Art

News, Reviews & Features

Oh, hi Mark! How does James Franco sync up with Tommy Wiseau?

Movie Feature | Matt Looker | 19th July 2017

Hmm, it's not perfect. Gah, YOU'RE TEARING ME APART, JAMES FRANCO!

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Pirates-related Paul McCartney puns that should have been taglines

Movie Feature | Matt Looker, Ali Gray, Ed Williamson | 28th June 2017

With all the fuss about Wonder Woman being an important step forward for feminism in cinema, and the current question of Disney curbing creative authorship on big studio projects, I really feel like some finer movie news is passing us by without enough comment. Like PAUL MCCARTNEY WAS IN PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, GUYS.

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It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt Pepper & Beyond

Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 29th May 2017

Where Ron Howard's Eight Days a Week ends, as the teenage screams die down after the last chord struck at Candlestick Park, Alan G Parker's new documentary begins. Timed to coincide with Sgt Pepper's fiftieth anniversary and hoping to catch the wave of tributes and looks-back that will go along with it, it takes us from the end of Beatlemania into the start of the studio years and through the recording of their most significant album. And it doesn't come near to doing it justice.

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Personal Shopper

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 20th March 2017

"A brazenly unconventional ghost story" says Time Out's poster quote for this film, presumably because "A profound and intimate exploration of humankind's innate need for existential crisis" didn't do the right job. There’s no denying that Personal Shopper is a ghost story of sorts, but that hardly seems an adequate description. It may begin with some spooky fare about a haunted house and a terrifying manifestation, but this isn't a film of jump-scares and sudden bangs, it's a film that gives the audience the space and respect to ruminate on the very concept of an afterlife. These ghosts don't say "boo!", they say "who?" and indeed "why?" as well as "how does that make you feel? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Let's talk about that."

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Logan

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 9th March 2017

There only three things that are certain in life: death, taxes and the fact that someone is hard at work writing a sequel to the X-Men movie you're currently watching. Logan, the third Wolverine standalone movie after X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Wolverine, is the exception: it is the last in its series, because Hugh Jackman says so, and not just because they've run out of ways to name Wolverine movies. Buoyed by the success of 15-rated Deadpool and supported by Jackman's desire to leave a lasting legacy for his defining role, Logan is that rare superhero movie that feels like a full stop rather than a comma. Intentionally distanced from the rest of the X-Men universe and its frankly Gordian timelines, Logan stands alone as the best of the series: a bleak, bold and mold-breaking masterpiece of the genre.

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Sing

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 24th January 2017

I can't tell you how long I have been waiting to take my two-year-old son on his first trip to the cinema. Well, actually, I suppose I can. It's been two years. Obviously. But that wait finally came to an end with this movie, one which I thought might be an appropriate introduction to the big screen for him because a) it's about singing cartoon characters, and b) it wasn't written by Seth Rogen. Of course, I was still fully prepared for failure. Expecting a toddler to stay still and quiet in a chair surrounded by strangers for nearly two hours? Surely impossible. And yet, that's exactly what he did, while fixated on the movie. So whatever I say in this review from now on, know that my son – easily closer in age to the target demographic than I – rates it 10 out of 10 choo-choo trains or whatever.

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Flowchart to help you decide what is and isn't a "Christmas film"

Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 24th December 2016

With the year's Ghostbusters argument well and truly won by masculine internet men, they need something new to protest against. It seems the new issue facing Men's Rights Activists the world over is this: is Die Hard a Christmas movie? Choke on that, Christmas: I've taken your polite festive holiday and I've thrown a swearing Bruce Willis in it! But is it technically a Christmas movie? The only way to tell is with this flowchart, which uses science to determine exactly which films qualify as Christmas films.

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Bleed For This

Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 4th December 2016

Trouble with all boxing films: they aren't Rocky. Rocky not only set the benchmark, but the template, out of which no one's really managed to break: guy has to overcome adversity, the other boxer is a metaphor for his life, and his real opponent is himself. True-lifer Bleed For This is a bit different. But not that different.

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Sully: Miracle On The Hudson

Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 29th November 2016

In times of crisis, look to Hanks. America's on its arse and what it needs now more than ever is a man whose Twitter account is dedicated to finding gloves on the streets of New York, not making baseless claims of voter fraud. Inferno got it wrong, but Sully understands better what sort of hero Hanks can be: the kind who manages to land a malfunctioning aeroplane but afterwards just wants everyone to stop going on about it.

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The Beatles: Eight Days A Week – The Touring Years

Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 16th September 2016

What a Beatles documentary has never quite captured is their cultural significance. You can't, not really: it is too tightly bound up in everything we hold as self-evident about popular culture and our relationship with celebrity. Ron Howard, having had the sense to focus his film on the touring years up until 1966 rather than compress The Beatles Anthology into two hours, allows us a window into just how mental those four years were, and gets closer to the truth of it than anyone else has managed.

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