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      Matt Cipolla

      Matt Cipolla

      Tomatometer-approved critic
      Biography:

      Matt Cipolla is a critic and essayist for hire who has worked with WGN Radio, Bright Wall/Dark Room, RogerEbert.com, The Film Stage, Crooked Marquee, and more. He's also a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association, and he firmly believes that ".gif" is pronounced as "jiff."

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      Movies reviews only

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      Rating T-Meter Title | Year Review
      B
      Scream VI (2023) As a return to form for Scream, this is a sigh of relief––notwithstanding some key issues, VI has a freewheeling sense of lunacy, and it’s way too fun to decry. - The Film Stage
      Read More | Posted Mar 08, 2023
      Lux Æterna (2019) The spontaneous “poetry” of Lux Aeterna—an extrapolation of sorts of his previous film, Climax—lives on a prosaic approach. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2022
      Control (2007) If suicidality wavers through a spectrum of solipsism and obsequity, Control knows existence as performance. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted May 18, 2022
      C
      Scream (2022) Scream takes some risks, some of which are truly daring. It's head-spinning, then, that it could still come off as so unceremonious throughout. - The Film Stage
      Read More | Posted Jan 13, 2022
      Nightmare Alley (2021) As a story, there's such little idea of what it truly is, losing its sense of both the class struggle at the heart of its thesis and the America that continues to inform it. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Dec 13, 2021
      C
      House of Gucci (2021) Despite the reasons House of Gucci doesn't work, none are damning enough to make a bad movie. It's forgettable, sometimes playing like the sort of cable-TV fare that displaced these tales from the silver screen over the past decade. - The Film Stage
      Read More | Posted Nov 22, 2021
      Procession (2021) Procession, while effective at points, is too thematically and logistically uneven in some of its key discussions. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Nov 19, 2021
      The Souvenir Part II (2021) As experienced, life is hard, misty, and messy. As executed, The Souvenir Part II is similar in order to complement its metatext emotionally and thematically. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Nov 05, 2021
      Last Night in Soho (2021) [I]t's once story becomes paramount in the last quarter that the film suddenly derails into something as misguided as it is out of place. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Oct 29, 2021
      D+
      Halloween Kills (2021) Halloween Kills seems to stem from the thought of the system failing the innocent. That doesn't work, however, when David Gordon Green's latest completely fails its audience. - The Film Stage
      Read More | Posted Oct 16, 2021
      No Time to Die (2021) The problem is that, both thematically and structurally, it's damn near the same as Skyfall. So those risks are visible from miles away. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Sep 29, 2021
      The Nowhere Inn (2020) Between its more self-satisfied tangents and characterizations that don't do justice to its core, The Nowhere Inn lacks sufficient internal logic to fully work. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Sep 18, 2021
      Cry Macho (2021) It's not a soaring success but a modest one, with Eastwood's work as actor and director respectively grounding and elevating the material. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Sep 15, 2021
      Candyman (2021) The gestalt execution allows its themes to build up, to mutate, to rot. As the film progresses, it falls deeper and deeper into the collective psyche of its characters. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Aug 25, 2021
      Annette (2021) Carax is in on the joke, constantly playing chicken with his and his characters' pretensions in ways that keep its 140-minute runtime fluid. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Aug 05, 2021
      The Green Knight (2021) Here's a story that's so inherently loose and extemporaneous. It doesn't help, then, that [the] approach is hermetic enough that there's not too much of the film from its neck up. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Jul 26, 2021
      Old (2021) [B]eyond the underwritten characters, Shyamalan's approach lacks the philosophy, introspection, or look at ephemerality it needs to pull off what it ultimately attempts. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Jul 23, 2021
      Pig (2021) It is, against all odds, a wider parable about the decay of art in a culture where everything is to be bought and sold. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Jul 14, 2021
      B
      Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain (2021) What it captures is that feeling of the gearshift sliding into neutral, the point later on when openness and acquiescence bleed into one. - The Film Stage
      Read More | Posted Jul 14, 2021
      C
      Mama Weed (2020) For all the schisms it's actually about, Jean-Paul Salomé's film either doesn't care about or isn't aware of what it depicts. - The Film Stage
      Read More | Posted Jul 14, 2021
      C+
      Till Death (2021) It's a simple enough premise that functions in parts. It's also one Fox elevates. The problem is that . . . Till Death feels like something one wouldn't expect: contrived. - The Film Stage
      Read More | Posted Jun 30, 2021
      In the Heights (2021) In the Heights works in pieces but not as a whole, ultimately playing like a jumble of tones, themes, and plot threads it doesn't acknowledge or develop until it absolutely has to. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Jun 08, 2021
      The Carnivores (2020) Nothing here is particularly deep or likely to leave a lasting impact. . . . That said, it takes a steady hand to keep this sort of material feeling as modest as it does here. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Jun 07, 2021
      Port Authority (2019) [I]t's about Paul and only Paul. It's about who can help him and how, with no real success at probing the conflicts or systemic issues at hand. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Jun 04, 2021
