HORROR MOVIES TO SCARE THE SH*T OUTTA US IN 2019

March 7, 2019 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists Tagged 3 From Hell, Brightburn, Child's Play, Crawl, Grudge, Horror, It: Chapter 2, Little Monsters, Ma, Midsommar, Pet Semetary, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, The Hole in the Ground, The Lighthouse, The Lodge, The Nightingale, Us, Wounds Leave a comment

2019 is already off to a hot start when it comes to my favorite genre: horror. Between Gaspar Noe’s wrecking ball of a breakdown with Climax, the highly overlooked creeper The Prodigy, and Nicolas Pesce’s anti-love body horror cat and mouse game Piercing, 2019 is off to the races with fantastic offerings for the genre. Even the slight (and only tangentially horror) Happy Death Day 2 U was a fun theatrical distraction. But the year is long and the number of potential horror hits higher than ever. There is no doubt that a handful of these will be joining our countdown of the 100 greatest horror films of the decade come the end of the year. Check out the breakdown of what to expect for horror for the remainder of 2019.

Do note that this is not a comprehensive list of all 2019 horror movies to come as I’ve intentionally left off fare like the second untitled Annabelle sequel (first time director and a checkered past with the franchise has me thinking it won’t be very good) and The Curse of La Llora (the trailer was simply awful, hoping the film is much better.) Similarly I don’t have New Mutants on here (not convinced it’ll ever see the light of day at this point honestly) and the 47 Meters Down sequel (does not look inspired in the least bit). So don’t come after me.
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Julianne Moore Discovers Inner Strength in A24’s Humanist Romance ‘GLORIA BELL’

March 6, 2019 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged A24, Brad Garret, Chile, Gloria, Gloria Bell, John Turturro, Julianne Moore, Michael Cera, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Rita Wilson, Sean Astin., Sebastián Lelio Leave a comment

Come for Julianne Moore’s effortlessly jubilant performance, stay for the complicated middle-aged tryst in Sebastián Lelio’s Gloria Bell. A remake of the director’s own 2013 Spanish-language film Gloria, Chile’s submission for Best Foreign Language film at the 2014 Academy Awards, the film is distributed by indie giant A24 and carries the mark of quality that is commonly associated with their auteur brand, though it would be hard to mistake the competent, if hard to swoon for, drama for one of the distribution company’s finest outputs. Read More

‘CAPTAIN MARVEL’ Punches Through the Glass Ceiling With Style

March 5, 2019 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Anna Bowden, Avengers: Endgame, Brie Larson, Captain Marvel, Clark Gregg, Djimon Honsou, Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Jude Law, Lee Pace, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, MCU, Pinar Toprak, Ryan Fleck, Samuel L. Jackson Leave a comment

True to its name, Captain Marvel is pure Marvel. That’s not to say that it’s necessarily a top-tier entry to the now twenty-one film franchise (it is however a worthy middle entry) but the film perfectly sums up what the Marvel brand is: a family-friendly blend of sci-fi and action adventure, led by postured heroes in colorful spandex, lit up by busy, expensive CGI and regularly relieved with whip-snap jokes. It’s an origin story of somewhat common degree, one familiar with the storytelling roots of Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America before it, that encapsulates the highs and lows of the superhero series in equal measure. Read More

Gaspar Noé Hosts World’s Worst Acid Dance Party in ‘CLIMAX’

March 3, 2019 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged Claude-Emmanuelle Gajan-Maull, Climax, Gaspar Noé, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Romain Guillermic, Sofia Boutella, Thea Carla Schott Leave a comment

Climax is a movie only Gaspar Noé could – and would – make. The French provocateur has long embedded hallucinatory imagery into his pictures – his 2009 feature Enter the Void is a literal out-of-body experience adopting the POV of a slain drug dealer – but takes his flirtation with on-screen drug use to new levels with his latest experimental feature, which follows an acid-dosed troop of dancers over the events of an increasingly unhinged night. The journey is a dark and delirious jaw-dropping mindfuck for sure, but one of horrifying technical marksmanship that is sure to burrow under your skin and peck at one’s brain. Like blood in the carpet, these psychological stains won’t wash out easily. Read More

‘HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: THE HIDDEN WORLD’ Doesn’t Manage to Fly Higher

February 20, 2019 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged America Ferrera, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Dean DeBlois, Gerard Butler, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, Justin Rupple, Kristen Wiig, Out in Theaters, Reviews Leave a comment

If looks could kill, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World would engulf audiences in a deathly conflagration of dragon fire. The animated second sequel looks absolutely brilliant on the big screen, roaring to life in luscious detail. From the crystal-clear scale of its big set pieces to the minutia of the movement of sand and water, Dreamwork’s How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World splashes every penny of its 129 million dollar budget up on the screen for audiences to behold. If only they could have dumped equally as much energy and effort into the story mechanics, which are far and away the weakest of the three HTTYD films. Read More

