Sundance ’16 Review: ’31’

January 25, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged 31, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Kevin Jackson, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Meg Foster, Reviews, Richard Brake, Rob Zombie, Sheri Moon Zombie, Sundance 2016, Sundance Review 10 Comments

Rob Zombie‘s transition to the film world is, if nothing else, intriguing. After finding success uncharacteristic to the metal genre with band White Zombie, the metal rocker decided that basing album concepts off classic horror movies wasn’t cutting it. He wanted in on the game. By 1999, he had written an original script, The Crow: 2037, but the project was abandoned for a variety of reasons. Instead Zombie paired with Universal Studios to make his horror house debut, House of 1000 Corpses and so began his bloodstained path to 31. Read More

Sundance ’16 Review: ‘YOGA HOSERS’

January 25, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Harley Quinn Smith, Johnny Depp, Justin Long, Kevin Smith, Lily-Rose Melody Depp, Reviews, Sundance 2016, Sundance Reviews, Yoga Hosers 4 Comments

Yoga Hosers, the second feature in the proposed True North trilogy, refers to the fact that the two main characters, both named Collen, like yoga (or at least writer/director Kevin Smith‘s grossly ignorant appropriation of yoga) and are hosers (Canada’s way of saying fool or dolt.) Convenient store clerks and high school students, the Colleens are frequently buried up to their eyeballs in their smartphones, snapping selfies, posting to the ‘gram and generally disengaging from the physical world around them. When an ancient army of foot-long Nazi sausage clones, called Bratzis, begins to attack their small Canadian town, the girls must put down their iPhones to save the day. Read More

Sundance ’16 Review: ‘CHRISTINE’

January 24, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Antonio Campos, Christine, Maria Dizzia, Reviews, Sundance 2016, Sundance Reviews, Tracy Letts Leave a comment

Almost 7% of the American population has been diagnosed as suffering from depression. That’s roughly 15 million people today. In 1974, though depression was recognized as a serious mental disorder, it wasn’t regarded with the same weight that it is today. After all, the mental disease didn’t enter the DSM III until 1980. Christine, from Simon Killer director Antonio Campos, takes a look at infamous Sarasota reporter Christine Chubbuck and her struggle with depression in sad, sanguine, cinematic streaks. Read More

Sundance ’16 Review: ‘CAPTAIN FANTASTIC’

January 24, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Ann Dowd, Captain Fantastic, Charlie Shotwell, Frank Langella, Kathryn Hahn, Matt Ross, Reviews, Steve Zahn, Sundance 2016, Sundance Reviews, Viggo Mortensen 1 Comment

With Captain Fantastic, writer/director Matt Ross has tapped enlightenment like a spigot into a maple tree and funneled it into crowd-pleasing dramedy. With a first-rate cast that includes Viggo Mortensen, Kathryn Hahn, Steve Zahn, Frank Langella and Ann Dowd, Ross’ second feature shows a filmmaker emerging with a booming voice, immediately confident enough to corral such talent into one articulate, sarcastic and smartly realized vision. The result is a righteously comic and deeply-felt examination of a family experimenting with life on the fringes of society. Read More

Sundance ’16 Review: ‘GREEN ROOM’

January 24, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Alia Shawkat, Anton Yelchin, Callum Turner, Green Room, Imogen Poots, Jeremy Saulnier, Joe Cole, Mark Webber, Reviews, Sundance 2016, Sundance Reviews 3 Comments

Hot from the critical heralding of Blue Ruin, Jeremy Saulnier returns to the world of white trash and movies with colors in their title with Green Room. An ultraviolet fantasy of viscus and vengeance, Green Room is as unapologetic as a Misfits album, as dead-serious as a KKK rally and as boastfully savage as a scalping. Characters find themselves torn to kibble by attack dogs, slashed to crimson ropes by box cutters and blasted in the face at point blank range with shotguns. Read More

Sundance ’16 Review: ‘GOAT’

January 24, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Andrew Neel, Ben Schnetzer, Brad Land, David Gordon Green, Goat, James Franco, Nick Jonas, Reviews, Sundance 2016, Sundance Reviews 1 Comment

Goat harrowingly explores the hypocrisy of fraternal brotherhood, bearing witness to the ugly rights of passage that men must submit to into order to earn their badge of masculinity. In Andrew Neel‘s testosterone-fueled melodrama, ideas of modern masculinity are examined through the lens of the Phi Sigma Mu fraternity of the fictitious Brookman University as new arriving “goats” (that’s pledges to those who don’t speak frat) are victim to a brutal “hell week”. Read More

Sundance ’16 Review: ‘MORRIS FROM AMERICA’

January 23, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Carla Juri, Chad Hartigan, Craig Robinson, Lina Keller, Markees Christmas, Morris From America, Reviews, Sundance 2016, Sundance Reviews 1 Comment

Debuting in a time where discussion on race in American cinema is at an absolute fever pitch, Morris From America explores the idea of cultural and personal identity through the lens of a 13-year old black aspiring free-styler living with his father (Craig Robinson) in the little white-washed German village of Heidelberg. Directed by Chad Hartigan, who won Sundance’s Best of Next prize in 2013 for This is Martin Bonner, Morris may be relatively light viewing but with fine performances across the board and a semi-charmed approach to talking about race and culture, Morris is a crowd-pleasing success story that could find love outside the festival circuit. Read More

Sundance ’16 Review: ‘HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE’

January 23, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Julian Dennison, Rachel House, Reviews, Rhys Darby, Rima Te Wiata, Sam Neill, Sundance 2016, Sundance Reviews, Taika Waititi 6 Comments

Taika Waititi‘s oddball Hunt for the Wilderpeople continues the Kiwi director’s aggressive expansion into the mainstream while still maintaining his goofy, grinning, soft-centered tendencies. Coming off the roaring critical success of vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows, Wilderpeople is a more grounded venture (but then again, what isn’t?) that maintains Waititi’s ironic and largely innocent sense of humor while injecting a fair measure of heart into the affair. Read More

Sundance ’16 Review: ‘SWISS ARMY MAN’

January 23, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged Daniel Kwan, Daniel Radcliffe, Daniel Scheinert, Paul Dano, Reviews, Sundance 2016, Sundance Reviews, Swiss Army Man 7 Comments

Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan‘s (A.K.A. The Daniels) flatulence-fueled, sea-stranded mind trip is a totally bonkers, emotionally decadent spirit quest to the weirdest corners of reality. A man and a corpse test the boundaries of friendship and filmmaking in this boundlessly creative, wildly original tramp sure to shock any lucky enough to cross its odd path. Rich thematic elements of self-discovery and questionable sexuality slam the rocky shoals of excessive farting, boners-that-think-for-themselves and general farcical bombast in this absolutely absurd sketch; one that could only come from the minds of former music video director gurus like The Daniels. Swiss Army Man is uncompromisingly weird and goddamn if I didn’t respect the hell out of that fact. Read More

Sundance ’16 Review: ‘WILD’

January 22, 2016 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Lillith Stangenberg, Nicolette Krebitz, Reviews, Sundance 2016, Sundance Reviews, Wild Leave a comment

Wild, or 50 Shades of Grey Wolf, is Germany’s erotic response to Beauty and the Beast. If the beast were a feral wolf and beauty his captor. Like an anarchistic misinterpretation of To Catch a Predator, the German feature from Berlin-native Nicolette Krebitz finds a dissatisfied Ania (Lillith Stangenberg) serendipitously strike up a relationship with a city-dwelling wolf that develops into an obsession after she traps it in her high-rise apartment. Read More