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

SXSW 2021: Racial Dystopia Roosts in Brazilian Social Thriller ‘EXECUTIVE ORDER’

March 16, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Adriana Esteves, Executive Order, Lázaro Ramos, lfred Enouch, Seu Jorge, SXSW, SXSW 2021 1 Comment

In present-ish day Brazil, the fight for reparations for citizens of African descent reaches a violent impasse. Lawyer Antônio (Alfred Enouch) wants his government to impose equitable laws to atone for the nation’s past sins, chief amongst them slavery, but the fascistic government opts instead to offer a one-way ticket way “back to Africa” as a kind of mocking fuck you to the idea of reparations. Confusion, outrage, and mockery follows but the high-melanized (the term “black” has fallen out of politically-correct vogue) population have no idea how bad things will soon get when the government imposes an executive order that will instead force any citizen with a hint of melanin out of Brazil and back to Africa. Read More

SXSW 2021: ‘THE END OF US’ a Pandemic Breakup Movie With Just Enough Heart

March 16, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Ali Vingiano, Ben Coleman, Henry Loevner, Steve Kanter, SXSW, SXSW 2021, The End Of Us Leave a comment

Timing is a fickle thing and often means a world of difference. Timing divides those who murder the stock market and those that are steamrolled by it. It’s the difference between perfectly scrambled eggs and inedible burnt yellow mush. And in the case of recently broken-up Nick (Ben Coleman) and Leah (Ali Vingiano), bad timing means that you have to quarantine with your ex during the COVID-19 stay-at-home order in The End of Us. Read More

Humanist Spy Thriller ‘THE COURIER’ Is On a Mission to Move You

March 16, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Abel Korzeniowski, Angus Wright, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dominic Cooke, Ironbark, Merab Ninidze, Rachel Brosnahan, Reviews, The Courier, Tom O'Connor 1 Comment

I’m calling an early shot here: if there’s one movie out of Sundance 2020 that stands a decent shot at a Best Picture nomination almost a year from now, it’s very likely The Courier (formerly titled Ironbark). The Cold War espionage thriller takes a classical approach to its telling, leaning into familiar biopic/historical nonfiction tropes, while viewing events through an extremely humanistic lens. Read More

Nightmares ‘COME TRUE’ in Genuinely Scary Sleepwalk Through the Subconscious

March 10, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Anthony Scott Burns, Come True, Daniel Weissenberger, Horror, Julia Sarah Stone, Landon Liboiron, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Tedra Rogers Leave a comment

A few nights into a mysterious university sleep study, Sarah finds herself perusing a bookshop, pulled towards the Phillip K. Dick entries on the shelf. Jeremy, her primary researcher and maybe-stalker, suggests she give Dick a read, referring to his work as “hauntingly sad”. This description – hauntingly sad – accurately captures the weirdly affecting (and low-key terrifying) tonality of Come True, a descent into sleep paralysis and ancestral nightmares coming to life. Vividly tragic, but always in a darkly unspeakable way, Come True captures that in-between realm separating sleep and dreams and twists it into a malevolent manifesto about the collective terror that lingers in the mysterious netherworld of slumber. Read More

‘RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON’ Is Disney Dominance on Autopilot

March 4, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Adele Lim, Awkwafina, Benedict Wong, Carlos López Estrada, Daniel Dae Kim, Disney, Don Hall, Gemma Chan, Kelly Marie Tran, Qui Nguyen, Raya and the Last Dragon, Reviews, Ross Butler, Sandra Oh 1 Comment

For the better part of a century, Disney has been carefully formulating a template for blockbusting success. Churning out mega-hit after mega-hit on a semi-annual basis is no happy accident and the family-friendly behemoth has gotten that formula down pat – they’ve even exported it to the god-knows-how-many subdivisions of their corporate content creation stations. But going into any Disney animated movie specifically, you have a basic idea of what to expect: there will be a brave, slightly defiant female protagonist who doesn’t quite fit in with her community; an unbearably cute little animal sidekick who manages to be snarky even if they can’t talk; a quest to restore a kingdom; and a dead parent or two. You can never forget about the dead parent bit. Read More

Sprawling Opioid Drama ‘CHERRY’ a Sometimes Entertaining Jumbled Mess

February 25, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Angela Russo-Otstot, Anthony Russo, Cherry, Ciara Bravo, Damon Wayans Jr., Forrest Goodluck, Jack Reynor, Jessica Goldberg, Joe Russo, Michael Gandolfini, Nico Walker, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Tom Holland 1 Comment

Once you pop you just can’t stop. Or so goes the philosophy of the Joe and Anthony Russo when it comes to telling the story of a college-drop-out turned bank-robbing, dope-addicted war vet in Cherry. The directorial pair who rose to the highest of box office heights helming a handful of Marvel’s most critical and commercial smashes (including the last two Avengers mega-hits) prove uneasy with actual drama. Their telling of Nico Walker’s semi-autobiographical best-seller of the same name – adapted in part by screenwriters Angela Russo-Otstot and Jessica Goldberg, is meandering and unjustifiable long-winded. Read More

God Save the Elderly Because Rosamund Pike is Here to Swallow Them Whole in Wicked ‘I CARE A LOT’

February 23, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Chris Messina, Dianne Wiest, Eiza González, I Care a Lot, J Blakeson, Out in Theaters, Peter Dinklage, Reviews, Rosamund Pike Leave a comment

J Blakeson’s I Care a Lot wears a lot of hats. What starts as a genuinely electrifying satire centered around a morally repugnant legal guardian who grifts the elderly out of their assets and autonomy slinks into all kinds of genre territory; becoming at various points a pulpy thriller, a tongue-in-cheek dark comedy, and a pointed takedown of our national tendency to slide the old and aging out of public view. It is at times trying to do too many things, and is noticeably better in certain arenas than others, but when Blakeson’s lampoon of carnivorous capitalism sinks its teeth in deep and his performers rein fire and brimstone down upon each other, I Care a Lot‘s fiendish joys are simply irresistible. Read More

‘WRONG TURN’ Director Mike P. Nelson Talks ‘Temple of Doom’ Nods and Cuts to Avoid an NC-17 Rating

February 22, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Interviews Tagged Horror, Interviews, Mike P. Nelson, Talking With..., Wrong Turn 1 Comment

It’s sometimes in the strangest places that the sweetest things lurk. Or such is the case with Mike P. Nelson’s 2021 sequel/reboot of the Wrong Turn franchise, a film series which began in 2003 and went on to spawn five sequels. Despite a dedicated fan base, the backwoods inbred cannibal horror franchise never managed any notable critical or commercial success but in flipping the script and starting basically from scratch, Nelson and writing partner Alan B. Elroy have breathed new life into a series that now shows no sign of running out of gas and a whole new highway of ideas to explore. Read More