Chris Pratt

News, Reviews & Features
  • Marvel's Cine-CHAT-ic Universe: Guardians Of The Galaxy (2014)

    Movie Feature | Ali Gray, Matt Looker, Becky Suter, Ed Williamson, Luke Whiston | 28th March 2019

    It's the regular feature you assumed had been quietly abandoned - but we've got nothing else going on right now! We're back with another scintillating edition of Marvel's Cine-CHATIC Universe: this week/month/quarter, we're talking about James Gunn's Guardians Of The Galaxy, but also, very much other things too.

  • Review: The Lego Movie 2 plays nicely but has no new surprises

    Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 10th February 2019

    My nephews were younger when the first Lego Movie came out. I mean, everyone was. But in 2014 they were five years younger; a lifetime when you're under ten. The elder one loved it; the younger probably not quite at the age where he could be relied on to sit through anything for more than ten minutes without chewing his shoes. They'll love this too, because they're still under ten and they're idiots, despite the older one being quite capable of comprehensively schooling me about dinosaurs. Me, I think maybe the magic has faded a bit.

  • Analysing the cast signatures on that Guardians Of The Galaxy support letter

    Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 31st July 2018

    Touching scenes online this week, as the cast members of Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy series banded together in a show of support for fired director James Gunn, by co-signing a letter that almost but not quite called for his reinstatement. Gunn, a former Troma filmmaker and purveyor of questionable humour, was fired by Disney after a bunch of right-wing lunatics, led by lisping dong Mike Cernovich, dredged up a bunch of offensive ten year-old tweets and weaponised their fake outrage in order to punish the director for his outspoken liberal views. It’s all very 2018, but let’s focus on the real issue here: MOVIE STAR SIGNATURES!

  • Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

    Movie Review | Ali Gray | 10th June 2018

    I am a Jurassic Park sequel apologist. I am a Jurassic sequapologist. There’s no shame in loving the original movie, obviously, and I maintain that Jurassic World was an unapologetic, fan-pleasing blockbuster that wanted to reach even farther than Michael Crichton’s visionary thinking. But the sequels? I am at war with myself. The Lost World sort of has some good bits? The birdcage bit in Jurassic Park III was cool, I guess? Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, sadly, is a different beast entirely: it is the first Jurassic movie I haven’t enjoyed unreservedly from the get-go. With the other duffers I’d eventually pick up on the flaws after multiple rewatches - this is the only Jurassic Park movie I’ll have to learn to love.

  • Avengers: Infinity War

    Movie Review | Matt Looker | 25th April 2018

    In every way that matters – and it matters in every way – Avengers: Infinity War is basically the biggest movie ever. Ten years in the making, producing some of the highest grossing films on record and some of the most recognisable characters and franchises in the world, it’s astonishing that this climactic crossover event combining all of them in one big-screen adventure is even possible. What’s more astonishing is that it somehow meets every single impossible expectation you have for it.

  • Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2

    Movie Review | Matt Looker | 1st May 2017

    While fans continue to squabble over the correct, surely-soon-to-be-official 'Ultimate Ranking of MCU films' (nearly there, guys! Seriously, you're doing great work), it's easy to overlook the fact that, at this stage, the Marvel movie-making model looks unlikely to ever produce a truly bad film. Sure, there have been Dark Elvish messes and Mickey Rourke-sized hiccups, but Marvel really has its mathematically-safe, formulaic shit together now and, as a result, always delivers an agreeable level of fun and action albeit without taking any real risks. That is, except for Guardians Of The Galaxy, the only property in the Universe that still feels like a gamble, sitting apart from the homogenised Avenger adventures to follow its own completely different set of rules. Which is why it's a shame that this sequel follows them too.

  • Passengers

    Movie Review | Ali Gray | 19th December 2016

    Passengers is a sci-fi with an easily adaptable premise: what if, on the 120-year journey through space to colonise another planet, you were the only person on your spaceship to wake up? You can imagine dozens of versions of this movie. The Werner Herzog version is slow and considered and intimate and depressing and everyone dies. The Michael Bay version is huge and costs a billion dollars and has bikini models in zero gravity and it turns out the spaceship is evil. Nestling uncomfortably in the halfway point between the two is Morten Tyldum's Passengers, a shiny spin on Jon Spaihts' screenplay that can't decide if it's a blockbuster or a character piece and ends up being neither.

  • The Magnificent Seven

    Movie Review | Ali Gray | 14th September 2016

    If you find yourself staring at the marketing for Sony's The Magnificent Seven thinking 'Who is this for?', then you're not alone: I've just seen it and I still don't know. It is an odd choice for such a straight-laced remake, particularly in the current age of the gender swap but PARTICULARLY because the Seven Samurai trope is the most well-worn story in cinematic history, having been remodelled in various forms over the years. We've enjoyed it in ronin form, as a western, told via science-fiction, remade as comedy and even reinvented with animated insects. They say each new generation deserves their own version of all the classic stories, and I daresay the 2016 adaptation of Magnificent 7 is the version this generation deserves: polished but still remarkably unremarkable.

  • Shock: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 made by same people as Vol. 1

    Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 17th February 2016

    Is all this really necessary? Next you'll be telling me Star Wars: Episode VIII features some of the characters from Star Wars: Episode VII. Some but not all. Too soon? Too soon.

  • Film starring Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence somehow gets greenlight

    Movie Feature | Matt Looker | 17th June 2015

    Sometimes I just don't understand Hollywood.