Zack Snyders latest film is on Netflix, and Matt stopped by the For Reel Crew & Cameos Podcast to talk about it!
Continue reading “Matthew talks ‘Army of the Dead’ with Thomas & Tim on the For Reel Crew & Cameos Podcast”
Zack Snyder has been making comic movies almost exclusively for the last 15 years, starting with 300 and most recently with this year’s release of his extended cut of Justice League. That’s not a complaint, but it is interesting to me that he has come back to zombies after having finished that run, the genre that started his career.
It is my opinion that his remake of Dawn of the Dead, penned by James Gunn and released in 2004 as his first feature, is my favourite of Snyder’s films. His return to the genre is a proposition that I found exciting, and while it’s not a perfect movie by any stretch, Army of the Dead is his best movie in ages.
Continue reading “Review: ‘Army of the Dead’ is dumb, fun, and Zack Snyder’s best movie in years”
Imagine for a moment a film full of Oscar-winning actors you love, written by a Pulitzer prize winner whose work you adore, directed by a director with a solid track record, and that pays homage to some of the great mystery stories of all time. Now imagine that it isn’t very good.
Continue reading “Review: ‘The Woman in the Window’ pays homage to many other films you should probably watch instead”
Families are tough. You don’t get to choose them, and you may not fit in with them, but unless you are one of the unlucky ones, your family will never stop trying and will always have your back. The Mitchells vs The Machines is the latest film that will teach you this lesson, that no matter what is going on in your life and how much you don’t relate to them, your parents will have your back. Most people learn this over time as they grow and mature. Katie Mitchell learns on a road trip with her parents that happens to coincide with a robot uprising.
Spoiler alert, this movie is amazing.
Continue reading “Review: ‘The Mitchells vs the Machines’ continues Lord & Miller’s ongoing streak of great films”
How do you create change? That’s one of the questions at the heart of Moxie, the story of Vivian (Hadley Robinson), a young woman whose high school is, in a word, toxic and the girls of which are disempowered and objectified. The boys literally create a list ranking each of the girls for their best “attribute”, like biggest breasts or “most bangable”, or in the case of Vivian, “most obedient.”
The answer, it turns out, is “however you can.” Tired of existing in a world so toxic, and after both being inspired by a new girl in class and by finding a suitcase full of mementoes from her mother, Lisa’s (Amy Poehler) past, she finds a way to create change with an anonymously produced ‘zine she calls “Moxie”.
Continue reading “Review: ‘Moxie.’ is a tale of protest and empowerment”
Look, 2020 was a challenging year. In a world that feels incredibly bleak, sometimes you want something bright and colourful and maybe a little naive to get you through the day. Space Sweepers is entirely this: a Korean blockbuster about a group of rag-tag misfits who salvage space junk for a living, get caught up in a massive conspiracy, adopt a child, and fight back against a ruthless and oppressive corporate overlord.
It’s a ton of fun.
Continue reading “Review: ‘Space Sweepers’ is exactly the kind of bonkers fun I want in my Sci-Fi right now”
I like movies that are based on plays, or that resemble them. Movies where characters sit in a room and talk endlessly. Showcases for actors, heavy with dialogue and a tendency toward big performances. Malcolm & Marie, the new film by Sam Levinson starring John David Washington and Zendaya is not based on a play, but it does resemble one.
Continue reading “Review: ‘Malcolm & Marie’ confirms Zendaya and John David Washington as major talents”
They say that you can never really know where you are going if you don’t know where you have been. This is true for societies as well as individuals, and in the new Netflix movie The Dig we get a chance to delve into a moment in England’s history as well as England’s relationship with its history.
Continue reading “Review: ‘The Dig’ is an unpretentious look at how the past affects the present”
A tragic accident. A woman in distress. An animal with which to form an emotional bond. Penguin Bloom is precisely the movie you think it is.
Continue reading “Review: ‘Penguin Bloom’ is just fine”
With over 1.3 billion people, India is the worlds largest democracy. The country is still steeped in traditional values, and while there used to be many castes of people there are now seemingly just two: the rich, and the poor. The White Tiger sets out to tell you a tale of those two classes, much like 2008s Slumdog Millionaire did, but where Slumdog was a fairy tale, The White Tiger is a tale of power and abuse, and how those things will reveal exactly who you are.
Continue reading “Review: ‘The White Tiger’ is a rags-to-riches story, but not a fairy tale”
You have definitely seen this film before. Well, ok, not exactly this film, but if you’re a fan of science fiction and you’re presented with a story about a cocksure young recruit being paired with an android who can’t lie but clearly isn’t telling the whole truth, well, you’ve seen this movie before.
Continue reading “Review: ‘Outside the Wire’ is a bit derivative but has some cool action”
Parents aren’t supposed to outlive their children. This is one of those universal truths, along with things like “the Earth is round” or “water is wet.” The devastation of losing a child is unimaginable, let alone losing one at the moment of birth. This is the story of Pieces of a Woman, which follows expectant parents Vanessa Kirby and Shia LaBeouf through the night of their daughter’s birth and then through the year after as they deal with the aftermath of her death.
Continue reading “Review: ‘Pieces of a Woman’ has a tour de force performance from Vanessa Kirby”
George Clooney is a talented actor and director, and often produces excellent work when he does both of those things. The Midnight Sky, his latest starring and directorial effort, features an incredible ensemble of character actors, stunning effects and production design, and a story clearly influenced by many seminal science fiction stories, but even in the hands of such talent fails to become something special.
Continue reading “Review: ‘The Midnight Sky’ shoots for the stars, but ultimately misses”
The visual language of cinema has changed a lot since the first movies were produced, but one thing they retain is the ability to affect the people. Citizen Kane, widely regarded as one of –if not the– best films of all time, is a thinly veiled look at the life of William Randolph Hearst, and not a kind one.
The authorship of the screenplay of Citizen Kane has been a controversy for decades now. The story was initially conceived of by Welles and Herman Mankiewicz, but who wrote it? Welles? Mankiewicz? I don’t know the answer to this question but Mank, the latest film from David Fincher supposes that Mankiewicz wrote it nearly entirely, and tells the story of that man’s life during the time that he was writing it.
Is that accurate? I don’t know, but it makes for a hell of a story.
Continue reading “Review: ‘Mank’ is a love letter to old Hollywood”
When Chadwick Boseman passed away this summer, it cast a new light on all of his recent work. Not only did he work nearly constantly while also suffering from stage four cancer, but he also took the time to inhabit meaningful African American characters and to bring African American stories to the screen. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom has a hell of a lot of expectations, being both produced by Denzel Washington and adapted from the August Wilson play of the same name, and that’s before you consider that it is Boseman’s last film.
So it’s a good thing that its a good movie then.
Continue reading “Review: ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ brings us powerful performances by Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis”
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