Analysis

News, Reviews & Features
  • I don't know about you but I'm reading that Liam Neeson horse story again

    Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 15th October 2018

    This is it. This is the content I crave. The world is a horrible place, full of racist demagogues and insidious politicians and hordes of idiots and hurricanes, but the news that Liam Neeson thinks a horse recognised him from a previous movie somehow makes everything okay. Liam Neeson doing horse whispering is the salve on the gaping wound that is 2018. Shhhh. Everything is going to be fine. Let's read it again, together.

  • The nine most embarrassing X-Men marketing fuck-ups

    Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 12th October 2018

    You can always count on the X-Men for a laugh. While the Marvel marketing machine runs like a well-oiled machine and the DC marketing machine is basically a Xerox of the Marvel machine, the Fox marketing machine is more like a dodgy office printer, old and busted and producing wildly erratic and inconsistent results because no one really knows how to use it properly. The X-Men franchise is arguably the biggest name in superhero cinema - so why can't Fox ever seem to sell the movies without, excuse my language, fucking up like cack-handed twats?

  • Analysing THE SHEER INSANITY of a day in the life of Mark Wahlberg

    Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 13th September 2018

    Mark Wahlberg is most unlike you or I. For starters, he's a rich and famous celebrity, who is so rich and famous and blessed with over-confidence he can get away with inventing hypothetical scenarios whereby he averts the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and face almost no backlash. His career trajectory is uniquely insane, running the full gamut from teenage thug to white rapper to underpants model to Hollywood actor to hamburger magnate. And despite his obvious handicap of looking permanently like he's not sure what floor his lift just stopped at, Wahlberg is inexplicably popular, not just with people who go and see movies with titles like 'Max Payne' and '2 Guns', but with actual, credible filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson, Martin Scorsese and James Gray. He's one of a select circle of actors - including Adam Sandler and Nicolas Cage - who can lurch from atrocious dreck to proper cinematic fare without even changing his facial expression.

  • So we've all just accepted that his actual name is 'Jed Mercurio', have we?

    TV Feature | Ali Gray | 31st August 2018

    I'm sure that you, like me, have been enjoying new BBC drama Bodyguard, starring a shooty-shooty man and a woman and some terrorists. Congratulations on your correct decision, because it is totally brilliant. I can't help but notice, however, that we are all apparently totally on-board with the creator's name: Jed Mercurio. That's right, is it? Jed Mercurio. First name Jed, last name Mercurio. Right. We're all fine with that. Just checking.

  • "You keep your hands off those!" Extensive and comprehensive analysis on Phillip Schofield's greatest TV moment

    TV Feature | Ali Gray | 24th August 2018

    In which I spend several thousand words on the most excruciating 18 seconds of Phillip Schofield's professional career.

  • Analysing the cast signatures on that Guardians Of The Galaxy support letter

    Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 31st July 2018

    Touching scenes online this week, as the cast members of Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy series banded together in a show of support for fired director James Gunn, by co-signing a letter that almost but not quite called for his reinstatement. Gunn, a former Troma filmmaker and purveyor of questionable humour, was fired by Disney after a bunch of right-wing lunatics, led by lisping dong Mike Cernovich, dredged up a bunch of offensive ten year-old tweets and weaponised their fake outrage in order to punish the director for his outspoken liberal views. It’s all very 2018, but let’s focus on the real issue here: MOVIE STAR SIGNATURES!