James Mcavoy

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.

  • Review: X-Men: Dark Phoenix is an unevolved end to a once super franchise

    Movie Review | Matt Looker | 10th June 2019

    So now the X-Men franchise comes to an end. Since that first ensemble movie was released 19 years ago, the property has launched 12 films (13, if you count the still-to-be-unshelved The New Mutants) and has not only become a staple of the superhero genre in the process, but helped set the template for how to do this kind of movie well. And here we have the last instalment; the final chapter that, surely, the entire saga has been working towards for nearly two decades: a fourth-film reboot set in an alternate timeline remaking the same story from the third film of the original movies. It’s the only conclusion we’ve ever really wanted!

  • Review: Glass is a fragile follow-up with wasted promise

    Movie Review | Matt Looker | 17th January 2019

    No one knows the importance of a good ending like M. Night Shyamalan. He has built his entire career on them. He knows that many film flaws can be forgiven along the way if, right before the credits roll, he can suddenly wow an audience so that they leave only talking about that ending. It’s a circus approach to storytelling, saving the big top narrative stunt for the final act, but it works. In the case of Split - an otherwise divisive film - it worked so well that the ending itself manifested a whole sequel. But no one should be in any doubt that it’s a cheat. A big last-minute reveal teasing a forthcoming crossover might be an original way to have a shock twist, but it doesn’t automatically make for a good ending to what came before it. Just as it doesn’t automatically make for a good beginning for what comes next.

  • Atomic Blonde

    Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 11th August 2017

    I'd have been cool if I lived in Berlin in the Cold War. You would've been too: we would've smoked constantly and worn elegantly distressed charity-shop peacoats and listened to Bowie in a Lada. Maybe we could've been happy there, you and me.

  • Split

    Movie Review | Ali Gray | 19th January 2017

    Some actors go their whole lives without being offered a role as tasty as James McAvoy's character in Split. You've heard of roles being described as "scenery chewing"? In Split, M Night Shyamalan basically builds his sets out of beef jerky and invites McAvoy to tuck in. It's full-on Willy Wonka. As kidnapper Kevin who suffers from dissociative identity disorder (multiple personalities to you, me and I), McAvoy effectively has free reign of a buffet comprised of equal parts cheese, ham and bananas.

  • 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".

  • X-Men: Days Of Future Past

    Movie Review | Matt Looker | 13th May 2014

    Have you seen all of the X-Men films? Including the First Class prequel and both Wolverine movies? AND all of the mid-credits and post-credits stings that were tagged on to the end? Good. Then you may proceed. Welcome to X-Men: Retcon. I hope you've been paying attention.

  • Eight astonishing things on the new X-Men: Days Of Future Past poster

    Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 24th March 2014

    The X-Men don't historically have a lot of luck when it comes to cool poster designs - who could forget 9/3/11? - and that trend continues with this mental new one-sheet for X-Men: Days Of Future Past. Featuring: ALL OF THE THINGS.

  • Filth

    Movie Review | Neil Alcock | 4th October 2013

    Bruce Robertson is a cunt. A lying, thieving, cheating, racist, misogynist, homophobic shitstick who would sooner drug you and steal your watch than give you the time of day, and if he did give you the time of day it would be after looking at your own watch, which he has just stolen. He pinches kids' balloons, forces underage girls to nosh on his junk and screws his friends' and colleagues' wives. He's also a Detective Sergeant in Edinburgh's Lothian Constabulary, and probably the greatest lead character in cinemas this year.

  • Trance

    Movie Review | Ali | 26th March 2013

    Trance wastes no time in getting going, so neither shall I. Sir Danny of Boyle hops genres yet again to try his hand at a heist thriller, and it races out of the gate as if the essence of speed was necessary to maintain its air of deception. We're introduced to James McAvoy's art curator Simon, who swiftly tells us exactly how you'd steal a priceless painting if you were so inclined. He is, and does, but partner in crime Vincent Cassel soon thumps its location out of his noggin, setting up Trance's central conceit: how do you retrieve something thought lost from the human brain?