Matt's Movie Lodgecast

Olivia Wilde's new film Don't Worry Darling is now streaming on HBO Max. We saw it a while back in IMAX and gave our gut reactions. Florence Pugh is living in an idyllic 1950s-styled neighborhood, but not everything is what it seems. We've seen this scenario before. Harry Styles plays her husband, and her neighbors include Olivia Wilde, Gemma Chan, KiKi Layne, and Nick Kroll. Chris Pine plays the sinister mastermind behind the planned community and his character was apparently modeled after psychologist and author Jordan Peterson. There's a twist in this one that we will spoil, so you've been warned!

With Election Day right around the corner, the Lodgecast drops a bombshell episode covering the new movie from Breitbart News called My Son Hunter directed by Robert Davi. In this cast we'll expose all things Hunter Biden and cover The Laptop from Hell! The movie was filmed in Serbia and stars Brit actor Laurence Fox as Hunter Biden, John James as U.S. president Joe Biden, and Gina Carano as secret service Agent Hound. Emma Gojkovic plays the fictional hooker with a heart of gold who hears Hunter's story and decides to tell all! We will tell you all we saw and more in this highly politicized episode of the Lodgecast!

Episode 140 - Halloween Ends Review by Matt's Movie Lodge

The new horror movie Smile had been haunting us for quite some time. We had seen the trailer at least a dozen times in the past six months, so it was inevitable that we had to see it on a packed Tuesday discount night. Sosie Bacon (daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick) is the star of this supernatural horror film. She plays a psychiatrist who witnesses a bizarre suicide and then is forced to confront her own sanity after seeing many smiling hallucinations. First time writer/director Parker Finn based this movie on his own short film and this one is quite literally a glorified short. But critics and audiences were mostly delighted by the many jumpscares. We'll let you know what we thought in this hawt take! It's almost time for Halloween!

Warning: This is not a very uplifting film or podcast episode. Filmmaker Gaspar Noe has returned with a film about dementia and death starring Dario Argento, Francoise Lebrun, and Alex Lutz. If you saw the last Gaspar Noe movie we covered called Climax (2018), then this is a wildly different experience. We saw this at the dying and now permanently closed Landmark Theatres' Pico. Vortex has been widely praised and with good reason, but it is depressing as hell! You've been warned!

Lot of buzz around the new film Barbarian so we checked it out to get a hawt take. Zach Cregger is basically a first time writer/director who brought this unique horror film to the screen. Set in Detroit (but filmed in Bulgaria), the film stars Georgina Campbell and Bill Skarsgard who both check into the same double booked Airbnb. We won't say anything more, but if you're a horror movie fan you probably want to check this film out. Lot of surprises in this one that we thoroughly spoil in this hawt take!

The classic Steven Spielberg film Jaws was re-released into IMAX theaters this Labor Day weekend so we decided to see it big! And we took a Lodger to see it who had somehow never seen it before! The 1975 blockbuster changed the course of cinema and it still holds up today. You know all about it, but we'll mention that it stars Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, and a shark named Bruce! John Williams provides the famous score, and it's based on the 1974 novel by Peter Benchley, who wrote the screenplay with Carl Gottlieb. We'll talk about all things Jaws and get the full reaction of a person who has never seen it!

September 3rd, 2022 was National Cinema Day and we celebrated by seeing the new horror movie Orphan: First Kill. The theater was packed as everyone was pumped to see the prequel to the 2009 film Orphan. It somehow stars the same actress Isabelle Fuhrman as Esther, along with Julia Stiles, Rossif Sutherland (son of Donald), and Hiro Kanagawa as a hard-charging detective. This horror movie was directed by William Brent Bell and written by David Coggeshall, and was shot in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Were we scared? Were we knocked out by the twist? We'll let you know as we celebrate cinema in movie theaters!

Director George Miller returns at the age of 77 with his first feature film since Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). This one is called Three Thousand Years of Longing and stars Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba. Based on the 1994 short story "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye" by A. S. Byatt, this movie has Elba star as a genie who tells mythical recollections to a lonely British scholar played by Tilda Swinton. The film crosses many genres and was a box-office bomb, and we definitely think you should see it!

Terror on the Prairie is one the first films released by The Daily Wire Plus! A new streaming service from Ben Shapiro's right wing media company The Daily Wire. This western set in Montana stars cancelled MMA fighter Gina Carano and is directed by Michael Polish (Twin Falls Idaho). Some other actors in the film are Nick Searcy, Donald "Cowboy" Cerrone, Tyler Fischer, and Daniel Day-Lewis's son Gabriel-Kane Day-Lewis. Few publications have covered this movie, but we were not afraid! We'll let you know what we saw!

French film director Claire Denis returns to the international film scene with her new film Both Sides of the Blade. The last film she directed called High Life (2018) left quite an impression on us when we did a podcast review of it back in May of 2019. That film starred Juliette Binoche, and now Binoche is back in Both Sides of the Blade alongside actor Vincent Lindon (Titane). We had heard that this film was an erotic thriller, but in actuality it is a romantic drama. We saw it at the Laemmle Glendale.

