SXSW 2021: ‘SOUND OF VIOLENCE’ Is the Ultra-Campy ASMR Slasher You Didn’t Know You Needed

March 18, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Alex Noyer, Horror, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Lili Simmons, Reviews, Sonya Munro, Sound of Violence, SXSW, SXSW 2021 Leave a comment

There is a scene early on in the absolutely bonkers horror camp-fest Sound of Violence where murderess-musician-mistress Alexis (Jasmin Savoy Brown) kidnaps a homeless man and rigs him up like an electric drum set. Part-hardware, part-flesh, done up as if Kevin Mcalester and Jigsaw were there to help perfect the evil mastermind mechanics. A meat tenderizer dangles above his skull, a mallet aimed at his kneecaps, scalpels bisecting his wrists like cello bows. Alexis nervously puts on her earphones and gets to work. Read More

SXSW 2021: Urgent School Shooter Teen Drama ‘THE FALLOUT’ is the First Defining Movie of Gen-Z

March 18, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged Jenna Ortega, John Ortiz, Julie Bowen, Lumi Pollack, Maddie Ziegler, Megan Park, Niles Fitch, Reviews, Shailene Woodley, SXSW, SXSW 2021, Will Ropp) 4 Comments

We’re only minutes into The Fallout before the carefree world of 16-year old Vada (Jenna Ortega in a star-making role) is turned upside down by a school shooting. Up to that point, her biggest concerns were nagging parents, knowing the answers to an upcoming quiz, and which flavor cake-pop to get at the Starbucks drive through. When her doting little sister Amelia (Lumi Pollack) texts her “911” (she’s gotten her first period and needs to be talked off a ledge), Vada goes to the bathroom to provide some much-needed sisterly advice. She’ll remain trapped there, with popular girl Mia (Maddie Ziegler), when gunshots start ripping off in the hall outside, accompanied by piercing screams of abject terror. Read More

SXSW 2021: Goretastic ‘JAKOB’S WIFE’ Is the Most Fun Vampire Movie in Years

March 17, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Barbara Crampton, Jakob’s Wife, Kathy Charles, Mark Steenland, Reviews, SXSW, SXSW 2021, Travis Stevens 2 Comments

According to Biblical etymology, the name Jakob as found in Genesis is derived from the word for “heel”. In Jakob’s Wife, the eponymous Jakob (Larry Fessenden) is indeed a heel; an old-fashion minister who looks down his nose at his parishioners and town’s hoi polloi and treats his wife as a subservient inferior. When an old flame comes through town, obedient church mouse spouse Anne (a perfectly cast Barbara Crampton) gives into temptation…and is delivered unto the ultimate evil: a primordial vampire hiding out in the abandoned mill in their small town. Read More

SXSW 2021: ‘HERE BEFORE’ A Tricky Psychological Thriller That Just Might Awaken the Undead

March 17, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Andrea Riseborough, Here Before, Reviews, Stacey Gregg, SXSW, SXSW 2021 Leave a comment

Andrea Riseborough may be our greatest under-appreciated actress working today. Delivering standout turns in indie favorites like Mandy, Possessor, and Birdman as well as leading Amazon’s excellent crime drama ZeroZeroZero, Riseborough has slowly proven herself a transfixing chameleon presence. A la the great Tilda Swinton, with whom she shares vampiric lily white skin and sharp angular features, Riseborough creeps into the skin of her roles, the real persona rarely peeking through. Read More

SXSW 2021: Floral Horror ‘GAIA’ a Nightmarish Reckoning with Nature

March 17, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged Alex van Dyk, Carel Nel, Gaia, Horror, Jaco Bouwer, Monique Rockman, Reviews, SXSW, SXSW 2021 1 Comment

Eco-horror is having a resurgence of late, as are psilocybin mushrooms as a visual language in film. Jaco Bouwer’s formidable woodland creeper Gaia fits snugly into a recent wave of psychedelic folk horror, a subgenre that binds Ari Aster’s Midsommar, Alex Garland’s Annihilation, Ben Wheatley’s In the Earth (a recent Sundance release that would make a pitch perfect double feature with Bouwer’s entry) and even Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Sparked by an increasing awareness of humanity’s abusive relationship with nature, eco-horror pits the survival of man and earth against one another and in the light of a global pandemic, those themes have never been as prescient. Read More

