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Mattie Lucas
Tomatometer-approved critic
Mattie Lucas (she/they) is a freelance film critic from North Carolina whose work has appeared in print and online since 2004. She attended Appalachian State University where she studied Theatre and Film Studies.
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Twisters (2024) |
Twister is by no means a great film, but it has a sense of playfulness and fun that Twisters mostly lacks as it attempts to mirror the original beat by beat. - trans|cendental cinema
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| Posted Jul 23, 2024
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The People's Joker (2022) |
This isn't just sticking it to the man, it's a middle finger to the entire cis-tem with Drew as our puckish master of ceremonies, confidently asserting herself as a thrilling and vital new voice. - trans|cendental cinema
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| Posted Jul 17, 2024
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Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 (2024) |
A gorgeously rough-hewn tapestry of American mythmaking. - trans|cendental cinema
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| Posted Jul 16, 2024
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Longlegs (2024) |
Perkins is clearly a skilled craftsman with a keen sense of mood, but Longlegs needed more than just Cage's unique spark of madness to really land. - trans|cendental cinema
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| Posted Jul 16, 2024
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Music (2023) |
As lovely as it is obfuscating, a cinematic Rorschach blot that holds the audience at arm's length as much as it envelops us in its peculiar aural environment. - trans|cendental cinema
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| Posted Jul 09, 2024
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Janet Planet (2023) |
The world (Baker) creates nevertheless feels fully realized and lived in because of the rich interiority of her characters. - trans|cendental cinema
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| Posted Jul 08, 2024
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Transamerica (2005) |
The entire tone of the film takes on a kind of patronizing view of Bree that is consistently frustrating at best and deeply offensive at worst. - trans|cendental cinema
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| Posted Jun 25, 2024
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Ghostlight (2024) |
Like the endearing troupe of amateur thespians at its heart, there's a sense of sincerity that's almost impossible not to love. - trans|cendental cinema
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| Posted Jun 20, 2024
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The Gods (1972) |
This is the Senegalese filmmaker's Lysistrata, a feminist screed whose magical realism points to the uselessness of clinging to tradition in the face of deadly subjugation. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Jun 18, 2024
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Xala (1975) |
In Xala, the powers that be in Senegal have lost sight of the revolutionary fervor felt in Emitaï , and through Sembène's acerbic lens, that once glittering promise becomes little more than a bitter joke. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Jun 18, 2024
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Ceddo (1977) |
Despite the heavy subject matter, Sembène's filmmaking is often playful, lampooning the inherent ridiculousness of the religious hypocrisies on display while taking bold formal swings. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Jun 18, 2024
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The First Omen (2024) |
A spooky air of gloom and dread hangs over the film, and Stevenson isn't afraid to explore the darkness at the heart of the concept - From the Front Row
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| Posted Jun 04, 2024
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In A Violent Nature (2024) |
It requires a certain amount of patience, but by upending the expected rhythms of the genre, the deliberate stillness of In a Violent Nature feels more intense than any slasher has in ages. - From the Front Row
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| Posted May 30, 2024
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Evil Does Not Exist (2023) |
A small and rapturous wonder that cements Hamaguchi as one of our most compelling contemporary filmmakers. - From the Front Row
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| Posted May 29, 2024
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Madame Web (2024) |
So shockingly inept that it's hard to believe its real. - From the Front Row
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| Posted May 23, 2024
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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024) |
It's not breaking any unique ground and its story follows a familiar hero's journey structure, but it's clear that great care was taken in crafting this world, the characters are strong, and the stakes feel grounded. - From the Front Row
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| Posted May 21, 2024
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I Saw the TV Glow (2024) |
At once troubled and hopeful, moody and inspiring; a howl of grief for those who haven't yet found themselves, and a deep, warm hug for those who saw the TV glow and successfully escaped into the embrace of the pink opaque. - trans|cendental cinema
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| Posted May 20, 2024
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In Our Day (2023) |
A wistful yet hopeful reverie of a filmmaker grappling with seeking truth in artifice, and through that lens the barebones style suddenly comes into sharp focus. Another stunner from a master of the craft. - From the Front Row
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| Posted May 20, 2024
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The Beekeeper (2024) |
It's no John Wick (or Atomic Blonde, for that matter), but it's a future basic cable staple that is as silly as it is satisfying. - From the Front Row
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| Posted May 08, 2024
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Unfrosted (2024) |
The kind of bad film that is so inoffensively bland that it doesn't even have the temerity to stick around in the mind as a memorable disaster. - From the Front Row
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| Posted May 06, 2024
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Challengers (2024) |
Set to a pulsing techno score by (Reznor) and (Ross), the film feels like it's in a constant state of motion, glances are lobbed between its characters like tennis balls being bandied about on a court. erotic tension vibrating throughout every frame. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Apr 30, 2024
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Pulgasari (1985) |
A fascinating curio; difficult to take seriously as a genuine piece of leftist agitprop, perhaps, yet designed to be palatable to audiences outside of North Korea as a would-be showcase for the country's nascent film industry. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Apr 26, 2024
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Late Night with the Devil (2023) |
The way it so indelibly ratchets up the suspense and the stakes is thrilling, and the film's slow burn build-up feels like an urban legend being born before our eyes. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Apr 25, 2024
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KOKOMO CITY (2023) |
