Latest

  • Review: The Creator is high-end, low-tech sci-fi with middling ambitions

    Movie Review | Ali Gray | 11th October 2023

    Apologetically plonked at the end of the September release schedule like a $100m afterthought, Gareth Edwards' The Creator is a movie that does a lot with a little, although that should be no surprise to anyone familiar with the director's prudent knack of making movies that look twice as expensive as they actually are. His first movie since Star Wars spin-off Rogue One - that rare Disney-era Star Wars feature that is universally beloved - Edwards finds himself back on imperious form, crafting a zeitgeisty tale about the dangers of A.I. that couldn't be more timely if it were written by ChatGPT itself.

  • Review: Jackass Forever is a healing balm for our bee-stung ballsack world

    Movie Review | Matt Looker | 3rd February 2022

    You may have noticed that film reviews, or indeed content of any kind, has been few and far between on the ridiculous pages of this site recently, but every now and then a film comes along that is so powerful, so commanding of the cultural zeitgeist, that it just simply can’t be ignored. This is that film. Jackass Forever is a movie that provides the relief we so desperately need following two years of global hardship. It’s a solution for the general societal malaise from which we’re all suffering. It might even hold the cure for the coronavirus itself. And all it took was a lot of dicks and balls getting hit, bitten, stung and punched.

  • Review: Black Widow adds shades of grey to the most interesting Avenger

    Movie Review | Ali Gray | 10th July 2021

    People sure like to bitch about Marvel movies, huh? You've got the usual Film Twitter snobs, writing them off as "films for children". You've got the hard nerd right, who never met a female character they couldn't belittle. You've got the cinema purists, claiming they represent everything wrong with cinema and that Disney are sounding the death knell for the industry. We are now, what, 24 movies into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (I'm not checking, I refuse to check) and it's never been easier to write a review of a Marvel movie - just reapply the same argument you did on the previous 23 films, file copy, commence smugness. People like to say the Marvel production line creates "cookie-cutter" movies, like that's somehow a bad thing. What, you don't like fucking cookies now? Enjoy your gluten-free artisanal crackers you tedious bores, because Black Widow is a triple-chocolate chunk cookie of a movie and it goes down real easy.

  • Review: Fast & Furious 9 is a bloodless blockbuster Scalextric

    Movie Review | Ali Gray | 27th June 2021

    Is there any point in bothering to review a film like Fast & Furious 9? Its very existence is a middle finger to anyone who genuinely considers themselves to be a 'film critic' - even its title feels like the sort of cute background gag you'd see in Back To The Future II, a sly crack at Hollywood's over-reliance on familiar formula. Let me rephrase my original question: is there any point in me bothering to review a film like Fast & Furious 9? The answer is yes, thank you very much, because I haven't reviewed a film since 2019 and I couldn't imagine booking an easier comeback gig. It's a big stupid target for someone like me to take cheap potshots at and at the same time feel good about myself for ultimately giving it a positive review, as per the will of the people. Everybody wins! Except the criminals.

  • Review: Wonder Woman 1984 is here to remind you about idiot nonsense cinema

    Movie Review | Matt Looker | 30th December 2020

    Coming right in the final throes of a horribly unheroic year, the long-awaited sequel of the best reviewed film of the DCEU - and the only true superhero movie to be released in 2020 - should be a slam dunk. Tenet aside, the year has been utterly devoid of blockbuster spectacle and we haven’t been able to measure our cinematic expectations in major franchise instalments like we normally would, resorting instead to counting Netflix hits and misses. So, whether it’s being watched at an IMAX or on an iPad, Wonder Woman 1984 really couldn’t have hoped for a more receptive audience. Sadly, any assumptions that this would guarantee a great movie experience is purely wishful thinking.

  • Review: Borat Subsequent Moviefilm arrives on time, but is it too little, or too much?

    Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 29th October 2020

    How do you lift the veil from someone who doesn't care what people think of them? This is the challenge facing Sacha Baron Cohen as he resurrects his Borat character, 14 years after the first film, in an attempt to snare the big figures of American politics prior to the upcoming election. The knowingly flimsy premise for this return is a meta plot in which Borat has now become so famous he has to continue his interview series in disguise - a process he's putting himself through in order to deliver a gift to U S. Vice President Michael Pence, otherwise he faces execution back home. Although you'd be mistaken for thinking Borat had turned up dead already.

  • Review: Rebecca is an uninspired case of diminishing returns

    Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 26th October 2020

    Here are a couple of film facts you can use to impress your TikTok audience: Die Hard is a Christmas movie, and John Carpenter's The Thing is a remake. Wait, one of the most awesome movies ever is a copy of another film? Well no, not exactly: Carpenter took an old story and improved it, adding his own ideas and explosions, and generally raising everything up a notch. Okay, so what's your point? That it is possible to create legitimate new art from old art. Oh right, is it worth obsessing over? Not really. Are you going to anyway? Yes, after this dab.

  • Review: Inheritance digs up the past, but you'll wish it remained buried

    Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 19th October 2020

    I was reading some comments under the Lily James gossip stuff recently, and someone said they couldn't tell the difference between James, Emma Roberts and Lily Allen. Lily Allen? But she's a singer, not an actress. And then I realised the person was an American and only knew her from films, not Top of the Pops. And then it got me thinking about initial impressions of people, and how I could work that into this review, before realising it's actually Lily Collins in the film and not Lily James. So my point is there are too many women.

  • Review: Hubie Halloween is a sorry excuse for a film, but don't expect an apology

    Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 12th October 2020

    It was cruel, really - to give us a glimpse of an oft-quoted character from Adam Sandler's greatest creation, Happy Gilmore, and then to undo any hint a comedy of that calibre would be in store mere seconds later when the funny voices and scat humour kicked in. And this is a film obsessed with scat: farts, poo, piss, it's got it all. Which is apt, because I've never seen anything go to shit as quickly as Hubie Halloween.

  • Review: Enola Holmes is an energetic romp that runs out of steam

    Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 10th October 2020

    English people sound one of three ways in Hollywood films: grubby urchin begging for a crumb of bread, Hugh Grant being wanked off by a malfunctioning robot, and Sherlock Holmes. Having been an English person for nearly forty years and travelled most of the country, I have never met a single person who sounds like any of them. Obviously I'm not tossing off enough floppy toffs. But just because we don't sound that way doesn't mean we don't think like it - which I'm about to handily prove by adopting my finest Sherlock big posho internal monologue for a review of Enola Holmes, what what!