John Goodman

News, Reviews & Features

Trouble With The Curve

Movie Review | Matt | 24th November 2012

I'm not a huge sports film fan and, to be honest, I'm less interested in baseball than practically any other sport. It's pretty much at the bottom of my list, just below dressage and kabaddi. And this movie isn't even about playing baseball - it's about a grumpy old man watching it and complaining about life. It's basically Moanyball. (*high-fives self*)

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#LFF2012: Argo

Movie Review | Ali | 17th October 2012

How could it be that Ben Affleck â€“ he of being the bomb in Phantoms, yo â€“ has become the most exciting American director working today? The former himbo and male half of Bennifer made one of the all-time greatest career turnarounds when he ditched the smug action hero roles and gave honest to goodness filmmaking a shot; first with sensational kidnapping drama Gone Baby Gone, then with palm-sweatingly tense heist thriller The Town. Affleck has gone one better with his third film as director, moving from the frying pan of Boston into the fire of Iran for his most ambitious â€“ and awards-worthy â€“ movie yet.

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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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Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 13th February 2012

September 11th, 2001. Pretty bad day, overall. But ten years on, 9/11 is beginning to take its place alongside the Vietnam War in inspiring a genre of American cinema in its own right, and the story of how the day unfolded and its aftermath resonated is taking shape through filmmakers' eyes. The wounds are still raw, but while there might have been cries of "Too soon!" when Oliver Stone and Paul Greengrass released World Trade Center and United 93 respectively in 2006, in relative terms these guys waited longer than Coppola did before Apocalypse Now. Stephen Daldry's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close couldn't be accused of insensitivity: it's the first film I've seen to treat 9/11 as a historical event and look at the loss suffered in retrospect, rather than put you right in the middle of the clouds of debris or a doomed aeroplane.

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Just in case you were wondering...

Movie News | Ali | 13th January 2012

The Artist is still out now, and still wonderful.

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#LFF: The Artist

Movie Review | Ali | 19th October 2011

The dog doesn't die. What a relief. After the relentless misery of films like Tyrannosaur and Snowtown, and with We Need To Talk About Kevin still to come, I'm just grateful a film as joyous as The Artist even exists. A lovingly shot black and white homage to silent film, Michel Hazanavicius's evocative picture echoes the classics of the genre and stretches wide over the cinematic horizon like a double rainbow (so intense, all the way across), blasting away the black clouds hanging over the London Film Festival. If it doesn't leave you with a smile plastered all over your stupid face, then you don't have a mouth, in which case, I'm sorry I said your face was stupid.

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Red State

Movie Review | Matt | 7th September 2011

Matt reviewed Red State earlier this month. As it's out today, here's a fresh reminder of his crazy thoughts and opinions.

In recent years, the loud-mouthed, foul-mouthed Kevin Smith has become the very antithesis of his former silent onscreen persona. With a network of daily updated podcasts sprawling out from his Smodcast.com website, Smith is even intent on giving up filmmaking altogether so he can justâ€¦umâ€¦â€˜talkâ€™ for a living. But after Cop Out was torn to shreds by â€˜biased critics out to get himâ€™, Red State is a one-man retort railing against the Hollywood system. For all his often very funny stoner ramblings, it seems that, with this film, Smith is actually trying to say something.

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Confessions Of A Shopaholic

Movie Review | Anna | 24th February 2009

It seems that any female New Yorker worthy of screen time must be a writer or an aspiring writer - see: Betty Suarez (Ugly Betty), Carrie Bradshaw (Sex And The City), Andy Sachs (The Devil Wears Prada) - so we're already on familiar ground with Rebecca Bloomwood (Isla Fisher), a journalist in the Big Apple. Rebecca starts out...

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Speed Racer

Movie Review | Ali | 11th May 2008

Some nine years after they first introduced the world to bullet-time with The Matrix, the Wachowski brothers continue their obsession with Japanese culture and cutting-edge technology with Speed Racer - a CG-injected update of the largely unseen '60s cartoon 'Mahha GoGoGo'. But while The Matrix drew you in with its post-apocalyp...

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