Predicting Winners at the 2019 Oscars (Plus What Should Win, And What Shoulda Been There)

February 19, 2019 by Matt Oakes Posted in Awards Tagged Awards, Oscars Leave a comment

I can’t recall a year where A) I cared less about the Oscars as a ceremony, B) I felt so unsure about their results, and C) I found so many of the nominees to be utterly unmoving. While a few of my very favorite films of the year scored big with nominations, most notably The Favourite with a tidy 10 noms, this year’s slate of Oscar films felt decidedly like a step backward. After the whole kerfuffle with instituting a new category that would award the Best Popular Film and then removing it, the Academy seemed to move forward with instead just nominating said “popular” films into their Best Picture category, with 2018’s domestic box office champion Black Panther scoring a Best Picture nomination in addition to a bevy of below-the-line nods as well, and critically-divisive Bohemian Rhapsody, which has been lambasted with claims of “Fake News” since its debut, collecting a heap of nominations to call its own. Read More

Mads Mikkelsen Talks Surviving ‘ARCTIC’, How He Would Fare in a Crash, and Whether He’s Actually That Intense in Real Life

February 11, 2019 by Matt Oakes Posted in Interviews Tagged Arctic, Interview, Mads Mikkelsen, ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY, Talking With..., The Hunt Leave a comment

Mads Mikkelsen might not be a household name but the Danish actor has haunted some of the biggest Hollywood properties in the known universe, from playing Jyn Erso’s father in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ’to featuring as big bad Kaecilius in Marvel’s Doctor Strange to starring opposite James Bond in Casino Royale. The distinctive-looking actor is also known for playing the titular cannibal in NBC’s deliciously macabre (and unfairly cancelled) horror serial Hannibal in addition to offering up a should-have-been-Oscar-nominated role in Thomas Vinterberg’s outstanding drama The Hunt. For me, it’s Mikkelsen’s turn as Le Chiffre in Casino Royale (for my money, the best villain 007 has faced) that both showed the actor’s vast potential and represented his promise best – playing a calculating, wildly intelligent baddie is Mikkelsen’s bread and butter and no one does it quite like him. Even flipping the script and playing on the light side of the spectrum, the actor is undeniably magnetic. Read More

All’s Quiet on the Front in Brutally Hard-Fought Survival Saga ‘ARCTIC’

February 10, 2019 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Arctic, Joe Penna, Joseph Trapanese, Mads Mikkelsen, Maria Thelma Smáradóttir, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Tómas Örn Tómasson Leave a comment

A marooned man’s survival in the Arctic gets much more complicated when a helicopter crashes attempting to rescue him. He decides to save the lone survivor, taking her life into his hands and, in doing so, igniting anew his purpose to live. The measured survivalist story Arctic is as cold and quiet as the frigid tundra for which it is named, its protagonist Overgård (played with silent ferocity of will by the ever-reliable Mads Mikkelsen) is a man of few words but powerful convictions, convictions which bleed through the veteran actor’s pores, adding soul and pathos to this testament of the human spirit in times of great adversity. Read More

Inferior ‘THE LEGO MOVIE 2: THE SECOND PART’ Still Relentlessly Catchy

February 7, 2019 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Alison Brie, Animated, Charlie Day, Chris Miller, Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Mike Mitchell, Nick Offerman, Phil Lord, Stephanie Beatriz, Tiffany Haddish, Will Arnett Leave a comment

Five years after The Lego Movie stormed theaters and unexpectedly blew back the hair of critics and moviegoers alike (only to be shut out of the Oscars animated film contest entirely), the world is a very different place. The White House is occupied by a hot Cheeto-colored p*ssy-grabber. White nationalists march the streets with tiki torches. The world’s climate is going haywire, meaning raging summers of fire and winters of blistering cold. Basic civility has sunk to dwell with Davey Jones locker. Everything is decidedly not awesome. Even the toys know so. Read More

‘THE MAN WHO KILLED HITLER AND THEN THE BIGFOOT’ Fulfills Title’s Promise with Medium Fanfare

February 6, 2019 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Aidan Turner, Caitlin FitzGerald, Out in Theaters, Robert D. Krzykowski, Ron Livingstone, Sam Elliot, The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot Leave a comment

Decidedly less pulpy and more sobering than its grindhouse name implies, The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot stuffs existential drama into a B-movie premise to mixed results. Sam Elliot plays Calvin Barr, a stony tracker who must sit on the fact that he assassinated Adolf Hitler half a lifetime ago. Nowadays, Calvin haunts a local dive, drinking two fingers of cheap whiskey, bending the ear of George the bartender. Read More