John Goodman

News, Reviews & Features

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.

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10 Cloverfield Lane

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 18th March 2016

What a nice, interesting surprise. A Cloverfield sequel that nobody was expecting dropping a trailer out of nowhere and coming with a tantalising-yet-head-scratching title implying a connection to the first film that makes no sense whatsoever. I'm excited, but also... confused? Like a dog hearing somebody whistling on the TV. I have no idea what's about to come next, but it sounds fun.

And this, as it happens, is the film's greatest strength. Because there are so few films released now that make us feel like dogs hearing somebody whistle on the TV.

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The Transformers/Coen Bros Venn diagram

Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 4th July 2014

It's one of the weirdest phenomenons in modern movie history: how is it that so many Coen regulars wind up in Transformers movies? See the culprits as we attempt to figure out what possible motives the guilty parties could have.

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The Monuments Men

Movie Review | Rob Young | 21st February 2014

Last summer I remember reading about George Clooney and Matt Damon playing basketball at a Cambridge council-run gym. They posed for photos, were called 'lovely people' by the manager and basically had a cracking time in south Cambridgeshire. And while in my neck of the woods, they shot scenes for The Monuments Men at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford: a joyful place I was often taken as a child by an over-eager father keen on Spitfires, but less keen on buying me an Airfix model of one.

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#LFF2013: Inside Llewyn Davis

Movie Review | Neil Alcock | 16th October 2013

"If it was never new and it never gets old, then it's a folk song," mutters Inside Llewyn Davis' titular muso between performances from a dimly-lit Greenwich Village stage. Those might just be the folkiest words ever uttered, but while they're perfectly accurate, they could just as easily be applied to the Coen brothers' best work. The reassuring familiarity of the Coenverse's unique characters, patois and situations, which sit at ninety degrees to reality, is one of modern cinema's greatest pleasures, and the knowledge that they could take you anywhere is never less than tantalising. Inside Llewyn Davis delivers that old magic in spades, and includes an award-worthy performance from a cat to boot. What's not to love?

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The Hangover: Part III

Movie Review | Ali | 22nd May 2013

Only now that it has reached its merciful conclusion, we can see that The Hangover trilogy plays out a lot like a night of drunken excess. To start with, everything you say or do seems riotously funny and original. Then, as the night grows old, the attention goes to your head; you begin to repeat yourself, and your humour takes on a nasty edge. Finally, three sheets to the wind and completely intoxicated on your own brilliance, you become boorish, hateful, unnecessarily violent, idiotic and completely unrecognisable from the man you once were. That's certainly how my Saturday nights usually pan out, anyway.

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#LFF2012: Argo

Movie Review | Ali | 17th October 2012

How could it be that Ben Affleck – he of being the bomb in Phantoms, yo – has become the most exciting American director working today? The former himbo and male half of Bennifer made one of the all-time greatest career turnarounds when he ditched the smug action hero roles and gave honest to goodness filmmaking a shot; first with sensational kidnapping drama Gone Baby Gone, then with palm-sweatingly tense heist thriller The Town. Affleck has gone one better with his third film as director, moving from the frying pan of Boston into the fire of Iran for his most ambitious – and awards-worthy – movie yet.

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ParaNorman

Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 13th September 2012

Like any right-thinking adult, I make it my business to scare a child at least once a week. Otherwise there's a risk they could grow up soft, I always think, what with their Bebos and their Sylvanian Families. Happily, I can now take the day off every once in a while, because stop-motion animation ParaNorman should put the frighteners on them. Might even make them laugh a bit too, but then you can do that just by tickling them.

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Just in case you were wondering...

Movie News | Ali | 13th January 2012

The Artist is still out now, and still wonderful.

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#LFF: The Artist

Movie Review | Ali | 19th October 2011

The dog doesn't die. What a relief. After the relentless misery of films like Tyrannosaur and Snowtown, and with We Need To Talk About Kevin still to come, I'm just grateful a film as joyous as The Artist even exists. A lovingly shot black and white homage to silent film, Michel Hazanavicius's evocative picture echoes the classics of the genre and stretches wide over the cinematic horizon like a double rainbow (so intense, all the way across), blasting away the black clouds hanging over the London Film Festival. If it doesn't leave you with a smile plastered all over your stupid face, then you don't have a mouth, in which case, I'm sorry I said your face was stupid.

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