Rogowski, Jacob Matschenz, Out in Theaters, Paula Beer, Reviews, Undine Leave a comment

Legend goes that the undine, an elemental race of water nymphs described in ancient European myths, are doomed to the fidelity of their beloved. Emerging from the water to love a man of their choosing and thereby become human, undine are beautiful but fragile creatures, cursed to die if their man isn’t faithful to them. The price of that infidelity? Death. Whereas many relationships end in taters when a beau is unfaithful, it’s literally kill or be killed for the undine and that goes doubly so in acclaimed German director Christian Petzold’s mythologically-rooted romantic drama Undine. Read More

Franchise Fatigue Possesses ‘THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT’

June 1, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, Horror, Julian Hilliard, Michael Chaves, Out in Theaters, Patrick Wilson, Reviews, Ruairi O’Connor, The Conjuring, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Vera Farmiga 1 Comment

The Conjuring extended universe is one of the – if not the most – preeminent examples of a modern horror franchise done correctly. Expansive, with spin-offs shooting off into this direction or that, and an absolute box office powerhouse (with almost two billion dollars in worldwide gross), The Conjuring’s terrifying rein is vast. And yet with three separate offshoots, including a full-fledged Annabelle trilogy, and more on the way, the haunting force of the series that began in 2013 comes sputtering to a decidedly indifferent halt with The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. Read More

Devilishly Fashionable ‘CRUELLA’ Sees Emma Stone Break Bad On the Catwalk

May 26, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Craig Gillespie, Cruella, Disney, Emma Stone, Emma Thompson, Jenny Beavan, Jeremy Strong, Joel Fry, Nicolas Karakatsanis, Paul Walter Hauser, Reviews 1 Comment

Turning any iconic Disney villain into a sympathetic (but still devious) protagonist is no easy feat, particularly when that task involves ‘both sides’ of turning 101 Dalmatian puppies into haute couture. Disney’s atrocious Maleficent origin story wholly bungled the task, dropping the bag on transforming that striking villain into a whole-cloth anti-hero, instead defanging and deflating the malevolent fairy, leaving her all but unrecognizable, costume aside. With Cruella, Disney course-corrects on that previous failing, striking the right balance between exploring the roots of its devilish protagonist while still remaining true to her animated rancorous counterpart. Read More

Australian Whodunit ‘THE DRY’ Will Quench Thirst for Straight-Forward Mystery

May 21, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Eric Bana, Genevieve O’Reilly, John Polson, Keir O’Donnell, Matt Nable, Robert Connolly, The Dry 1 Comment

Before a global pandemic wrought devastation across the whole of the world, international attention was all on Australia, which went up like a tinderbox in their unusually hot 2019-2020 bushfire season. In a period known as the Black Summer, 18.6 million hectares went up in flame, killing dozens of people, destroying thousands of homes and businesses, and burning nearly three billion animals alive. It was an apocalyptic level of devastation that called to mind imagery of hellfire and damnation. Robert Connolly’s The Dry, a small town Australian murder mystery set in this period of immense drought, is about the devastation wrought by dried up land and dried up people. Read More

Formulaic Feel-Good Movie ‘DREAM HORSE’ Expertly Designed for Your Mom

May 19, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Damian Lewis, Dream Horse, Euros Lyn, Neil McKay, Out in Theaters, Owen Teale, Reviews, Toni Collette 1 Comment

Decidedly light matinee fare that has no qualms sticking to a well-trot winsome formula, Euros Lyn’s Dream Horse nonetheless breeds charm rather than contempt for its stick-to-the-formula approach. Based on the true story of a ragtag group of aspiring racehorse-owners from a Southern Welsh community who come together to breed and train a proper thoroughfare, Lyn’s film is designed for moms that like their movies “nice”. Read More

Even Quieter Sequel ‘A QUIET PLACE PART II’ Goes Places

May 18, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged A Quiet Place Part II, Cillian Murphy, Horror, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, Out in Theaters, Reviews 1 Comment

John Krasinski’s Lee Abbott may have bit the dust in the actor-turned-filmmaker’s directorial debut but that doesn’t stop him from returning in the opening moments of A Quiet Place Part II. The scene is set as Marco Beltrami’s foreboding soundtrack creeps into our senses as a ‘Day 1’ title card slips into frame. The end is nigh but no one knows anything about the devastation barreling their way. In fact, it’s just another beautiful summer day in Small Town America. The Abbot family and their tight-knit community gather in blissful ignorance at a little league game. Marcus (Noah Jupe) is up to bat when the sky erupts in flaming streaks. Something is coming. Families break off into nuclear clusters, rushing to their vehicles, heading home to regroup. Before anyone has any sense of what’s happening, monsters reign down, killing anything that makes a sound. A quiet place is born, in flame and in blood. Read More

Laughable ‘SPIRAL’ a Chris Rock-Hosted SNL-Style Sendup of an Outmoded Version of Horror

May 13, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Charlie Clouser, Chris Rock, Darren Lynn Bousman, Max Minghella, Samuel L. Jackson, Saw, Spiral 2 Comments

Jigsaw is dead but the Saw franchise continues to spiral, now with Chris Rock! The aptly-named Spiral is a bizarro world creation. One that feels like a Chris Rock-hosted Saturday Night Live Saw satire short that forgot it was a bit and took on life of its own. Frankensteining Chris Rock’s signature observational comedy stylings, the Saw series’ trademark torture gore, frenetic editing, and grizzled low-budg aesthetics, and a lazy attempt to modernize the formula by putting police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement front and center, Spiral is a crazed textual and tonal mishmash. One that thinks it has a lot on its mind but nothing of actual value to say, it’s the weird clunker of a horror reboot that can’t even prove how it ever thought the disparate elements would align to begin with. Instead, we’re left with whatever the hell Spiral: From the Book of Saw is and the layup imagery of a shit of a movie circling the proverbial drain.