Social Horror ‘CANDYMAN’ Radically Addresses Black Trauma in Brutal Fashion

August 25, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged Candyman, Colman Domingo, John Guleserian, Jordan Peele, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Nia DaCosta, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowes, Teyonah Parris, Win Rosenfeld, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II 2 Comments

For what it does right – and it does do plenty right – Bernard Rose’s 1992 cult horror-slasher Candyman feels like a dated product of its racially off-putting times. Hone in on where it focuses the spotlight: Virginia Madsen’s curious and lily white grad student Helen Lyle, out to deconstruct the urban myths of a hook-handed boogeyman terrorizing the Black community. A white woman in distress scouring the trauma of the African-American hood, Helen is a peculiar cypher for a story about the lingering horrors of race. Read More

Fantastical but Flawed ‘SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS’ Expands MCU’s Horizons

August 23, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Andrew Lanham, Awkwafina, Benedict Wong, Dave Callaham, Destin Daniel Cretton, Marvel, MCU, Meng-er Zhang, Shang-Chi, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Simu Liu, Tony Leung Chiu-wai 2 Comments

Indebted as much to Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as anything within the Marvel Cinematic Universe proper, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is the MCU’s spin on a Wuxia epic. Big fantastical action mixes with Chinese mysticism and Marvel’s signature mood-lightening jokes to create a unique, if imperfect, Marvel experience, one that introduces new characters, powerful Macguffins, new brand of superpowers, and even more hidden worlds to the ever-expanding MCU. Read More

Dystopian Neo-Noir Love Story ‘REMINISCENCE’ Made Me Feel Nothing

August 19, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Cliff Curtis, Hugh Jackson, Lisa Joy, Out in Theaters, Rebecca Ferguson, Reminiscence, Reviews, Thandiwe Newton 1 Comment

If it keeps on raining the levy’s going to break. As sang by Robert Plant so it goes in Reminiscence, Lisa Joy’s stodgy science fiction noir some untold years into a future devastated by climate change and war. As an increasingly uninhabitable earth grows wetter and hotter with each passing year, oceans eat away at what is left of America. The roaring heat of the daytime turns humanity into nocturnal creatures. Dry lands become the new gold standard but greedy barons snap up what they can and leave little for the masses. With populations displaced and growing civil unrest, humanity turns increasingly to memories of yesteryear. Read More

Entertaining ‘THE SUICIDE SQUAD’ Surprisingly Conventional for Comic Book Movie That Weaponizes Polka Dots

August 4, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Daniela Melchior, David Dastmalchian, DC, DCEU, Idris Elba, Jai Courtney, James Gunn, Joel Kinnaman, John Cena, Margot Robbie, Michael Rooker, Nathan Fillion, Pete Davidson, Peter Capaldi, Reviews, Sean Gunn, Storm Reid, Sylvester Stallone, The Suicide Squad, Viola Davis 1 Comment

Look no further than James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad for proof that superhero media has truly become too big to fail. As legions of old and new, traditional and bizarre, familiar and not-so-familiar heroes position themselves to win out at the box office, as well as, increasingly, on our premium streaming services, comic lore has become the last remaining monocultural tentpole of our current age. Read More

‘JUNGLE CRUISE’ Charters a Noisy, Pun-Fueled Trip Down Familiar Waters

July 29, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Disney, Dwayne Johnson, Édgar Ramírez, Emily Blunt, Glenn Fircarra, Jaume Collet-Serra, Jesse Plemons, John Requa, Jungle Cruise, Michael Green, Out in Theaters, Paul Giamatti, Reviews 1 Comment

