‘The End of Oak Street’
Directed by David Robert Mitchell (PG-13)
★★★
“I can’t fathom how The End of Oak Street actually exists,” said Alison Willmore in NYMag.com. The movie is, after all, “a perfect example of what the big studios should be doing right now: making original spectacles, ideally ones in which Anne Hathaway fires a rifle at a velociraptor.” Hathaway plays a suburban mom whose neighborhood is suddenly and mysteriously transported from 1982 to prehistoric times, putting family and neighbors at the mercy of hungry dinosaurs. The movie marks the big-budget debut of It Follows director David Robert Mitchell, and “the glee he takes in the carnage he inflicts on this stretch of suburbia is infectious.”
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Mitchell “doesn’t have any loftier ambitions for The End of Oak Street than spinning a tale of familial bonding through dino fighting,” said Keith Phipps in The Reveal. “That’s mostly OK,” especially because the four actors playing the Platts, including Ewan McGregor as the dad, “establish a believable family dynamic” as they overcome dysfunction to pursue survival. But given the rote marital woes and shortage of thrilling set pieces, Oak Street turns out to be “one of those movies that’s good enough to make it hard not to wish it was just a little better.” Whatever its flaws, it’s “easily the best homage-slash-ripoff of a Spielberg movie in ages,” said David Fear in Rolling Stone. Unsurprisingly, “Hathaway is the linchpin, pirouetting from exasperation to affection to hysteria to steeliness in a way that would inspire a fist bump from The Odyssey’s Penelope.” The Oscar winner is “in a serious groove right now.” We and Mitchell are lucky to have her.
‘The Rivals of Amziah King’
Directed by Andrew Patterson (R)
★★★
Matthew McConaughey has appeared in only two movies since 2019, and you can see why the 56-year-old star signed on for this one, said Owen Gleiberman in Variety. The role of a gregarious, bluegrass-playing beekeeper “fits his scraggly aging-bad-boy redneck charm like a glove”; at the same time, the film itself is “different from anything he’s ever done,” although different “in ways both good and not as good,” with a second half that betrays the promise of the first. The movie “intentionally never settles on one particular tone,” said Ryan Lattanzio in IndieWire. As McConaughey’s Amziah King is pulled into the investigation of a honey heist and reconnects with a young Choctaw woman who once was his foster child, director Andrew Patterson “cross-pollinates a bluegrass musical, a beekeeping drama, a Native American Western, and a winding Mark Twain journey up a river.”
The daughter figure, played by newcomer Angelina LookingGlass, assumes lead duties once the title character falls. “There’s too much movie,” in short, “but isn’t that better than none at all?” It helps that Kurt Russell plays the villainous businessman who instigates the mid-story shift, said Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. Even so, this picture belongs to its headliner, who delivers “a performance so great it looms over everything—and serves as a reminder that when he’s really cooking, McConaughey is much more than just alright.”
