Liam Neeson Wields a New Particular Set of Skills in ‘THE NAKED GUN’

July 30, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Akiva Schaffer, CCH Pounder, Danny Huston, Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser, The Naked Gun 2 Comments

Over 30 years after The Naked Gun 33⅓, a risky comic resurrection is now playing at your local theater. In an age of genre-bending comedy hybrids (see The Fall Guy, meh) and niche, catered offerings (see Friendship, loved), the traditional studio comedy has basically vanished. What used to be a regular fixture at the cineplex is now nearly extinct. The new Naked Gun isn’t just trying to revive that format; it’s a full-on throwback to a time when comedies weren’t afraid to be stupid, loud, and singularly focused on laughs. And while this movie is definitely all of those things, it’s also just plain funny. That Liam Neeson, now tragically deep into his post-Taken run of stoic, violent men with a particular set of skills, is anchoring one of the most laugh-dense movies in years feels like a joke in itself. But somehow, it lands. Read More

25 Best Movies of the 2020’s You Probably Haven’t Seen

July 24, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged Best Movies 2020s, Black Bear, Bottoms, Cha Cha Real Smooth, Dinner in America, Emergency, First Cow, How to Blow Up a Pipeline, How to Have Sex, Kajillionaire, New Order, On the Count of Three, Red Rocket, Sanctuary, Shithouse, Strange Darling, The Alpinist, The Beast, The Coffee Table, The Fallout, The Innocents, The Painter and the Thief, Titane, Wrong Turn (2021), Zola 2 Comments

Somehow, we’re already halfway through the 2020s. The world’s still on fire, the algorithms and A.I. have taken over, my readership is down (people love video, and yet, here I remain), and despite the fact that there is continued chatter about the death of cinema… great movies keep slipping through the cracks. While big franchise I.P. garbage continues to dominate the cultural conversation, there’s been a steady stream of bold, bizarre, and beautiful films flying under the radar. Whether they had a tiny theatrical run, got buried on streaming, or just never hit your watchlist, these are 25 films from this chaotic half-decade that you probably haven’t seen — but absolutely should. Read More

Fantastically Dull ‘THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS’ Miscalculates Introduction to First Family

July 23, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Ebon Moss‑Bachrach, Eric Pearson, Fantastic Four: First Steps, Ian Springer, Jeff Kaplan, Joseph Quinn, Josh Friedman, Julia Garner, Kasra Farahani, Matt Shakman, Michael Giacchino, Natasha Lyonne, Paul Walter Hauser, Pedro Pascal, Ralph Ineson, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Vanessa Kirby 1 Comment

The MCU is dead. The MCU is back. The MCU is dead. The MCU is back. Someone put a fork in it. She’s cooked. But just you wait until the next one! And on and on the content carousel spins. Even as someone who had gripes with the Marvel machine well before Endgame, I found myself tossing out more than a few positive reviews in that era. In fact, there was a time when I felt rather pot-committed to the whole enterprise, even when its storytelling got obnoxiously self-aggrandizing and interconnected. Post-Endgame, it’s mostly been a tragic slide into mediocrity with some blips of quality. A few titles have become the lone bright spots in an otherwise bleak Phase 4/5 wasteland. Meanwhile, Ant-Man: Quantumania, The Marvels, Thor: Love and Thunder, Eternals, Captain America: Brave New World, and Thunderbolts all earned a solid splat from my little corner of the internet. Now, with James Gunn’s DCU breathing heavily down Marvel’s neck and the franchise’s future hinging on two upcoming Avengers movies (featuring Robert Downey Jr. returning, but as Doctor Doom, for reasons not disclosed here), The Fantastic Four: First Steps from director Matt Shakman arrives with downright heroic expectations. Expectations that are promptly crushed under the weight of its own blandness. Read More

Being ‘TOGETHER’ Becomes the Ultimate Act of Codependency

July 22, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged Alison Brie, Damon Herriman, Dave Franco, Horror, Michael Shanks, NEON, Together 7 Comments

A fantastically icky mash-up of black comedy and body horror, Michael Shanks’ Together is a biting satire about the horrors of codependency. And like any body horror that earns its stripes, it’s not for the squeamish. Real-life married couple Allison Brie and Dave Franco star as Millie and Tim, a decade-long duo who’ve decided to take the plunge and carve out the next chapter in their relationship. What follows is a twisted love story that’s equally weird, funny, and utterly nasty, taking their “growing together” to grotesquely literal extremes. Read More

All These Years Later, ‘I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER’ Is Still Copying ‘Scream’

July 17, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Chanda Dancy, Chase Sui Wonders, Elisha Christian, Freddie Prinze Jr., Horror, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jonah Hauer-King, Leah McKendrick, Madelyn Cline, Neal H. Moritz, Saira Haider, Sam Lansky, Sarah Pidgeon, Tyriq Withers 2 Comments

