Jk Simmons

News, Reviews & Features

The Snowman

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 12th October 2017

Murder mysteries exist in a weird sort of critical stasis while you're watching them, because any story that hinges on an explosive final act reveal floats in limbo until it has shown its hand. Such a reveal - a surprise identity, a killer motive, a shock twist - may cause you to reassess everything you've already seen. The best films of the genre do just that: they cleverly subvert what you think you saw, fill in plot gaps you didn't know were there and, like a smug serial killer, flaunt the fact that they've been one step ahead of you the whole time. Yeah, The Snowman does not do any of that. You watch attentively and wait patiently and cross your legs and twiddle your thumbs but come the crushingly disappointing final act, the only dawning realisation you have is this: The Snowman is a bad movie and it turns out it had been all along. Twist!

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Terminator Genisys

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 1st July 2015

Terminator Genisys represents everything that is wrong with modern movies. Absolutely everything. It is a hopelessly contrived revisit to a once famous franchise, long since dragged through the mud and reanimated - for the third time - in the hopes that it can repeat past tricks. It is a reboot that fails to perform the basic function of a reboot - to start afresh with a blank canvas - instead preferring to muddy the waters of an already terminally confusing timeline. Worst of all, it is chronically boring and manages to make a movie about a robot uprising seem about as exciting as the launch of Tidal. In short, it is the worst film of the year by far; a catastrophically bad moviegoing experience that not only manages to insult fans of the first (and only) two decent Terminator movies but manages to botch the franchise to such an extent you wonder if even the 12-year-olds it's aimed at will be impressed by its static action and needlessly convoluted plot.

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Whiplash

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 11th January 2015

Sometimes a joke hits too close to the mark, and so it is I cannot ever listen to jazz music without thinking of The Fast Show sketch, Jazz Club, with its bowl-cutted host Louis Balfour introducing chin-stroker acts in straight trousers with names like Charlie ''The Bulb'' Robeson and Soylent Green. That's an entire musical genre desolated, for all time - an entire section of HMV I'll never trouble. But perhaps there is a saviour for jazz; not a musician, but a director, Damien Chazelle - a man who's probably too young to even remember The Fast Show, let alone the old duffers who made jazz insufferable in the first place. Trumpets please!

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The Rewrite

Movie Review | Becky Suter | 10th October 2014

Before I launch into my review of The Rewrite, I'd like to take the opportunity to tell you about my own script entitled "Another Shit Movie Starring Hugh Grant", where Hugh Grant plays Hugh Grant, a Hugh Grant who is trying to make a film about Hugh Grant being Hugh Grant, but Hugh Grant doesn't want to Hugh Grant anymore, so Hugh Grant must out-Hugh Grant's Hugh Grant, and everyone's Hugh Grant. If by now, you want to stick pins in your eyes to prevent me from going any further, then you will know how I felt watching The Rewrite.

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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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Jennifer's Body

Movie Review | Ali | 8th November 2009

Recently I spoke of the lack of prominent female figures in the movie industry. Well, here are three on the same film. First, you have director Karyn Kusama of Aeon Flux and Girlfight fame. Penning the script is Oscar-winning scribe du jour Diablo Cody, hot off Juno. Then, most prominent of all, you have star and full-time erection facilitator Megan Fox, who's somehow become the hottest property in female film - and even she'd be first to admit she's no idea why.

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Burn After Reading

Movie Review | Ali | 19th October 2008

Just nine short months after No Country For Old Men was released to critical acclaim and just eight short months after it bagged the Best Picture Oscar (among others), the Coen brothers present a film that couldn't be more different in tone. There are similarities - like Llewelyn Moss, the central characters here are forced into...

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Juno

Movie Review | Ali | 7th February 2008

No one likes a wiseass, but give Juno MacGuff a chance. The sass-talking star of Jason Reitman's follow-up to Thank You For Smoking is a sixteen year-old smarty-pants who looks like a schoolgirl but talks like a scriptwriter, and she saves her film from becoming just another Little Miss Sunshine schmaltz-fest. Boasting a sharp-t...

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Thank You For Smoking

Movie Review | Ali | 20th July 2006

Although I can't stomach cigarettes myself, I'm with Bill Hicks when it comes to the attitude towards the humble cancer stick and those who chew on her: "Non-smokers... I'd probably quit if I didn't think I'd become one of you." It's an ongoing battle between the two warring factions; the non-smokers arguing with the moral high...

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