Sundance ‘24: Tortured ‘I SAW THE TV GLOW’ Reaches Through the Screen

January 20, 2024 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged Brigette Lundy-Paine, I Saw the TV Glow, Jane Schoenbrun, Justice Smith, Sundance, Sundance 2024 5 Comments

Jane Schoenbrun’s audacious followup to their attention-grabbing debut We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is billed as a horror feature but it takes careful time developing said horror. And delivers a wallop. A quietly remarkable film, and one that spurred a handful of walkouts during its Sundance premiere, I Saw The TV Glow is not an easily accessible film. But with just a little thought, investment, and excavation, this handsomely-mounted ethereal slowburn will be sure to worm its way deep under your skin and suck you into the screen. Read More

Sundance ‘24: ‘FREAKY TALES’ A Disjointed Tapestry of Stories, Ideas, and Tones, with Nazis

January 19, 2024 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Angus Cloud, Anna Boden, Ben Mendelsohn, Freaky Tales, Jay Ellis, Pedro Pascal, Ryan Fleck, Sundance, Sundance 2024 2 Comments

Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s Freaky Tales, a madcap 1987 Oakland-set anthology, is a lot. Told in four loosely threaded together chapters, this interconnected story of the intersection of corruption, subculture, and violence in Reagan-era west coast America bites off more than it can chew, becoming more of an implosive collision than a meaningful exploration of much as it stretches on. As is often the case with anthological features, each individual story only feels half-baked, the germ of a story not afforded the room to grow and develop into something more. They’re connected in only the loosest of senses, making the sloppy whole certainly less than the sum of its sometimes interesting parts. Read More

Sundance ’24: ‘HOW TO HAVE SEX’ and the Obliteration of Carefree Youth

January 18, 2024 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged Enva Lewis, How to Have Sex, Lara Peake, Laura Ambler, Mia McKenna-Bruce, Molly Manning-Walker, Samuel Bottomley, Shaun Thomas, Sundance, Sundance 2024 2 Comments

When three British teenage friends, Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce), Skye (Lara Peake) and Em (Enva Lewis), abscond for a weekend holiday of hard partying, thumping clubs, and fast sex, they find that their freewheeling existence is more fragile than imagined. Tara, or “Taz” when she’s in full party animal mode, is the rowdy, raunchy heart and soul of the party and the film. She has yet to lose her virginity, and her mates won’t let her forget this fact. The trio embarks on their holiday with a clear goal: to explore their sexualities, particularly Tara’s. This setup is familiar for a coming-of-age romp but How to Have Sex quickly becomes something much deeper and more penetrative. Read More

‘THE BEEKEEPER’ Makes John Wick Look Like Walt Whitman

January 11, 2024 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Bobby Naderi, David Ayer, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Jeremy Irons, Josh Hutcherson, Kurt Wimmer, Reviews, The Beekeeper 6 Comments

Just because a movie actively acknowledges how dumb it is doesn’t make it any less so. This is the case with The Beekeeper, a low-rent John Wick knockoff that almost plays like a spoof. There’s plenty of quick-cut bloody action, a truly mind-boggling amount of references to bees and bee hive politics, and some of the worst dialogue this side of an Expendables movie. Pretty much everyone involved in the project seems to be in on the joke, hamming up the lowbrow camp when not administering decent, if unmemorable, action shoot ‘em ups, but that doesn’t make its consumption any less grueling. Read More

Move Over ‘MEAN GIRLS’, There’s a New High School Musical in Town

January 9, 2024 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Angourie Rice, Arturo Perez Jr, Auliʻi Cravalho, Avantika, Jaquel Spivey, Jeff Richmond, Mean Girls, Nell Benjamin, Reneé Rapp, Reviews, Samantha Jayne, Tim Meadows, Tina Fey 3 Comments

A new movie adaptation of the Broadway smash musical version of the original 2004 hit movie, which in turn was adapted from Rosalind Wiseman‘s 2002 book Queen Bees and Wannabes, 2024’s Mean Girls is a redux with pizzaz. Updating the impressively not-dated Lindsay Lohan/Rachel McAdams early-aughts teen comedy classic to the modern era while adding in a number of catchy tunes, the musical from co-directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. is an accomplishment in IP recycling that doesn’t feel, well, recycled. In fact, the whole thing is pretty fetch. Read More

Shallow, Campy ‘NIGHT SWIM’ Mostly Treads Water

January 4, 2024 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Amélie Hoeferle, Bryce McGuire, Charlie Sarroff, Horror, Night Swim, Reviews, Wyatt Russell 4 Comments

