Out in Theaters: ‘SING STREET’

April 27, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged Aidan Gillen, Don Wycherley, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Ian Kenny, Jack Reynor, John Carney, Lucy Boynton, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Mark McKenna, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Sing Street 1 Comment

Sing Street is that rare film that manages to be good to its core. Like Ward Cleaver teaching Wally and Beaver an important life lesson good. Or finding someone’s billfold on the beach and mailing it to them good. Neil Young crooning “Heart of Gold” good. Snuggling a 6-week old puppy good. Pure dictionary definition good. Omnibenevolence bleeds from the very pores of John Carney’s latest singing sensation to create a sharp-tongued crowdpleaser positively dripping with wit and charm that results in an unimpeachably winning film sure to elicit tears and laughs in equal measure. That it’s also a whipsmart, droll and overwhelmingly heartfelt coming-of-age film brimming with 80s nostalgia and upbeat tuneage drives it the extra mile. Read More

Blu-Ray Review: ‘JANE’S GOT A GUN’

April 26, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Blu-Ray/DVD Reviews Tagged Ewan McGregor, Gavin O’Connor, Joel Edgerton, Natalie Portman, Noah Emmerich Leave a comment

Synopsis: “Natalie Portman is Jane Hammond, a frontierwoman who enlists the aid of a disgruntled former flame (Joel Edgerton) when a rowdy gang led by a ruthless but charismatic killer named John Bishop (Ewan McGregor) plots to axe her outlaw husband (Noah Emmerich). Using a combination of her feminine guile and a sudden disposition for weapons and explosives, Jane must fight off the clan of invading Bishop Boys while also coming to terms with the losses in her past that have made her the woman she is today.” Read More

Out in Theaters: ‘A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING’

April 22, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged A Hologram for the King, Alexander Black, Dave Eggers, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Sarita Choudhury, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Tom Hank, Tom Tyker 1 Comment

Tom Hank’s everyman charisma can’t save Tom Tyker’s laborious fish out of water romantic drama A Hologram for the King. That the plot doesn’t extent far beyond a man waiting for a meeting – an uphill battle of a dramatic thrust if there ever was one – isn’t necessary narrative nightshade though Tyker’s lackadaisical Tilt-A-Whirl approach to storytelling may just be. With a backbone that lacks pizazz, and often settles on a cursory examination of midlife existential crisis through the lens of cultural alienation, and a directorial style that tends towards unfocused arcs and uneven pacing, Tom Hanks proves a saving grace as a down-on-his-luck moral guide. With Hanks, we are admittedly in good hands but Tyker fails to make the frame swirling around him pop to any degree worth remaking upon. Read More

Talking with Jeremy Saulnier of ‘GREEN ROOM’

April 21, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Interviews, Uncategorized Tagged Alia Shawkat, Anton Yelchin, Blue Ruin, Callum Turner, Green Room, Imogen Poots Mark Webber, Interviews, Patrick Stewart, Talking With... 4 Comments

Jeremy Saulnier emerged from the shadows last year with his not-quite-cult independent smash Blue Ruin. About a man fatally ill prepared to strike justice on the man responsible for his parent’s slaying, Saulnier managed an original voice in a familiar setting. With this year’s Green Room, he’s managed to strike the sweet spot once more. An uncompromisingly violent tale of a hapless punk band (played by Alia Shawkat, Anton Yelchin, Callum Turner and Mark Webber) who come head to head with a Neo Nazi club owner (an intimidating as hell Patrick Stewart) is shrouded in viscus and plays like a violent assault to the senses. Visceral and mean, Saulnier has sharpened his edge as a filmmaker to craft a siege film set in a seedy underbelly society that’s absolutely boiling with tension. Read More

Out in Theaters: ‘GREEN ROOM’

April 21, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Alia Shawkat, Anton Yelchin, Callum Turner, Green Room, Imogen Poots, Jeremy Saulnier, Joe Cole, Mark Webber, Patrick Stewart, Reviews, Sundance 2016, Sundance Reviews 2 Comments

Hot from the critical heralding of Blue Ruin, Jeremy Saulnier returns to the world of white trash and movies with colors in their title with Green Room. An ultraviolet fantasy of viscus and vengeance, Green Room is as unapologetic as a Misfits album, as dead-serious as a KKK rally and as boastfully savage as a scalping. Characters find themselves torn to kibble by attack dogs, slashed to crimson ropes by box cutters and blasted in the face at point blank range with shotguns. Read More

Out in Theaters: ‘THE HUNSTMAN: WINTER’S WAR’

April 20, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Alexandra Roach, Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth, Craig Mazin, Emily Blunt, Evan Spiliotopoulos, Jessica Chastain, Liam Neeson, Nick Frost, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Rob Brydon, Scary Movie 4, Sheridan Smith, The Huntsman: Winter’s War Leave a comment

