MATINEE (1989)
2 out of 10 stars Time to Read: 1:35 min
BASIC PLOT:
A murder at a small town movie theater, sets off more murders. A jackass big city cop comes to town to hide from his past, and stop the killings. He does neither, and the self-righteous, shallow, vacuous people of Holsten, British Columbia continue with their pointless lives.
WHAT WORKS:
*THE ACTING IS ABOVE AVERAGE and it's wasted here, wasted on a TERRIBLE plodding and pedantic film.
*DECENT FILMMAKING There are some beautiful shots that took real talent to get, but they are wasted on a script that's tedious and telegraphed.
WHAT DOESN'T WORK:
*PACING PROBLEMS This movie is slow! And not only is it slow, but even when things do happen, they are filler, boring filler.
*TERRIBLE ATTEMPT AT NEO-NOIR, and at using the grey, dreary background of Canada as an atmospheric. It could have been outstanding for this type of slow burn, but instead it's pitiful.
*TELEGRAPHED FROM START TO FINISH, From Al (
Ron White) and Marilyn's (
Gillian Barber) conversation at the diner, where he says, "I guess I never see what's right in front of my face", to Marilyn's family pictures that give away EVERYTHING, you know all the answers from the beginning of the film! There's no big reveal, the whole movie is a spoiler! There's foreshadowing, and there's giving everything away, and this is the latter.
*I HATE EVERY SELFISH F___ING PRIG IN THIS MOVIE
Cops that punch reporters, and railroad teenagers, because that want to impress a woman, doesn't make them a flawed, neo-noir protagonist, it just makes them a blind, ignorant jackass. I'm supposed to care about Al Jason (
Ron White), but I don't. He's just irritating.
Sherri (
Beatrice Boepple) turns on her boyfriend Lawrence (
Jeff Schultz) all the time, and he's the only decent character in the whole film!
Earle Gardner (
Don S. Davis), the gay theater owner, wants to shoot his boyfriend, Warren (
R. Nelson Brown), simply because he's playing mind games with the police, who are trying to railroad him. What? You want to shoot your boyfriend because he's being snarky to the homophobic police?!
And don't even get me started on Lawrence Shaw Sr. (
Walter Marsh), who treats his grandson Lawrence, the only likable character, like crap.
Every character here is a PRIG! This movie should have been called, "Prigville", because that's what it is. Everyone here thinks they're better than everyone else, they are disgusting. It's a bunch of weak, pathetic useless people, WHO AREN'T INTERESTING TO WATCH! I kept hoping a tornado would touch down and kill everyone, then I remembered it was Canada.
*CHARACTERS HAVE NO DEPTH and they should! With pacing this slow, there should have been tons of character development, but there wasn't. The characters are flat, and uninteresting.
TO RECOMMEND, OR NOT TO RECOMMEND, THAT IS THE QUESTION:
*I cannot recommend this movie to anyone except insomniacs, because it will put you to sleep! The only thing good about it is it's good for an
Aux frontières du réel (1993) drinking game. There are 9 actors from the
Aux frontières du réel (1993) in this movie -
Gillian Barber,
Timothy Webber,
Don S. Davis,
R. Nelson Brown,
Matt Hill,
William B. Davis,
Stephen E. Miller,
Kerry Sandomirsky and
Walter Marsh. Take a drink every time you find one of them, and then maybe it will become watchable.
CLOSING NOTES:
*I HAVE NO CONNECTION TO THE FILM, or production in ANY way. This review was NOT written in full, or in part, by a bot. I am just an honest viewer, who wishes for more straight forward reviews (less trolls and fanboys), and better entertainment. Hope I helped you out.
