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Review: The Great Hack will make you want to delete your Facebook account, data, self

Movie Review | Becky Suter | 4th August 2019

Facebook went downhill as soon as your mum signed up. The day she arrived with her Farmville requests and then started phoning you in the middle of a work day asking why you hadn't yet taken the "Which Shoe Are You?" personality quiz, it was in decline. And not just because it was irritating when she (or it could have been your dad, I don't know your family) would wish people a happy birthday by commenting on old posts they'd made about broken dishwashers five years ago, or confusing the search bar with their status update ("Ma Suter is tesco opening times christmas thank you"). It went downhill because she, and then the rest of us by default, put weapons into the hands of people who wanted to spark a culture war and now we cannot guarantee fair elections worldwide.

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Review: Booksmart is all that was good about Superbad and more

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 6th May 2019

The ten years since Superbad have passed in a heartbeat, that's a long time to leave between checking in with youth culture. I'm sure everything is still exactly as it was in 2009, right? [weakly] Fo' sho. Booksmart, the fantastic debut directorial effort from Olivia Wilde, is proof that while things change, they've very much stayed the same: today's high schoolers might be newly woke and progressive and tolerant, but they're still all about end of term ragers and macking with hotties. Kids still say all of those words, I assume? Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong.

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Review: Green Book is a road trip that takes Route 1

Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 6th February 2019

If racism can be solved in microcosm, film often likes to suggest, then can't we all just get along? Sure, except for all the massive systemic obstacles to that. The buddy relationship at the heart of Peter Farrelly's Green Book, one in which a white racist comes to accept a black man as a friend, wants us to believe that prejudice can be chipped away at through prolonged exposure to its object; that we only hate what we don't know. There's probably a broad truth in that. And yet social media has introduced everyone to people and cultures they'd otherwise never interact with, and Twitter in particular seems to make people even more determined never to change their mind. So is this any use?

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The Book Of Henry

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 26th June 2017

If you haven't seen the Book Of Henry trailer, I urge you to watch it now. It shows a whimsical family drama about a genius kid looking after his mum and little brother, making them realise the value of real love until... FUCK Dean Norris is evil! Is he a killer? No time to find out because Naomi Watts is now running around with a sniper rifle! Clearly someone somewhere hasn't worked out how to properly market this film.

Except they have. They really have. This is the exact film of that trailer.

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The Jungle Book

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 15th April 2016

Will they... will they be singing? The 1967 classic animation is so embedded in the public consciousness that it's difficult to know what to expect from this live-action retelling. What will the life-like animals look like when they talk? Will Mowgli look just like cartoon Mowgli? Will Baloo at any point wear coconut shells and a hula skirt? And what of the songs? Those legendary earworms so infectious that it's going to be hard not to resort to punning references throughout this entire review? Thankfully, Jon Favreau delivers a film that is just as wonderful and captivating as that original classic, and he does so by concentrating on the bare n-... the basics. He concentrates on the basics.

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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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Assessing the jauntiness of Silver Linings Playbook from its myriad logos

Movie Feature | Ali | 19th November 2012

The poor bastards in charge of Silver Linings Playbook in the UK have their work cut out for them, given that the film features no aliens, robots or vampires. What it does have is people with mental illness. How best to represent that on the poster? Why, jaunty lettering, of course!

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Can Daniel Radcliffe play a young Jon Hamm?

TV Feature | Ed Williamson | 2nd November 2012

Daniel Radcliffe is to play Jon Hamm's younger self in a four-part drama for Sky Arts. But does that even work? Like, as a thing?

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No, Bret Easton Ellis. No.

Movie News | Ali | 16th August 2011

Author Bret Easton Ellis has been teasing a new movie version of his book, Glamorama, but we're not keen on the teen dream he's seen.

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Catfish

Movie Review | Ali | 19th December 2010

If you want to get the best out of Catfish, stop reading this review immediately and just go see it - it's in cinemas and available to watch online now. The movie's marketing team know an enigmatic approach is key, as its ads suggest you "don't let anyone tell you what it is" a la Psycho - the first hint you're in for a surprise that's nasty and nice in equal measure.

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