Fox

News, Reviews & Features

Review: Project Power hits the right beats but offers nothing new

Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 26th August 2020

Netflix is an odd one isn't it. In order to operate they need to attract a certain amount of subscribers, so cast a wide net of shiny mid-budget fare with no pretension the films don't exist to reel in the dollars. It's pure returns-driven broad entertainment, designed to appeal to as many people as possible but that leaves little cultural footprint. Other studios do this, of course - it is a movie industry after all - but the frequency of ho hum numbers generated by Netflix does nothing for their reputation as a production line serving up gruel, and the next announcement always comes with a twinge of doubt. Anyway I just watched this new Netflix film called Project Power.

Read full article »
Review: The Aeronauts is an uplifting ode to the spirit of discovery

Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 26th March 2020

There's something compelling about a singular premise. Gravity and The Martian both made good use of theirs, squeezing every second of tension out of a sequence of continually escalating nightmare scenarios, all in service of one outcome. What those films have in common are protagonists who want to survive not just through a desire to see their efforts validated, but also as avatars of a very human need to prove we can overcome the challenges of nature as a species able to shape the world around us. It's affecting, connective stuff, and rings true on a fundamental level. But whereas Matt Damon's character in The Martian mostly concerned himself with potatoes, if I've learnt anything from The Aeronauts it's to always carry a knife.

Read full article »
Review: Uncut Gems is an anxiety attack in film form

Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 7th February 2020

What's the worst lie you've ever told? Let me rephrase that: what's the worst lie you've ever told and got away with? Congratulations! From the synapses snapping away to bring your consciousness to life, to the cells in the blood pumped around your veins, to the atoms in your DNA, and all the stardust delivered on a rock from a galaxy far, far away embedded in your primeval history, that deception is now a part of what makes you uniquely you. So was it worth it?

Read full article »
Review: Isn't It Romantic is a pleasing trope inverter

Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 3rd April 2019

I don't have a problem with tropes. If you've had a long day and just want to unwind watching one of the Chrises drift a car or fight some pixels, a well-placed cliché can fill the gaps between any distracting thinky bits to keep the plot ticking along - allowing your eyes to glaze over as your body slowly powers down. Tropes are a useful form of cinematic shorthand. But imagine not being overwhelmingly tired all the time, and also wanting to be entertained while using your brain. What do you stick on? A sci-fi? Action-thriller? If I said there was a romcom that met all these needs you'd probably say "shut the hell up with that", to which I'd reply "Click through for the full review", and you'd say "Sir, this is a Burger King", then I'd say "Please like and subscribe." And then the police would arrive.

Read full article »
The nine most embarrassing X-Men marketing fuck-ups

Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 12th October 2018

You can always count on the X-Men for a laugh. While the Marvel marketing machine runs like a well-oiled machine and the DC marketing machine is basically a Xerox of the Marvel machine, the Fox marketing machine is more like a dodgy office printer, old and busted and producing wildly erratic and inconsistent results because no one really knows how to use it properly. The X-Men franchise is arguably the biggest name in superhero cinema - so why can't Fox ever seem to sell the movies without, excuse my language, fucking up like cack-handed twats?

Read full article »
Advertise with us!
TIL: Tom Selleck and Jamie Foxx are rival avocado-farming neighbours

Movie Feature | Matt Looker | 29th August 2018

It sounds like it should be the plot of a terrible movie, or the basis for a terrible sitcom, but i promise you, it really is just terrible real life.

Read full article »
Baby Driver

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 20th June 2017

I don’t envy Edgar Wright. I mean, I do, obviously. He’s stupidly talented, hangs out with cool Hollywood people and totally rocks the kind of facial hair you’d normally only see on a second-year arts grad student. But he is also under an awful lot of pressure to meet impossibly high expectations considering his relatively short film résumé. Think about it: two cult comedy classics, followed by the visually-impressive-but-niche Scott Pilgrim, and then a quick return to close off the Cornetto Trilogy. That’s it. Now everyone is ready to hail this new Edgar Wright movie as the champion of the summer, but what even IS an ‘Edgar Wright movie’?

Read full article »
X-Men: Apocalypse

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 19th May 2016

Forgive me for sounding like I'm on the company payroll, but have Marvel movies ruined superhero movies for everyone else? I fear they have. The Marvel Cinematic Universe made its own space in the superhero sphere; it owns the area marked 'fun'. DC, as a countermeasure to all the lousy fun everyone was enjoying, staked their claim on the 'serious' space; heroes with grim faces carved out of rock, pre-tantrum lip-wobble expressions lashed with rain. Where does this leave the X-Men? I'm sure I don't know anymore, because X-Men: Apocalypse attempts to be all things to all people and ends up being neither overtly fun or remotely serious, just entirely ridiculous. It feels like a superhero movie back from when no one really knew what that was supposed to mean, or, as a friend of mine put it so perfectly: "It's like a shit superhero movie from the nineties".

Read full article »
Ten things Back To The Future Part II correctly predicted about 2015

Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 4th January 2015

Did you hear? This year is the year in the future that Marty and Doc Brown travel to in Back To The Future Part II! How crazy is that?! OR IS IT? CRAZY, I MEAN? It turns out Actual 2015 is a lot more similar to the 2015 of Back To The Future Part II than you might have thought! And cue generic feature!

Read full article »
The Woman In Black 2: Angel Of Death

Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 3rd January 2015

I saw Woman In Black 2 about a month ago and I didn't make a lot of notes. No, you're unprofessional. But I didn't make a lot of notes because I felt by its third act that it was broadly doing what it had set out to, in the way that a lot of mainstream horror movies tend to quite competently, and that to review it straight would be to retread ground I've already trodden in other reviews. But one interesting thing did occur to me. Read on if you like tedious narrative theory!

Read full article »

Support Us

We are now using Patreon to cover some of our hosting fees. So if you like our brand of "content" and would like to see us do more, please consider chucking a few digital pennies our way by clicking on the link below. Thanks!