Sign in

iiinova is part of the Atmosphere — an open, public network where you own your identity.

Matt Cipolla

@cipollamatt.bsky.social
876 followers 233 following 1.2K posts

Was a film critic for seven-ish years (Bright Wall/Dark Room, The Spool, Ebert Voices, The Film Stage, so on). Now I guess I’m just critical. Tail-end millennial trash. Music, motorcycles, etc. #MeToo Mostly on Instagram @Cipolla.Matt cipollam926@gmail

PostsRepliesMedia
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 17/10/2026
What does an Icelandic dog say Björk
000 0
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Truly insane double feature last night. Only at @musicboxtheatre.bsky.social!
My left hand holding two receipt paper tickets for the Music Box Theatre in Chicago. The left one is for the 4K restoration of Gregg Araki’s MYSTERIOUS SKIN at 9:15 pm in Theater 3 and has two horizontal creases from having been folded in my wallet. The right one is for Liam Lynch’s TENACIOUS D IN THE PICK OF DESTINY on 35mm in the main theater at 11:45 pm. Both are dated for 9/11/26 and have QR codes on the bottom half. The title on the TENACIOUS D ticket is cut off and says “Tenacious D in the P.”
0111 11
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
I kinda wish I read this alongside Y2K: HOW THE 2000S BECAME EVERYTHING by Colette Shade (which you should also read!), as they do pair quite well together.
000 0
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
- How the more protracted an event’s news cycle becomes, the more hypotheses viewers come to, which forever alters our cultural memory for the worse (e.g. Waco, O.J., Columbine) - Bill Clinton as the root of neoliberal hell, but specifically a hyper-mediated neoliberal hell - The 2000 election
100 1
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Some favorite sections: - Semantics, concepts vs. words, Ebonics, ‘90s queer vernacular, and how public perceptions of lyrics shift depending on genre - The evolution of tech/internet - How accessible entertainment reaches greater success in a centrist, passive culture (e.g. FRIENDS, Garth Brooks)
100 1
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
detail alongside a conversational tone, which matches the shifts between politics and pop culture. Following each chapter with a brief complementary essay doesn’t always work, but the broad chronological structure from 1989 to 2001 allows for the book to remain varied in tone and content throughout.
100 1
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Just finished THE NINETIES by Chuck Klosterman after reading FOOTBALL two weeks ago, and it’s fantastic (of course)! Not quite on the rhetorical level of FOOTBALL (which makes sense since he wrote that four years later), but continuously readable in his mix of academic prose and attention to (cont.)
100 1
Reposted by Matt Cipolla
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
I truly love WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR and I SAW THE TV GLOW. TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA has to be the biggest disappointment in years, holy shit. boxd.it/fULXnr
boxd.it
A ★★ review of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026)
This has to be the biggest disappointment in years. I love We're All Going to the World's Fair and think it's one of the best films of the 2020s. I Saw the TV Glow gave me four emotional breakdowns ov...
011 1
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
I truly love WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR and I SAW THE TV GLOW. TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA has to be the biggest disappointment in years, holy shit. boxd.it/fULXnr
boxd.it
A ★★ review of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026)
This has to be the biggest disappointment in years. I love We're All Going to the World's Fair and think it's one of the best films of the 2020s. I Saw the TV Glow gave me four emotional breakdowns ov...
011 1
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Some of the best, funniest silently-pissed-off face acting here. I think about this scene soooo much.
141 4
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
At a loss for words regarding Hayden Panettiere’s passing. Her work in SCREAM 4 was so important to me in high school and still is to this day: an all-timer horror performance in which her sarcasm was her greatest sincerity. She kept her comedic edge as her most straightforward asset.
160 6
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Is Verizon cell service incredibly spotty or just downright not working for anyone else?
000 0
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
I’m deeply thankful for this sort of writing, and I’m also deeply sorry for everyone who’s about to experience my making Klosterman’s work my personality for the next two months or so.
010 1
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
There’s a self-awareness here that avoids ever fully committing anything to the past, despite acknowledging that the sport and the country it embodies *does* exist in the past.
100 1
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
culture—whether good, bad, or neutral—as if they’re perched against the edge of extinction despite remaining alive in the aficionado’s mind. He steps in and out of the solipsistic boundaries such thought processes entail and is deft at it too.
100 1
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
The penultimate chapter predicting how football will recede and go the way of horse racing within the next few decades somehow made me cry. I imagine anyone with a passion related to Americana would be taken with his writing in that sense here, as he dissects facets and extensions of (cont.)
110 1
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
As an examination of American culture, it’s truly special, its conversational style and ontological argumentative structures as compulsively readable as they are gently self-effacing, and honestly kind of hilarious.
110 1
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Just finished Chuck Klosterman’s FOOTBALL, a copy of which I happened to acquire at work at the beginning of this year. I absolutely adored it, and I wonder if my ambivalence (and former antipathy) toward the sport actually enhanced my love for the book.
110 1
