Love. Laugh. Shriek. Cry. Make every second count. Most of all, live. The life lessons Dante was imparting 30 years ago are as vital now as they ever were then, making Matinee a modern classic ripe for rediscovery.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 24, 2023

"Matinee" is a fun time. But when you couple such a resolutely uncommercial idea with a filmmaker whose résumé illustrated clear disinterest in compromising his idiosyncratic paranoia, you might wish the film leaned a little harder into its nuclear wind.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 30, 2023

Throughout Matinee, director Dante delivers this retro 60s world in a thoroughly entertaining, brisk 99 minutes.

| Jan 19, 2023

John Goodman is delightful in this sweetly amusing '60s-era comedy... Despite some incoherence in the plot, the film is genuinely charming and generous with its humor.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 11, 2023

When Woolsey loses himself in one of his many speeches about the power of movies, the importance of escape, and the joy it brings him to realize these notions for his audience, we sense this is exactly how Dante feels, and that joy is instantly catching.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 21, 2022

The glory of Dante’s comedy in this movie and others–as aided and abetted by his usual production team, producer Michael Finnell, cinematographer John Hora, and screenwriter Charlie Haas–is that it suggests poetic parallels without insisting on them.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 2, 2022

One of director Joe Dante's finest achievements.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 18, 2021

Executed without passion, with faulty pacing, and predicaments that are too dull even for a family-friendly movie.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Sep 14, 2020

A tremendously sympathetic film capable of transcending the mere character of entertainment to become the most emblematic celluloid example of Joe Dante's work. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Jul 31, 2019

Matinee is such an earnest film lacking in cynicism about the gimmickry of old that its warmth is infectious.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 30, 2018

[Dante's] delirium is both hilariously absurd and terrifyingly convincing.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Aug 3, 2018

Released in 1993, Matinee - a loving tribute to the z-grade, drive-in monster pics of the '50s and '60s, as viewed nostalgically through the eyes of children - isn't the sort of film you'd see come out of a major studio that often.

| Mar 6, 2018

Something of a forgotten gem, 1993's Matinee sits between Gremlins and Toy Soldiers in director Joe Dante's oeuvre.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 16, 2017

This celebration of art over war is the closest thing Gremlins director Joe Dante has to a lost masterpiece.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 5, 2016

A wonderful message about the power of the horror director, and what treasures they can bestow on their audiences.

| Oct 14, 2013

| Original Score: B+ | Sep 7, 2011

Uproarious comedy that film buffs should love.

| Original Score: A- | Oct 6, 2009

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 18, 2007

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 7, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 14, 2005