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

Exploitative Metal Thriller ‘LORDS OF CHAOS’ Pushes Sacrilegious Buttons

February 4, 2019 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Emory Cohen, Jonas Åkerlund, Lords of Chaos, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Rory Culkin Leave a comment

Ye of purer form, be warned! There’s a moment early on in Jonas Åkerlund’s Norwegian black metal exploitation film Lords of Chaos that’ll determine your ability to stick around for the rest of the two-hour true crime feature. 22-year old singer “Dead” takes a kitchen knife and vertically slashes both his wrists. He then takes the knife to his own throat. Blood pouring from the self-inflicted wounds, “Dead” puts a gun to his head and pulls the trigger. Making permanent good on his extreme namesake. Read More

‘ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL’ An Eye-Popping Spectacle Without an Ending

February 1, 2019 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Alita, Alita: Battle Angel, Christoph Waltz, Ed Skrein, James Cameron, Jennifer Connelly, Junkie XL, Mahershala Ali, Out in Theaters, Robert Rodriguez, Rosa Salazar Leave a comment

Assembled from the scrapyard of a nine-volume run of cult mangas from the 90s, Alita: Battle Angel is the joint production of director Robert Rodriguez and producer James Cameron. Looking at it from a distance, you might assume the costly mega-manga adaptation were more the work of the later. And that’s anything but a ding. Alita has the look and feel of a Cameron sci-fi epic. The world building is sprawling. The effects are tip-top. The spectacle is massive. There’s a reason the blockbuster guru said that the “only way” to experience his latest was in a theater. He wasn’t lying. Read More

Generic ’MISS BALA’ An Anti-Feminist Female-Led Actioner

January 31, 2019 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Anthony Mackie, Catherine Hardwicke, Cristina Rodlo, Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, Gina Rodriguez, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Miss Bala, Out in Theaters, Reviews Leave a comment

It’s hard to consider Miss Bala with anything but startling disappointment. A Hollywood actioner led by a young Latina starlet, retooling a Mexican critical darling for American audiences, in a coming out party for Gina Rodriguez. If all these were working in harmony, this could have worked out very, very well. In the hands of Catherine Hardwicke, it does not. Like, at all. The Twilight director shaves Miss Bala down to the most generic premise and skates around the very thing that could have made it a powerful feminist action film – empowering the woman at the center of the film, tinkering with the best-laid plans of mice and men that seek to dominate her. Instead, Rodriguez’s Gloria is passive eye candy, consistently strong-armed (physically and mentally) by the men around her, and only taking agency at the very last moment possible. Read More