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Hulu’s ‘Crush’ is a Charming Queer Rom-Com (Review)

6May

By Matt ShiverdeckerNo Comments

Features, Film, Reviews

Hulu’s ‘Crush’ is a Charming Queer Rom-Com (Review)

Hulu's 'Crush' is part of a growing batch of films and television series that focus on young queer people finding love. Following Netflix's 'Heartstopper' series, which is one of the most charming love stories in recent years of any orientation, this heartfelt and comic debut feature from director Sammi Cohen follows a young artist named Paige (Rowan Blanchard) who would do anything to get close to the girl she has a crush on at school. Rowan Blanchard and Auli'i Cravalho star in 'Crush' (Photo by: Hulu) For Paige, being gay has just been a fact of life. She's been out at school for years and has an overly supportive mother (Megan Mullally) who tries to show her how much of a cool mom she is by gifting her vibrators and dental dams. The target of her affection is Gabriela (Is...

Michael Bay Returns With Action-Packed ‘Ambulance’ (Review)

3May

By Matt ShiverdeckerNo Comments

Features, Film, Reviews

Michael Bay Returns With Action-Packed ‘Ambulance’ (Review)

The new film from maverick director Michael Bay will stand the test of time with audiences despite its lackluster showing at the box office. The action-packed thriller is a remake of a 2005 Dutch film called 'Ambulancen' about brothers who risk it all to pull off a bank robbery to cover some massive medical bills. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II stars as Will, an unemployed veteran with a newborn baby and a wife in need of a costly experimental surgery. He is struggling to find a job that will pay him enough to help his family when he gets a proposition from his half-brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal). Without much time to consider the implications of his decision, he agrees to join Danny and his nefarious crew to pull off a bank robbery that could solve all of his problems. As is of...

Celebrate Record Store Day With ‘Vinyl Nation’ (Review)

19Apr

By Matt ShiverdeckerNo Comments

Features, Film, Reviews

Celebrate Record Store Day With ‘Vinyl Nation’ (Review)

The 15th annual Record Store Day is happening at independent record stores around the world this Saturday, April 23. A new documentary called 'Vinyl Nation' celebrates these incredible stores and the collectors who keep them alive. I am unashamedly one of those people. In fact, I was quite excited to watch this because I am such a vinyl nerd. With over 5,000 albums filling the shelves at my home, it's a collection that has been growing ever since I got the 'Grease' soundtrack for my third birthday. Covering All The Bases Co-directors Kevin Smokler and Christopher Boone cover a lot of ground, speaking to store owners, fans, record label employees, and the people who work in the pressing plants. One dealer at the Austin Record Convention admits that he owns over 20,000 records and...

Netflix Doc Examines “all-American” Retailer Abercrombie & Fitch (Review)

15Apr

By Matt ShiverdeckerNo Comments

Features, Film, Reviews

Netflix Doc Examines “all-American” Retailer Abercrombie & Fitch (Review)

'White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch' is a brand new Netflix documentary from director Alison Klayman ("Jagged"). While the company still exists in an altered form, clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch was an inescapable presence in malls across the country. No really, you couldn't escape it. If you were anywhere near it in the mall's footprint, you could smell their exclusive store scents wafting through the building and you could hear the bass of club remixes reverberating through the walls. If you were enticed through the doors by the often-shirtless young men who were hired as "models," you would see sexualized imagery on the walls, the shopping bags, and inside the A&F Quarterly magazine published by the company. It was "fast fashion" appealing t...

HBO Doc Explores the Singular Focus of Tony Hawk (Review)

8Apr

By Matt ShiverdeckerNo Comments

Features, Film, Reviews

HBO Doc Explores the Singular Focus of Tony Hawk (Review)

In the new HBO documentary 'Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off,' we spend time with the most famous skateboarder on the planet. We also see him at his most vulnerable. The film, directed by Sam Jones ('I Am Trying To Break Your Heart') and produced by Mark and Jay Duplass, begins with a sequence of groan-inducing failures. As the opening credits roll, we watch for nearly five full minutes as Hawk freefalls countless times while practicing a skate trick. It's hard to watch, mostly because I think we want to view celebrity athletes as invincible gods who cannot do anything wrong. When you see the man who is arguably the greatest to ever grace the sport having consistent difficulty while he pushes himself physically, it opens your eyes to just how challenging it is to pull off. It's...