      Scream 4 (2011) [Craven and Williamson] observe technology as an extension, a funhouse mirror, of the silver screen. . . . [M]eta doesn't even cover it. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Apr 15, 2021
      Minari (2020) Chung's latest wants to balance the specific and the universal, and while it does so at points, it also ends up just too impersonal. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Feb 09, 2021
      Pleasure (2021) Pleasure, while incredibly difficult to watch, repackages [the star-is-born tale] into a look at the cycle of abuse when having boundaries isn't a commodity. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Feb 03, 2021
      C
      Prime Time (2021) [It] has nothing deep to say about pop culture, the turn of the millennium, or its own characters, and the movie plays like a treatment forced into feature-length. - The Film Stage
      Read More | Posted Feb 03, 2021
      C
      Marvelous and the Black Hole (2020) It wants to be something cute for the family. It also wants to show how belligerent and vulgar young teenagers can be. The problem is that the two never intersect. - The Film Stage
      Read More | Posted Feb 02, 2021
      B
      El Planeta (2021) I'd be sad if it didn't have such a droll approach. In some ways, it is. El Planeta isn't the most thematically consistent, but it's clever and brisk enough to be a good time. - The Film Stage
      Read More | Posted Feb 02, 2021
      B+
      We're All Going to the World's Fair (2021) Nothing about it is shocking, nor is it meant to be. That's why it feels so real when it reaches its natural conclusion. - The Film Stage
      Read More | Posted Feb 02, 2021
      Life in a Day 2020 (2021) This gimmick may have worked 10 years ago, but that's because it was a specific time when people recorded a lot, not quite everything. The sliver of novelty is gone now. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Feb 02, 2021
      D+
      The Blazing World (2021) [T]he surrealism doesn't feel subversive or even too inventive. It just feels like a put-on, one that doesn't understand its heroine's mental state. - The Film Stage
      Read More | Posted Feb 01, 2021
      All Light, Everywhere (2021) Theo Anthony weaves history, film theory, philosophy, and politics to explore the limits of perception in cinema, often while playing with the syntax of documentary filmmaking. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Jan 31, 2021
      C+
      Coming Home in the Dark (2021) The skill is here and it comes to fruition in the first 50 minutes, but it's when it tries to interrogate the motives at hand that it starts to wobble. - The Film Stage
      Read More | Posted Jan 31, 2021
      The Cursed (2021) For those looking for a slow burn, this werewolf tale is too reliant on cheap jump scares. For those in the mood for gore and a good time, it's far too slow--stagnant, even. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Jan 31, 2021
      B-
      Cusp (2021) The result isn't perfect, but it manages to feel consistent. There's no immediate future on display here. There's also no real hope. . . . Cusp doesn't even try to fake a smile. - The Film Stage
      Read More | Posted Jan 31, 2021
      In The Earth (2021) In the Earth sees Wheatley aping Andrei Tarkovsky by taking liberally from Stalker, but it also sees him aping himself by rehashing A Field in England much more predictably. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Jan 31, 2021
      John and the Hole (2020) [I]ts attempts to tie fable into metatext are just overt enough to cement how toothless it all really is. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Jan 30, 2021
      Cryptozoo (2021) To be fair, the plot is by far the least original and most protracted part. The visual ingenuity, on the other hand, is something to witness. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Jan 29, 2021
      C+
      Homeroom (2021) It's a very well done documentary on a technical level . . . It's the pace that truncates some of the details, making Homeroom too brisk to realize all of its moving parts. - The Film Stage
      Read More | Posted Jan 29, 2021
      C
      One for the Road (2021) While most movies are either innocuous or at the mercy of self-satisfied characters, One for the Road happens to be both--and it is so for 137 minutes. - The Film Stage
      Read More | Posted Jan 29, 2021
      Songbird (2020) Perhaps it'd be possible in another world to overlook [the concept] if Songbird were any good, but it isn't. It feels like a network TV pilot from 2005 that never got picked up. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Dec 10, 2020
      Zappa (2020) Zappa does a commendable job at echoing that sort of coke-adjacent counter-culture chaos the artist spun together so uniquely. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Nov 25, 2020
      Mank (2020) [S]omething of a surprise is how [David Fincher] and the script from his late father, Jack Fincher, lure audiences into a false sense of nostalgia while negating its most amiable aspects. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Nov 18, 2020
      D+
      Fatman (2020) What feels like a Robot Chicken sketch drawn out to 100 minutes doesn't even sound too hopeful in theory, but it didn't have to be this pointless. - The Film Stage
      Read More | Posted Nov 13, 2020
      B-
      Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds (2020) A logical approach runs through Fireball, but the sheer wonder of it all--and its sly balance of tones--is what prevents it from burning up before making impact. - The Film Stage
      Read More | Posted Nov 12, 2020
      Divine Love (2019) The material is timeless, but it thinks it's a timely, sociopolitical warning. As weird as the script thinks it is, it's never really that weird. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Nov 11, 2020
      Come Play (2020) Jacob Chase's latest is a low-key chiller with an affinity for long, floating takes and 360-degree pans to punctuate its human core--until it isn't. - The Spool
      Read More | Posted Oct 29, 2020
      C+
      Sleep (2020) Sleep is so full of ideas that it can be a bit too much. It's certainly ambitious and has its moments, but its dream logic grows numb by the end. - The Film Stage
      Read More | Posted Oct 19, 2020
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