House

News, Reviews & Features
  • Review: Rebecca is an uninspired case of diminishing returns

    Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 26th October 2020

    Here are a couple of film facts you can use to impress your TikTok audience: Die Hard is a Christmas movie, and John Carpenter's The Thing is a remake. Wait, one of the most awesome movies ever is a copy of another film? Well no, not exactly: Carpenter took an old story and improved it, adding his own ideas and explosions, and generally raising everything up a notch. Okay, so what's your point? That it is possible to create legitimate new art from old art. Oh right, is it worth obsessing over? Not really. Are you going to anyway? Yes, after this dab.

  • Review: The Knight Before Christmas in excuse for rambling film article

    Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 1st December 2019

    Ahh Christmas; the season of feelgood movies, peace and love to all, chestnuts roasting by an open fire, dressing gowns and comfy slippers, aisles of biscuit tins in Wilko, the excitement of the first snowflake, glitter, novelty plastic tat destined for a landfill, forcing yourself to like disgusting M&S sandwiches, family arguing about Brexit, splinters going up in the loft, more glitter, Boris Johnson what a character eh, tears as your wife's antique bauble gets smashed, fighting back consumerist guilt, the bulbs don't work, splinters coming down from the loft, kids screaming, lies upon lies about Santa, THE BULBS DON'T WORK AND SOMEONE NEEDS TO GO TO THE SHOP AND THERE'S GLITTER EVERYWHERE. It's December 1st.

  • Review: The House With A Clock In Its Walls is a fun waste of time

    Movie Review | Ali Gray | 18th September 2018

    Ugh. September. The worst month by some distance. Nothing good has ever happened in September. I checked history, which verified and confirmed: September is a dud. All the blockbusters are a distant memory, the big Christmas movies are too far away (see also: Christmas) and even the tiresome slog that is Oscar season has yet to get underway. That just leaves shitty geriaction movies where Denzel Washington kills people, horror movies that are too crap to save for Halloween and oddball movies that genuinely don't fit in anywhere else in the calendar. Mercifully, that last sub-genre occasionally yields surprising results, which is where The House With A Clock In Its Walls chimes in: it's not quite enough to salvage the September cesspool, but it is a fun kids' fantasy that does just about enough to distract you from the backslide into the arse end of the year.

  • The Death Of Stalin

    Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 23rd October 2017

    By now the central premise of Armando Iannucci's recent satirical output is clear enough, or has maybe just about been done to death: in politics, everyone's a chancer, making it up on the fly and looking out for number one. In The Death of Stalin there's an extra layer of irony, too: under Communism, there isn't supposed to be a number one to look out for. It's kind of the point.

  • Moana

    Movie Review | Ali Gray | 28th November 2016

    It seems quaint that there was an ever an outcry about the 'death' of traditional hand-drawn animation when you watch a movie with such beautiful artistry as Moana. John Musker and Ron Clements did more than most to keep that medium alive, with classics like The Little Mermaid and Aladdin on their resumes - they even tried to bring back 2D animation with 2009's The Princess And The Frog, a good-intentioned throwback to the old ways. But when the sun sets on Musker and Clements' jaw-droppingly beautiful CG adventure Moana, no one will be mourning those outdated techniques. It is a film so vibrant and luminescent and immersive that it is impossible to argue that the future of animation isn't in good hands. Though its storytelling is a touch too familiar to qualify as a true modern classic, Moana is nonetheless a relentlessly entertaining spectacle that's rooted in authenticity and has a talent pool so deep you can swim in it.

  • Men sit at table in tantalising first-look House of Cards image

    TV News | Ed Williamson | 2nd February 2016

    Breaking new ground as ever, Netflix has today released this first look at House of Cards season four, confirming that all 13 episodes will consist of President Underwood talking to RoboCop at a table. The sixth will consist entirely of Frank's acerbic asides to camera, such as "Get a load of this bell-end!" It will then be all anyone talks about for a week because it's on Netflix.

  • Amy

    Movie Review | Becky Suter | 2nd July 2015

    Three young friends lark about with a video camera, filming themselves eating sweets and making private jokes like typical teenagers. They start to sing Happy Birthday to the girl holding the camera, but one voice stands out – a rich, soulful and mature voice completely at odds with the young face its coming out of, one that will be later compared to the likes of Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. It’s an astonishing opening to Asif Kapadia’s moving portrait of tragic singer Amy Winehouse, and it’s as sad as fuck.

  • Your guide to understanding US politics through House of Cards

    TV Feature | Ed Williamson | 19th February 2015

    American politics is a right old carry-on. They have ballot papers designed by Chad Michael Murray and they don't even have a rich family they pay a huge annual salary to nonce off teenage girls and dress up as Nazis at parties. If only House of Cards made it easier to understand WAIT IT DOES

  • Top 20 TV shows of 2013

    TV Feature | Ed Williamson, Matt Looker, Rob Young, Luke Whiston, Iain Robertson, Neil Alcock | 31st December 2013

    In years to come, we will remember 2013 as the year everything changed. Danny Dyer is now in Eastenders, and across the land all else has ceased to matter. But look upon the works of this medium, now so wholly transformed, and you will see more than this. And you might think it handy that some berk put it all in a list and bid you read it.

  • #LFF2013: The Sacrament

    Movie Review | Christopher Ratcliff | 22nd October 2013

    Deep within a heavily armed camp in South America, a group of sober-living hippies under the influence of a safari-shirted old man known only as The Father, have relocated to begin a new life away from the evils of modern society – mediocre broadband speeds, ill-matching Tupperware lids, Starbucks constantly spelling their names wrong - that sort of shit.

    Within the congregation of hemp-oil smelling beatniks is Caroline, the sister of Vice magazine journalist Patrick. Seeking to rescue his sister from the cult, Patrick travels to the remote commune with fellow Vice journalist Sam (AJ Bowen, the bearded guy from You're Next) and cameraman Jake (Joe Swanberg, also from You're Next) who intend to document the family reunion, expose this bizarre gathering and interview the charismatic leader. As you can imagine, things get much shitter from there.