‘Jackass Forever’ is a Raucous Reunion (Review)

1Apr

By Matt ShiverdeckerNo Comments

Features, Film, Reviews

‘Jackass Forever’ is a Raucous Reunion (Review)

It has been over a decade since 'Jackass 3D' was unleashed on the world. Getting older when your career revolves around pranks and extreme stunts is not exactly ideal. But here we are, twelve years after the last film installment (we're not counting 'Bad Grandpa'). Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Preston Lacy, Weeman, and the whole Jackass crew are certainly older, but you'd be hard-pressed to call them wiser. In 'Jackass Forever,' the crew reassembles alongside new cast members Eric Manaka and Rachel Wolfson. We even get a few celebrity features from the likes of Machine Gun Kelly, Tyler the Creator, and Eric André, none of whom are spared from the often humiliating action. Machine Gun Kelly gets slapped down in 'Jackass Forever' (Paramount Pictures) Per usual, th...

SXSW 2022 Film Dispatches, Vol. 3 (Reviews)

25Mar

By Matt ShiverdeckerNo Comments

Features, Film, Reviews

SXSW 2022 Film Dispatches, Vol. 3 (Reviews)

After having a few days to recover, I'm finally ready to close out my look at this year's SXSW Film Festival by featuring the best film I saw. To say it's been a crazy week or so around here is an understatement. Things wrapped up on Sunday with the last few premieres from Saturday screening online. Right after the majority of out-of-towners headed out of Austin, we were hit with an intense storm system that found tornadoes ripping through the area on Monday night. Over the course of the event, I watched 20 feature films. That feels like a lot to me, but I also have friends who attended who got closer to 40. All I can say in my defense is that I was also working a full-time job and still making time for viewing. Ultimately, I really enjoyed almost everything I saw, but the foll...

SXSW 2022 Film Dispatches, Vol. 2 (Reviews)

18Mar

By Matt ShiverdeckerNo Comments

Features, Film, Reviews

SXSW 2022 Film Dispatches, Vol. 2 (Reviews)

The 29th edition of the SXSW Film Festival has been back in-person (and online) this week in Austin, Texas, for the first time in three years. With nearly 100 feature films on the schedule and 76 World Premiere screenings happening over the course the week, there are plenty of opportunities to be entertained. With today’s dispatch, I'm going to cover a few more films that I really enjoyed this week. When it comes to festivals, I tend to gravitate to the documentaries. I already covered a few in my previous post, but here are some more to keep an eye out for in the months ahead. Kids In The Hall: Comedy Punks Five wild and crazy Canadian guys formed a comedy troupe in 1984. For this documentary, they head back to The Rivoli in Toronto where their earliest shows began and talk abou...

SXSW 2022 Film Dispatches, Vol. 1 (Reviews)

15Mar

By Matt Shiverdecker2 Comments

Features, Film, Reviews

SXSW 2022 Film Dispatches, Vol. 1 (Reviews)

The 29th edition of the SXSW Film Festival is back in-person (and online) this week in Austin, Texas, for the first time in three years. With nearly 100 feature films on the schedule and 76 World Premiere screenings happening over the course the week, there are plenty of opportunities to be entertained. With today's dispatch, I'll take a look at some of the best documentaries I've caught so far during the festival and I'll be back later in the week with more updates. The Pez Outlaw Before becoming obsessed with the wide variety of international Pez dispensers available overseas, Steve Glew had never been out of the country. Living with his family in rural Michigan and working in a factory as a machinist was a means to an end, but then his OCD manifested itself in collecting all ...

‘The Andy Warhol Diaries’ Come to Life on Netflix (Review)

8Mar

By Matt ShiverdeckerNo Comments

Features, Film, Reviews

‘The Andy Warhol Diaries’ Come to Life on Netflix (Review)

The promotional tagline for 'The Andy Warhol Diaries' is "the art you know, the artist you don't." Director Andrew Rossi ('Page One: Inside the New York Times') and executive producer Ryan Murphy bring us a six-part docuseries that takes Warhol's own diaries and brings them to life using his own voice. Unlike Morgan Neville who generated controversy last year with the 'Roadrunner' release when it was revealed that his team had used artificial intelligence to manipulate Anthony Bourdain's voice to perfectly narrate the documentary, this project had the full approval of the Warhol Foundation to use a similar technology. Rossi recently told Entertainment Weekly, “To fully appreciate the radical vulnerability that Andy shares in the Diaries, I felt that we needed to hear the words i...