MASTERFUL MIX OF COMING OF AGE STORY AND TRIBUTE TO SCI-FI MONSTER FILMS!
Added 9/27/2009
I was lucky enough to catch this film on cable this week and so glad I did. 'Matinee' is a great film that pays homage to 50's and 60's sci-fi monster films and also is a very believable coming of age story. What really sets this film apart from so many others is the fact that this is a send up that still feels real! Having grown up in this era it was a treat to relive some of those great matinee experiences of my youth. They just don't make that kind of entertainment anymore!
The film is set in 1962-63 when there were plenty of war scares and bomb drills in school. The film is a lot of fun, but doesn't lose site if it's serious undertone. The monster film parodies are a blast and this is going to make any monster kid from this era smile as you are transported back to a simpler time when it wasn't so hard to entertain folks.
If you're a fan of sci-fi monsters or coming of age films or even period pieces this is a must see. The DVD is OOP, but I recorded it from a movie channel this week, hopefully they will play it again. Look for it as its well worth the effort.
1 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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One of the Best Film Scripts Ever Written!
Added 7/27/2009
I've been a fan of campy disaster movies my entire life. You know the genre: Giant radioactive ants attacking Los Angeles, huge asteroids racing toward Earth, monster storms threatening human civilization. Good clean fun.
Unfortunately, the biggest disaster of all -- global nuclear destruction --almost came true in October 1962. I was four years old at the time, living in a small Midwestern city with my parents and older sister. Now, all those years later, I can vaguely remember our family sitting around a huge black-and-white TV "console," watching the news updates. "Why don't WE have a bomb shelter?" my sister demanded to know. Ah, the quiet joys of childhood...
History and imagination have a strange way of mixing together over time. Let's start with history: The Cuban Missile Crisis as power struggle was portrayed in two serious movies: "The Missiles of October" (1973) and the more recent film, "Thirteen Days" (2000). Both captured the immense tension gripping the planet as Kennedy and Khrushchev played chicken with the bomb.
In contrast, "Matinee" (released 1993) captures the pop culture side of the crisis - how ordinary people responded to the threat of annihilation based on pre-existing Hollywood stereotypes. Scriptwriter Charlie Haas deserves high marks for finding the humor in this otherwise horrific situation. (I'd give him an Oscar any day.)
The film centers on an over-the-hill movie producer named Woolsey, played to perfection by John Goodman. Woolsey travels to Key West in October 1962 to screen his latest schlock flick featuring atomic blasts, human mutation and B-movie cheesecake. A teenage boy named Simon, who knows everything about disaster movies, connects with Woolsey...and we're off!
Every character cliché from the late 1950s and early `60s is paraded across the screen with delicious irony and humorous affection: The "bad boy poet wannabe" just out of reform school. The sexually curious girlfriend. The lonely military wife, whose husband is stationed on a ship off the coast of Cuba. The beatnik parents and their radical 9th-grade daughter. The paranoid movie theater owner with a worthless bomb shelter in the basement. And so on and so on.
Unlike cheap parody films such as "Scary Movie," this film takes the pop culture stuff seriously. You can actually learn something about America from "Matinee," while you simultaneously laugh your head off. The storyline is so perfectly crafted that even the most outrageous twists and turns seem to make perfect sense. Kudos as well to whoever selected the cast for this movie. I can't imagine a more delightful ensemble.
If you haven't yet seen "Matinee," please set aside time soon for this masterwork of American filmmaking. Bravo!
REVIEWER'S NOTE: This review concludes my personal writing project called "99 Books and a Movie," which I started back in September 2004. I hope you've enjoyed my postings on Amazon.com. Best wishes...Peter Kobs
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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A Treasure
Added 12/26/2007
My wife and I have set aside 6 to 8 movies that we put on when we just can't think of anything else to watch. These are the movies that are so special and such a delight to watch that we never seem to get tired of them. Matinee is one of those movies. There's something comfortable and familiar in Matinee. I love period films anyway, especially those that remind me of a time in my own life. And even in the midst of a potential nuclear conflict (the Cuban missle crisis) it still reminds me of a simpler time. I love the Key West setting, and all the main characters are fun and likable. But the best "character" of all is the B-movie that is the core of the characters adventures. "When a man, and an ant, are exposed to radiation simultaneously, the result is terrible indeed! The result is MANT!
