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Black Panther

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 9th February 2018

One thing the Marvel Cinematic Universe does not need more of is white privilege. Tony Stark with his billion dollar problems. Captain America with his government sanctioned patriotism. Thor, the blonde-haired blue-eyed Norse God with claims to the throne. Peter Quill, the self-appointment Star-Lord, the so-called guardian of the galaxy. We're good for white dudes. Arriving far too late to the party is King T'Challa, a storied hero from Africa with a rich heritage who is finally breaking the unremitting streak of white heroes on the Marvel payroll. Without wanting to disservice the people of colour who have served the MCU well to date - Anthony Mackie, Zoe Saldana and let's not forget Samuel L motherfucking Jackson - Black Panther is the character that the Marvel universe, the movie industry and the entire world needs right now. It's hard to imagine a more righteous movie arriving at a more necessary time.

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Justice League

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 19th November 2017

It wasn’t evil aliens that defeated the Justice League: it was facial hair.

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The Death Of Stalin

Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 23rd October 2017

By now the central premise of Armando Iannucci's recent satirical output is clear enough, or has maybe just about been done to death: in politics, everyone's a chancer, making it up on the fly and looking out for number one. In The Death of Stalin there's an extra layer of irony, too: under Communism, there isn't supposed to be a number one to look out for. It's kind of the point.

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Important investigation: what would Henry Cavill's Superman look like with a moustache?

Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 25th July 2017

In the true spirit of investigative journalism, we recently learned that Henry Cavill will be sporting a moustache during his Justice League reshoots, so we set to work imagining what such a thing would look like. Screw you, Failing New York Times, that Pulitzer is mine.

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An oral history of superhero actors complaining about going to the toilet

Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 6th July 2017

There's a strange, unspoken relationship between a journalist and a film star that absolutely nothing personal must be discussed during an interview. Except, that is, when that film star is playing a superhero, in which case it's absolutely on message to ask them exactly how they pissed and/or shat while wearing their super-suit. The weirdest thing is just how willing the actors are to share.

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Alien: Covenant

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 11th May 2017

By rights, the Alien franchise should be dead by now, all curled up on its back like a big dead spider, flambéed by the flamethrower of critical ire. How many other movie series would be allowed so many misses and still get invited back to the plate for another swing? Throughout its various iterations since the 90s - sequels, prequels, versus match-ups - the Alien franchise has succeeded only in corroding its own legacy. Even 2012's promising Prometheus, directed by franchise progenitor Ridley Scott, fell short of expectations thanks to its entire cast suffering total frontal lobotomies in the third act. Well, the rot stops here. In Alien: Covenant, Ridley Scott has directed the best Alien movie of the past 30 years, and although that isn't exactly a glowing compliment, know this: not only does Covenant deliver a payload of short, sharp scares and atmosphere in spades, it course-corrects the franchise as a whole, retroactively making Prometheus feel like a better movie too.

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Ghost In The Shell

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 1st April 2017

'The only colour that matters in Hollywood is green,' he typed, pleased with himself, attempting to clumsily sidestep the whitewashing controversy that surrounded the movie. Okay, fine. Is Ghost In The Shell racist? I am here today to spectacularly ignore that important issue, not because it's not worth addressing, but because the answer is 'Yes, but only as racist as most other movies', which is not exactly a good point on which to start a healthy and balanced debate. Let's just get on with the review, shall we? This is already in my top five worst opening paragraphs.

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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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Logan

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 9th March 2017

There only three things that are certain in life: death, taxes and the fact that someone is hard at work writing a sequel to the X-Men movie you're currently watching. Logan, the third Wolverine standalone movie after X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Wolverine, is the exception: it is the last in its series, because Hugh Jackman says so, and not just because they've run out of ways to name Wolverine movies. Buoyed by the success of 15-rated Deadpool and supported by Jackman's desire to leave a lasting legacy for his defining role, Logan is that rare superhero movie that feels like a full stop rather than a comma. Intentionally distanced from the rest of the X-Men universe and its frankly Gordian timelines, Logan stands alone as the best of the series: a bleak, bold and mold-breaking masterpiece of the genre.

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Suicide Squad, DC and the Warner Bros war against coherence

Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 8th August 2016

It should be abundantly clear now to anyone with even a passing interest in superhero movies that the concept of the "shared universe" should be feared. Credit to Marvel: they took a big risk, did their groundwork and built up their shared universe by releasing not one but four successful individual franchises, before bringing them together like a corporate executive doing an overbite and interlocking his fingers in the universal sign language for 'synergy'. Everyone else saw The Avengers' box-office success and thought, 'Yeah, we'll have a bit of that. But sod all that hard work!' And thus, the very blueprint for superhero movies was torn up, sellotaped back together and plonked on the desks of finance departments throughout Hollywood.

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