Robert De Niro

Review: The Irishman is a slow burn deconstruction of mafioso mythos

Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 14th December 2019

I wonder if I'll live to be old, and if so, what secrets will I have accumulated by then? I don't mean secrets like things I ate that weren't mine; more like the sort of intimate knowledge that could change the course of history, sunk so deep it weighs down the soul of even the hardest immoral criminals. I guess that's why Martin Scorsese chose to make a three-and-a-half hour film about violent mob assassins involved in some of the most shocking conspiracies the world has ever seen, and not the time I took my girlfriend's Toblerone from the fridge and denied it because I was scared.

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Review: Joker discovers the magical art of not giving a f*ck

Movie Review | Becky Suter | 8th October 2019

To be honest, I had every intention of getting this review done as soon as I’d watched the film on Friday, but then I got distracted by Untitled Goose Game and the rest of the weekend was a bit of a waterfowl blur, to be honest. My waking hours were mainly spent terrorising a small, English village, checking off my to-do list before I grew bored and wanted to fuck shit up, just for the sake of it. I stole goods from a small business and planted them in a man’s garden to frame him for theft for pure lols. I trapped the boy in the garage over and over again, because I thought he was was weak and he didn’t like my honking. Unbound by societal demands, I was liberated; I was free. The poor inhabitants of the village had done nothing to deserve my feathery reign of terror, other than they didn’t like me and therefore, I didn’t like them. By the end of the weekend, had even one villager shown just a morsel of kindness toward me (a piece of bread, perhaps), I would have just honked in their stupid faces, and continued to destroy everything they hold dear. I didn’t set out to be the figurehead of the goose rebellion; they made me that way. Throughout the ages, village elders will tell tales of "The Goose That Hid in a Box, Then Jumped Out and Scared the Lady.” In the early hours of the morning with no more worlds left to conquer, I closed my laptop and remembered I said I was going to do a write-up of Joker, about a marginalised character on the fringes of society who adopts an alter-ego in a downward spiral, and I realised my story had already been told, except it was filmed a lot better and had Joaquin Phoenix in it and not so many geese.

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You said it, weird Russian poster for lesser De Niro movie Bus 657

Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 28th April 2015

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Grudge Match

Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 24th January 2014

You join me as I battle the triple threat of fatigue, hangover and a burgeoning cold in attempting to semi-satisfactorily review Grudge Match in the two hours I have before I collapse. This tight schedule is caused by a three-night midweek run in which I saw the film, then contributed drunkenly to Team Shiznit's glorious triumph at the Picturehouse Podcast Comedy Film Quiz, and now am attempting to write the review by the release date. Now, when a film is press-screened three days before it comes out, you fear the worst, but they needn't have worried: Grudge Match is pretty good fun when it bothers trying.

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The Family

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 24th November 2013

Those awful people that weren't born until the nineties, or God forbid, the 'noughties' - what must they make of a man like Robert De Niro? Because even though you can buy his DVDs at your local newsagent and go online to download literally any movie he ever made in seconds flat, surely it's only fair to judge an actor on his recent output: say, from the last 20 years. De Niro has earned his right to be less choosy, obviously, and I'm not about to shit on the likes of Raging Bull, Goodfellas and The Deer Hunter, but The Family isn't so much indicative of a career slump as it is the kind of painfully average movie that makes you realise he's completely stopped caring.

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The Big Wedding

Movie Review | Ali | 22nd May 2013

I've seen my fair share of wedding movies over the years but the damn things all melt into one in my head afterwards. Once you've established your wacky line-up of one-note characters, the screenplay practically writes itself. Having forced myself to sit through marital comedy The Big Wedding, I thought I'd take a similar approach with my review and just write an exhaustive list of every single wedding cliché I spotted. That's the bare minimum, but in this genre, the bare minimum is all you need.

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Silver Linings Playbook

Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 21st November 2012

I have no idea what 'playbook' means, being British. How am I possibly supposed to grasp a concept so arcane; so steeped in Americana? You might as well ask me to participate in a rodeo or wage a baseless imperialist war against a country wholly unprepared to defend itself against mine. A good thing, then, that the UK marketers of Silver Linings Playbook had the sense to make the word very small in all its promotional material. A less good thing that Ali wrote a whole feature about this before I got around to writing the introduction I'd been planning based on this premise. One day I'll have more than one idea in my head at a time, then I'll be unstoppable.

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Sorry, but I'm about to ruin the Cape Fear poster for you

Movie Feature | Ali | 17th November 2012

The stupid pop culture sponge I call a brain has ruined the poster for Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear. Now I pass it on to you, like the videotape from The Ring. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.

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These EXCLUSIVE Red Lights posters are questionable

Movie News | Luke | 12th June 2012

Spooky psychic thriller Red Lights makes its presence known with an exclusive gallery of character posters. Not our exclusive, mind you. Sorry, thought I'd made that clear.

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New Year's Eve

Movie Review | Rob | 8th December 2011

New Year's Eve; the one night of the year when you feel obliged to have fun, but if truth be told, you usually can't be arsed. Fittingly, that's how Garry Marshall's follow-up to Valentine's Day makes you feel.

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