The schnapps of this film from IMDb: "It is the year 2025: Since the outbreak of the Corona virus in 2020, the world has not been the same: A communist system with a single world government has been established, English has been chosen as the world language, contacts have been reduced to a minimum. Christianity has been banned completely; the constitution how we knew it no longer exists. In Germany, a small group of young Christians start an underground revolution to reunite Christians and regain freedom." If this sounds intriguing to you, then listen to our podcast review. You will learn the true meaning of "spray fish"! Writer/director/actor Joshua Wesely put together this low budget film that we had to see. And if you're really curious, it is available on the free streaming platform Tubi!

Let the bodies, bodies, bodies hit the floor, floor, floor in A24's new Gen Z slasher whodunit directed by Halina Reijn. Two Gen Z lovers played by Amandla Stenberg and Maria Bakalova head to a secluded house for a "hurricane party". At the house they meet up with Myha'la Herrold, Chase Sui Wonders, Rachel Sennott, Lee Pace, and Pete Davidson. Tensions mount when the power goes out and somebody is murdered. We'll let you know our hawt takes on this lauded black comedy horror film, and we won't even spoil the ending!

One of the favorite movie genres amongst Lodgers is the all but defunct erotic thriller genre. Yet at the ripe age of 81, director Adrian Lyne is back with a new erotic thriller to hopefully revive the genre he popularized with classics like Fatal Attraction (1987), Indecent Proposal (1993), and Unfaithful (2002). Adrian Lyne's new film, which is his first in 20 years, is called Deep Water and it stars Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas as a troubled couple. A supporting cast includes Tracy Letts, Lil Rel Howery, Dash Mihok, Finn Wittrock, Kristen Connolly, and Jacob Elordi. After many delays in release, the movie got dumped on Hulu back in March when we watched it. We'll let you know if Lyne delivered another erotic thriller classic, or if he's lost a step in the 20 years he's been away. The movie is based on the 1957 novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith.

After witnessing the trailer at least a dozen times, we finally got to see Jordan Peele's Nope! We saw this big screen spectacle in IMAX the way it was intended. After Jordan Peele's last film Us (2019), our expectations weren't too high as we were all kinda lukewarm on that movie. This time around we were very divided in our reaction to Nope! In this movie a UFO descends on a horse ranch in California. Nope has a solid cast including Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, Michael Wincott, and Brandon Perea.

Body horror master filmmaker David Cronenberg is back with a new body horror film! After spending most of the 2000s making excellent non-body horror movies, he's returned to his roots for a dark cinematic voyage of sex & surgery called Crimes of the Future. We were all fans of Cronenberg to varying degrees, and we talk about his filmography before entering this futuristic tale starring Viggo Mortensen, Lea Seydoux, and Kristen Stewart. Definitely not a podcast episode or movie for the weak of stomach, we'll spoil all the grisly details of the Salad Dragon scenes, of which there are many!

On a whim we decided to see The Black Phone, the new Blumhouse horror movie directed by Scott Derrickson and adapted from a short story by Joe Hill (Stephen King's son). Ethan Hawke plays a child abductor nicknamed "The Grabber" in 1978 suburban Denver. It also stars Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies, and James Ransone. We got all hot and bothered about the film and the theatrical experience in the Burbank 6, in this very hawt take!

The anticipation was high for Baz Luhrmann's Elvis biopic! Mostly because of the shots we'd seen of Tom Hanks as Elvis's manager Colonel Tom Parker. Like all Baz Luhrmann movies this film looked bonkers and it is definitely not a conventional music biopic. Austin Butler plays rock and roll icon Elvis Presley, with a supporting cast including Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge, Helen Thomson, Richard Roxburgh, Kelvin Harrison Jr., David Wenham, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Luke Bracey. This 160-minute film covers Elvis Presley's entire life. We disagreed over many points in the film and we hash it out in this comprehensive Lodgecast!

In this urgent Lodgecast a group of adventurous Lodgers attended the Fathom Event on June 14, 2022 of Kirk Cameron Presents: The Homeschool Awakening. This is the latest controversial documentary from actor and Evangelical Christian Kirk Cameron. We discussed our long history with Kirk Cameron and our feelings on homeschooling. Then we proceeded up to the Burbank 16 to witness Kirk Cameron. This screening had many twists and turns which may have involved the sitcom The Golden Girls. Needless to say if Kirk Cameron shows up in theaters again, we'll be there!

Writer/director Alex Garland returns with his new folk horror film called Men. His last film Annihilation (2018) was one of the most hotly debated movies in the Lodge, so we were excited to see and fight about Men. The film stars Jessie Buckley who goes to a small village in the countryside after the death of her husband. Actor Rory Kinnear shows up there in many forms, and the holiday quickly spirals into horror. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a "D+"! We'll let you know what we thought!