Matt Looker

News, Reviews & Features

Review: Doctor Sleep feels like a lot of work for very little play

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 11th November 2019

There’s a lot to be said about the context surrounding Doctor Sleep. About the impossibly high benchmark set by The Shining, about the challenge of reconciling Stephen King’s vision and Stanley Kubrick’s execution, and about choosing which source material to honour most. But honestly, ignoring all of that for now, my biggest takeaway from this film is... fuck, it spends a lot of time driving in a car. Every pre-set-piece scene is spent hauling across road for hours and every post-sequence respite is spent hauling back again, usually at night-time, usually while someone is asleep in the passenger seat. I have spent more time in cars while watching this film than I have on actual road trips. It seems Danny Torrance simply swapped one purgatory for another. Come drive with him. Forever... and ever... and ever...

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Review: It Chapter Two is a great bookend, but where's the tl;dr version?

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 3rd September 2019

2017’s It was such a huge success that it has reignited not only a demand for more Stephen King adaptations, but also a desire for high quality scares again. But there’s a downside to being the highest grossing horror film of all time - and I’m not talking about Pennywise making it harder for real-life clowns like Bongo Bonzo And Catty Watty Boom Boom (both local to me - I searched the directory) to find work. No, the downside is that, for this follow-up, the filmmaking team appear to have been left more unchecked. This sequel is far longer than it needs to be, far funnier than it makes sense to be and filled with so many meme-worthy visuals that it seems to have been made purely for Twitter retorts. In short, it’s an overlong carnival for the senses, and that’s in addition to Pennywise continuing to give clowns like Bongo Bonzo and Catty Watty a bad name.

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Men In Black: International was released and every critic made the same joke

Movie Feature | Matt Looker | 8th July 2019

Attention filmmakers! If your movie franchise contains a unique narrative device that also serves as easy ammunition for critics to use in the event of a bad review, don't kid yourselves that they'll rise above it. They'll latch on to that reference like it's a personal gift from you to them. Thank you, they'll say. Thank you for making our jobs and deadlines easy. Because that's what good film reviews should be. Easy.

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Review: Spider-Man: Far From Home but back to brilliant basics

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 28th June 2019

The epic, end-of-times extravaganza of Endgame left us with many questions: Has the timeline now been irreparably changed? Who are the Avengers now? Where the fuck did Valkyrie suddenly get a flying horse? And also, how does the world adjust to half of its population now having a five-year age gap? What about all the parents that missed out on seeing their children grow up? All the spouses that remarried in that time? All those people that were snapped out of existence while on their way to return something to a shop, only to be brought back and find out that their receipt is now five years out of date? If those questions are going to be addressed at all, it isn’t happening with this first film out of the gate since the 'snapback'. No, this is just very much Spider-Man back to doing whatever a spider can.

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Review: In Fabric is dressed to kill but won't suit everyone

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 27th June 2019

Sometimes a surreal arthouse film comes along that contains just enough logic to give you a sense of what it’s all about. Even it’s just one interpretation. Even if it’s just a guess. Other surreal arthouse films aren’t so obliging and, in those instances, it’s always useful when you can be given a clue to work on, maybe from, say, a director Q&A that immediately follows the screening. I’m not saying that’s what happened for me, of course, but I can say that In Fabric is definitely about mankind’s intimate relationship with our own clothes and how extremely powerful that personal closeness becomes. I can also confidently say that the shoot mostly took place in Croydon and there were several planned scenes that didn’t get filmed because of budget and time restraints. But that might just be my interpretation.

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Secret Cinema Presents Casino Royale is 00-heaven, has a license to thrill, etc

Movie Feature | Matt Looker | 20th June 2019

Spies! Guns! Booze! Cars! Booze! If you have ever wondered what the point is of Secret Cinema’s immersive film screenings, or have ever asked yourself why anyone would ever be interested in inhabiting the world of, say, Dr Strangelove, then surely that cynicism ends for this latest 007-themed production. Because who hasn’t imagined themselves as the sharpest, sexiest superspy on the big screen? Who hasn’t wanted to indulge in the frisson of international espionage? Who hasn’t wanted to pretend-win a game of make-believe cards while sipping a themed cocktail named after an obscure Bond reference? This is exactly the kind of cinema that Secret Cinema was made to be secret about!

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Apropos of nothing, let's revisit Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: Commentary! - The Musical

TV Feature | Matt Looker | 12th June 2019

Now that films like La La Land and The Greatest Showman are being celebrated for inventing the musical, it’s time to reappraise the best thing to ever come singing out of the Whedonverse. No, not Once More With Feeling. And no, not Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. I’m obviously talking about Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog: Commentary! – The Musical. But you knew that already. It's in the title. Come with me on a terribly niche journey...

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Review: X-Men: Dark Phoenix is an unevolved end to a once super franchise

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 10th June 2019

So now the X-Men franchise comes to an end. Since that first ensemble movie was released 19 years ago, the property has launched 12 films (13, if you count the still-to-be-unshelved The New Mutants) and has not only become a staple of the superhero genre in the process, but helped set the template for how to do this kind of movie well. And here we have the last instalment; the final chapter that, surely, the entire saga has been working towards for nearly two decades: a fourth-film reboot set in an alternate timeline remaking the same story from the third film of the original movies. It’s the only conclusion we’ve ever really wanted!

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Review: Godzilla: King Of The Monsters is a dreary mess of titanic proportions

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 29th May 2019

To all those that said Gareth Edwards' Godzilla was a bore, or that it was slow, or that it took too long to reveal the beast himself, this one's on you, because this new monster mêlée follow-up is a megatomic nuke to the senses. It's a relentless shit-storm of mayhem and bullshit that attempts spectacle but delivers shaky-cam confusion and exhausted clichés for optimum headaches and head-shakes. It's a slog, an onslaught of expensive oblivion and a brain-fouling juggernaut of chaos. Although, I realise some of you may actively want all of this from your giant monster stories.

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Review: Detective Pikachu ensures all this Pokémon shit hits the fans

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 10th May 2019

I consider myself to be a passionate fan of many things: Star Wars, Marvel, the smell of fresh sea air on a bright summer morning, denim... all sorts. But I have no interest or investment in Pokémon. I’ve never watched the cartoons, never played with the cards, never walked into open traffic while using my phone to throw a digital ball at a pretend squirrel. And it turns out that Detective Pikachu is not made for people like me. It’s made for fans who will be happy at the sight of a Rainbow Monster, or a Clown Wolf or a Cock Otter or whatever. Disclaimer: the film does actually give the proper names for most of the Pokémon on screen, I just didn’t catch ‘em all.

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