A former Major League Baseball player moves his family to a house with a haunted pool in the campy Jan-horror release, Night Swim. Six months after receiving a career-ending MS diagnosis, Ray Waller (Wyatt Russell), his wife Eve (Kerry Condon), and their two high school aged children, Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle) and Elliot (Gavin Warren), struggle to accept the reality that life as they once knew it is over. Put off by the idea of moving to an assisted living community, Waller finds himself drawn to a house with a shady past (an instance of its evil detailed in the mildly effective cold open) and a mysterious pool. He soon discovers that its waters, drawn from a nearby natural spring, have healing qualities. But not all who wade into its wet quarters fare so well. Read More

‘AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM’ a Juvenile Underwater Hootenanny

December 21, 2023 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Amber Heard, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, DC, DCEU, James Wan, Jason Momoa, Nicole Kidman, Patrick Wilson, Reviews 1 Comment

All good things come to an end, and fortunately, so do all bad things. With Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, it’s more the latter for the DCEU. Although there were occasional flashes of good to be found in the decade-spanning franchise, many of the 16 films inspired by DC comics were middling to flat out terrible. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is the end of the line for the entirety of the failed experiment that was the DCEU and it’s about as awkward and unthought-through an ending as any other chapter of the franchise, which in a way makes it a suitable conclusion. Is it any good? Certainly not. But, like the larger franchise it was contained in, the last DCEU joint does have some things that people would ostensibly like, even if they’re shipwrecked in clumsy narrative flotsam and weak character work. Read More

Old-Timey Underdog Sports Drama ‘THE BOYS IN THE BOAT’ Lacks Personality, Punch

December 15, 2023 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Alexandre Desplat, Callum Turner, George Clooney, Joel Edgerton, Mark L. Smith, Martin Ruhue, Out in Theaters, Reviews, The Boys in the Boat 1 Comment

George Clooney’s adaptation of Daniel James Brown’s biography, ‘The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics,’ is a study in contrast. Brown’s diligently researched and thrillingly told biography loses its texture and depth, succumbing to formulaic filmmaking. The film falls prey to the pitfalls of a tepid adaptation, trading the story’s nuance for Hollywood shorthand, effectively reducing it to a SparkNotes version of events. As a film, The Boys in the Boat overlooks its most crucial element: the individual boys in the boat. Presented as a singular unit, the boys emerge as a vague assortment of working-class underdogs, lacking distinct individual characterization. By glossing over the individual motivations of each boy, the film forfeits its inspirational potential, resulting in a glossy and paint-by-numbers recounting of events. Read More

‘WONKA’ Delights in Making the Roald Dahl-Verse Dreamy Again

December 14, 2023 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged Calah Lane, Hugh Grant, Jim Carter, Matt Lucas, Matthew Baynton, Natasha Rothwell, Neil Hannon, Olivia Colman, Paterson Joseph, Paul King, Rake Thakrar, Reviews, Rich Fulcher, Roald Dahl, Simon Farnaby, Timothée Chalamet, Tom Davis, Wonka 2 Comments

Two words: Paul. King. The 45-year old British writer/director has not so much stumbled as pioneered his way into the most winsome of formulas with his trifecta of perfectly delightful family friendly films, Paddington, Paddington 2, and, now, Wonka. By exploring the backstory of the mysterious titular character from one of Roald Dahl’s most iconic tales, King seamlessly blends the charm and whimsy that have defined his previous works with the musical fantasia of the 1971 Gene Wilder-starring film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. The result is a truly special prequel: a largely wonderful and never-not-dazzling film that revels in oodles of fun, deliciously lavish set pieces, and many a toe-tapping song and dance numbers. Read More

‘THE IRON CLAW’ Wrestles with Tragedy but Fails to Pin Down Greatness

December 12, 2023 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged A24, Harris Dickinson, Holt McCallany, Jeremy Allen White, Maura Tierney, Sean Durkin, Stanley Simons, The Iron Claw, Zac Efron 1 Comment

The Iron Claw, Sean Durkin’s foray into the tumultuous world of the Von Erich wrestling dynasty, made up of multiple generations of wrestling stars and a number of notable title wins, juxtaposes the silly spectacle of wrestling with a profoundly dysfunctional family drama. Starring Zac Efron as much-too-beefy wrestler Kevin Von Erich, this A24 film offers an intriguing, if somewhat limited, look into the larger-than-life spectacle of the wrestling world and the grim reality of a family marred by real life tragedy. Read More