Matinee

Matinee (1993) is a comedy-drama directed by Joe Dante — watch it online on iFILM. October 1962: a military kid named Gene is living on a naval base in Key West when every radio in the house starts broadcasting news about missiles ninety miles away. That same week, showman Lawrence Woolsey rolls into town — played by John Goodman at full, glorious volume — with a rubber-suited monster movie and a bag of theater gimmicks.

Dante runs two stories at once. The adults are genuinely scared. The teenagers are busy falling in love, sneaking into screenings, and arguing with parents who won't explain what's actually happening. Woolsey sells fake terror while real dread hangs over the whole town, and the film keeps those two things in deliberately uncomfortable proximity.

Kathy Moriarty is pitch-perfect as Woolsey's sharp-tongued partner. Together they make the movie-within-the-movie sequences feel like a loving, slightly self-aware tribute to 1950s B-pictures. Dante never prettifies that October — the fear underneath the gags is real — and that restraint is what makes Matinee more than nostalgia. Stream Matinee (1993) online on iFILM.