<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[Dark of the Matinee]]></title><description><![CDATA[Reviewing movies in Phoenix since 2015.]]></description><link>https://www.darkofthematinee.com/blank</link><generator>RSS for Node</generator><lastBuildDate>Fri, 11 Sep 2026 03:45:41 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://www.darkofthematinee.com/blog-feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title><![CDATA[Review: Onslaught]]></title><description><![CDATA[Onslaught sounds like Adam Wingard returning to the sweet spot that made You’re Next and The Guest feel like jolts of genre electricity: a lean, mean, blood-slicked siege movie about a traumatized veteran, her daughter, a desert trailer park, and a trio of genetically engineered super soldiers unleashed by the sort of government program that seems to have been funded entirely by paranoia and bad ideas. For a while, that promise is enough. Wingard opens the film with a grab bag of lurid images...]]></description><link>https://www.darkofthematinee.com/post/review-onslaught</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a988f0379e2b90bfeaee151</guid><pubDate>Wed, 02 Sep 2026 21:06:45 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/8e7cf8_4efa8fd117f442c6892d9d1a3a1a7718~mv2.webp/v1/fit/w_1000,h_667,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew G. Robinson</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Review: The Dog Stars]]></title><description><![CDATA[There are few filmmakers who seem less interested in slowing down than Ridley Scott. At 88, the director is still cranking out movies at a pace that would exhaust someone half his age, bouncing between historical epics, science fiction, crime dramas and whatever else catches his attention. That restless curiosity has become part of the fun of late-period Scott. Even when the movies don't entirely work, there is usually something fascinating about watching one of cinema's great craftsmen...]]></description><link>https://www.darkofthematinee.com/post/review-the-dog-stars</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a8f1f22a6bf65007ed1ec70</guid><pubDate>Wed, 26 Aug 2026 17:19:55 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/8e7cf8_d33b8379ef0045f8b90671e49552656e~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew G. Robinson</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Review: Tony]]></title><description><![CDATA[Matt Johnson has always seemed more interested in the moments that shape a person than in celebrating the legend they eventually become. Tony continues that fascination, sidestepping the familiar rise-and-fall rhythm of the traditional biopic to focus instead on a brief but pivotal chapter in Anthony Bourdain's youth. Rather than attempting to define the man audiences came to know through television and bestselling books, the film explores the uncertainty, arrogance, and restless curiosity...]]></description><link>https://www.darkofthematinee.com/post/review-tony</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a6a4027cecb33cd5ae87a17</guid><pubDate>Thu, 20 Aug 2026 15:38:31 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/8e7cf8_a3bd2d5794c545bbafd41919a7f62bb4~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_800,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew G. Robinson</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Review - Insidious: Out of the Further]]></title><description><![CDATA[There was a charming simplicity to the original Insidious. A family moved into a house, weird things started happening, and before long Lin Shaye was wearing a gas mask while Leigh Whannell scribbled down whatever nightmare fuel she whispered into his ear. James Wan and Whannell borrowed liberally from decades of haunted-house movies, but they did so with enough energy, humor, and wonderfully cheap-looking weirdness that the whole thing felt strangely fresh. Six movies later, the Further has...]]></description><link>https://www.darkofthematinee.com/post/review-insidious-out-of-the-further</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a85e467360e55e6c70252e8</guid><pubDate>Wed, 19 Aug 2026 17:17:45 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/8e7cf8_bf613affdab74e018dee664c100192b7~mv2.webp/v1/fit/w_1000,h_675,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew G. Robinson</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Review: Coyote vs Acme]]></title><description><![CDATA[There is something wonderfully appropriate about Coyote vs. Acme surviving its own seemingly certain demise. Wile E. Coyote has spent decades being crushed by boulders, blown up by dynamite, flattened against canyon walls, and launched into the stratosphere, only to dust himself off and try again. Warner Bros. tried to do something similar to his movie, shelving the completed film as a tax write-off before it was eventually rescued for release. If any character was built to survive corporate...]]