Hero

News, Reviews & Features
  • The Girl On The Train

    Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 7th October 2016

    Here's Emily Blunt on the Girl on the Train poster, looking suspiciously like she has more make-up on than she does in the actual film (again). She's very much the best thing about it, but still: if there's one genre for which I have a soft spot, it's the serviceable but unexceptional thriller.

  • When Louis Met Nick Pisa: watching two journalists examine their own work

    TV Feature | Ed Williamson | 4th October 2016

    On TV this week: one journalist wrestles with his conscience and tries to understand where he went wrong, while another discusses with undisguised glee how he exploited a young woman's murder for personal gain.

  • 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".

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Deadpool

    Movie Review | Ali Gray | 11th February 2016

    You like to talk about tough superhero gigs. Thor was a tough gig. Mixing magic and mythology with grit and realism. Not easy. Guardians Of The Galaxy was a tough gig. Introducing an entirely new bunch of rogues unrelated to any existing properties. Tricky. Deadpool, however, is quite literally a tough gig: stepping up on stage to make with the laughs after being designated the 'funny' superhero movie. Like it's the one movie that has special dispensation to say what we all really think about superhero movies. That's a tough gig. What we ask of Deadpool is the movie equivalent of people who ask comedians to tell them a joke: a request to be funny on demand, on on our terms.

  • Top 10 TV shows of 2015

    TV Feature | Ed Williamson | 3rd January 2016

    I almost did it. Almost went my first Christmas period for five years without having to think about the end-of-year list. But then I thought of you, who is reading this now, and even though statistically you most likely are either my mother or the Googlebot spider, I decided I couldn't let you down. Also I'm on hold to TalkTalk and have nothing else to fill the time.

  • Mad Max: Fury Road, 2015's best film by a thousand miles

    Movie Review | Ali Gray | 31st December 2015

    I actually watched Mad Max: Fury Road in its week of release, but it was such an overwhelming experience it's taken me all of seven months to mentally unpack it all, like when someone emails you a crazy big zip file which basically nerfs your inbox and you can't do anything until it's properly downloaded. That, with writing. Anyway. This is the best film of the year by a very long stretch, I'm off to watch it again because it got it on Blu-ray for Christmas and oh you've already stopped reading.

  • Fantastic Four (2015)

    Movie Review | Matt Looker | 6th August 2015

    The old Fantastic Four films from 10 years ago are an embarrassment, aren’t they? All kid-friendly colours and CGI slapstick; they might as well be cartoons. It’s great then, that this – say it with me – gritty reboot finally aims to give comics’ First Family the big-screen outing they deserve. A film that treats Stretchy Man, Rock Guy, Fire Boy and Invisi-Girl with due reverence and respect. A film that takes a realistic approach to dimension-hopping science and explores the seriousness of.. oh god, no, I can’t do it. Come back, Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans and, yes even you, Michael Chiklis’ foam fatsuit. All is forgiven.

  • 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.