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Got around to THE ODYSSEY before its 70mm run ended. Honestly, so much was just in one ear and out the other. A series of handsomely mounted distractions with no staying power, and more critically, no sense of interiority. Jennifer Lame’s editing also needs to take a chill pill. boxd.it/fMIDqd
boxd.it
A ★★½ review of The Odyssey (2026)
In one ear and out the other, the product of a man whose camera can only passively reflect rather than refract. There's no interiority here, which is a problem for any film, especially one ostensibly ...
010 1
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Well, I WANT YOUR SEX is in competition for my least favorite Gregg Araki movie, but it’s a high bar. It feels like diet KABOOM, and also the first time an Araki film felt like it had studio notes or something. Great cast and I had fun for stretches, but this script is a mess. boxd.it/fEEQIT
boxd.it
A ★★★ review of I Want Your Sex (2026)
This review may contain spoilers. Visit the page to bypass this warning and read the review.
040 4
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Listened to MUSIC, FASHION, FILM last night. Between BRAT and this, I’m really taken with how Charli XCX structures her albums to unpack identity as an internal pendulum that, against all odds, remains tangible through outward experience itself, and the dissonance that stems from that.
020 2
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
It turns out that the real devil’s lettuce… … was Taylor Farms
011 1
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Just saw the 4K restoration of SHERMAN’S MARCH. Essentially a perfect American movie and a virtually flawless examination of the Western male psyche. boxd.it/fkF7jV
boxd.it
A ★★★★★ review of Sherman's March (1985)
About as ephemeral an experience can be. So perfectly perched against the concept of finality without seeming to ever end, and only for the better. There’s just something so effusively American to McE...
0122 12
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Whoa, just found out that if you let “Freak on a Leash” play directly into “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly),” the transition from song to song is kind of perfect.
000 0
Reposted by Matt Cipolla
Chris Steller @chrissteller.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Someone just sent me this photo from Chicago, unbelieveable
Album cover photo of the Marina apartments in Chicago for Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot CD
35183671143 8.4K
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
I haven’t been outside since I walked nine seconds from inside an Uber into a building like eight hours ago and I feel like my esophagus is burning with some demon hell spawn stuck in my chest. Honestly, do not go outside *at all* unless you literally have to.
000 0
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
I was thinking of the episode where Tiffany-in-Jennifer-Tilly’s-body hosts a party with Gina Gershon, Joe Pantoliano, and Meg Tilly. It’s fun because it’s about Tiffany’s pretense, deconstructing Tilly’s image, and conflating her career trajectory with the character’s personal life. *That* is smart!
000 0
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
I’ve been doing a full CHILD’S PLAY rewatch over the last week and a half and watching the CHUCKY show, and man, that series really shows itself as one of the most elastic, modern ways of having celebrities play themselves and against their appearances. It really has to be about performance to work.
110 1
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Saw GAIL DAUGHTRY AND THE CELEBRITY SEX PASS, which has some truly silly gags and solid cackles! But oh my God, did the “hey look it’s a celebrity you recognize and that’s meant to be the joke now laugh” of it all start to irritate me by the end. boxd.it/fg1lmj
boxd.it
A ★★★ review of Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass (2026)
Funny and silly and gag-on-gag in a cackle-at-best, amusing-at-worst way even if it's never quite what I'd call memorable, but that's okay. It's fun and it's refreshing to have fun, and everyone's ver...
110 1
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Wrigley Field is the most data center-coded building in the Chicago area that isn’t actually a data center
010 1
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Revisited LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE for the first time since high school and holy hell is this screenplay so much messier than I remembered. boxd.it/eW5bnT
boxd.it
A ★★½ review of Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
The guy in front of me was talking before the movie about Guster, and I was just like, Shit, it really does feel like 2006 right now. I hadn't seen this since high school, and I liked it then, but I d...
010 1
Reposted by Matt Cipolla
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
We’re also showing a 35mm print of Gus Van Sant’s LAST DAYS on Saturday, June 13 at 7:15 pm. Another favorite of mine, and I wrote a few quick words on why you should see it: www.musicboxtheatre.com/films-and-ev...
musicboxtheatre.com
021 2
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
We’re also showing a 35mm print of Gus Van Sant’s LAST DAYS on Saturday, June 13 at 7:15 pm. Another favorite of mine, and I wrote a few quick words on why you should see it: www.musicboxtheatre.com/films-and-ev...
musicboxtheatre.com
021 2
Reposted by Matt Cipolla
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
For the opening night of Bleak Week at @musicboxtheatre.bsky.social, l’ll be introducing Gregg Araki's MYSTERIOUS SKIN in a new 4K restoration this Friday, June 12 at 6:45 pm. Truly one of my favorite films of the 21st century. www.musicboxtheatre.com/films-and-ev...
musicboxtheatre.com
162 6
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
For the opening night of Bleak Week at @musicboxtheatre.bsky.social, l’ll be introducing Gregg Araki's MYSTERIOUS SKIN in a new 4K restoration this Friday, June 12 at 6:45 pm. Truly one of my favorite films of the 21st century. www.musicboxtheatre.com/films-and-ev...
musicboxtheatre.com
162 6
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Somehow spent a bunch of my day rewatching SCARY MOVIE and SCARY MOVIE 2 before watching 3 and 4 for the first time. How did they misspell Lil Jon’s name in the credits of 4? Damn, this one really sucked.
The screen of my MacBook Pro playing the end credits of David Zucker’s SCARY MOVIE 4 (2006), showing a black screen with the following in centered white text:

