Anna Kendrick

News, Reviews & Features

Review: A Simple Favour is a fabulous new look for Paul Feig

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 22nd September 2018

Imagine being Paul Feig. Youâ€™re a talented director with a charming comedy disposition who consistently dresses like a flamboyant uncle at a wedding. Then you dare to reboot a beloved 80s franchise and cast it with actors who have one more X chromosome than the original actors. Suddenly the Horrible Part Of The Internet hates you. It doesnâ€™t care that you made Bridesmaids, because suddenly it hates that too now, just because. Trolls make your life hell for a couple of years. They no longer find it endearing that you dress like a recently widowed old man celebrating his anniversary one last time before taking his own life to join his beloved. Instead they send you death threats because you reimagined their favourite pretend ghost hunters from 30 years ago as women. What do you do now?

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The Accountant

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 28th October 2016

Adding itself to the long list of films that are about the least dynamic occupations known to man - alongside The Postman and The Constant Gardener - The Accountant belies the real nature of the job by having a musclebound, autistic Ben Affleck punch and shoot people in his spare time. We all know, however, that accountants are only good for trawling through an overly complicated mess of information to try to simplify everything and make sense of it all. Which is, coincidentally, exactly the kind of accountant that this film really needed.

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Mike And Dave Need Wedding Dates

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 7th August 2016

I have been trying to write a movie script for a few years now. Of course, I am under no illusion that it will be any good but, like all aspiring screenwriters I am hoping for two impossible things to happen: 1) it will be lauded as a magnificent piece of art, and 2) it will actually get made into a film. What Mike And Dave Need Wedding Dates shows, however, is that if you care less about 1), there are some quick and easy ways to make 2) happen.

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The Last Five Years

Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 16th April 2015

A woman near me straight-up cried at this. Call me a burnt-out husk of a man with a tin heart if you will, but I couldn't see what at. Because musical involves the naked outpouring of expository emotion through song, there is a built-in conduit for stirring up this sort of feeling, and its largely comprising big orchestral numbers with powerful maintained high notes naturally raises forearm hairs and moistens eyes too. Where musical really succeeds is in having real heart behind the bombast, though, and there's not enough of it on show in The Last Five Years.

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Pitch Perfect

Movie Review | Matt | 18th December 2012

Here we have a film that is simultaneously an antidote to the pop-gurning mime-fest of Glee and an offender of exactly the same kind of squeaky clean routines. One that spends as much time smiling through faux music video stage dancing as it does making fun of acapella groups for being "lame". In short, it is both refreshingly funny and teen-panderingly cheesy. Ladies and gentlemen, to use the appropriate parlance, it seems we have here what all the young kids these days refer to as a 'mash-up'.

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#LFF2012: End Of Watch

Movie Review | Matt | 4th October 2012

As we welcome the BFI London Film Festival into our lives once again, get ready for a spate of reviews of worthy, awardsy type films that illicit an emotional response different to our usual "fuck yeah, that roundhouse kick was awesome!". And End Of Watch is as good a film as any to kick off proceedings, being a GRITTY, REALISTIC cop drama that reminds us that crime on the streets of LA is GRITTY and REALISTIC and OFTEN QUITE HARROWING REALLY.

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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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What to Expect When You're Expecting

Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 22nd May 2012

There's no end to what Hollywood can monetise. Board games, toys, popular holidays, and now non-fiction books that guide expectant parents through pregnancy. You'll have noticed one constant thread running through the examples linked above: in being straightforward, cynical attempts to cash in on a popular phenomenon with a distinct target audience, they all dispensed with one key tenet of film production. Namely, the idea that you're supposed to at least try to make a good one.

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50/50

Movie Review | Ali | 23rd November 2011

You can always judge an 'illness' movie on how hard it makes you cry. Depending on the genre, it may also make you laugh or think or empathise, but when it comes down to it, the tears tell the story â€“ it's the one emotion that informs all others, the one that can't lie. So what saltiness level are we talking for 50/50, Jonathan Levine's buddy comedy based on writer Will Reiser's own cancer treatment? When it comes to the crunch, it's quite likely there'll be "something in your eye", with possible cheek wiping needed, and a fair chance of a little dry-sobbing at the end. It's unlikely to have you bawling, but 50/50 is smartly written and well acted enough to have you fully invested once it's time to find out if those titular odds come good.

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Up In The Air

Movie Review | Kirsty | 14th January 2010

Remember before pre-printed boarding passes, when you'd be queuing at check-in for 30 minutes, manically searching for your passport and tickets, only to have someone roll past you with their top-of-the line Samsonite holdall with dedicated laptop and "liquids" compartments, sail through first class check-in and security and be in their high-end Hertz hire cars before you even had your already dog-eared boarding pass in your sweaty little hand? Don't be too quick to envy their flashy suits and graphite members cards.

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