Princess Diana Feels the Oppression of Royal Tradition in Masterful ‘SPENCER’

November 4, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged Freddie Spry, Jack Farthing, Jack Nielen, Jacqueline Durran, Kristen Stewart, Pablo Larraín, Sally Hawkins, Sean Harris, Spencer, Stella Gonet, Steven Knight, Timothy Spall 1 Comment

Princess Diana (Kristen Stewart) is terribly lost. Putting along rolling hills under the glowering gray English skies in her Porsche, she can’t find her way to the royal Sandringham House, where she is deigned to join the Royal Family for Christmas. But her being off-course runs much deeper. Diana’s disorientation in the very town she grew up in – in the shadow of the aforementioned seat of royalty no less – speaks to a growing sense of being out of place. Following the infidelity of her husband Prince Charles (Jack Farthing), Diana is nonetheless expected to play the part of dutiful wife but it’s a role she simply cannot swallow. Read More

An Opportunistic Knight Quests in Superbly Crafted, Narratively Adventurous ‘THE GREEN KNIGHT’

July 28, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged A24, Alicia Vikander, Andrew Croz Palermo, Barry Keoghan, Daniel Hart, Dev Patel, Erin Kellyman, Joel Edgerton, Kate Dickie, Malgosia Turzanska, Ralph Ineson, Sarita Choudhury, Sean Harris, The Green Knight 2 Comments

David Lowery is a visual poet. Throughout his celebrated career, the Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Pete’s Dragon, and A Ghost Story director has leaned on visual language and unconventional film grammar to connect with audiences, championing the emotional resonance of imagery over traditional narrative structure. In many ways, his films are in the same vein as American auteur Terrence Malick: thoughtful and dense, visually resplendent, whispery tone poems designated strictly for the Film Buff crowd. In that capacity, Lowery suffers Malick’s shortcomings, particularly as it pertains to resting too much within the opaque interiority of his characters and letting plotting fall by the wayside.

Out in Theaters: ‘MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: FALLOUT’

July 24, 2018 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged Best of 2018, Henry Cavill, Mission Impossible: Fallout, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Simon Pegg, tom cruise, Ving Rhames 4 Comments

I have a confession to make. There’s this thing that happens to people who review movies on any kind of quasi-professional circuit. A kind of numbing of the enthusiasm gland by proxy of the inability to overlook a film’s shortcomings. The more movies one takes in, the more unavoidable it is to not diagnose lazy writing, poor story structure, bland acting, choppy VFX… The collection of pratfalls these XXL “turn your brain off” tentpole films tend to suffer. When you see 200 movies a year, the bar to dazzle becomes impossibly high. What works for general audiences who catch a movie every few months often feels flat and stale for the critic – just another coat of crisp digital paint lazily slathered on poorly recycled narrative – because we’ve already seen this exact story twice this year. Read More

Out in Theaters: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: ROGUE NATION

July 30, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Batman & Robin, Christopher McQuarrie, Drew Pearce, Jack Reacher, Jeremy Renner, Joe Kraemer’, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, Reviews, Robert Elswit, Sean Harris, Simon Pegg, tom cruise, Ving Rhames 1 Comment

For the sake of honesty, I’ll report this: I loved 2011’s Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol too much. So much so that it earned a slot in my top ten that year. To this day, it’s my favorite of the series and an improbably rewatchable event film. Even with a somewhat spotted past (Mission Impossible 2 is fun though objectively not the greatest film accomplishment), the Mission Impossible franchise is one of my sleeper hit favorites, with the last two entries – the aforementioned addition from Brad Bird and J.J. Abrams‘ Phillip Seymour Hoffman-starring threequel – delivering some of the series’ absolute best material. When it was announced that Christopher McQuarrie (director of Jack Reacher, screenwriter of Batman & Robin) had mounted the directorial stool for the fifth iteration of Ethan Hunt’s impossible missions, my anticipation shuttered and cautiously withdrew. Read More