John Goodman
News, Reviews & Features-
Atomic Blonde
Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 11th August 2017
I'd have been cool if I lived in Berlin in the Cold War. You would've been too: we would've smoked constantly and worn elegantly distressed charity-shop peacoats and listened to Bowie in a Lada. Maybe we could've been happy there, you and me.
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Transformers: The Last Knight
Movie Review | Ali Gray | 21st June 2017
Michael Bay finally did it: he exploded history. Not content with retconning the dinosaurs in the last part of his ever-growing Transformers universe, Bay has now officially changed the course of human history. The Last Knight not only rewrites Arthurian legend (myth, history, whatever), it puts an Autobot spin on World War II, the mystery of Stonehenge and even Stephen Hawking, via scenes that stretch from the depths of outer space to the bottom of the ocean. It's a miracle there isn't a scene where we find out Jesus was a robot too: the Crucifixicon. It is, I shouldn't have to say but will, an extraordinary payload of absolute horseshit: a Buster Gonad-style wheelbarrow of bollocks that will leave you flabbergasted as to how incoherent, lazy and contemptuous it is. I should say, however, that I haven't laughed so much in a cinema in years.
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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.
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Patriots Day
Movie Review | Matt Looker | 2nd March 2017
How soon is too soon? Is it when the real-life victims of a tragedy are still raw from the experience? Is it when artistic licence just isn't appropriate for events that are still fresh in everyone’s minds? Is it when unseemly facts about those involved might detract from their otherwise brave and heroic actions? Or is it when - as is the case here - overcompensating for all of the above results in muddled, mawkish melodrama?
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10 Cloverfield Lane
Movie Review | Matt Looker | 18th March 2016
What a nice, interesting surprise. A Cloverfield sequel that nobody was expecting dropping a trailer out of nowhere and coming with a tantalising-yet-head-scratching title implying a connection to the first film that makes no sense whatsoever. I'm excited, but also... confused? Like a dog hearing somebody whistling on the TV. I have no idea what's about to come next, but it sounds fun.
And this, as it happens, is the film's greatest strength. Because there are so few films released now that make us feel like dogs hearing somebody whistle on the TV. -
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The Transformers/Coen Bros Venn diagram
Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 4th July 2014
It's one of the weirdest phenomenons in modern movie history: how is it that so many Coen regulars wind up in Transformers movies? See the culprits as we attempt to figure out what possible motives the guilty parties could have.
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The Monuments Men
Movie Review | Rob Young | 21st February 2014
Last summer I remember reading about George Clooney and Matt Damon playing basketball at a Cambridge council-run gym. They posed for photos, were called 'lovely people' by the manager and basically had a cracking time in south Cambridgeshire. And while in my neck of the woods, they shot scenes for The Monuments Men at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford: a joyful place I was often taken as a child by an over-eager father keen on Spitfires, but less keen on buying me an Airfix model of one.
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#LFF2013: Inside Llewyn Davis
Movie Review | Neil Alcock | 16th October 2013
"If it was never new and it never gets old, then it's a folk song," mutters Inside Llewyn Davis' titular muso between performances from a dimly-lit Greenwich Village stage. Those might just be the folkiest words ever uttered, but while they're perfectly accurate, they could just as easily be applied to the Coen brothers' best work. The reassuring familiarity of the Coenverse's unique characters, patois and situations, which sit at ninety degrees to reality, is one of modern cinema's greatest pleasures, and the knowledge that they could take you anywhere is never less than tantalising. Inside Llewyn Davis delivers that old magic in spades, and includes an award-worthy performance from a cat to boot. What's not to love?
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The Hangover: Part III
Movie Review | Ali | 22nd May 2013
Only now that it has reached its merciful conclusion, we can see that The Hangover trilogy plays out a lot like a night of drunken excess. To start with, everything you say or do seems riotously funny and original. Then, as the night grows old, the attention goes to your head; you begin to repeat yourself, and your humour takes on a nasty edge. Finally, three sheets to the wind and completely intoxicated on your own brilliance, you become boorish, hateful, unnecessarily violent, idiotic and completely unrecognisable from the man you once were. That's certainly how my Saturday nights usually pan out, anyway.
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Flight
Movie Review | Matt | 29th January 2013
As with every year, the Best Actor Oscar of 2013 will no doubt be given to the actor who has portrayed the greatest character affliction. So let's tally up: Bradley Cooper had mood swings, Joaquin Phoenix had um... something, Daniel Day-Lewis had... a beard? And Hugh Jackman sang. A lot. Lucky then for Denzel Washington who plays an alcoholic. Also, pity poor John Hawkes for not even getting nommed.
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