A legacy sequel nobody asked for, reviving a three-decade-old franchise that, let’s be honest, was never exactly beloved to begin with, 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer is generic modern slasher fare, but also kinda better than it has any right to be as an IKWYDLS fourquel. It slightly exceeds the low bar you’d expect, but not by enough to call it a top-to-bottom success. In a bit of (presumably knowing) irony, this sequel owes much to Scream (2022), just as the original was clearly cribbing from Scream (1996). You could argue the similarities between the franchises are coincidental, but like the skeptical cops of Southport, North Carolina, I’m not sure I’m buying it. The two franchises have been linked for decades, both helping to revitalize the slasher subgenre in the ’90s, earning a few sequels, and inspiring short-run TV spin-offs. It’s just that every time out, Scream had IKWYDLS beat. That still holds true today. Read More

Ari Aster’s ‘EDDINGTON’ Sloppily Relitigates Pandemic Woes

July 16, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged A24, Ari Aster, Austin Butler, Deirdre O’Connell, Eddington, Emma Stone, Joaquin Phoenix, Luke Grimes, Micheal Ward, Pedro Pascal 1 Comment

Covid denialism. Mask mandates. BLM protests. Ari Aster’s fourth feature revisits all the trials and tribulations of the 2020 pandemic, dragging us back to that societal fever dream while adopting a decidedly odd “both sides” stance to interrogate the existential mania of the era. The result is a film that tries to tackle a lot—most notably how partisan mainstream media, social platforms, and fringe sites funnel viewers into conspiratorial rabbit holes that deepen division and further otherize an already fraying left/right American divide—but ends up feeling more like the frazzled screed of someone who, frankly, had a really bad pandemic. Read More

‘SUPERMAN’ Makes CBMs Fun Again

July 8, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Anthony Carrigan, Beck Bennett, Christopher McDonald, David Corenswet, DCU, Edi Gathegi, Isabela Merced, James Gunn, Mikaela Hoover, Milly Alcock, Nathan Fillion, Nicholas Hoult, Peter Safran, Rachel Brosnahan, Skyler Gisondo, Superman, Wendell Pierce 1 Comment

It’s been a good long while since I’ve unequivocally enjoyed a comic book movie, but good readers, I’m pleased to report that Superman makes the genre fun again. It might just be the best comic book movie in years. The latest redux of the OG Man of Steel arrives as the inaugural entry in the new DCU, following the stutter-stepped saga of the DCEU and Henry Cavill’s brooding take on the character. It’s busy, cheesy, overstuffed — and I almost certainly will never watch it again (though that’s true of nearly every comic book movie these days, if not 90% of all movies) — but for a film tasked with both rebooting an iconic character and launching a new cinematic universe, James Gunn mostly pulls off the improbable. This movie flies. Read More

‘JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH’ Another Careless, Lumbering Corpse of IP Resurrection

July 1, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Audrina Miranda, David Iacono, Ed Skrein, Gareth Edwards, Jonathan Bailey, Jurassic World: Rebirth, Luna Blaise, Mahershala Ali, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Rupert Friend, Scarlett Johansson 1 Comment

If there’s one thing that defines Gareth Edwards as a director, it’s his knack for scale. The guy knows how to make things look and feel epic. But the only thing impressive about the scale in Jurassic World Rebirth is just how completely flat and lifeless it all feels. Across seven films, audiences have marveled at prehistoric monstrosities resurrected via ancient Dino DNA, stirring up all the usual ethical woulda, shoulda, coulda hand-wringing. “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should” has never felt more relevant, nor as exhaustingly humdrum as it does with Rebirth. And yet here we are, in the fourth new-era Jurassic World movie (seventh overall), with a film so devoid of purpose and personality that it feels like a supergroup doing a really expensive cover of someone else’s greatest hits album. Read More

F1’s Big-Screen Thrills Slicked by a Boneheaded Script

June 25, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Brad Pitt, Claudio Miranda, Damson Idris, Ehren Kruger, F1, Hans Zimmer, Javier Bardem, Jerry Bruckheimer, Joseph Kosinski, Kerry Condon, Stephen Mirrione 2 Comments

Apple’s high-speed Formula One blockbuster bid to break into large-format moviemaking – complete with Hollywood stars, slick, expensive production details, a deluge of product placement, and a who’s who of behind-the-scenes legends (Jerry Bruckheimer! Hans Zimmer!) – doesn’t crash out in flames, but it hardly mounts the podium the way this $300M movie hopes to. What we get is a largely cliché-ridden sports drama about grizzled veteran driver Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) and his cocky rookie partner Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), who have to overcome their differences to get their new team, APX GP, helmed by Javier Bardem’s unconventional Ruben Cervantes, out of first gear and actually winning races. Read More

‘MATERIALISTS’ Is a Hallmark Movie in Faux Prestige Trappings

June 11, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged A24, Celine Song, Chris Evans, Dakota Johnson, Materialists, Pedro Pascal 1 Comment

Celine Song’s Past Lives – a wistful love triangle between a Korean-American woman, her Korean ex who never quite aligned with her life, and the American man who did – was one of the best films of 2023. Emotionally decadent and raw, it boasted a trio of stunningly honest performances, a sharp script, and economical direction from Song. The first time I saw it, I thought it was great. The second time, I was completely bowled over. In 2025, Song returns to a similar formula: a materialistic matchmaker torn between a rich new suitor who checks every box and her ex, who is sweet but poor and otherwise ill-suited on paper. Whatever Song nailed with Past Lives, she gets absolutely wrong here. Read More