What to say about Jungle Cruise, Disney’s latest attempt to mine existing IP for franchise potential and big box office ducats, that isn’t already implied by its existence? For all intents and purposes, the movie is fine. An unremarkable, CGI-heavy “throwback” to the swashbuckling serials of the 1920’s, Jungle Cruise doesn’t hide its obvious aspirations to turn a Disneyland ride into another major media franchise a la Pirates of the Caribbean. The result is filmmaking as pure commerce, the beancounters at the House of Mouse barely containing their cynicism for audiences who see marquee names and a decently cut trailer and rush to cinemas (or, now, Disney+) to trade in their hard earned dollars for 127 minutes of chiseled, forgettable fantasy-adventure mediocrity. Read More

An Opportunistic Knight Quests in Superbly Crafted, Narratively Adventurous ‘THE GREEN KNIGHT’

July 28, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged A24, Alicia Vikander, Andrew Croz Palermo, Barry Keoghan, Daniel Hart, Dev Patel, Erin Kellyman, Joel Edgerton, Kate Dickie, Malgosia Turzanska, Ralph Ineson, Sarita Choudhury, Sean Harris, The Green Knight 2 Comments

David Lowery is a visual poet. Throughout his celebrated career, the Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Pete’s Dragon, and A Ghost Story director has leaned on visual language and unconventional film grammar to connect with audiences, championing the emotional resonance of imagery over traditional narrative structure. In many ways, his films are in the same vein as American auteur Terrence Malick: thoughtful and dense, visually resplendent, whispery tone poems designated strictly for the Film Buff crowd. In that capacity, Lowery suffers Malick’s shortcomings, particularly as it pertains to resting too much within the opaque interiority of his characters and letting plotting fall by the wayside.

Cathartic Documentary ‘ROADRUNNER: A FILM ABOUT ANTHONY BOURDAIN’ Grapples with Dark Profundity

July 7, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged Documentary, Morgan Neville, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain 2 Comments

I’d never watched a full episode of any of Anthony Bourdain’s various programs but I knew of and admired the man nonetheless. A New York line cook turned globe-trotting modern day philosopher, Bourdain embodied the idea that travel is a transformative business and Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain reveals a man changed – for the better, and the worse – for it. For Bourdain, a willingness to try anything once coupled with a desire to go to the furthest reaches of the globe to reveal an inner yearning and restlessness. Read More

‘THE FOREVER PURGE’ Is Redundant, Already Behind the Times

July 1, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Ana de la Reguera, Everardo Gout, Horror, James DeMonaco, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Tenoch Huerta, The Forever Purge, The Purge, Will Patton Leave a comment

Subtlety has never been the aim of James DeMonaco, the writer-director of the first trilogy of Purge flicks as well as screenwriter for the remaining sequels and all-around franchise figurehead, and that’s never been more clear than in The Forever Purge. Claiming to be the final film in the franchise that spawned four sequels and two seasons of a now-cancelled USA Network series, The Forever Purge puts our turbulent American politics front and center, creating a not-too-distant vision where MAGA-inspired insurrectionists continue the “legalized violence” at the film’s center beyond the allowed 12-hour window of the purge. A new dawn brings the continuation of violence as America enters a “forever purge”, a state of bullet-ridden eternal mayhem; a nightmarish ever after of racially-motivated violence. Read More

Better Late than Never, ‘BLACK WIDOW’ Gives MCU’s Preeminent Shero a Fitting Sendoff

June 29, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Black Widow, Cate Shortland, David Harbour, Eric Pearson, Florence Pugh, Jac Schaeffe, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, MCU, Natasha Romanoff, Out in Theaters, Rachel Weisz, Ray Winstone, Reviews, Scarlett Johansson, William Hurt 1 Comment

The second to last of the original Avengers to get her own standalone bow (with Hawkeye’s very own miniseries hitting Disney+ late 2021), Black Widow has been long overdue her turn in the spotlight for some time now. If we weren’t living in an aggressively patriarchal society, it might seem strange that it took so long to get Scarlett Johansson, who has led the charts for most bankable actress alive for many years, her own feature film. But then again it seems that Hollywood suits only recently learned the lesson that the masses would turn out for superhero movies that starred people other than white men and so thus Black Widow was bankrolled into existence, 11 years after her debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Read More

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