‘HOW TO MAKE A KILLING’ Is Slick Nihilism That Never Quite Gels

February 18, 2026 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged A24, Bill Camp, Ed Harris, Glen Powell, How to Make a Killing, John Patton Ford, Margaret Qualley, Topher Grace, Zach Woods 1 Comment

After being cast out from his billionaire family for the sin of being born from a working class father, average joe Beckett Redfellow (Glen Powell) decides the only logical solution is to murder his entire clan and reclaim the inheritance denied to him. Writer-director John Patton Ford, following up his auspicious Aubrey Plaza starring debut Emily the Criminal, fails to recapture that film’s scrappy, pedestrian angst. While his first film understood the slow moral erosion of someone trying to survive in a culture that worships status and money above all else, How to Make a Killing is a slick, nihilistic crime caper that is easy enough to watch but has almost nothing going on beneath its lacquered surface. It feels less like a director building on his foundation and more like one spinning his wheels in expensive tires. Read More

‘HIGHEST 2 LOWEST’ a Campy Epic of Urban Success and Crime

August 14, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged A$AP Rocky, A24, Alan Fox, Apple, Aubrey Joseph, Denzel Washington, Elijah Wright, Highest 2 Lowest, Jeffrey Wright, Spike Lee 2 Comments

One of Spike Lee’s best films of this century, Highest 2 Lowest is pure cinema. A soapy, sudsy, campy, bombastically performed meditation on morality, success, legacy, and loyalty, Lee’s latest joint relishes both the simple pleasures of moviemaking and its most potent forces. It blends stylish filmmaking and a breakneck pulse with a roaring sense of place and character to pay tribute to a fellow auteur great, making it a film that’s nearly impossible to look away from. Adapted from Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 High and Low, itself based on Ed McBain’s detective novel King’s Ransom, Highest 2 Lowest straddles genres effectively to paint a portrait of a man who has carved out his own little kingdom. That man, played with quicksilver ferocity by Denzel Washington, must reckon with what matters most as his world threatens to crumble around him from an escalating series of eternal forces. Read More

Ari Aster’s ‘EDDINGTON’ Sloppily Relitigates Pandemic Woes

July 16, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged A24, Ari Aster, Austin Butler, Deirdre O’Connell, Eddington, Emma Stone, Joaquin Phoenix, Luke Grimes, Micheal Ward, Pedro Pascal 1 Comment

Covid denialism. Mask mandates. BLM protests. Ari Aster’s fourth feature revisits all the trials and tribulations of the 2020 pandemic, dragging us back to that societal fever dream while adopting a decidedly odd “both sides” stance to interrogate the existential mania of the era. The result is a film that tries to tackle a lot—most notably how partisan mainstream media, social platforms, and fringe sites funnel viewers into conspiratorial rabbit holes that deepen division and further otherize an already fraying left/right American divide—but ends up feeling more like the frazzled screed of someone who, frankly, had a really bad pandemic. Read More

‘MATERIALISTS’ Is a Hallmark Movie in Faux Prestige Trappings

June 11, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged A24, Celine Song, Chris Evans, Dakota Johnson, Materialists, Pedro Pascal 1 Comment

Celine Song’s Past Lives – a wistful love triangle between a Korean-American woman, her Korean ex who never quite aligned with her life, and the American man who did – was one of the best films of 2023. Emotionally decadent and raw, it boasted a trio of stunningly honest performances, a sharp script, and economical direction from Song. The first time I saw it, I thought it was great. The second time, I was completely bowled over. In 2025, Song returns to a similar formula: a materialistic matchmaker torn between a rich new suitor who checks every box and her ex, who is sweet but poor and otherwise ill-suited on paper. Whatever Song nailed with Past Lives, she gets absolutely wrong here. Read More

‘BRING HER BACK’ Is As Bleak As A24 “Prestige Horror” Comes

May 20, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged A24, Bill Hinzman, Billy Barratt, Bring Her Back, Danny Philippou, Horror, Jonah Wren Phillips, Liam Damons, Michael Philippou, Mischa Heywood, Sally Hawkins, Sally-Anne Upton, Sora Wong, Stephen Phillips 3 Comments

Australian writer-director twins Danny and Michael Philippou are quickly redefining a kind of no-holds-barred prestige horror filmmaking. With their sophomore feature Bring Her Back, absolutely nothing is off-limits. This bleak and deranged story of a brother and sister taken into the home of a foster mother, played by Sally Hawkins (who is most definitely not the kindly counselor the world believes her to be), lands among the most disturbing entries in the “elevated horror” genre, mostly by inflicting gruesome body horror upon children in ways that is as horrifying as is it narratively compelling. It’s a tough film to stomach, not just for its barbaric depictions of violence against kids, but for its thematic notes of child abuse and the grief of losing a child. Bring Her Back is horrifying in its premise, but it’s dramatically anchored by its mirrored narratives about families in grief: one side of the coin desperately trying to stay intact after a tragedy, the other willing to go to truly ungodly lengths to reconstruct what’s been taken. Read More

