Matt Singer is the editor and critic of the website ScreenCrush.com. For five years, he was the on-air host of IFC News on the Independent Film Channel, hosting coverage of film festivals and red carpets around the world. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, he’s been a frequent contributor to the television shows CBS This Morning Saturday and Ebert Presents At the Movies, and his writing has also appeared in print and online at The Village Voice, The Dissolve, and Indiewire. His first book, Marvel’s Spider-Man: From Amazing to Spectacular, is on sale now.
Matt Singer
Bestflix: February 2016’s Best New Netflix Instant Titles
Bestflix — ScreenCrush’s monthly video series dedicated to finding the best new stuff to watch on Netflix — is back with more recommendations for December 2015. (If you missed October, November, or December’s episodes [we missed January], it’s not too late to add more great films and TV shows to your MyList.)
New Netflix Instant Releases: February 2016
With each new month, the list of new titles on Netflix is more and more about the list of new titles from Netflix. In February, Netflix has a brand-new sequel to the martial-arts classic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (titled Sword of Destiny), plus a standup special from Hannibal Buress, the new series Love from producer Judd Apatow, and the revived version of Full House, Fuller House, which may or may not star a ghost dog.
‘Dirty Grandpa’ Review: I Can’t Believe How Bad This Movie Is
Earlier this week, Buzzfeed’s Anne Helen Petersen wrote an essay called “The Shaming of Robert De Niro,” in which she criticized cinephiles who think De Niro should retire rather than continue to harm his legacy as one of his generation’s finest actors by appearing in subpar material. Such arguments, Petersen says, are “snobbery at best and thinly veiled ageism at worst.” Starring in films like The Bag Man, Red Lights, and Killing Season “might not be working with Scorsese for 10 years,” she adds, “but it’s not shameful.”
Sony Shifts ‘Spider-Man’ and ‘Jumanji’ Release Dates
The upcoming movie release calendar is like a table full of dominos; incredible expensive dominos that are each worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Once one shifts, they all start to move around.
‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Review: The Saga Continues…
The original Star Wars was driven by nostalgia for pulp magazines, Saturday-morning serials, and a simpler era with clear-cut heroes and villains. The new Star Wars is driven by nostalgia for the original Star Wars, and a simpler era when that title evoked words like “adventure” and “excitement,” and not words like “the taxation of trade routes,” and “Jar Jar Binks.” The characters in Star Wars: The Force Awakens are all searching for something of great importance to the galaxy far, far away. I won’t reveal what this MacGuffin is, but I will tell you what it represents: that old Star Wars magic. Can director J.J. Abrams and the rest of the saga’s new creators find it?
‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ Trailer: The End Is Nigh for Marvel’s Mutants
I’m an old enough nerd to remember when the first X-Men movie came out in theaters. At that time, comic books were not the number one driver of all things in popular culture. Bryan Singer’s X-Men certainly featured all the comic’s beloved heroes and villains, but there did seem like there was a concerted effort to tamp down some of their comic-book-ness. Everyone dressed in black. There was no spandex. The story was grounded in weighty real-world themes like prejudice and vengeance. It was the X-Men you knew, but watered down just a bit. It was a rum and coke, not a shot of gin. X-Men: Apocalypse, in comparison, looks like a bottle of Beefeater.
‘Joy’ Review: Jennifer Lawrence Is Totally Miscast in This Business Biopic
Jennifer Lawrence was 24 when she shot Joy. Her character, Joy Mangano, was 34 when she invented the Miracle Mop and became one of the first stars of the QVC network. This fact remains inescapable throughout Joy. Lawrence remains watchable in Joy because, as one of our best young actors, she can’t help but be watchable. But she’s totally miscast as a divorced mother of two who’s been repeatedly beaten down by life’s disappointments. This part was meant for the Jennifer Lawrence of a 2025, not the one of 2015.
‘The Revenant’ Review: This Revenge Western Is Beautiful And… Uh… Well, It’s Beautiful Anyway
How good does a movie have to look to offset its other deficiencies? The Revenant is as beautiful a movie as has ever been made. The photography by master cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki is inconceivably gorgeous; sweeping wide shots that juxtapose tiny, insignificant men against the overwhelming grandeur of nature, close-ups so intimate they seem like invasions of the actors’ privacy, and action sequences of shocking violence.
‘Now You See Me 2’ Trailer: Get Ready For a Reappearing Act
And now, for their next trick: a sequel!
‘Creed’ Review: An Old Franchise Flies High Again
“The way I imagine it, after the fight, he’s riding home in a cab, with the roar of the people chanting ‘Rocky!’ still in his ears. And he just drops over dead. In other words, he has achieved everything possible and he dies when he’s on top. I don’t think people want to see Rocky when he’s 80.”