I always feel better after watching Matinee. For me, it's literally therapeutic.
2 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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You must sign a liability release "In case you die of fright"
Added 12/3/2007
This has to be the most under-rated, under-valued and criminally under-seen film of all time. Funny, touching, nostalgic in a good way, a wonderful tribute to the very joy of film itself and, the clincher, a cast of kids that never get on your nerves.
John Goodman has never bettered his performance from this movie. If you love the movies, you'll love this film. See it; then see it again and again. It really is the undiscovered artistic masterpiece of the 20th Century. I look forward to this movie on HD-DVD.
Until 'Man Conquers Space' comes out, we have Matinee!
4 out of 4 people found this helpful.
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A great tribute to 50's era horror films and panic in the streets
Added 1/19/2007
I felt that the advertising for this movie was somewhat misleading. I expected to see a film about John Goodman portraying a loose characterization of showman William Castle. Instead, the main focus of the film is a young boy, Gene Loomis, whose father is a soldier who is dispatched to active duty during the Cuban missile crisis, which is the time period in which this film is set. You have your typical coming-of-age themes revolving around Gene and his friends as they discover their own emerging adolescence, and this consists largely of tired material that has been done to death. However, I did like the scene where the character Sandra refuses to get down on the floor and put her hands behind her head during a civil defense drill, saying that "duck and cover" was useless. I actually remember doing these drills in elementary school back in the 60's.
Somewhat in the background we have John Goodman as old-fashioned showman Lawrence Woolsey, a vaudevillian stuck in the age of cinema who wants to put the show back in picture shows. He is tied into the film because Gene enjoys Woolsey's showmanship as a way to forget about the world around him which seems to be on the brink of self-destruction. Woolsey pulls such stunts as having his girlfriend (Cathy Moriarty) dress a a nurse and ask patrons to sign a waiver releasing Goodman's character from liability in case they die of fright during the movie. This is based on a similar stunt by William Castle and his movie "Macabre". Woolsey also wires the seats to produce a mild electric shock during a key moment in a film, which he labels "Atomo-Vision." That antic is based on what William Castle did during the showing of "The Tingler". Then he rigs still another device to shake things up as buildings on the screen are tumbling and calls it "Rumble-Rama." Again, these are all very similar to the showman-like stunts of William Castle during the 50's and 60's.
The best part of the movie is when Woolsey comes up with an atomic-age monster movie entitled "Mant" that is a composite of cheesy 50's horror films such as "The Fly," and "Them!". "Mant" is about a mutant that is half-man and half-ant and is a total riot. Woolsey's schlock merchant displays just the right mix of con-man materialism and childlike glee at his own bogus movie magic. It's too bad that Goodman's character and his showmanship weren't the main focus of the movie - Goodman was truly born to play the part of Lawrence Woolsey. Perhaps the biggest joke of all is realizing that this movie cost about 100 times the budget of any of the old pictures being parodied.
Besides recognizing all of the silly rituals such as the civil defense drills that people have performed and always will perform in order to feel like they have some control in an uncontrollable situation - remember the run on duct tape and plastic sheeting four years ago? - this movie really made me wish that there was a William Castle collection on DVD. Some of Castle's films were not so bad, and some were so bad they were good - "Macabre" comes to mind - but all of them were memorable. But none of them outside of "House on Haunted Hill" and "The Tingler", both starring Vincent Price, are ever on TV anymore.
3 out of 3 people found this helpful.
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MASTERFUL MIX OF COMING OF AGE STORY AND TRIBUTE TO SCI-FI MONSTER FILMS!
Added 9/27/2009
I was lucky enough to catch this film on cable this week and so glad I did. 'Matinee' is a great film that pays homage to 50's and 60's sci-fi monster films and also is a very believable coming of age story. What really sets this film apart from so many others is the fact that this is a send up that still feels real! Having grown up in this era it was a treat to relive some of those great matinee experiences of my youth. They just don't make that kind of entertainment anymore!
