Joe Dante’s Matinee

The Skinny are super excited to be screening underrated gem Matinee, Joe Dante's comedy that celebrates art over war, movies over Armageddon. Released in 1993, the film turns 30 this year but it feels fresher than ever and remains the closest thing the Gremlins director has to a lost masterpiece.

The setting is Key West, Florida, 1962. Our protagonist, Gene, has two things on his mind: girls, and the arrival of low-rent filmmaker Laurence Woolsey (played with warmth and wit by John Goodman), who’s premiering his new monster movie, Mant, in town… Well, actually, Gene and his friends have one other minor worry: the Cuban Missile Crisis and the real possibility of total nuclear annihilation.

This is Joe Dante’s celebration of the trashy, low-budget B-movie he grew up on. John Goodman is fantastic as the schlock-horror director and the Cuban Missile Crisis backdrop lets Dante weave in a potent anti-war message, as he does in other slyly satirical films like in kids' flick Small Soldiers and his zombie horror Homecoming.