Chris Evans

News, Reviews & Features

Marvel's Cine-CHAT-ic Universe: Captain America: Civil War (2016)

Movie Feature | Ali Gray, Matt Looker, Becky Suter, Ed Williamson, Luke Whiston | 21st August 2020

Marvel movies. Remember those? We do. Thirteen months after we discussed Ant-Man, we are finally ready to officially kick off Phase 3 of Marvel's Cine-CHAT-ic Universe. It's not like the world has had any distracting major events or global catastrophes over that time period or anything.

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Review: Knives Out is a modern-age murder mystery that absolutely kills it

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 4th December 2019

Traditional murder mysteries must be the hardest stories to write, because audiences are always second-guessing everything, desperate to work out the twist before the genius detective. Writers have to seed important details among their pool of suspects without giving the game away, whilst also offering red herrings that have to feel like they could still be relevant. Meanwhile their audience is constantly reading too much into everything, determined not to be outsmarted. So a film like this one is already at make-or-break point for each viewer. If they don’t guess the killer and the motive, and the reveal still makes sense, then they can be satisfied with the thrill of being outplayed. But if they solve the mystery before the end, it’s "Nah, that’s rubbish, mate. I saw it coming a mile off". And audiences are actively rooting for the latter. They’re the ones with the knives out.

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Review: The Red Sea Diving Resort sinks under the weight of its own clichés

Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 16th September 2019

Is it still white saviour complex if the events actually happened? Or is it a different kind of white saviour complex; one for the benefit of white audiences, to make them feel better about conditions in other countries that probably had something to do with them sticking their oar in at some point in history? Are we challenging ourselves by broaching such subjects in the first place: a tacit acceptance of blame by not sugarcoating the human casualties of conflict? Was a film ostensibly about ethnic cleansing the right time to show off Chris Evans' side-ass and the top bit of his pubes? Many questions.

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Marvel's Cine-CHAT-ic Universe: Avengers: Age Of Ultron (2015)

Movie Feature | Matt Looker, Ali Gray, Becky Suter, Luke Whiston, Ed Williamson | 10th April 2019

We have two weeks to go until Avengers: Endgame brings about the end of an 11-year-long story arc and changes the MCU as we know it forever. So what better time to revisit an old Avengers movie from four years ago? That's right, we're back with another instalment of our less-than-semi-regular Marvel movie email discussion feature, which might even have been a better title than 'Marvel's Cine-CHATIC Universe'.

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Marvel's Cine-CHAT-ic Universe: Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

Movie Feature | Matt Looker, Ali Gray, Becky Suter, Luke Whiston, Ed Williamson | 27th February 2019

Following the low-point (both in terms of the MCU and our attempts at having an insightful discussion) that was Thor: The Dark World, we’re back on track now with Captain America’s first solo sequel. Don’t let that fool you though - we certainly haven’t stepped up our game in any way. The recurring feature of diminishing returns continues!

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Marvel's Cine-CHAT-ic Universe: The Avengers (2012)

Movie Feature | Matt Looker, Ali Gray, Becky Suter, Ed Williamson, Luke Whiston | 7th December 2018

Guess who's been emailing again! That's right, we're back with our regular feature that I'm only just now realising we should have called 'We see you, MCU'. Hmm, maybe not actually. But a better title than the one we went with certainly does exist somewhere. Anyway, please enjoy the latest of our rambling chats that are pieced together during an editing process so painstaking, that this article is its own heroic assembly.

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Marvel's Cine-CHAT-ic Universe: Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Movie Feature | Matt Looker, Ali Gray, Becky Suter, Ed Williamson, Luke Whiston | 25th November 2018

Our semi-regular-certainly-far-less-regular-than-it-should-be feature Marvel's Cine-CHAT-ic Universe returns to take on The First Avenger Who Isn't Iron Man. Please enjoy the latest instalment of us talking about a Marvel film like it's never been done before in a format that really lends itself better to a podcast, but then we'd have to meet up and everyone's busy so then we're penning a date in the diary for several weeks' time which automatically makes it, like, a big thing and...

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Captain America: Civil War

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 5th May 2016

"So what is Vision?" I'm at the pub, still digesting Captain America: Civil War, and I've been caught off guard. "Well, he's... um...he's a, er... so Thor had this sort of bath, then Ultron, erm... You know the Mind Gem, th-..." Christ, I'm racking my brains and his first movie only came out a year ago. Marvel movies move pretty fast; if you don't re-watch regularly, or God forbid miss a movie, your pub trivia game will suffer. (My best guess: Vision is a space ghost fruit roll-up robot butler dressed by George at Asda). Civil War is the 13th movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and if you haven't been paying attention over the last eight years, you're going to find it really, really hard to keep up. The MCU doesn't slow down, doesn't pull its punches and doesn't really do 'Previously, on the Marvel Cinematic Universe..." It has unapologetically and unreservedly been constructed from the ground up for fans - and those fans are going to go bend-over-backwards apeshit crazy for Civil War, arguably the movie that the previous 12 have all been working towards.

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PLACEHOLDER: 5-star Civil War review [pending Marvel payment] ***DO NOT PUBLISH***

Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 18th April 2016

Hi guys, just to let you know, the marketing arm of Marvel have been in contact with me as they have with all of the UK press to offer The Shiznit payment for giving Captain America: Civil War a positive review. I'm sure you remember that they already paid us the first £5,000 for giving Batman V Superman a negative review, but they've confirmed that the rest of the bribe will be delivered upon publication of our Civil War review, which I'm seeing tomorrow. Not that it matters.

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Avengers: Age Of Ultron

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 21st April 2015

For how much longer can superhero films rule the box office? Everyone's waiting for comic-book movies to implode, and while it probably won't happen with one disastrous misfire that has a big Comic Sans 'Ker-dunk!' hanging overhead, this second Avengers assembly would seem like the logical start of a more gradual decline. After all, genre fatigue is already setting in, and The Avengers' USP - superhero all-stars teaming up for one mega-big movie - is no longer a fresh, never-before-seen idea. Just in terms of living up to the sheer excitement levels of its predecessors, Avengers: Age Of Ultron would already seem like a failure.

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