The film is set in 1962-63 when there were plenty of war scares and bomb drills in school. The film is a lot of fun, but doesn't lose site if it's serious undertone. The monster film parodies are a blast and this is going to make any monster kid from this era smile as you are transported back to a simpler time when it wasn't so hard to entertain folks.
If you're a fan of sci-fi monsters or coming of age films or even period pieces this is a must see. The DVD is OOP, but I recorded it from a movie channel this week, hopefully they will play it again. Look for it as its well worth the effort.
1 out of 2 people found this helpful.
|
One of the Best Film Scripts Ever Written!
Added 7/27/2009
I've been a fan of campy disaster movies my entire life. You know the genre: Giant radioactive ants attacking Los Angeles, huge asteroids racing toward Earth, monster storms threatening human civilization. Good clean fun.
Unfortunately, the biggest disaster of all -- global nuclear destruction --almost came true in October 1962. I was four years old at the time, living in a small Midwestern city with my parents and older sister. Now, all those years later, I can vaguely remember our family sitting around a huge black-and-white TV "console," watching the news updates. "Why don't WE have a bomb shelter?" my sister demanded to know. Ah, the quiet joys of childhood...
History and imagination have a strange way of mixing together over time. Let's start with history: The Cuban Missile Crisis as power struggle was portrayed in two serious movies: "The Missiles of October" (1973) and the more recent film, "Thirteen Days" (2000). Both captured the immense tension gripping the planet as Kennedy and Khrushchev played chicken with the bomb.
In contrast, "Matinee" (released 1993) captures the pop culture side of the crisis - how ordinary people responded to the threat of annihilation based on pre-existing Hollywood stereotypes. Scriptwriter Charlie Haas deserves high marks for finding the humor in this otherwise horrific situation. (I'd give him an Oscar any day.)
The film centers on an over-the-hill movie producer named Woolsey, played to perfection by John Goodman. Woolsey travels to Key West in October 1962 to screen his latest schlock flick featuring atomic blasts, human mutation and B-movie cheesecake. A teenage boy named Simon, who knows everything about disaster movies, connects with Woolsey...and we're off!
Every character cliché from the late 1950s and early `60s is paraded across the screen with delicious irony and humorous affection: The "bad boy poet wannabe" just out of reform school. The sexually curious girlfriend. The lonely military wife, whose husband is stationed on a ship off the coast of Cuba. The beatnik parents and their radical 9th-grade daughter. The paranoid movie theater owner with a worthless bomb shelter in the basement. And so on and so on.
Unlike cheap parody films such as "Scary Movie," this film takes the pop culture stuff seriously. You can actually learn something about America from "Matinee," while you simultaneously laugh your head off. The storyline is so perfectly crafted that even the most outrageous twists and turns seem to make perfect sense. Kudos as well to whoever selected the cast for this movie. I can't imagine a more delightful ensemble.
If you haven't yet seen "Matinee," please set aside time soon for this masterwork of American filmmaking. Bravo!
REVIEWER'S NOTE: This review concludes my personal writing project called "99 Books and a Movie," which I started back in September 2004. I hope you've enjoyed my postings on Amazon.com. Best wishes...Peter Kobs
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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A Treasure
Added 12/26/2007
My wife and I have set aside 6 to 8 movies that we put on when we just can't think of anything else to watch. These are the movies that are so special and such a delight to watch that we never seem to get tired of them. Matinee is one of those movies. There's something comfortable and familiar in Matinee. I love period films anyway, especially those that remind me of a time in my own life. And even in the midst of a potential nuclear conflict (the Cuban missle crisis) it still reminds me of a simpler time. I love the Key West setting, and all the main characters are fun and likable. But the best "character" of all is the B-movie that is the core of the characters adventures. "When a man, and an ant, are exposed to radiation simultaneously, the result is terrible indeed! The result is MANT!
I always feel better after watching Matinee. For me, it's literally therapeutic.
2 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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