Netflix releases new movie Tau featuring Gary Oldman - and the first reviews are not good
Also starring Maika Monroe and Ed Skrein
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Your support makes all the difference.How do you follow up a career-defining, Best Actor Oscar-winning performance? You make a Netflix movie, of course!
Gary Oldman’s latest project, the first since winning the aforementioned prize for Darkest Hour, has been quietly released onto the streaming service today.
Directed by Federico D’Alessandro (best known for storyboarding Avengers and leading the art department on Doctor Strange), Tau stars It Follows breakout Maika Monroe, Deadpool’s Ed Skrein, and Oldman as the voice of a futuristic ‘smart’ house. (The plot, coincidently, sounds remarkably like a famous episode of The Simpsons, itself a spoof of 2001: A Space Odyssey.)
Despite the obvious talent on screen and behind the camera, the horror - which borrows heavily from Black Mirror - has been released to little fanfare from Netflix, with very minimal promotion before release.
Perhaps that’s because of the movie’s quality. The Guardian have offered a first review, giving just one star and writing of Oldman’s performance: “Not since Patrick Stewart voiced a literal pile of feces in The Emoji Movie has an actor so thoroughly embarrassed themselves without appearing onscreen.”
The Hollywood Reporter offered a slightly more positive review, calling Tau “a stylish B-movie” but concluding that the story never delves below a surface level of haunted house horror: ”Little if anything in the picture speaks to the actual crises in humanity’s developing relationship with computers. For that, one can go to Black Mirror.”
Another reason Netflix may have been coy about promoting this Oldman flick: season two of GLOW has just been released, receiving wildly positive reviews across the board. If you’re not taken by the World Cup, we recommend giving the Alison Brie-led show a go.
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