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
‘Fantastic Four’ Producer Says There Could Still Be a Sequel Somehow
The Fantastic Four movie stunk. Perhaps you heard about it. Fox attempted to reboot Marvel’s First Family with a younger cast, a darker tone, and a buzzy young director (Chronicle’s Josh Trank). The finished product was a baffling, ugly mess. It made just $167 million worldwide, way less than either of the Fantastic Four movies that had come before it, earned some of the worst reviews of 2015, and won (“won”) three Razzie Awards, including Worst Director for Trank and Worst Picture.
‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ Review: A Familiar and Confusing Journey to Days of Past Present
When Nightcrawler broke into the White House at the start of 2003’s X2, it felt like more than a watershed moment in the history of comic book movies; it felt like a miracle. Here was one of comics’ most fantastical characters — a blue-skinned, three-fingered German demon with a pointy, prehensile tail and teleportation powers — brought to life with all of his outlandish quirks and powers intact, showcased in a sequence that was thrilling and utterly convincing. It was something no one had ever seen before. It was truly uncanny.
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.)
‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2’ Trailer: Out of the Shadows, Into the Shadows of a Movie Theater
I like that this video explains who the Ninja Turtles are, for the benefit of those people who have been living in a cave (or maybe a sewer) since the late 1980s and have somehow avoided one of the six previous movies, five television shows, hundreds of toys, comics, and video games about these characters. “Oh Donatello is the purple one, ohhhhhh. For the last 30 years, I thought that was Raphael! My bad.”
The Top Five Spider-Man Movies That Were Never Made
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).
The ‘Baywatch’ Movie Will Feature Pamela Anderson
If you are going to make a Baywatch movie — even one that’s a tongue-in-cheek satire of the original — there’s a few things you’ve got to have. You need men and women in red bathing suits. You need people running on the beach in slow motion. You need that magnificent theme song. You need at least one reference to Baywatch Nights. And you need David Hasslehoff and Pamela Anderson.
Robert Downey Jr. Will Appear in ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’
He’d already majorly hinted that it would happen on Jimmy Kimmel Live, but now Sony’s official Twitter account says it’s confirmed: Robert Downey Jr. will appear in the upcoming Spider-Man reboot from Sony, Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Guy Hamilton, Director of Classic James Bond Films, Dies at 93
If you like James Bond movies, you have several people to thank for your hero. Ian Fleming, obviously; he wrote the original Bond novels. Harry Saltzman and Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli, who produced and guided the franchise for decades; Terence Young, who directed the first two movies with star Sean Connery. And then there’s Guy Hamilton, who helmed perhaps the greatest Bond adventure of them all, Goldfinger. Sadly, per the BBC, Hamilton past away on Wednesday in a hospital on the Spanish island of Majorca. He was 93 years old.
‘The Huntsman: Winter’s War’ Review: A Lot of Stuff You Like Crammed Into a Sequel You Won’t
The Huntsman: Winter’s War is a prequel, a sequel, a spinoff, a mashup, a bit of a remake, and almost a movie. It contains many recognizable elements from actual films — plot, characters, scenes, imagery, music — almost all of them inspired by (if not outright stolen from) other far more original movies and television shows. There are bits and pieces shamelessly swiped from Frozen, Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games, Game of Thrones, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, plus a few odds and ends from the production it is ostensibly following, 2012’s Snow White and the Huntsman. It’s almost like the movie version of a pod person from Invasion of the Body Snatchers; superficially indistinguishable from the real thing, but lacking any semblance of a soul.
The Top Five Most Random Spinoffs in Movie History
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).