One of the most vibrant and essential pieces of queer cinema in recent memory. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Apr 24, 2024
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Rustin (2023) |
A story worth telling, but it's very much one of those movies that mistakes an important message for compelling filmmaking. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Apr 24, 2024
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Dicks: The Musical (2023) |
Over the top, low rent, and goofy in all the right ways. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Apr 24, 2024
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Ishtar (1987) |
Plays its humor much more straight than the Hope/Crosby comedies, which may explain why it never connected with audiences, but it's that deadpan nature that really makes it work. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Apr 24, 2024
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The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) |
More interested in being a bloody creature feature, bulldozing the creepy sense of desolation and despair that permeates Stoker's prose. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Apr 24, 2024
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I Am Cuba (1964) |
One of the most extraordinary pieces of revolutionary propaganda ever produced, as vibrant and vital as anything the Soviets released during the silent era. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Apr 24, 2024
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Night Swim (2024) |
Night Swim's "what if The Shining but in a pool instead of a hotel" premise is too goofy to take seriously and too repetitive and bland to be frightening. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Apr 19, 2024
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Drive-Away Dolls (2024) |
While Drive-Away Dolls has a few recognizably Coen-esque ideas, they feel so half-hearted that it makes us long for the days of that old Coen brothers magic. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Apr 18, 2024
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Lisa Frankenstein (2024) |
A sly and subversive candy-colored fantasy that plays like the fevered romantic ramblings of a disaffected teenager's diary. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Apr 18, 2024
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Civil War (2024) |
Its tepid refusal to actually engage with any politics (even fictional ones) leaves it feeling toothless. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Apr 15, 2024
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Immaculate (2024) |
Its transparency about its own mysteries ultimately holds it back from being something really special, even if it does still have some gruesome surprises in store. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Apr 09, 2024
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Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024) |
Feels buried under the weight of its own mythology, at once over-explained and undercooked. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Mar 29, 2024
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Frida (2024) |
Gutierrez’s Frida is a lovely and often visually striking film, but it ultimately offers very little in the way of new or unique insight into one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. - In Review Online
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| Posted Mar 20, 2024
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Love Lies Bleeding (2024) |
A sweaty, sweltering, heady mix of queer eroticism, crime thriller, magical realism, and dark comedy that feels genuinely rebellious in a way films rarely do. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Mar 20, 2024
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American Fiction (2023) |
A delicious send-up of the search for truth in a post-truth world, where comforting lies and yes, white fragility, often prevent us from seeing the world for what it really is. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Jan 12, 2024
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Society of the Snow (2023) |
Manages to make the unthinkable feel tangible and the horrific feel personal, taking a true life tale of disaster and treating it as both triumph and tragedy. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Jan 11, 2024
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Good Grief (2023) |
If the goal of Good Grief was to be the kind of forgettable rom-com you cuddle up and watch by a crackling fire, then it's halfway there.. but its attempts to wrestle with heavy topics... often fall flat. - In Review Online
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| Posted Jan 09, 2024
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Torn Curtain (1966) |
Coming on the heels of Marnie, ostensibly a film about Hitchcock's own desire to possess and ravage Tippi Hedren, (it) feels especially toothless, as if (he) was somehow exhausted from the film that might have (been) his ultimate cinematic exorcism. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Jan 02, 2024
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About Dry Grasses (2023) |
Ceylan's novelistic sensibilities create something singular here...troubling and beautiful and heartbreaking and endlessly fascinating. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Jan 02, 2024
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All of Us Strangers (2023) |
Haigh navigates extremely tricky and often incredibly heavy topics with grace, his piercing screenplay speaking deeply to ideas of queer disaffection and longing for human connection. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Jan 02, 2024
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R.M.N. (2022) |
Has a dry sense of humor that turns this dark tale into a kind of cautionary satire, an incisive mockery of small town politics and nationalist fervor. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Jan 02, 2024
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Maestro (2023) |
Credit where credit is due - this isn't just a "portrait of a great man" story of tortured genius, but its failure to really pick a lane leaves it feeling oddly incomplete. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Dec 23, 2023
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Leave the World Behind (2023) |
If this is the kind of streaming "content" we'd lose in an internet destroying apocalypse, maybe we'd be better off. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Dec 20, 2023
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Home Alone (1990) |
This film truly captures something enduring about what it's like to be a kid, and it continues to speak to that child in all of us. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Dec 14, 2023
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Poor Things (2023) |
It's hard not to admire the craft and skill involved in bringing this delightfully demented tale to life. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Dec 13, 2023
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The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023) |
The fun performances by a game cast can't make up for poor pacing and a bloated runtime that feels wholly unearned. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Dec 11, 2023
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The Zone of Interest (2023) |
The way in which Glazer displays just how normal this all was is an unnerving reminder of human capacity for both committing atrocities, and ignoring them. - From the Front Row
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| Posted Dec 11, 2023
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