Category: Netflix
Your Place or Mine: Where is the love?
by Matt Ward
Valentine’s Day weekends have always been a landing spot for the charming romantic comedy. And while the genre has become all but eradicated from the big screen, streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu have countless offerings of boy-meets-girl, hijinks ensue until they fall madly in love films. In a pre-pandemic world, there would simply be no reason that a rom-com led by … Read More Your Place or Mine: Where is the love?
White Noise: Cinematic static
by Matt Ward
It seems as though every year Netflix puts out a film that makes one wonder how it was greenlit into production. Whether it’s an exorbitant budget for a languishing Martin Scorsese epic like The Irishman or an overly sarcastic, nihilistic dramedy like Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up, the streaming service can’t quite find its footing for an award season contender to draw large audiences … Read More White Noise: Cinematic static
Glass Onion: Whodunnit in the modern era
by Matt Ward
Three years ago, writer/director Rian Johnson wowed audiences with an unexpected, compelling and hilarious take on the classic Agatha Christie-esque murder mystery genre. His Knives Out brought viewers into the world of a rural New England town filled with intrigue, suspicion and family tension while debuting an eccentric Southern detective on par with Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes in Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc. The … Read More Glass Onion: Whodunnit in the modern era
Blonde: Cracks below the surface
by Matt Ward
The human mind is a fragile thing. For as much as we want to believe that we are capable of handling anything that life throws our way, it’s the trauma and mental anguish that goes untreated that often leads to our demise. This is very much at the core of writer/director Andrew Dominik’s latest film, an avant-garde fever dream odyssey that follows no rigid … Read More Blonde: Cracks below the surface
Look Both Ways: One moment, multiple outcomes
by Matt Ward
How often are our lives inexplicably and permanently changed by a single moment with major impact on the future? One decision, one choice, one matter of happenstance could easy alter the course of individual history. It’s these questions of “what if” that dominate the romantic dramedy genre and for the first time since the 1998 feature Sliding Doors, a new movie confronts the duality … Read More Look Both Ways: One moment, multiple outcomes
The Gray Man: Action for the sake of action
by Matt Ward
No one seems to mind when every romantic comedy follows the exact same plot. Boy meets girl, girl falls for boy, something outlandish happens to separate them, love brings them back together. Rinse. Dry. Repeat. Somewhere along the way, it seems that moviegoers have lost their appetite – or perhaps more aptly, critics have lost their taste – for by-the-numbers action films that focus … Read More The Gray Man: Action for the sake of action
Hustle: Hoopin’ with heart
by Matt Ward
Adam Sandler’s prolific career on Saturday Night Live and a plethora of mid-1990s comedies haven’t kept the funnyman from large swings and misses during the past seven years as his Happy Madison Productions has partnered exclusively with streaming service Netflix to create content. The laughs haven’t quite landed for the comedian in quite some time, though Sandler has proven to be exceptional playing against … Read More Hustle: Hoopin’ with heart
Senior Year: High school do-over
by Matt Ward
Movie fans haven’t seen Australian comedienne Rebel Wilson on the big screen for a couple years now after her last comedy The Hustle, a subpar remake of the 1980’s classic Dirty Rotten Scoundrels opposite Anne Hathaway, bombed at the box office just prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. With Wilson, originality is key as parts where she’s inventing something new allow her humor to pop … Read More Senior Year: High school do-over
Home Team: Matter of inopportune timing
by Matt Ward
Super Bowl championship winning coach Sean Payton announced he was leaving his New Orleans Saints after 16 years with the franchise last week. Just days after his decision, a brand-new Netflix film about a pivotal moment in Payton’s coaching career ironically debuted focusing on yet another time Payton was away from his Saints. Home Team, a collaboration between Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions and … Read More Home Team: Matter of inopportune timing
Don’t Look Up: Stop worrying and love the comet
by Matt Ward
Stanley Kubrick made Dr. Strangelove, a quintessential black comedy of the 1960s starring Peter Sellers as a treatise against the uneasy relationship between America and Russia’s nuclear arms race. It’s one of the driest modern comedic films with a biting screenplay and pitch-perfect acting that fully realizes its auteur’s vision and works on numerous levels for casual as well as fully engaged audiences. Adam … Read More Don’t Look Up: Stop worrying and love the comet
The Power of the Dog: Melancholy in the old west
by Matt Ward
There’s no gunfights in Netflix’s largest awards contending release, a western starring Oscar nominee Benedict Cumberbatch as a Montana rancher in the 1920s. Director Jane Campion’s first film in more than a decade, The Power of the Dog is a subtle, slow-burn character driven drama examining life in the rural hills, what it means to be a man and the things we all too … Read More The Power of the Dog: Melancholy in the old west
Gunpowder Milkshake: Janey’s got a gun
by Matt Ward
Gunpowder Milkshake never had a chance at a theatrical run. The film’s biggest star is Karen Gillan, a talented actress with major ensemble roles in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as villainous half-robot Nebula and alongside Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart in the Jumanji reboot films. A major studio eyeing box office success isn’t going to put their resources into a female-led action ensemble film … Read More Gunpowder Milkshake: Janey’s got a gun
Cinematic Considerations 