Sundance ‘24: Tortured ‘I SAW THE TV GLOW’ Reaches Through the Screen

January 20, 2024 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged Brigette Lundy-Paine, I Saw the TV Glow, Jane Schoenbrun, Justice Smith, Sundance, Sundance 2024 5 Comments

Jane Schoenbrun’s audacious followup to their attention-grabbing debut We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is billed as a horror feature but it takes careful time developing said horror. And delivers a wallop. A quietly remarkable film, and one that spurred a handful of walkouts during its Sundance premiere, I Saw The TV Glow is not an easily accessible film. But with just a little thought, investment, and excavation, this handsomely-mounted ethereal slowburn will be sure to worm its way deep under your skin and suck you into the screen. Read More

‘DETECTIVE PIKACHU’ Solves Mystery: Video Game Adaptations Still Not Great

May 7, 2019 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Bill Nighy, Justice Smith, Kathryn Newton, Out in Theaters, Pokémon, Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, Reviews, Rob Letterman, Ryan Reynolds Leave a comment

Did you know that Pokémon is already the highest grossing media franchise of all time? At 90 billion dollars in total franchise revenue, its total haul triples that of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, eclipsing the net worth of Winnie the Pooh, Hello Kitty, Mickey Mouse & Friends, Mario, and the entire Disney Princess collection. To say it’s an international sensation is to put it mildly. After the recent resurgence of the pocket monsters in the form of the popular augmented reality game Pokémon Go, Pokémon fever has been at a new all-time high and for the first time in nearly 20 years, Pokémon: Detective Pikachu marks the long-awaited return of Pokémon, Pokémon trainers, and their pokéballs of steel to the big screen. Read More

Out in Theaters: ‘JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM’

June 20, 2018 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Pratt, Colin Trevorrow, Daniella Pineda, Derek Connolly, J.A. Bayona, James Cromwell, Jeff Goldblum, Jurassic World: Fallen King, Justice Smith 1 Comment

Fallen Kingdom indeed. If you’re considering seeing the latest Jurassic World movie, do yourself a favor and flush that $13 down the toilet instead. There’s maybe 15 minutes of Fallen Kingdom’s 130-minute runtime that is almost, kind of watchable. The rest is some of the most embarrassing tentpole bullshit this side of a Transformers movie. Hackneyed dialogue, a shamelessly uncreative and entirely predictable plot, awful acting, boring characters, and zero memorable set pieces to distract from all the awfulness, Fallen Kingdom sets an incredibly low bar for the once beloved dino series, delivering an abomination of blockbuster filmmaking that makes one wish for a meteorite to strike their local theater and wipe its nasty existence clean from this Earth. Read More

Out in Theaters: PAPER TOWNS

July 23, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Austin Abrams, Cara Delevingne, Halston Sage, Jake Schreier, John Green, Justice Smith, Nat Wolff, Paper Towns 1 Comment

Paper Towns is as infantile as it is pointless; a sloppily rendered, paint-by-numbers filmic blunder that celebrates femininity and the free spirit without understanding either. It’s a glossy venture through teenagedom (emphasis on “dumb”) that both takes itself too seriously and is too fantastical and inconsequential to be taken seriously. As such, it simply fails to grasp anything of value, though its fingers remain greedily extended. Though acted with suitable gusto by its young cast, Paper Towns is the movie equivalent of a rambling troglodyte, spouting words and ideas without having much to say at all. Read More