Matt Goldberg

Matt Goldberg Patron

Look at all the movies I'm watching!


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Favorite films

  • The Graduate
  • The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
  • The Fountain
  • Back to the Future

Recent activity

All
  • The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

    ★★★★★

  • Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget

  • Chicken Run

    ★★★½

  • Blast of Silence

    ★★★★

Recent reviews

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  • The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

    The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

    ★★★★★

    This film remains incredible. I love how it occupies the liminal space between the poetic and the prosaic with Bob’s journey as someone who is enraptured by American mythology, curdled when it fails to embrace him, and then becomes sadly resigned to reality. It’s a beautiful movie that I’ll go so far as to say is one of the best Westerns ever.

  • Chicken Run

    Chicken Run

    ★★★½

    Probably a weird day for the Tweedys.

    This remains super cute, and while CG animation has made great strides in the past few decades, it’s difficult to imagine this film being as charming if it wasn’t claymation (and I say that as someone who likes Aardman’s CG efforts). The tactile approach reinforces the chickens’ bits of ingenuity.

    Also, it’s interesting that so much of Gibson’s career is defined by violence (characters inflicting and/or receiving), but he’s far more charming as a schemer like here and in Maverick.

Popular reviews

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  • Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

    Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

    ★½

    Marvel has lost it. Films like Doctor Strange and Iron Man 2 now look like bastions of competence next to stuff like this because as weak as those films are, they still try to have a character arc for their protagonist where the adventure changes his outlook. Everyone in this movie is the same at the end as they are in the beginning. There’s not an ounce of character development or even a challenge to a character’s personality. It is…

  • Midsommar

    Midsommar

    ★½

    This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

    Between this and Hereditary, I’m confident saying I’m not an Ari Aster fan. On a technical level, his skill is undeniable, but it lacks artistry. Everything he does is painfully self-aware and there’s no empathy for his characters. The deaths of family members are exploited and crassly used for shock value with minimal reckoning. He’s made two movies that are ostensibly about unimaginable grief, and yet they both get bogged down in mythological bullshit. By the end, you’re no longer focused on the protagonist because of some threatening cultish other. Spare me.