Brutal Rabid Ape Slasher ‘PRIMATE’ Totally Shreds

January 8, 2026 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Gia Hunter, Jess Alexander, Johannes Roberts, Johnny Sequoyah, Primate, Troy Kotsur, Victoria Wyant 7 Comments

What a deranged way to kick off 2026. Primate, Johannes Roberts’ feverish little rabid chimpanzee slasher, is a gloriously squirmy exercise in pure genre efficiency. Sustaining a bone-deep sense of dread across its tight 90-minute runtime—punctuated by the occasional obligatory laugh to let off steam—Primate is a feral scream of a January horror film that doesn’t waste time papering over its shortcomings. It knows exactly where its strengths lie: in Roberts’ unsavory tendencies, the suffocating tension, and some of the most creatively horrifying gore to hit the screen in recent memory.

50+ Most Anticipated Movies of 2026

December 22, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists Tagged 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Alpha, Artificial, Avengers: Doomsday, Behemoth!, Brides, Clayface, Digger, Disclosure Day, Don’t Die, Dune: Part Three, Good Luck, Have Fun, How to Make a Killing, How To Rob A Bank, I Love Boosters, I Want Your Sex, In The Blink of An Eye, Josephine, Judy, Mayday, Mother Mary, October, Onslaught, Other Mommy, Primate, Project Hail Mary, Ray Gunn, Resident Evil, See You When I See You, Send Help, Shiver, Supergirl, Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma, The Adventures of Cliff Booth, The Backrooms, The Bride!, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, The Death of Robin Hood, The Dog Stars, The Drama, The Entertainment System Is Down, The Gallerist, The History of Concrete / U.S.A., The Incomer, The Last Disturbance of Madeline Hynde, The Mummy, The Odyssey, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, The Social Reckoning, The Weight, The Young People, They Will Kill You, Union County, Werwulf, Whitney Springs, Wuthering Heights, zi 2 Comments

With 2025 just about in the rearview window, tis the moment to take stock of what worked in 2025 before turning ahead to the most anticipated movies of 2026. As usual, the films I responded to most last year weren’t those trying to be agreeable or broad or endlessly franchisable. They were specific, abrasive, messy, and always driven by a strong sense of autership. Horror continued to be the most reliable space for ambition and risk, but plenty of dramas and genre hybrids landed too, largely when they championed mood, performance, and uncomfortable ideas over traditional polish. Even in a year where the industry still felt unsettled, some genuinely great films cut through. And though 2025 on a whole was a bit of a letdown here holistically, it featured some of the very best movies of the entire decade. Let us hope too that 2026 manages to deliver some true uncut gems.

Top Ten TV Series of 2025

December 19, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists, Most Popular Tagged Adolescence, Andor, English Teacher, Pluribus, Task, The Chair Company, The Pitt, The Rehearsal, The Studio, White Lotus 4 Comments

As more people turn to streaming from the comfort of their couch-pits, the small screen landscape has ballooned and splintered in a thousand directions. The era of monocultural appointment TV—the kind that made Game of Thrones (at its peak) or Lost before it into national talking points—has faded into the ether, drowned by the ever-expanding ocean of things-to-watch. Now, there’s hyper-specific content for every kind of viewer: whether you’re into MILF-bait reality shows set on tropical islands, dark docuseries interviewing the families of serial killers, or whatever else the algorithm coughed up this week. Meanwhile, the so-called “must-watch” marquee shows have become more niche by comparison. Sure, Stranger Things came back—meh—and it broke the internet for about 72 hours. But suffice it to say, everyone’s mostly just watching their own thing now. So, as you browse my personal favorite shows of the year, know this: I only considered stuff I actually watched. Read More

Violently Sexy ‘THE HOUSEMAID’ Cleans House

December 16, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Amanda Seyfried, Brandon Sklenar, Paul Feig, Sydney Sweeney, The Housemaid 2 Comments

A pulpy erotic thriller that channels the airport-read energy of Gone Girl with a dash of The Stepford Wives’ satirical zip, The Housemaid is an effortlessly entertaining throwback to a mostly bygone era of glossy, high-concept potboilers. Led by the competent, sudsy trio of Sydney Sweeney, Amanda Seyfried, and Brandon Sklenar, Paul Feig’s adaptation of Freida McFadden’s 2022 bestseller does carry some of the expected baggage: over-reliance on clunky overdubbed narration, and a few character choices that feel more convenient than coherent. But the film is so self-aware, so happily leaning into its own soapy excess, that the silliness becomes part of the charm. Read More

‘AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH’ Is a Punishing Retread With Nothing New to Add

December 16, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Avatar, Avatar: Fire and Ash, Britain Dalton, Jack Champion, James Cameron, Oona Chaplin, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Zoe Saldana 3 Comments

James Cameron is too good of a director to spend the rest of his career trapped in Pandora. Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third of five planned installments, may be the most unequivocal waste of time and talent in any major motion picture this century. At three hours and 17 minutes, this second sequel is the neglected middle child of the franchise—adrift, unsure of its purpose, and mostly forgotten even as it plays out in real time. Despite its nearly endless runtime, so little actually happens that the movie ends in almost the exact same place it began. It’s a truly depressing chapter in a franchise that began with a box-office-destroying splash in 2009 and (shockingly) managed to carry the flame with The Way of Water, a disappointing but still absurdly profitable sequel. Read More

