Matt Oakes
Tomatometer-approved critic
When not whetting his thirst with an exotic ale, Matt can be found holed up in his Seattle apartment or hidden amongst the mountains. Started blogging about film in college when the college paper wouldn?Äôt have him. Watcher of far too many films annually. Regular attendee @ Sundance, SXSW, SIFF. Editor-in-chief of Silver Screen Riot.
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023) |
A step back into mindless oblivion for a franchise that briefly showed promise of transforming into something better. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Jun 06, 2023
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Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) |
The film never proselytizes about diversity, instead opting for a more organic, unspoken representation. It’s a radiant celebration of unity in multiplicity, painted across a broad canvas of stylistic wonder. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Jun 01, 2023
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The Boogeyman (2023) |
It’s scary, it’ll make you jump, and it’s somehow only rated PG-13. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted May 31, 2023
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Fast X (2023) |
Death has been tamed in the realm of the Fast and the Furious, a universe where mortality is less of a concrete reality and more of a minor inconvenience. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted May 17, 2023
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Sanctuary (2022) |
Qualley’s dominance in 'Sanctuary' is not limited to her character's profession; it's in every scene she graces, every line she delivers, every look she gives. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted May 17, 2023
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My Animal (2023) |
This indie film take on high school werewolf erotica feels like a darker, more niche Stephanie Meyer creation. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted May 17, 2023
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Evil Dead Rise (2023) |
Much like a vinyl record that keeps spinning, this franchise seemingly has an endless groove of gory goodness. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted May 16, 2023
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Past Lives (2023) |
Song makes it all feel so natural and real, allowing an outsider’s glimpse into this simmering relationship to blossom into something closer to deep knowing and genuine intimacy. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted May 12, 2023
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Next Sohee (2022) |
Ju-ri paints a portrait of a young adult’s evolution from student-to-worker that’s deeply dehumanizing, revealing a shockingly broken system that’s intentionally stacked against the Sohees of society. Powerful stuff. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted May 12, 2023
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Mother Superior (2022) |
Wolfszahn’s direction is economical and effective, the film clocks in at just a smidge over 70-minutes but never skimps on mood or narrative tidiness. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted May 11, 2023
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Scrapper (2023) |
What it lacks in narrative complexity, it makes up for in scrappy charm. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted May 10, 2023
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20 Days in Mariupol (2023) |
Dying babies. Dead bodies. Mass graves. Shelled maternity wards. War crimes. 20 Days in Mariupol is not for the faint of heart. It is however an urgent and unblinking reminder of the atrocities occurring to this day in Ukraine. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted May 08, 2023
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When It Melts (2023) |
A feel-bad Belgium coming-of-age story, Veerle Baetens’ When It Melts focuses on increasingly predatory pubescent children as they learn the art of exploitation. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted May 07, 2023
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Sisu (2022) |
Ultra-violence as poetry. With a pick-axe. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Apr 24, 2023
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Beau Is Afraid (2023) |
Oedipus Complex: The Anxiety Comedy. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Apr 19, 2023
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Guy Ritchie's The Covenant (2023) |
The overwhelmingly jingoistic, oorah approach certainly doesn’t match up with the critical gaze you might expect from a handful of Brits making a movie about one of America’s most sketchily motivated wars in a history of sketchily motivated wars. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Apr 18, 2023
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Renfield (2023) |
Renfield makes its 90-minute runtime feel like a small eternity, an ironic feat for a movie about having to endure an endless, purposeless existence. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Apr 12, 2023
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Air (2023) |
I was surprised to be so invested in a movie about a corporate shoe contract that I knew was eventually going to be signed. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Apr 05, 2023
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John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023) |
John Wick: Chapter 4 will have you questioning everything. Do bullets hurt? Are cars soft? Is half the world’s population sleeper assassins? Can Keanu Reeves act? Despite how insane everything in this universe may be, it remains a ridiculously good hang. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Mar 16, 2023
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Creed III (2023) |
Majors simply is a sensation here, a sinewy strapped wagyu beefcake whose performance is layered with loss and anger and a depth of sadness that make what could have been a run-of-the-mill adversary into the real star of the show. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Feb 24, 2023
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Cocaine Bear (2023) |
Perhaps the movie works better under the influence of its titular substance. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Feb 23, 2023
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Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania (2023) |
If this is what we can expect from the future of the MCU, you can find me in the timeline where I stop following along. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Feb 16, 2023
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Knock at the Cabin (2023) |
Dave Bautista is as good as he’s ever been here. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Feb 02, 2023
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Infinity Pool (2023) |
Who are we if not the reining champion of all other versions of ourself? - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Jan 26, 2023
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Rye Lane (2023) |
A black love story that eminates pure joy, Allen-Miller’s film is propelled by the natural chemistry between its strong leads. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Jan 24, 2023
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Missing (2023) |
Improving upon Searching’s relative visual stasis, Missing finds a variety of ways to explore the digital space, leveraging new techniques and tricks to give the filmmaking a bit more flair and variety. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Jan 13, 2023
