Giovanni Ribisi

News, Reviews & Features
  • Gangster Squad

    Movie Review | Matt | 10th January 2013

    It turns out that I have a small issue with a lot of gangster films, which I didn't realise until watching Gangster Squad. For all their sharp-suited, Tommy gun-wielding adventures, most feel the need to bring home the heavy-hitting drama underlying it all. Of course, there's no problem with this, but it seems to me that Hollywood has spent so long trying to tell us the real story behind some of history's most infamous outlaws, that it seems to have forgotten how to tell us the fake, fun, irresponsible version. This is where Gangster Squad chimes in; a film so gloriously cartoony at times that it feels ripped from the frames and pages of a graphic novel. Even though it is actually um... based on true events.

  • Ted

    Movie Review | Ali | 2nd August 2012

    I have a love/hate relationship with Family Guy, and Seth McFarlane by association. Nothing about it is particularly clever or witty or considered – in fact, the laziness and sloppiness of the writing is often shockingly cavalier; stale pop culture punchlines and routines straight from the 'We can't be bothered to finish this joke, so that's the joke' school of comedy. Yet in spite of myself, almost by accident, I still find myself laughing at it from time to time – usually when I'm shattered at the end of the day and lapsing into sleep. It's hardly a glowing endorsement, but the occasional LOL does elevate Family Guy above 'no way and no how' programming like Two And A Half Men.

  • Lost In Translation

    Movie Review | Ali | 2nd January 2005

    The follow-up to 1999's The Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation is a story about despondency, a story about being adrift, about looking for your place in the grand scheme of things and not being able to find it. It's certainly an easy subject to identify with, and if there's any justice, then Lost in Translatio...