Brie Larson

News, Reviews & Features
  • Review: Avengers: Endgame is a fitting tribute to Earth's mightiest franchise

    Movie Review | Matt Looker | 25th April 2019

    Fan or sceptic, hardened critic or casual movie-watcher, there is no denying that Marvel Studios has changed the face of cinema. These past 20-odd Marvel movies – for all the good and bad, for all the shawarmas and dramas, the Lady Sifs and Malekiths, the Jotunheims and Ed Norton times – have been a historic undertaking and seen record-breaking success. And Avengers: Endgame knows it. Not only does this film reach the narrative culmination of the Avengers to date, but it’s simultaneously a beautiful send-off, a greatest hits tour and a lap of honour. This is Marvel celebrating Marvel, and it is thoroughly deserved.

  • Review: Unicorn Store sparkles but doesn't shine or, er, something

    Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 23rd April 2019

    Hey everyone, it's the new movie starring Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson! You know, the one where she has to make a bunch of defining choices regarding her responsibilities in a fantasy setting! While making quips! Actually Unicorn Store was completed a few years ago but has only just been released by Netflix, in what is presumably a Captain America-style tactical decision to capitalise on Brie Larson's new-found Marvel fame. But don't read too much into this apparent dumping on a streaming service because while it's not exactly a Vision to behold and a bit low-key (Loki) on the life-affirming front, it's not a Hulking great mess either! Thanos!

  • Review: Captain Marvel is predictably great fun by numbers

    Movie Review | Matt Looker | 5th March 2019

    It seems strange now to consider any new Marvel movie to be a risk. After 20 films, each amassing box office receipts equal to the size of entire national economies, surely a new instalment of the MCU can only ever be a sure thing at this stage? And yet, here we are, with a film that is about risky as Marvel gets now; not because this is its first female-fronted film (Wonder Woman has kapowed that glass ceiling already), but because we are dealing with a character most won’t know, with abilities that are supposed to be more powerful than anything we have ever seen before, played by a still relatively obscure lead actress. Oh and there’s that little thing of presenting her as the Endgame saviour of the Infinity War. Have no doubt, Marvel is rolling the dice here, even if they are safely loaded.

  • 7 clues found in Brie Larson's Captain Marvel film-wrap photo

    Movie Feature | Matt Looker | 10th July 2018

    As is the tradition for all Hollywood classics, completion of principal photography on Captain Marvel was officially announced at the weekend with a Twitpic of a graffiti-ridden slate and a homemade calendar drawn on to a scrap piece of paper. But look a little bit closer and we can start to glean some plot details and clues about what lies ahead for the MCU...

  • Kong: Skull Island

    Movie Review | Matt Looker | 11th March 2017

    There will surely be a time soon when the film industry decides that monster movies just aren't a good fit for modern cinema audiences. That we have developed a more sophisticated taste for storytelling and an appreciation for nuance, and that therein lies a problem for films that are essentially about giant rage-beasts smashing things up with their clumsy hoof-paws. Luckily, that time hasn't come yet and until it does we still have opportunities like this one to enjoy creature features that are as big, dumb and ridiculous as whatever enormous idiot monkey is causing all the destruction in the first place. That's right, this film is a gigantic fun monster - a stupidly thrilling buffoon baboon of a movie - and we shouldn't want it any other way.

  • LFF 2016: Free Fire

    Movie Review | Matt Looker | 16th October 2016

    Remember that sequence in Spaced, where Tim gets out of a bind by initiating a pretend shootout with finger guns, safe in the knowledge that no one in the near vicinity can resist joining in? Ben Wheatley's new trigger-happy triumph plays out exactly like that, complete with stylised slow-mo, only with real guns, real bullet wounds and with it all carrying on for a real long time.

  • Room

    Movie Review | Becky Suter | 21st January 2016

    No internet and a TV that can only pick up a few analogue channels….no, not Christmas at my parents, but the world in which five-year-old Jack and his beloved Ma live. There’s also Bed, Lamp and Rug – the bits of furniture that Jack greets fondly every morning as most five-year-olds would greet their little mates at playschool, making his way around his 10 square-feet room, a space which would probably go for a premium price if it was in the right spot in London. To Jack, it’s the grand sum of his universe, but to Ma it’s the claustrophobic prison where she’s been kept captive as a sex slave for several years by a serial rapist. If you’re easily upset and/or of a sensitive disposition, you’re probably best off seeing Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Road Chip instead.

  • Hold me closer, Tony Danza

    Movie Feature | Ed Williamson | 11th November 2013

    ... said Brie Larson, yesterday.

  • #LFF2013: Don Jon

    Movie Review | Ali Gray | 21st October 2013

    Joseph Gordon-Levitt is impossible to dislike. The bastard. Attractive, talented, creative, industrious and brilliant at karaoke, he's the kind of self-made leading man who you actively will towards success – as opposed to all the no-talent shit-for-brain himbos for hire who I actively will towards homelessness. Gordon-Levitt's directorial debut Don Jon is certainly an accomplished and confident first film, but I can't help but think a lot of the praise it's receiving is directed at its star and not its screenplay – subtract all the personal goodwill that Gordon-Levitt has banked over the years and Don Jon remains a good film, just perhaps not a great one.

  • 21 Jump Street

    Movie Review | Rob | 13th March 2012

    21 Jump Street: a US cop show from the late 80s that a lot of us probably never heard of. It was about youthful-looking cops going undercover in high schools, lasted five seasons, kick-started the career of Johnny Depp, boasted guest stars like Brad Pitt and Josh Brolin, and had a kick-ass intro that's all very Saved By The Bell. So then, perfect fodder for a 21st Century piss-take.