Exhilarating ‘WEAPONS’ Unloads a Doozy of a Horror Story

August 20, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged Alden Ehrenreich, Amy Madigan, Austin Abrams, Benedict Wong, Cary Christopher, Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Weapons, Zach Cregger 6 Comments

Prepare the crown, there’s a new king to be anointed. Zach Cregger, formerly of the sketch comedy troupe The Whitest Kids U Know, burst onto the horror scene in 2022 with Barbarian. That film was a masterful, devilishly fun “something’s in the basement” thriller that tapped into audiences’ fear of negative space and relationship dynamics, all while embracing the over-the-top camp that made ’80s and ’90s horror so unserious and so much fun. Barbarian was a killer debut, promising a new horror voice less concerned with using the genre as a Trojan horse for social issues (Peele), plumbing mythic universalisms and medieval tonalities (Eggers), or turning grief into bone-chilling metaphor (Aster, and his knockoff army), and more into being a little scary, a little funny, and a whole lot of fun. His follow-up, Weapons, which WB declined to screen for most critics for some inconceivable reason, is both a worthy continuation of Cregger’s voice and a clear step up in craft. This guy may just be the horror prince the 2020s were promised. Read More

Fantastically Dull ‘THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS’ Miscalculates Introduction to First Family

July 23, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Ebon Moss‑Bachrach, Eric Pearson, Fantastic Four: First Steps, Ian Springer, Jeff Kaplan, Joseph Quinn, Josh Friedman, Julia Garner, Kasra Farahani, Matt Shakman, Michael Giacchino, Natasha Lyonne, Paul Walter Hauser, Pedro Pascal, Ralph Ineson, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Vanessa Kirby 1 Comment

The MCU is dead. The MCU is back. The MCU is dead. The MCU is back. Someone put a fork in it. She’s cooked. But just you wait until the next one! And on and on the content carousel spins. Even as someone who had gripes with the Marvel machine well before Endgame, I found myself tossing out more than a few positive reviews in that era. In fact, there was a time when I felt rather pot-committed to the whole enterprise, even when its storytelling got obnoxiously self-aggrandizing and interconnected. Post-Endgame, it’s mostly been a tragic slide into mediocrity with some blips of quality. A few titles have become the lone bright spots in an otherwise bleak Phase 4/5 wasteland. Meanwhile, Ant-Man: Quantumania, The Marvels, Thor: Love and Thunder, Eternals, Captain America: Brave New World, and Thunderbolts all earned a solid splat from my little corner of the internet. Now, with James Gunn’s DCU breathing heavily down Marvel’s neck and the franchise’s future hinging on two upcoming Avengers movies (featuring Robert Downey Jr. returning, but as Doctor Doom, for reasons not disclosed here), The Fantastic Four: First Steps from director Matt Shakman arrives with downright heroic expectations. Expectations that are promptly crushed under the weight of its own blandness. Read More

‘WOLF MAN’ Redux Howls With Heart and Horror

January 15, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Christopher Abbott, Corbett Tuck, Julia Garner, Leigh Whannell, Matilda Firth, Wolf Man 9 Comments

The Wolf Man has a shaggy history in the annals of cinema. After premiering in George Waggner’s well-regarded 1941 feature, the character went on to appear in increasingly desperate mashups alongside Frankenstein, Dracula, Abbott and Costello, and—for some godforsaken reason—Alvin and the Chipmunks. Joe Johnson’s 2010 dreadfully dull remake with Benicio del Toro and Anthony Hopkins was widely panned. Years later, Ryan Gosling was briefly set to play the character in the quickly-sundowned Dark Universe series. Like a full moon waning, the monster movie icon was put to rest. Following a successful stint reviving the Universal monster movies with the critically acclaimed, box-office hit The Invisible Man, writer-director Leigh Whannell (Saw, Upgrade) was tapped to try his hand at this oft-cursed property, recruiting Christopher Abbott as his leading lupine man to star opposite Ozark’s Julia Garner. Read More

Out in Theaters: ‘GRANDMA’

September 18, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Grandma, Judy Greer, Julia Garner, Laverne Cox, Lily Tomlin, Marcia Gay Harden, Nat Wolff, Out in Theaters, Paul Weitz, Reviews, Sam Elliot Leave a comment

“Time passes – that’s for sure” – an Eileen Myles quote that opens the film Grandma and could have just as easily come spilling from the churlish mouth of Lily Tomlin’s titular character. After all, Tomlin’s Elle Reid is no stranger to her own passing time. In her words, “I’m rapidly approaching 50” (Elle’s deadpan is matched only by her sense of irony – Tomlin has around rounded her third quarter-century.) Her thick sheen of sarcasm is persistently cutting and deeply riotous and between the sharp writing and Tomlin’s pitch-perfect comic timing, there’s many good reasons to see Grandma. Forget that Tomlin’s name will be thrown all up and down the Oscar buzz aisle because award or no, her presence here is absolutely aces. Read More