></description><link>https://www.darkofthematinee.com/post/review-coyote-vs-acme</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a7e16ad9eafd9eb8e5a63fb</guid><pubDate>Thu, 13 Aug 2026 19:12:37 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/8e7cf8_fcee1326b3e842d4a06c29e73db945b8~mv2.webp/v1/fit/w_1000,h_675,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew G. Robinson</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Review: The End of Oak Street]]></title><description><![CDATA[There’s something wonderfully strange about watching a family quietly fall apart while a dinosaur takes a dump on the neighbor’s lawn. That particular collision of domestic malaise and prehistoric absurdity is where The End of Oak Street is at its best. Writer-director David Robert Mitchell has always been interested in familiar American spaces becoming subtly, inexplicably wrong. It Follows turned Detroit suburbs into an endless nightmare; Under the Silver Lake imagined Los Angeles as a...]]></description><link>https://www.darkofthematinee.com/post/review-the-end-of-oak-street</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a7c9a48bc8e587d43996763</guid><pubDate>Wed, 12 Aug 2026 16:10:40 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/8e7cf8_5862661213a7447ea96d154e165ad5c9~mv2.webp/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew G. Robinson</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Review: Teenage Sex &#38; Death at Camp Miasma]]></title><description><![CDATA[There is a moment in Teenage Sex &#38; Death at Camp Miasma where someone gets spectacularly murdered while a deeply earnest piece of ’90s music plays on the soundtrack. Blood sprays, bodies fall, and Jane Schoenbrun lets the whole ridiculous thing unfold with the confidence of someone who understands that sometimes the distance between irony and sincerity is practically nonexistent. That tension runs through Schoenbrun’s wonderfully strange follow-up to I Saw the TV Glow. This is a movie about...]]></description><link>https://www.darkofthematinee.com/post/review-teenage-sex-death-at-camp-miasma</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a7a22d2bb2b410376b9a43c</guid><pubDate>Mon, 10 Aug 2026 19:51:48 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/8e7cf8_73811f38da794674be6bfd2aca9bc068~mv2.webp/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew G. Robinson</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Review: The Odyssey]]></title><description><![CDATA[There are filmmakers who make spectacles, and then there are filmmakers who make myths. With The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan has delivered the largest production of his career, but its greatest achievement isn’t measured by the size of its battles, the scale of its practical effects, or the staggering number of recognizable faces that populate the screen. It lies in something far more difficult: making one of humanity’s oldest stories feel immediate without stripping away its timelessness....]]></description><link>https://www.darkofthematinee.com/post/review-the-odyssey</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a57c538a4777ca49cc35dfa</guid><pubDate>Wed, 15 Jul 2026 17:40:40 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/8e7cf8_1765c211e7c143d991b1ae4a08154794~mv2.webp/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew G. Robinson</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Review: Evil Dead Burn]]></title><description><![CDATA[For all the gallons of blood, shattered bones, and possessed grins that have defined the Evil Dead series for over forty years, the franchise has always understood one simple truth: horror works best when there’s someone worth saving. Sam Raimi knew it with Ash Williams, who evolved from a terrified everyman into one of horror’s most iconic heroes. Fede Álvarez understood it with Mia, transforming a woman battling addiction into a survivor who quite literally clawed her way out of hell. Evil...]]></description><link>https://www.darkofthematinee.com/post/review-evil-dead-burn</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a4e8e4f7e39c02d63681f49</guid><pubDate>Wed, 08 Jul 2026 17:56:04 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/8e7cf8_6c476b5f936a471b8107ed9873cc99fe~mv2.avif/v1/fit/w_1000,h_728,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew G. Robinson</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Review: Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass]]></title><description><![CDATA[David Wain has built an entire career on asking audiences to accept one deeply ridiculous premise and then refusing to acknowledge that anything unusual is happening. His best comedies don't escalate because the characters become aware of the insanity around them; they escalate because everyone treats the absurd as perfectly ordinary. Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass follows that same philosophy, mining an inherently juvenile idea for every ounce of comic potential until it evolves...]]