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News, Reviews & Features

Review: Fahrenheit 11/9 is a lukewarm takedown of Trump

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 31st October 2018

There are ambitious movies, there are overly-ambitious movies, and then there are 'Let's tell the story of Donald Trump' movies. By now it should be pretty clear that the tall tales of the Trump presidency cannot be adequately covered in a single documentary - we're surely in 'multi-season HBO mini-series' territory - but Michael Moore has attempted to document Chapter 1 of The Donald Trump Story, the story of the American dream turned into a waking nightmare, handily prefaced here with a perfectly succinct and necessary question: "How the fuck did this happen?"

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The 24 maddest moments from Gerard Butler's Pentagon press conference

Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 16th October 2018

Because global politics isn't weird and backwards and horrifying enough right now, Washington reporters gathered together yesterday afternoon for a Pentagon press conference, not to ask questions of President Trump, or his press secretary Sarah Sanders, or even White House advisor Stephen Miller, the Salacious Crumb to Trump's Jabba. No, today's speaker would be Gerard Butler, actor and star of forthcoming submarine thriller Hunter Killer. Perfectly normal, just another normal day, nothing to see here, so normal it hurts.

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A special Shiznit investigation: which food is acceptable to eat on a train?

Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 1st October 2018

Earlier this week, an unforeseen event shocked me to my very core. My good friend and colleague Matthew Looker, a professional and a family man, contacted me to inform me of some most distressing news, and he had pictorial evidence: a woman on his packed commuter train home had begun eating a whole melon with a spoon. Not melon chunks, you understand. An entire, spherical melon. No sooner had the perpetrator finished carving the guts out of the melon, satisfying her own perverted craving for flesh, she began carving up a second melon. The carnage was only contained when the carcasses of the large fruits were stored in a Tupperware lunchbox and removed from the theatre of conflict. Regardless, it was clear: the rules had changed, and none of us in the Banter Squad group chat would ever be the same again.

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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.

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"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.

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There was a film released recently called Blackmark and hereâ€™s all you need to know

Movie Feature | Matt Looker | 16th August 2018

Here is a plot synopsis: â€œ1963 Military Industrialist Arthur Blackmark must race against the clock to stop an international incident which threatens to end the world.â€

Thatâ€™s right. This isnâ€™t about a military â€˜black markâ€™; his name is Arthur Blackmark. No one is called Arthur Blackmark. Thatâ€™s not even a surname.

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Today, in 'Everything Is Totally Fine And Normal In Hollywood'

Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 15th August 2018

Nothing to see here, just a filmmaker operating under the illusion that he's going to cast an actual android instead of a human in his next role in a movie that is definitely going to get made and be released and be competent. "The android will be trained in various techniques and a variety of acting methods," say The Guardian. Well, it can't be worse than Mark Wahlberg.

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7 things you didn't spot in the first-look photo of the new Terminator film

Movie Feature | Matt Looker | 1st August 2018

Whether you want it or not, Untitled Terminator Reboot is on the way. Arnie is back! Because lol. More importantly, James Cameron is back too! Now we just have to wait and see if his producer credit amounts to any more input than that time he tried to convince us all that Terminator: Genisys was a â€œRenaissanceâ€. His actual word.

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Tully

Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 11th May 2018

There are no ugly people in Hollywood, and as such the idea of ugging-up a bit for a role has become a "brave" one. It puts you in the awards conversation, as though peeling off some make-up or yellowing your teeth a bit reveals depth. This involves an acknowledgement that the profound is an exception, and I suppose that the industry is therefore preoccupied by surface sheen. For actresses this proposition also suggests that to be beautiful is to be shallow, which is a bit rich, since if they aren't beautiful they aren't allowed in the door. I think Charlize Theron largely transcends this, but she remains most critically celebrated when she's made to look her least pretty.

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Journeyman

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 28th March 2018

Paddy Considine delivered a heart-stopping directorial debut with Tyrannosaur in 2011, the kind of grim, unforgettable movie that left dirt under your nails and needles under your skin. His long-awaited follow-up, boxing movie Journeyman, initially feels like it pulls its punches in comparison to its predecessor's savagery, but don't be fooled; the fancy shorts and bright lights of the ring dress up an equally complex story of recovery and redemption.

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