Matt Singer is the editor and critic of the website ScreenCrush.com. For five years, he was the on-air host of IFC News on the Independent Film Channel, hosting coverage of film festivals and red carpets around the world. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, he’s been a frequent contributor to the television shows CBS This Morning Saturday and Ebert Presents At the Movies, and his writing has also appeared in print and online at The Village Voice, The Dissolve, and Indiewire. His first book, Marvel’s Spider-Man: From Amazing to Spectacular, is on sale now.
Matt Singer
Dustin Diamond, ‘Saved By the Bell’s Screech, Dies at 44
The ’90s icon was diagnosed with lung cancer in January.
Sean Connery, Iconic James Bond Actor, Dies at 90
Connery was the first actor to play the role in the long-running film series.
The 25 Most Important Sex Scenes in Film History
Boiling down 125 years to 25 steamy scenes.
‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Review: The Saga Continues…
The original Star Wars was driven by nostalgia for pulp magazines, Saturday-morning serials, and a simpler era with clear-cut heroes and villains. The new Star Wars is driven by nostalgia for the original Star Wars, and a simpler era when that title evoked words like “adventure” and “excitement,” and not words like “the taxation of trade routes,” and “Jar Jar Binks.” The characters in Star Wars: The Force Awakens are all searching for something of great importance to the galaxy far, far away. I won’t reveal what this MacGuffin is, but I will tell you what it represents: that old Star Wars magic. Can director J.J. Abrams and the rest of the saga’s new creators find it?
‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ Trailer: The End Is Nigh for Marvel’s Mutants
I’m an old enough nerd to remember when the first X-Men movie came out in theaters. At that time, comic books were not the number one driver of all things in popular culture. Bryan Singer’s X-Men certainly featured all the comic’s beloved heroes and villains, but there did seem like there was a concerted effort to tamp down some of their comic-book-ness. Everyone dressed in black. There was no spandex. The story was grounded in weighty real-world themes like prejudice and vengeance. It was the X-Men you knew, but watered down just a bit. It was a rum and coke, not a shot of gin. X-Men: Apocalypse, in comparison, looks like a bottle of Beefeater.
‘Joy’ Review: Jennifer Lawrence Is Totally Miscast in This Business Biopic
Jennifer Lawrence was 24 when she shot Joy. Her character, Joy Mangano, was 34 when she invented the Miracle Mop and became one of the first stars of the QVC network. This fact remains inescapable throughout Joy. Lawrence remains watchable in Joy because, as one of our best young actors, she can’t help but be watchable. But she’s totally miscast as a divorced mother of two who’s been repeatedly beaten down by life’s disappointments. This part was meant for the Jennifer Lawrence of a 2025, not the one of 2015.
‘The Revenant’ Review: This Revenge Western Is Beautiful And… Uh… Well, It’s Beautiful Anyway
How good does a movie have to look to offset its other deficiencies? The Revenant is as beautiful a movie as has ever been made. The photography by master cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki is inconceivably gorgeous; sweeping wide shots that juxtapose tiny, insignificant men against the overwhelming grandeur of nature, close-ups so intimate they seem like invasions of the actors’ privacy, and action sequences of shocking violence.
‘Now You See Me 2’ Trailer: Get Ready For a Reappearing Act
And now, for their next trick: a sequel!
‘Creed’ Review: An Old Franchise Flies High Again
“The way I imagine it, after the fight, he’s riding home in a cab, with the roar of the people chanting ‘Rocky!’ still in his ears. And he just drops over dead. In other words, he has achieved everything possible and he dies when he’s on top. I don’t think people want to see Rocky when he’s 80.”
Someone Is Remaking Christopher Nolan’s ‘Memento’
If you were interested in movies back in the year 2000 and you didn’t have some kind of brain-destroying amnesiac condition, you remember Memento. The second feature by a British filmmaker named Christopher Nolan, Memento became a breakthrough in American cinemas (the indie made an impressive $25 million in U.S. theaters) and Nolan’s calling card in Hollywood, where he went on to become one of the most important and interesting filmmakers of his generation.