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M3GAN (2022) |
The notion of artificial intelligence gaining unintended malicious sentience and rebelling against its protocol certainly isn’t fresh. What M3gan does is approach this idea with one thing primarily on the brain: an almost programmatic level of fun. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Jan 06, 2023
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Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) |
If the larger story had felt more substantial than a "rehash of previous conflicts, plus wet," then the thinly written characters might not have mattered. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Dec 14, 2022
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The Whale (2022) |
Beneath the pain, the anguish, the prosthetics, Fraser does something miraculous. Anchoring Charlie’s trauma in his own, the once A-list star taps his publicly-recorded anguish and ostracism and turns it into something truly transcendent. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Dec 12, 2022
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The Inspection (2022) |
Bratton’s screenplay combines the brutal dehumanization of Full Metal Jacket with the queer warmth of Moonlight to craft a (sometimes frustratingly) forgiving story about perseverance in the heart of darkness. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Dec 05, 2022
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Violent Night (2022) |
Good holiday movies are few and far between and while Violent Night isn’t top shelf, it’s a holiday actioner that gives its lumps with glee. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Dec 05, 2022
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Bones and All (2022) |
Though it’s not the inspired mash-up that a romantic cannibal roadtrip movie promises, ‘Bones and All’ features a strong cast (Rylance is especially great) and striking production elements. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Nov 24, 2022
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She Said (2022) |
'She Says' checks all the boxes, bound to solid performances and workmanlike filmmaking. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Nov 18, 2022
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The Menu (2022) |
As if run through a Paco Jet, Ralph Fiennes delivers an icy tour-de-force as a mesmerizing, disturbed chef at the end of his rope. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Nov 18, 2022
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Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) |
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is actually a real movie...a story about legacy and loss, complicated by real life grief and the guilt of carrying on. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Nov 08, 2022
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Black Adam (2022) |
What could be construed as a passion project for Johnson (who spent the better part of a decade in development on Black Adam) is probably better read as an ego trip. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Oct 20, 2022
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Halloween Ends (2022) |
Even if Halloween Ends is a messy, weird, convoluted, predictable, and only quasi-satisfying conclusion to the 40-plus year Michael Myers saga, you have to give it credit for actually trying something new. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Oct 13, 2022
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The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) |
'The Banshees of Inisherin' feels like an adaptation of some unwritten Shakespearean tragedy or Homerian epic. It’s a film that revels in its own riddles and demands multiple screenings to puzzle out what everything means. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Oct 07, 2022
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Smile (2022) |
A surprisingly brutal and weird horror movie from a major studio, Smile has something to say about the “grin and bear it” mantra of traumatized Americans but is most fun when it’s just being bizarre and totally blood-splattered. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Sep 30, 2022
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Pearl (2022) |
Mia Goth plays a woman desperate to be a star but doomed never to be one. The irony is that Pearl should be the movie that propels Goth herself to proper stardom. She's simply sensational. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Sep 15, 2022
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Don't Worry Darling (2022) |
What seems to be a modern indictment of timeless dynamics turns instead into a weirdly ra-ra-ra pop ballad. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Sep 10, 2022
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Barbarian (2022) |
Delivering what is almost a grindhouse double feature in itself, Cregger proves he can make a measured, suspenseful horror-thriller and a maximalism, gonzo camp-fest. All in one movie! - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Sep 07, 2022
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Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022) |
Can barely sustain 108 minutes of longing much less three thousand years. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Aug 23, 2022
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Beast (2022) |
Strong pacing, gnarly animal action, and a worthy lead in Idris Elba make this a sinewy slasher worth a safari to the cinema. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Aug 18, 2022
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Bullet Train (2022) |
An algorithmic Guy Ritchie wanna-be crime whodunnit packed with movie stars and the popular “gun-fu” combat style the former stunt man helped pioneer but short on actual plot locomotion and charm. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Aug 02, 2022
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Thirteen Lives (2022) |
Cutting against the grain of exploitative Hollywood translations, Howard humbly steps out of the way to let the power of the story speak for itself, while injecting just enough tension to keep it a white-knuckle affair. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Jul 26, 2022
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Nope (2022) |
The Spielberg-inspired horror-tinged sci-fi features some outstanding individual elements – and Keke Palmer is a real scene-stealer – but they don’t add up to a convincing whole. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Jul 20, 2022
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Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) |
This is what happens when a successful vision is copy-pasted ad nauseam, obliterating what was fresh just a few years back into lazy pastiche. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Jul 07, 2022
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Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021) |
Gives the one-inch-tall shell the feature treatment by digging into what makes the character such an endearing delight - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted Jun 24, 2022
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Top Gun: Maverick (2022) |
The America of 'Top Gun' is the elusive greatness that we chase as a country. Perhaps it only ever existed on film. Whatever the case, it exists here. - Silver Screen Riot
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| Posted May 25, 2022
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