It

News, Reviews & Features

Review: It Chapter Two is a great bookend, but where's the tl;dr version?

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 3rd September 2019

2017’s It was such a huge success that it has reignited not only a demand for more Stephen King adaptations, but also a desire for high quality scares again. But there’s a downside to being the highest grossing horror film of all time - and I’m not talking about Pennywise making it harder for real-life clowns like Bongo Bonzo And Catty Watty Boom Boom (both local to me - I searched the directory) to find work. No, the downside is that, for this follow-up, the filmmaking team appear to have been left more unchecked. This sequel is far longer than it needs to be, far funnier than it makes sense to be and filled with so many meme-worthy visuals that it seems to have been made purely for Twitter retorts. In short, it’s an overlong carnival for the senses, and that’s in addition to Pennywise continuing to give clowns like Bongo Bonzo and Catty Watty a bad name.

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Maybe the real Love Island is the friends we made on the way...

TV Feature | Becky Suter | 29th July 2019

Love. Above all things I believe in love. Love is like oxygen. Love is a many splendored thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love. Every time I say it’s going to be different, I won’t get in too deep. Don’t fall for it, Becky: it’s infatuation, not love. Empires have fallen, glacial caps have melted and I’ve been oblivious to it all. I’ve fallen for the charms of Love Island. I've gone full factor 50.

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Review: Always Be My Maybe is almost definitely an okay film

Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 11th June 2019

I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that Keanu Reeves' turn in Always Be My Maybe is as funny as you'd hoped, not just living up to his much-memed slow motion entrance in the trailer, but hanging around for a few more scenes and becoming part of the plot like he's some sort of jobbing actor or something. The bad news is most of everything else.

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Review: See You Yesterday is a deft causality caper with a message

Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 7th June 2019

Confession: once at an old job I accidentally sent a test email campaign to a contact list of 40,000 people, with the subject 'Test XXX' and body content consisting of a single centrally aligned picture of a cartoon dog. The point I'm illustrating is that some mistakes can't be undone, leaving you with no choice but to live with the consequences. But hang on, you ask, why not simply travel back in time to stop yourself clicking 'Send' in the first place? Yeah sure I could take the easy route, but that small tinkering could change the man I am today. And besides, I've just seen See You Yesterday, which makes a strong case for leaving the past well alone.

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Review: Godzilla: King Of The Monsters is a dreary mess of titanic proportions

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 29th May 2019

To all those that said Gareth Edwards' Godzilla was a bore, or that it was slow, or that it took too long to reveal the beast himself, this one's on you, because this new monster mêlée follow-up is a megatomic nuke to the senses. It's a relentless shit-storm of mayhem and bullshit that attempts spectacle but delivers shaky-cam confusion and exhausted clichés for optimum headaches and head-shakes. It's a slog, an onslaught of expensive oblivion and a brain-fouling juggernaut of chaos. Although, I realise some of you may actively want all of this from your giant monster stories.

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Review: Game of Thrones bows out burning bridges, own fingers, everything

TV Review | Luke Whiston | 21st May 2019

So now that the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Game of Thrones are at an end - two of the most popular, costliest and consistently epic franchises to ever exist in film and TV - and we've chewed over when and how to talk about them online, are we at some kind of 'spoiler event horizon' or a 'spoiler singularity'? I don't know either, just wanted to say something that sounded clever. Tits and willies and dragons eh, cor!

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Review: Knock Down The House captures the highs and lows of hope

Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 15th May 2019

How can it be that every week feels like the series finale of America? The dumpster fire of Donald Trump's presidency that has engulfed our lives and timelines since 2016 can't be good for the collective psyche, and it's strange to think that a mere three years ago this constant gnashing background noise wasn't the norm. But US politics has measures in place to course-correct, namely a series of midterm elections whereby successful candidates can win a Senate seat, thus increasing their party's reach within Congress. At least that's what I understand from Wikipedia. I live in England, where we bow to whoever has the tallest top hat or the fanciest swan. Before today everything I knew about the American political system I learnt from The Simpsons.

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Review: Detective Pikachu ensures all this Pokémon shit hits the fans

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 10th May 2019

I consider myself to be a passionate fan of many things: Star Wars, Marvel, the smell of fresh sea air on a bright summer morning, denim... all sorts. But I have no interest or investment in Pokémon. I’ve never watched the cartoons, never played with the cards, never walked into open traffic while using my phone to throw a digital ball at a pretend squirrel. And it turns out that Detective Pikachu is not made for people like me. It’s made for fans who will be happy at the sight of a Rainbow Monster, or a Clown Wolf or a Cock Otter or whatever. Disclaimer: the film does actually give the proper names for most of the Pokémon on screen, I just didn’t catch ‘em all.

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Review: Guava Island has lovely sights but hums a dark tune

Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 9th May 2019

Donald Glover is a man of impossible talent and unparalleled style. At the age of just 35 he is already an accomplished actor, director, writer, singer and producer - both on TV and in the music world. So acclaimed is he, there is a lengthy Wikipedia page dedicated purely to his many awards and nominations in the arts. He is politically aware, incorporating challenging satire into his work, and often performs in aid of charities and causes. He has 2.43 million Twitter followers despite never having Tweeted. He was the only logical choice to play Lando Calrissian, the coolest man in the galaxy, in the Han Solo movie because he is in fact the coolest man in the universe. His entire being is infectious and we as a species should be thanking fortune, serendipity, providence, or whatever deity you believe controls time and space, that we are all alive under the same sky - a sky from which the stars look down upon him to learn how to shine. Yes, yes that's much better than my original opener: 'if Get Out was real I would save up for the guy who plays Troy in Community'.

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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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