></description><link>https://www.darkofthematinee.com/post/review-gail-daughtry-and-the-celebrity-sex-pass</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a4d751200be0c704955d374</guid><pubDate>Tue, 07 Jul 2026 21:57:15 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/8e7cf8_5c11cd778aba4d3f8ac7f090e057b8d6~mv2.webp/v1/fit/w_1000,h_579,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew G. Robinson</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Review: The Invite]]></title><description><![CDATA[Olivia Wilde's The Invite has the sort of premise that often inspires eye rolls before the opening credits finish rolling. Two unhappily married neighbors. One impossibly attractive, impossibly enlightened couple upstairs. A dinner party. Plenty of wine. The suggestion of ethical non-monogamy. On paper, it sounds like the kind of self-satisfied relationship satire that mistakes provocation for insight, eager to make sweeping declarations about modern love while congratulating itself for being...]]></description><link>https://www.darkofthematinee.com/post/review-the-invite</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a4c163bfa58f0a255d87601</guid><pubDate>Mon, 06 Jul 2026 20:58:25 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/8e7cf8_3b860a792ce14bbf98d59d7de1742c0a~mv2.jpeg/v1/fit/w_739,h_415,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew G. Robinson</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Review: Unidentified]]></title><description><![CDATA[There is something inherently haunting about a person becoming a mystery. Not just dying, but disappearing into paperwork. Reduced to a case file, a photograph, an evidence bag. A life condensed into administrative language. Haifaa Al-Mansour’s Unidentified understands that horror better than most crime thrillers, and while the film occasionally struggles to generate momentum as a mystery, it finds something far more interesting in the process: a meditation on grief, empathy, and the quiet...]]></description><link>https://www.darkofthematinee.com/post/review-unidentified</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a3174af6e3aac0bcf9b62b9</guid><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jun 2026 16:11:27 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/8e7cf8_baf1c6b1b90245f5a090140059634e80~mv2.webp/v1/fit/w_1000,h_730,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew G. Robinson</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Review: The Furious]]></title><description><![CDATA[Kenji Tanigaki’s The Furious doesn’t so much tell a story as it hurls one at your head. It arrives swinging, kicking, crashing through tables, and rarely pauses long enough to catch its breath. Child traffickers kidnap the daughter of a mute laborer. A journalist disappears while investigating the same criminal network. Two men collide, exchange punches, discover they want the same thing, and spend the next ninety minutes reducing an army of villains to broken bones and bloodstains. That’s...]]></description><link>https://www.darkofthematinee.com/post/review-the-furious</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a2ae4818d10dcf6288d856e</guid><pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2026 16:40:57 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/8e7cf8_9e6670fe84f14b249dc2640a3e58574b~mv2.webp/v1/fit/w_1000,h_667,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew G. Robinson</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Review: Disclosure Day]]></title><description><![CDATA[Steven Spielberg has spent nearly fifty years looking to the stars. From the awe-struck obsession of Close Encounters of the Third Kind to the childlike wonder of E.T. and the terror of War of the Worlds, extraterrestrials have long served as a vessel for the filmmaker’s deepest anxieties, hopes, and questions about humanity. With Disclosure Day, Spielberg returns to that well once again, this time asking a provocative question: If humanity learned we weren’t alone, would we be able to handle...]]></description><link>https://www.darkofthematinee.com/post/review-disclosure-day</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a284ae8579005354a9f03b3</guid><pubDate>Tue, 09 Jun 2026 17:23:44 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/8e7cf8_04030d369ca44a9eaf8bd343a4af4029~mv2.webp/v1/fit/w_1000,h_667,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew G. Robinson</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Review: Is God Is]]></title><description><![CDATA[Aleshea Harris’ Is God Is opens like a revenge movie and slowly reveals itself to be something thornier, sadder, stranger, and ultimately far more profound. On paper, the film sounds almost gleefully pulp: twin sisters set out across America to murder the father who burned their family alive years earlier. But Harris’ astonishing debut feature is not interested in the clean catharsis of revenge cinema so much as the rot that necessitates it in the first place. What begins as a...]]