The Huntsman: Winter’s War suffers from colon-movie spina bifida. Its curvy backbone veers near and far to collect the disparate parts necessary in making this part of a larger cinematic universe. In this case, that universe is Universal Picture’s Snow White, a bleak fairy tale retold with undeniable visual style and largely charmless aplomb in 2012 with an aggressively apathetic Kristen Stewart at the forefront and a scenery-smacking, mean-mugging Chris Hemsworth as her side piece. Putting his considerable beef to good use as the movie’s romantic tine/battle-weary whetting stone to slide K-Stew’s frosty edge against, Hemsworth proved a fleeting flash of joy in an otherwise grim and grimly serious saga. His burly Eric however hardly seemed an intriguing (or popular) enough character to stage a spin-off upon but if The Huntsman is proof of anything, it’s that adding a hefty scoop of Jessica Chastain, a dollop of dwarves and a much more tongue-in-cheek approach to this whole fairy tale thing may be just the spoonful of medicine the script doctor called for. Read More

Out in Theaters: ‘THE BOSS’

April 7, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Ben Falcone, Ella Anderson, Kristen Bell, Melissa McCarthy, Out in Theaters, Peter Dinklage, Reviews, The Boss Leave a comment

Melissa McCarthy extols virtues of bullying as hardball go-getter in The Boss. McCarthy’s latest, a rags to riches to rags to brownie empress saga, is a decidedly un-PC yet still paint-by-numbers comedy-cum-drama, written and directed by husband Ben Falcone. Falcone and McCarthy last collaborated as writer/director and star/writer on the critically reviled Tammy and if anything can be said of The Boss, it’s that the duo has still not perfected the formula. A gaffe-a-minute affair puckered with sequin turtlenecks, trite physical gags and the occasional guffaw-worthy ribbing, The Boss continues Hollywood’s trend of planting the theoretically funny McCarthy in mostly lame-brained, decidedly derivative and narratively bankrupt outings. If not entirely without laughs, The Boss is still poor enough in them to qualify for unemployment. Read More

‘ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY’ Trailer is F**king Amazing

April 7, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Trailers Tagged Alan Tudyk, Ben Mendelsohn, Diego Luna, Donnie Yen, Felicity Jones, Forest Whitaker, Jiang Wen, Mads Mikkelsen, Riz Ahmed, ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY, Star Wars, Trailers Leave a comment

Breathe people breathe…Ok I can’t hold it in. My god, it looks so glorious. So absolutely glorious. From the sights (AT-ATS in action, a semi-complete Death Star, new Stormtroopers), sounds (that iconic dark side score, that blaring alarm, that sweet zap of blaster fire) and new characters (Felicity Jones‘ already amazing rebel protagonist, Ben Mendelssohn as an evil Empirial commandeer, Forest Whitaker going all Ghost Dog (is he a Jedi? Please say he’s a Jedi), Donnie Yen going full samurai), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story looks so f***king good! Directed by Gareth Edwards, this eighth Star Wars feature focuses on the rebellion squadron tasked with stealing the infamous Death Star plans and offers the Star Wars universe its first chance to veer from the path of the traditional trilogy. It will function as a standalone spin-off and I cannot wait.

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Out in Theaters: ‘DEMOLITION’

April 6, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Bryan Sipe, Chris Cooper, Demolition, Heather Hind, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jay M. Glen, Jean-Marc Vallee, Naomi Watts, Out in Theaters, Reviews Leave a comment

Life has a tendency to zip forward on a single, amusement ride track until something or someone comes barreling out of the shadows of entropy to buck your stated momentum and set you serendipitously down a new path. 17th century physicist Isaac Newton described the phenomenon in which colliding forces impress upon one another an equal and opposite reaction in his famous Third Law, which describes both why someone struck by a moving vehicle would find their chest caved in and someone catching a bad edge going a cool 30 mph on decade old skis would find their wrist contorted in all kinds of wrong directions. Read More

Out in Theaters: ‘EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!!’

April 6, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Austin Amelio, Blake Jenner, Everybody Wants Some, J. Quinton Johnson, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Richard Linklater, Temple Baker, Wyatt Russell 1 Comment

There’s a moment in Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some where four collegiate athletes hover around an overstuffed bong, listening to the psychedelic crackle of Led Zeppelin, competing to see who can take the biggest bong rip. It’s an indisputably Linklater moment, one that speaks to the essence of the Austin filmmaker’s disco baseball comedy that forces one to meditate on what friendship and camaraderie meant before the advent of cell phones. There is an enviable sense of authentic connection found in this communal stoned passage, one that finds itself increasingly diluted by distraction in modern day conversation, that’s undercut by an overarching spirit of competition. Community and competition – two forces that rally to make Linklater’s latest film a low key, nostalgiacore home run. Read More