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News, Reviews & Features

Elle

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 10th March 2017

As part of a sustained effort on my part to watch more films featuring female leads and more films in a foreign language (an effort which so far has resulted in me seeing zero of either), I found myself at Elle, the new movie from Paul Verhoeven. Given that it fit those two criteria (Isabelle Huppert? Check! French? Check!) I gamely plopped myself into the screening room chair, not knowing what it was about. Some two and a half hours later, I still wasn't sure. I was told this was an exciting and edgy new thriller from the director of RoboCop.

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The Beatles: Eight Days A Week – The Touring Years

Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 16th September 2016

What a Beatles documentary has never quite captured is their cultural significance. You can't, not really: it is too tightly bound up in everything we hold as self-evident about popular culture and our relationship with celebrity. Ron Howard, having had the sense to focus his film on the touring years up until 1966 rather than compress The Beatles Anthology into two hours, allows us a window into just how mental those four years were, and gets closer to the truth of it than anyone else has managed.

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Ghostbusters (2016)

Movie Review | Becky Suter | 11th July 2016

Things that ruin your childhood: discovering that your parents are the tooth fairy/Father Christmas. Learning that grandparents and pets can die no matter how much you love them. Jimmy Savile. These are actual things that leave a lasting mark. A remake of a film that you probably originally saw on TV three years after its release because you weren’t old enough to see it at the cinema when it actually came out will not “ruin” your childhood memories (I also had an extended metaphor about how I have continually enjoyed cheese toasties despite once eating an amazing one a few years ago but that doesn’t diminish the good one I had, but I think you get my point). The new rebooted Ghostbusters isn’t going to piss on the fact that you can remember things from a movie that’s over 30 years old. But before I have to hand in my "I was a child of the 80s" badge, I’m going to go out on a limb and say Ghostbusters 2016 is actually funnier and scarier than the original.

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Fixed the new Jason Bourne poster

Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 17th June 2016

The poster designers seem to have forgotten to put any text on Matt Damon's face for once. You're welcome, you guys!

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Fans outraged by female-led Ghostbusters porn parody

Movie Feature | Matt Looker | 15th June 2016

A new adult version of classic 80s movie Ghostbusters has drawn criticism from fans of the original for reimagining its main characters as female. Many have claimed that the new film, which sees its female stars engage in a number of explicit sexual acts with male 'ghosts', is a case of "feminism gone mad".

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Warcraft: The Beginning

Movie Review | Becky Suter | 30th May 2016

Unlike Game Of Thrones, there are no tits and dragons in Warcraft: The Beginning. There are wizards with hipster beards, giant eagles and a progressive orc, though. And in an apt allegory of recent times, an invading horde trigger immigration anxiety amongst a bunch of white people. Rather than rinsing a failing health service and steal jobs, these invaders need mortal souls to… do something. I'm not quite sure. It's all a bit of a blur, to be quite honest with you. I really hope Duncan Jones doesn't read mid-level, sarcastic film blogs, because things are about to get orc-ward; Warcraft is an epic mess of a movie.

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8 incredibly depressing responses to Melissa McCarthy's Ghostbusters pic

Movie Feature | Matt Looker | 27th August 2015

Because bustin' gender-prejudiced idiots who use Twitter as a platform for their own mindless misogyny makes me feel good.

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Ant-Man

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 8th July 2015

More than any of its other movies to date, it seems that Marvel has been really savvy with this film. After all, it has completely turned around our expectations. Remember when we were outraged at Edgar Wright leaving due to “creative differences”? Remember when we sharpened our caps-lock ready for whatever half-assed generic borefest followed? Slowly, but surely, Marvel have won us all over with some neat trailers, some fun marketing and the sheer force of Paul Rudd’s lovable charisma. If that wasn't proof enough that Marvel just know exactly what the fuck they are doing with what they have, the finished movie also happens be rather ace. And that is no small achievement.

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Love & Mercy

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 26th June 2015

The Beach Boys: squeaky-clean surfers, or the subjects of sordid sex scandals, substance abuse and psychotic breakdowns? Whatever your level of familiarity with these endless harmonisers and their incredible off-stage history – fatherly abuse, drugs, rivalry, death, links to Charles Manson, drummer Dennis Wilson falling out with lead singer (and cousin) Mike Love and then marrying his daughter – the chances are that you don’t know the whole history…. because, frankly, there’s just so much to tell. Any Beach Boys biopic just couldn’t possibly do justice to their entire 53-years-and-counting career. Thankfully, this new film focuses on band figurehead and recognised musical genius, Brian Wilson. And even then, it still feels like just a drop in the ocean.

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Spy

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 10th June 2015

I'm not sure I understand how people continually lump Melissa McCarthy into the same category of comedians as the likes of Kevin James (actually, I do understand, I just choose to ignore it), because she's so much more talented than him it's barely a contest. Comic timing? Check. Pathos? Check. A habit of making her co-stars appear funnier by proxy? Check. These are not qualities you typically associate with Paul Blart: Mall Cop. McCarthy, on the other hand, is the complete package, and she furthers her winning relationship with director Paul Feig in Spy, albeit to not quite so winning effect as previous team-ups The Heat and Bridesmaids. The most important stat for the non-believers? There is only one [1] pratfall in Spy; Paul Blart: Mall Cop had 25.

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