SXSW 2021: ALS Activism Documentary ‘NOT GOING QUIETLY’ a Devastating, Inspirational Call to Arms

March 17, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged Ady Barkan, Documentaries, Nicholas Bruckman, Not Going Quietly, Reviews, SXSW, SXSW 2021 Leave a comment

Hope is a hammer, Ady Barkan attempts to say. His tongue, lungs, and the rest of his body devastated by ALS (an incurable degenerative disease that paralyzes and eventually kills its victims), Ady tries again and again but just can’t get the words out to the audience of thousands gathered to hear the American healthcare activist speak. This moment, one of many heartbreaking scenes in Nicholas Bruckman’s not-so-quietly devastating documentary Not Going Quietly, perhaps best encapsulates the ironic paradox of Ady’s emergent and often viral voice: the more his body fails him, the less he is physically able to move and speak, the more he has to say and the more people gather to listen to him. Read More

Humanist Spy Thriller ‘THE COURIER’ Is On a Mission to Move You

March 16, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Abel Korzeniowski, Angus Wright, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dominic Cooke, Ironbark, Merab Ninidze, Rachel Brosnahan, Reviews, The Courier, Tom O'Connor 1 Comment

I’m calling an early shot here: if there’s one movie out of Sundance 2020 that stands a decent shot at a Best Picture nomination almost a year from now, it’s very likely The Courier (formerly titled Ironbark). The Cold War espionage thriller takes a classical approach to its telling, leaning into familiar biopic/historical nonfiction tropes, while viewing events through an extremely humanistic lens. Read More

Nightmares ‘COME TRUE’ in Genuinely Scary Sleepwalk Through the Subconscious

March 10, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Anthony Scott Burns, Come True, Daniel Weissenberger, Horror, Julia Sarah Stone, Landon Liboiron, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Tedra Rogers Leave a comment

A few nights into a mysterious university sleep study, Sarah finds herself perusing a bookshop, pulled towards the Phillip K. Dick entries on the shelf. Jeremy, her primary researcher and maybe-stalker, suggests she give Dick a read, referring to his work as “hauntingly sad”. This description – hauntingly sad – accurately captures the weirdly affecting (and low-key terrifying) tonality of Come True, a descent into sleep paralysis and ancestral nightmares coming to life. Vividly tragic, but always in a darkly unspeakable way, Come True captures that in-between realm separating sleep and dreams and twists it into a malevolent manifesto about the collective terror that lingers in the mysterious netherworld of slumber. Read More

‘RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON’ Is Disney Dominance on Autopilot

March 4, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Adele Lim, Awkwafina, Benedict Wong, Carlos López Estrada, Daniel Dae Kim, Disney, Don Hall, Gemma Chan, Kelly Marie Tran, Qui Nguyen, Raya and the Last Dragon, Reviews, Ross Butler, Sandra Oh 1 Comment

For the better part of a century, Disney has been carefully formulating a template for blockbusting success. Churning out mega-hit after mega-hit on a semi-annual basis is no happy accident and the family-friendly behemoth has gotten that formula down pat – they’ve even exported it to the god-knows-how-many subdivisions of their corporate content creation stations. But going into any Disney animated movie specifically, you have a basic idea of what to expect: there will be a brave, slightly defiant female protagonist who doesn’t quite fit in with her community; an unbearably cute little animal sidekick who manages to be snarky even if they can’t talk; a quest to restore a kingdom; and a dead parent or two. You can never forget about the dead parent bit. Read More

Sprawling Opioid Drama ‘CHERRY’ a Sometimes Entertaining Jumbled Mess

February 25, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Angela Russo-Otstot, Anthony Russo, Cherry, Ciara Bravo, Damon Wayans Jr., Forrest Goodluck, Jack Reynor, Jessica Goldberg, Joe Russo, Michael Gandolfini, Nico Walker, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Tom Holland 1 Comment

Once you pop you just can’t stop. Or so goes the philosophy of the Joe and Anthony Russo when it comes to telling the story of a college-drop-out turned bank-robbing, dope-addicted war vet in Cherry. The directorial pair who rose to the highest of box office heights helming a handful of Marvel’s most critical and commercial smashes (including the last two Avengers mega-hits) prove uneasy with actual drama. Their telling of Nico Walker’s semi-autobiographical best-seller of the same name – adapted in part by screenwriters Angela Russo-Otstot and Jessica Goldberg, is meandering and unjustifiable long-winded. Read More