CHINGY
FABOLOUS
LIL JOHN
010 1
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Also, between the amount of (re)writing I had to get done and the copious migraines I’ve been suffering over the last few weeks, I don’t really have the time lol
000 0
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
30 days without a drop of alcohol. Would I say I’m fully Sober™ from alcohol from good? No, to be honest. I’m sure I’ll drink again and I believe that’s fine for me. But this impromptu break is nice, and honestly, I don’t really miss it that much.
A picture I took of myself in my bathroom mirror, shower curtain visible behind me. I’m wearing a dark blue t-shirt with the Triumph Motorcycles logo on it, which is tucked into blue jeans with a black leather belt, which has a black leather key hanger holding my keys over my left hip. The logo on the shirt is partially obscured by my right arm and hand holding my iPhone. I’m also wearing a red baseball hat that has the red, white, and blue Harley-Davidson #1 logo on it and a black bill, as well as my eyeglasses. My left thumb is tucked into the left pocket of my jeans with the rest of my hand hanging out. I’m looking up and into the mirror at myself. My full beard and mustache also looks quite good, if I do say so myself.
130 3
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Sometimes I just think about 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU and still can’t believe that Letters to Cleo is stuck on top of that building for the rest of time
020 2
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
Also, you know what did this concept way better and in a way more disturbing way, while also working as a commentary on the manic pixie dream girl? RUBY SPARKS, and that was 14 years ago.
000 0
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
Saw OBSESSION, which I found to be about as cowardly as its protagonist, its violence with zero impact and its attempts at cringe comedy too broadly pitched to ever be uncomfortable. But most importantly, this thing looks *atrocious*—so under-lit, so grey, so washed out, so boring. boxd.it/ev7rfH
boxd.it
A ★★ review of Obsession (2025)
This review may contain spoilers. Visit the page to bypass this warning and read the review.
110 1
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
I don’t think I’ve revisited this in eight or nine years, but what I wasn’t expecting was for parts of it to affect me in a way that oddly reminded me of TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN of all things—a languid, digital, lightly saturated series of isolated stories that feel like an existential nightmare.
000 0
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
Rewatched WIENER-DOG on a whim after having a weird, amorphous dream about Todd Solondz films last night. I watched this several times shortly after it came out 10 years ago and it’s just about as punishing as I remembered. Terrific stuff, but truly sad, and now I have to get out of this headspace.
100 1
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Honestly, this script gets worse the more I think about it. Why are all the characters so stupid? *No one* really tells people about this shit, even Alana Haim’s character, who’s especially livid at this reveal? ???¿!!¡?¿/?!!
010 1
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Finally saw THE DRAMA. … That was it? boxd.it/elReZJ
boxd.it
A ★★½ review of The Drama (2026)
That was it? As this script exists, there's a good one-hour movie here. The other 45 minutes are just milking a premise without doing enough with it. Here's a great setup, two perfectly cast leads, an...
110 1
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
I can’t be the only one who feels like the weather has been insanely up-and-down this spring, right?
000 0
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Nothing like having to lie on your bed in the dark with a dehumidifier and an air purifier blasting while listening to “My Girls” by Animal Collective on repeat because this unusually inconsistent weather has been triggering migraines on a weekly basis
110 1
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Saw ERUPCJA earlier tonight. Pleasantly surprised by its ability to be both succinct and intuitive, matching its narrative devices to the emotional dynamics at play. Not revelatory, but something that did make me quite sad at points. Curious to see more of Charli XCX as an actor. boxd.it/eaBf9N
boxd.it
A ★★★★ review of Erupcja (2025)
This really made me quite sad at points. I'm almost always in favor of a movie where characters don't have clear-cut arcs or really grow, but Erupcja strikes a fascinating balance in that it feels bot...
010 1
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
Baz Luhrmann’s KHMER ROUGE! Is this anything
062 6
Matt Cipolla @cipollamatt.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
Happy 15th to Wes Craven’s swan song; perhaps the most fun theatrical experience I’ve ever had; and one of the most prescient films of the 21st century, whether horror or not.
Two light blue ticket stubs for Wes Craven’s SCREAM 4 (2011) in a ticket stub booklet, both from the Emagine Novi movie theater in Novi, Michigan in auditorium #10. The first is for the film’s opening night of Friday, April 15, 2011 at 8:20 pm. It cost $7.50. The second is for Saturday, April 16, 2011 at 5:50 pm and cost $5.00.
000 0