‘IS THIS THING ON?’ Mic Checks a Middle-Aged Marriage

December 12, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Amy Sedaris, Andra Day, Bradley Cooper, Christine Ebersole, Ciarán Hinds, Is This Thing On?, John Bishop, Laura Dern, Mark Chappell, Sean Hayes, Will Arnett 3 Comments

Alex Novak is checked out. From his marriage. From himself. From whatever once brought him joy. The first moment we meet Alex, played with hangdog affability by Will Arnett, he amicably agrees to a separation with his wife Tess (Laura Dern, wonderful here) while they brush their teeth together. Their pending separation is met with all the nonchalance of agreeing on where to get Sunday night takeout. Because Alex Novak is checked out. Read More

Most Anticipated Films of the Sundance Film Festival 2026

December 10, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists, Most Popular Tagged American Doctor, Carousel, Frank & Louis, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, Hanging by a Wire, I Want Your Sex, In The Blink of An Eye, Rock Springs, Run Amok, Saccharine, See You When I See You, Sundance, Sundance 2026, The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, The Gallerist, The History of Concrete, The Incomer, The Invite, The Musical, The Shitheads, Union County, zi 2 Comments

Sundance Film Festival 2026 officially announced its lineup on December 10 and the reveal already feels weighted with more significance than usual. This will be the festival’s final year in Park City before it relocates to Boulder—a move that ends decades of proximity to the epic Wasatch slopes and closes the chapter on a place that helped define Sundance’s identity as much as the films themselves. It also arrives in the shadow of Robert Redford’s passing. As the festival’s founder and longtime steward, Redford shaped the trajectory of American independent cinema. His absence gives the 2026 Sundance festival a real end-of-an-era energy. Read More

Top Ten Films of 2025

December 9, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists, Most Popular Tagged Bugonia, Hamnet, Lurker, Marty Supreme, No Other Choice, One Battle After Another, Sinners, The Life of Chuck, Together, Top Ten, Weapons 6 Comments

If 2024 felt transitional, 2025 felt reactionary. The industry is still figuring out where it’s future is heading, with streaming turbulence, downsized theatrical slates, and the lingering specter of automation hanging over the heads of everyone from below-the-line workers to A-list actors. With the recent news of the landmark WB acquisition, the future is very much in a state of alarming flux. But even with cinema at a crossroads, a number of films showed up with blood dripping from their teeth in 2025. 2025 didn’t just have good movies, it had some of the very best movies of the whole decade. And I put in the work to find that out for myself. This year, I watched 109 new releases and wrote 67 reviews. The top four films from this year (all which earned a grade-A) could duke it out with any other recent release for supremacy. Even though art is, I guess, subjective and all that. Read More

‘NO OTHER CHOICE’ Is Park Chan-wook’s Darkly Comic Stand Against Humanity Becoming Replaceable

December 8, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged Jahye Lee, Lee Byung-hun, Lee Kyoung-mi, No Other Choice, Park Chan-wook, Park Hee-soon, Son Ye-jin 4 Comments

A searing South Korean social satire about the accelerating impossibilities of employment in 2025, No Other Choice doesn’t give an inch. The new film from legendary director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, The Handmaiden) stars Lee Byung-hun and Son Ye-jin as a husband and wife forced to reconsider their socioeconomic standing when patriarch Man-Su is laid off from his cushy white-collar job at a paper company looking to upscale efficiencies and downscale headcount. An updated reimagining of Donald E. Westlake’s 1997 horror thriller novel The Ax, the story follows Man-Su as he resorts to any means necessary to re-enter the workforce—including killing off his competition. After all, he has no other choice. Read More

‘MARTY SUPREME’ Serves Up Another High-Tension Safdie Classic

December 1, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged Gwyneth Paltrow, Josh Safdie, Kevin O’Leary, Koto Kawaguchi, Marty Supreme, Odessa A'Zion, Ronald Bronstein, Timothée Chalamet 3 Comments

Within the very first minutes of Marty Supreme, one thing is very clear: Josh had the juice. After the split between writing/directing duo Josh and Benny Safdie, each brother struck out to make their own riff on the sports drama. Benny’s The Smashing Machine, a shockingly flat biopic about Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson) and the early days of the UFC, revealed that, as I put it in my review, “he might not only benefit from a creative partner but actually need one. Alone, his work is startlingly inert.” The opposite is true of Josh Safdie. Marty Supreme, his fictionalized sports drama about a grifter table tennis player played by Timothée Chalamet in his best onscreen role yet, has more kinetic life and effortless energy in just the opening scene than the entirety of The Smashing Machine. While it’s not my intent to pit brother against brother in some carnivorous blood match of talent, it is striking to see the cinematic results of their cleaved relationship in such an apples-to-apples comparison. There is no contest: Marty Supreme reigns supreme. Read More