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
‘Independence Day: Resurgence’ Extended Trailer: Even More Landmarks Get Trashed
The trend in trailers right now is to make things shorter. Teasers for trailers. Vines for teasers for trailers. Even full-length trailers on YouTube now often start with a five-second tease of the trailer you are about to watch five seconds later. It’s hard to conceive of ways content can be chopped any smaller, but studios keep finding ways.
‘Beauty and the Beast’ Teaser: A New Tale as Old as Time
“Ever just the same. Ever a surprise.” One imagines those lyrics from “Beauty and the Beast” will apply particularly well to this new version of Disney’s animated classic, coming to theaters next year.
‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows’ Trailer: You Will Believe a Turtle Can Fly, Be a Ninja
Turtles skydiving, and fighting living brains housed in massive robots. They definitely ain’t lying with that whole “out of the shadows” subtitle.
‘The Purge: Election Year’ Trailer: Wait, Is This Movie a Documentary?
Violence in the streets. Civic unrest. Intractable ideological divisions. Is this the latest installment of The Purge or a documentary about the 2016 election?
‘Popstar’ Trailer: This Movie Is a Far More Important Piece of Art Than the Mona Lisa
The new Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping trailer made me laugh out loud four times. If we assume the movie is 90 minutes long, and that runtime-to-laugh ratio holds, then this should be the funniest movie ever made.
In Wake of ‘Batman v Superman,’ Warners Launches ‘DC Films’ to Oversee Comic Book Movies
Success is relative. A lot of movies would kill for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’s box office grosses. $869 million worldwide and counting? That’s got to be a hit, right? Yes and no. That total’s short of the $1 billion worldwide that has become the new benchmark for mega blockbusters. In just 11 days of release, Captain America: Civil War’s already made almost $100 million more. Then there are the film’s tepid Rotten Tomatoes and CinemaScores. This is the movie that’s supposed to launch at least a half dozen other franchises. So while the results weren’t disastrous, they weren’t great either.
‘Ghostbusters’ Trailer: If There’s a Paranormal Problem, They’re the Ones to Call
Oh, a new Ghostbusters trailer! I am sure this will be met warmly, with a calm and measured reception!
‘The Woods’ Trailer: Something Evil From the Creators of ‘The Guest’
The official synopsis for The Woods on YouTube says simply that it is “one of the scariest movies in decades. The Woods reinvents horror with a completely fresh and terrifying take on the genre.” Well, jeez. No pressure or nothing. Just be the scariest thing anyone has seen in years and completely reinvent one of the most formulaic genres in movies. Piece of cake!
‘Swiss Army Man’ Red-Band Trailer: Harry Potter’s Wand Really Is Magic
There is a quote from ScreenCrush in this Swiss Army Man, calling it “A fart-fueled adventure.” Technically, Erin Whitney called it “a bizarre fart-fueled adventure.” And the trailer does look pretty bizarre, what with Daniel Radcliffe’s rotting corpse farting and being used as a jet ski and, his erection being used by Paul Dano as a crude compass of some kind. Who says cinema is dead? As long as their is life in Daniel Radcliffe’s rotting corpse’s erection, the moves can never die.
‘Inferno’ Teaser: Tom Hanks Must Unlock Another Ancient Code
If your parents have a bookshelf, there’s a very good chance there’s a copy of The Da Vinci Code on that bookshelf. (My parents’ certain does.)
The Theme That Ties Everything and Everyone in ‘Captain America: Civil War’ Together
In other words, this movie is crowded. Maybe overcrowded. Marvel and Sony’s new Spider-Man (Tom Holland) steals the show with his wisecracks and web-swinging, but serves almost no narrative purpose. Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) is only slightly more important to the story; his main function is to introduce the character to a broader audience before he gets spun off into his own standalone movie in 2018. The subplot involving the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) ties up some loose ends from the last Captain America movie, but it’s not really crucial to the film’s central conflict between Cap (Chris Evans) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) over governmental control of the Avengers. (The Winter Soldier barely appears in the original Civil War comics.)
The Top Five Worst ‘Die Hard’ Rip-Offs
In the tradition of ScreenCrush series like You Think You Know Movies and You Think You Know TV comes a new YouTube series: Top Five! Each week (or so; we’ve got a lot of other stuff going on), ScreenCrush editor and critic Matt Singer will count down a particular topic from the world of movies (and probably write these introductory posts in the third person).