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News, Reviews & Features
  • Review: Polar is a blizzard of clichéd tedium

    Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 24th February 2019

    Working yourself to the bone during the prime of your life so you can live comfortably when you're too old to do anything seems really backwards. I'll happily stitch clothes with my gnarled hands in return for soup until I expire at my sewing table when I'm seventy, just let me have some fun now. What if I don't even make it to old age because of some horrible illness or a nuclear war? All those hours toiling away for nothing. Awful thoughts. Everything is terrible. Although I guess things can't be that bad if the worst thing that happened to me this week was watching Netflix's Polar, in which a hitman retires. Which is why I said all that stuff just now.

  • Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

    Movie Review | Matt Looker | 14th December 2016

    For all the criticism aimed at Marvel, the thought of a 1-star or 2-star MCU movie these days just seems like an impossibility, and you'd like to think that we could expect the same for all forthcoming Star Wars instalments. Surely there are just too many talented stakeholders invested in the process to allow for any major misfires? And yet, there are valid reasons to fear for Rogue One: it's the first standalone spin-off, consisting of almost entirely new characters; director Gareth Edwards still has much to prove; rumours around the reshoots weren't kind; and of course the recent memory of the prequels is still hanging around like a clingy, irritating Gungan. So does Rogue One give us reason to believe that Star Wars will now always be in safe hands? Or is it just another hollow, unmemorable blockbuster facsimile? Is it a new hope, or just the latest attack of a clone?

  • Doctor Strange

    Movie Review | Ali Gray | 3rd November 2016

    Considering the X-Men movies can't even stay consistent one movie to the next, it's a minor miracle the Marvel Cinematic Universe remains a cohesive whole, 8 years and 14 movies after Nick Fury first asked Tony Stark to join his professional LinkedIn network. We've had men of technology, beasts of rage, Gods from other realms and soldiers forged in war, all now reading from the same script. The latest recruit to the MCU is Doctor Strange, who heralds the arrival of the world of magic, but - like Arrested Development's Gob Bluth and his Alliance of Magicians - demands to be taken seriously. Disbelief is being suspended at a comfortable level by now: if you're cool with purple space tyrants and talking raccoons, chances are the addition of sorcerers, supreme or otherwise, isn't going to upset the apple cart.

  • Hannibal season four episode titles revealed

    TV News | Ed Williamson | 21st June 2015

    1. Waffles
    2. A Pasty from the Garage
    3. Ham Bap
    4. Zinger Tower Meal
    5. Prawn Ring
    6. Rib 'n' Saucy Nik-Naks
    7. Big Dairy Milk on Offer in Smiths
    8. Olympic Breakfast
    9. Chips
    10. Crunch Corner
    11. Had Some of That Beef Left Over So Just Did That with Some Spuds
    12. Quavers
    13. Kinder Bueno

  • The Salvation

    Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 22nd April 2015

    Now that everything is at least 140 minutes long, I applaud any film that does its thing for an hour and a half, gets the job done then fucks off home. The content of those 90 minutes is irrelevant really. It could be a dead goose for an hour then a man eating a Bounty for the rest. So well done, The Salvation, Danish western that you somehow are, for not hanging around too long. And for being generally all right in a forgettable sort of a way, too.

  • Big Hero 6

    Movie Review | TheShiznit.co.uk | 25th January 2015

    If you want an example of how our relationship with technology has accelerated at a terrifying rate, show a young millennial the first Toy Story movie, which turns 20 years old this year. Made in 1995, the first fully CG-animated movie was a cinematic landmark yet it was still, tellingly, a tale of simple toys and derring do. That millennial you roped in (I won't asked questions how) will now look at Toy Story and turn their nose up at the relatively rudimentary visuals; they're much more likely to get their kicks from a movie like Big Hero 6, a breathlessly exciting, migraine-inducingly busy animation that must have surely pushed the Disney render farms to meltdown. Purely from a technological standpoint, it makes Toy Story look like a Punch & Judy show.

  • Making Mads Mikkelsen less terrifying

    TV Feature | Ed Williamson | 28th August 2013

    Quite by chance, I have tonight discovered something that makes me a lot less scared of Mads Mikkelsen. In fact, he's a gigantic pussy and I could definitely have him.

  • What's wrong with this Metro ad?

    Movie News | Ali | 22nd July 2013

    Sounds like a great film! But what's it called? (via @bennhawkes)

  • Shower off the stink of The Following with two great things

    TV News | Ed Williamson | 30th April 2013

    I know, it was horrific. But it's over now. And Hannibal's first season and Justified's fourth begin on Sky Living and 5USA next week. Trust me, good TV is just around the corner. Pick yourself up and start again.

  • Nine things you need to know about Hannibal

    TV Feature | Ed Williamson | 18th February 2013

    Obviously, "need to know" is a bit of a stretch. You don't need to know them in the sense that you'll be at risk of losing your job or home if you don't, nor will your children be taken into care because of the danger in which you've placed them through your ignorance. But this is how you write features on the internet: put everything in a list.