‘FRIENDSHIP’ is 100 Minutes of Pure Tim Robinson Cringe

May 13, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged A24, Andrew DeYoung, Friendship, Jack Dylan Grazer, Josh Segarra, Kate Mara, Paul Rudd, Tim Robinson 8 Comments

Tim Robinson has one speed. Ever since he wrote and co-starred in Detroiters before becoming a sainted meme, ascending to viral sketch-comedy royalty with the gut-bustingly hysterical I Think You Should Leave, Robinson has specialized in playing a singular, ever-mutating archetype: the emotionally volatile social misfit. It’s a character he’s twisted into a hundred different shapes, but the core is always the same: an unhinged cocktail of cringe, indignation, and deeply funny despair. Whether he’s feeding eggs to his office monitor, melting down speed-ordering fast food (“55 burgers! 55 fries!”), or demanding a party host eat a receipt to prove he liked a gift, Robinson excels at crafting men living on the verge of complete and total social collapse. Read More

‘THE LEGEND OF OCHI’ a Technically Impressive but Familiar A24 Fable

April 23, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged A24, Cheech Manohar, Dean-Charles Chapman, Emily Watson, Finn Wolfhard, Helena Zengel, Isaiah Saxon, Reviews, The Legend of Ochi, Willem Dafoe 7 Comments

The Legend of Ochi harks back to an earlier era of children’s cinema. Set in the not-quite-magical, not-quite-real world of Carpathia—where mythical bipedal creatures roam the mossy forests, but stick-shift cars and terrestrial radio also exist—writer-director Isaiah Saxon crafts a vibe-heavy feature in which the all-natural landscapes and often jaw-dropping creature design take center stage. Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: a young girl bonds with a mysterious creature and sets out to return it home. It’s a story we’ve seen dozens of times, though few recent iterations arrive with this level of craft. It’s a film equally indebted to the works of Steven Spielberg and Wes Anderson, though it lacks the signature touch that gives those directors’ films such vivid life and clear sense of purpose. Read More

Overwhelming ‘WARFARE’ A Gonzo Descent into Garland’s Hellish Sandbox

April 10, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged A24, Adain Bradley, Alex Garland, Allon Reich, Andrew Macdonald, Charles Melton, Cosmo Jarvis, D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, David J. Thompson, Evan Holtzman, Fin Oates, Finn Bennett, Henry Zaga, Joseph Quinn, Kit Connor, Matthew Penry-Davey, Michael Gandolfini, Noah Centineo, Peter Rice, Ray Mendoza, Taylor John Smith, Warfare, Will Poulter 2 Comments

Warfare, the immersive Iraq War survival thriller from Navy SEAL veteran and first-time filmmaker Ray Mendoza and co-writer/co-director Alex Garland, is a blisteringly intense procedural experience. On one hand, it’s an incredibly effective piece of transportive filmmaking, one that leans into both the numbing banality of war plans and its most barbaric excesses. Told through a real-time, boots-on-the-ground POV, the film drops us alongside a platoon of Navy SEALs tasked with infiltrating a seemingly innocuous position and establishing a sniper nest. That’s all the context we’re given. No grander mission, no tie-in to some greater geopolitical scaffolding. Just a squad, a target, and a whole lot of code words. Which may very well be the point: a war without meaning, with boys playing at war. Read More

‘DEATH OF A UNICORN’ a Satirical Creature Feature that Beats the Dead Horse

March 25, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged A24, Alex Scharfman, Death of a Unicorn, Jenna Ortega, Paul Rudd, Richard E. Grant, Téa Leoni, Will Poulter 5 Comments

When uptight compliance attorney Elliot (Paul Rudd) drags his teenage daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) on an out-of-state business trip, what was meant to be a major career opportunity takes a turn for the absurd: they hit a unicorn. In a moment of panic (or probably just impatience), Elliot bludgeons the moaning mystical creature to death and stuffs its bleeding corpse into the rental’s trunk. But not before Ridley touches its horn, forming a vague, E.T.-style bond with the mythical beast. Read More

Sundance ‘25: ‘IF I HAD LEGS I’D KICK YOU’ – Rose Byrne is Remarkable in This Maternal Panic Attack of a Movie

February 3, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged A24, ASAP Rocky, Christian Slater, Conan O'Brien, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Mary Bronstein, Rose Byrne, Sundance 2025 3 Comments

Two hours of uncut existential dread and a career-best turn from Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You from writer-director Mary Bronstein is an uncomfortably intimate character study of a mother unraveling under the weight of her daughter’s medical issues and a gaping ceiling leak threatening to drown what’s left of her sanity. Byrne has long mastered the art of self-loathing and performative pleasantries (see her Apple TV+ series Physical for a masterclass), but she’s operating on another level here. As Linda, she’s barely holding together her personal and professional life in this cortisol-spiking, secondhand-stress-inducing domestic drama. Read More