></description><link>https://www.darkofthematinee.com/post/review-is-god-is</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a035a90e889759477a737b0</guid><pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2026 17:20:29 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/8e7cf8_8b53d5b9404c4f8897c0bf8843a29f2a~mv2.webp/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew G. Robinson</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Review: Mortal Kombat 2]]></title><description><![CDATA[For a franchise built on spinal extractions, acid vomit, and the phrase “Finish Him,” the most surprising thing about Mortal Kombat II is how desperately it wants to entertain you. Not impress you. Not elevate itself above its origins. Not apologize for being based on a game where a four-armed monster punches ninjas into skeletons. Simon McQuoid’s sequel understands that the appeal of Mortal Kombat has always lived somewhere between adolescent power fantasy and grindhouse absurdity, and for...]]></description><link>https://www.darkofthematinee.com/post/review-mortal-kombat-2</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fb87ce3587ab080fb8520f</guid><pubDate>Wed, 06 May 2026 18:38:30 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/8e7cf8_bb50e4f493164bf1baca4e432c9320b7~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_563,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew G. Robinson</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Review: Hokum]]></title><description><![CDATA[There’s something inherently promising about a filmmaker who understands that a setting can do as much storytelling as any line of dialogue. Damian McCarthy, coming off the slow-burn unease of Caveat and Oddity, clearly gets that. With Hokum, he trades in those tighter, more controlled chambers of dread for something a bit grander, a creaky, half-forgotten Irish hotel that feels less like a location and more like a living accusation. For long stretches, it’s enough to carry the film on...]]></description><link>https://www.darkofthematinee.com/post/review-hokum</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69f61c787b1c42fb24f5a254</guid><pubDate>Sat, 02 May 2026 15:53:22 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/8e7cf8_486fb5d5b3514e9bab8a291475d2ffb3~mv2.webp/v1/fit/w_1000,h_832,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew G. Robinson</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Review: Over Your Dead Body]]></title><description><![CDATA[There’s a version of Over Your Dead Body  that exists entirely in its first 30 minutes; a nasty, tightly coiled two-hander about a marriage so thoroughly rotted that murder feels less like escalation and more like administrative cleanup. It’s a film that understands, with uncomfortable precision, how resentment calcifies over time, how love curdles into something performative, transactional, and quietly venomous. In those early stretches, Jorma Taccone’s film isn’t just funny it’s specific....]]></description><link>https://www.darkofthematinee.com/post/review-over-your-dead-body</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69e6a14b930722cfe917bb80</guid><pubDate>Tue, 21 Apr 2026 15:41:16 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/8e7cf8_5517a97854aa49c1a3cec19458ac7a54~mv2.webp/v1/fit/w_1000,h_460,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew G. Robinson</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Review: I Swear]]></title><description><![CDATA[There’s a version of I Swear  that plays like a crowd-pleasing triumph, a handsomely mounted, deeply felt biopic about adversity, empathy, and the slow churn of social understanding. And for long stretches, that’s exactly the film Kirk Jones delivers. But what lingers isn’t just the uplift, it’s the abrasion underneath it. It's the sense that every small victory has been hard-won against a world that doesn’t merely misunderstand John Davidson, but actively resists accommodating him. Based on...]]></description><link>https://www.darkofthematinee.com/post/review-i-swear</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69e66d0f247930afa804862d</guid><pubDate>Mon, 20 Apr 2026 18:19:45 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/8e7cf8_453182fdbdaa45ea985817e2775c949f~mv2.webp/v1/fit/w_1000,h_699,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew G. Robinson</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[A KILLER LINEUP: FIVE MUST-SEE FEATURES AT THEINTERNATIONAL HORROR AND SCI-FI FILM FESTIVAL ]]></title><description><![CDATA[The International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival, held in conjunction with the Phoenix Film Festival, will once again deliver a thrilling lineup of bold, unforgettable genre storytelling. This year’s program features a dynamic mix of action, suspense, psychological terror, social satire, and body horror from exciting filmmakers around the world. Among the standout selections this year are:  THE FURIOUS  (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate Premiere Releasing)  Screening: Thursday, April 16 at 6:45pm...]]></description><link>https://www.darkofthematinee.com/post/a-killer-lineup-five-must-see-features-at-theinternational-horror-and-sci-fi-film-festival</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69c2fd0b4979352460194d40</guid><pubDate>Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:11:51 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/8e7cf8_3a7d030503104796947459a711d7d764~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matthew G. Robinson</dc:creator></item></channel></rss>