Mcg

News, Reviews & Features
  • Review: The Babysitter: Killer Queen is a sequel that's stuck in the past

    Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 27th September 2020

    I wasn't going to review The Babysitter: Killer Queen because it is a horribly bad film. But then I remembered that the world is in this sorry state because people aren't doing much to help each other out right now, and the film contains a good reason to do just that, even though it wasn't the intention of the filmmakers. So please consider this a PSA.

  • Review: Birds Of Prey is the fantabulous desperation of one Harley Quinn

    Movie Review | Matt Looker | 17th February 2020

    There’s no denying that the Joker is a truly iconic figure. Whether it’s Joaquin Phoenix’s fragile psychopath, Heath Ledger’s cruel anarchist or Cesar Romero’s painted moustache, the character of the Joker is an indelible legend of pop culture. But you wouldn’t want to hang out with him, would you? Imagine all the whoopee cushions and hand buzzers and all that endless itching powder. He’s just a terrible try-hard, isn’t he? So it’s probably apt that this film, which is primarily focused on his sudden absence from Harley Quinn’s life, tries to fill his void by being just as eager to entertain. It’s packed with colourful chaos, wacky narrative devices and fun, so much fun. But just like the Joker’s constant giggling, it also feels a little bit forced. Why so weary-ous, Harley Quinn?

  • Review: Doctor Sleep feels like a lot of work for very little play

    Movie Review | Matt Looker | 11th November 2019

    There’s a lot to be said about the context surrounding Doctor Sleep. About the impossibly high benchmark set by The Shining, about the challenge of reconciling Stephen King’s vision and Stanley Kubrick’s execution, and about choosing which source material to honour most. But honestly, ignoring all of that for now, my biggest takeaway from this film is... fuck, it spends a lot of time driving in a car. Every pre-set-piece scene is spent hauling across road for hours and every post-sequence respite is spent hauling back again, usually at night-time, usually while someone is asleep in the passenger seat. I have spent more time in cars while watching this film than I have on actual road trips. It seems Danny Torrance simply swapped one purgatory for another. Come drive with him. Forever... and ever... and ever...

  • Review: Rim of the World walks a fine line between stupid and clever

    Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 18th June 2019

    McG's (ugh) Netflix Original (UGH) Rim of the World (UGHHHH) is a sexist, misogynistic, inexplicably racist low-hanging-fruit-picking embarrassment that by rights should be shot into the sun and every trace of its existence burnt to ashes, and the people responsible sterilised so they don't accidentally send their kids to Hollywood film school and make another one like it. That would be if the sexism, misogynism and racism wasn't being delivered by 13-year-old children. Which I'm afraid in the arena of bad taste qualifies this for some sort of filmic equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

  • Review: Christopher Robin is a stark reminder that adulthood sucks ass

    Movie Review | Ali Gray | 14th August 2018

    If you hadn’t realised it from the twee, plinky-plonky marketing, Christopher Robin is a movie aimed more at large adult sons than it is small children - the kind of film that insists the key to happiness and the secret to being a better man, husband and father, is to be more childlike. That’s kind of Disney’s whole thing right now; the studio seems intent on arresting the development of adults around the world with superhero universes and space sagas and glitter-flecked versions of the movies they loved as children. But hey, if there’s any character that’s going to cut through corporate cynicism, it’s Winnie the Pooh, a bear after my own heart, living my trouserless dream, who is so loveable he could tell me he just disembowelled and stuffed the other residents of the Hundred Acre Wood and I’d still let him bumble around my house, stuffing his adorable face with £13-a-jar Manuka.

  • Miles Ahead

    Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 14th April 2016

    Miles Ahead is obviously an awful punning title for a Miles Davis biopic, like "The Biggie They Are, The Harder They Smalls" or something. Or so I thought until someone told me it was the name of one of his albums, which reveals how much I know about jazz and how much Miles Davis knew about good puns.

  • Ride Along

    Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 26th February 2014

    So who is Ice Cube? He's a rapper, actor, macker, got a little problem with the redneck cracker. Though I'm having to take 'macker' on trust as I'm not entirely sure what it means, he certainly wears the first two hats. He's recorded three of the greatest hip-hop albums ever made, with whose uncompromising ghetto reportage I was able to identify closely growing up in Devon, and he can properly bloody act. Now he's produced and co-starred in buddy comedy Ride Along, which is a stone-cold smash US hit, and it's comin' to YO' hood. (That's the last time I'll try to talk street, I promise.)

  • NEVER MIND YOUR FUCKING BOX OFFICE I'M FUCKING DROWNING

    Movie Feature | Ali | 30th March 2013

    Seriously TeleCinco, you couldn't have used this picture instead?

  • Jack The Giant Slayer

    Movie Review | Rob | 22nd March 2013

    Having grown up in a small, middle-class Conservative-voting Cambridgeshire village, I’ve seen enough poorly-acted productions of Jack and The Beanstalk to know when something isn’t quite right. And "Fe-fi-fo-fum, ask not whence the thunder comes" isn't quite right.

  • Belated review of The Impossible by my builder

    Movie Feature | Matt | 16th January 2013

    This is what happens when we don't receive a friendly invite from a PR company to attend a free, early press screening of a film with free tasty nibbles and free alcohol. Disgraceful oversight on someone's part. Don't they know who we are? Actually, they probably don't.