Todd Phillips

News, Reviews & Features

Review: Joker discovers the magical art of not giving a f*ck

Movie Review | Becky Suter | 8th October 2019

To be honest, I had every intention of getting this review done as soon as Iâ€™d watched the film on Friday, but then I got distracted by Untitled Goose Game and the rest of the weekend was a bit of a waterfowl blur, to be honest. My waking hours were mainly spent terrorising a small, English village, checking off my to-do list before I grew bored and wanted to fuck shit up, just for the sake of it. I stole goods from a small business and planted them in a manâ€™s garden to frame him for theft for pure lols. I trapped the boy in the garage over and over again, because I thought he was was weak and he didnâ€™t like my honking. Unbound by societal demands, I was liberated; I was free. The poor inhabitants of the village had done nothing to deserve my feathery reign of terror, other than they didnâ€™t like me and therefore, I didnâ€™t like them. By the end of the weekend, had even one villager shown just a morsel of kindness toward me (a piece of bread, perhaps), I would have just honked in their stupid faces, and continued to destroy everything they hold dear. I didnâ€™t set out to be the figurehead of the goose rebellion; they made me that way. Throughout the ages, village elders will tell tales of "The Goose That Hid in a Box, Then Jumped Out and Scared the Lady.â€ In the early hours of the morning with no more worlds left to conquer, I closed my laptop and remembered I said I was going to do a write-up of Joker, about a marginalised character on the fringes of society who adopts an alter-ego in a downward spiral, and I realised my story had already been told, except it was filmed a lot better and had Joaquin Phoenix in it and not so many geese.

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Hot take: Martin Scorsese's Joker movie might be good but might also be bad, more as it develops

Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 23rd August 2017

Two separate news stories broke in the same news story this morning. First, it was reported that Martin Scorsese would be producing a brand new '80s crime-era origin story for The Joker, with the role recast and the film unrelated to the nascent DC Cinematic Universe. Then, upon further scrutiny, it was discovered in the same report that Todd Phillips would be directing it. Oh. Right. Rough, meet smooth. Depending on how you frame it, this is either a savvy move from DC to decentralise their movie universe by putting legendary filmmaking talent at the centre of it, or it's an act of desperation from a studio who can't settle on a tone and can't even keep an actor interested in a role between one movie and the next. Which opinion is correct? Find out after these messages!

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War Dogs

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 26th August 2016

As I was leaving my work office to come to the screening of this film, I happened to tell a colleague where I was going. His response was: "Oh cool! I saw a trailer for War Dogs. It looks like The Hangover meets Lord Of War". He's not wrong, but it's the kind of reference point used far too much these days and is so simplistic as to become meaningless. He might as well have said "Oh cool! War Dogs looks like Todd Phillips meets gun-running". Or "It looks like funny stuff meets serious dangerous stuff". "Oh cool! I saw a trailer for War Dogs. It looks like Jonah Hill meets Miles Teller". Yes. Yes, he does.

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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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Meet Barry, the key to the Todd Phillips Movieverse

Movie Feature | Ali | 21st May 2013

Todd Phillips' movies might be the basest comedies known to man, but they are home to a rather fun recurring cameo by the director himself: sort of like Nick Fury if Nick Fury was a total skeezeball.

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Insufferable berk of the day

Movie News | Ali | 25th April 2013

Speaking in an Empire interview, Phillips went on to defend the $500m sequel, saying "It annoys me when people say it's lazy," before clarifying: "Yes, we do a wake-up and a blackout, but every joke in Hangover II is completely different." I think he means they're literally not the same jokes. Like, he didn't just re-use the old footage. Set your watch for April 2023.

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Project X

Movie Review | Matt | 3rd March 2012

When I remember the house parties I went to in my teens, I can only really recall people vomiting, broken household objects and people attempting dangerous physical pursuits. They weren't epic by any means, but they were reckless affairs fuelled by crippling amounts and combinations of alcohol, and often resulting in shame, guilt and remorse the next day. And yet, I will maintain to this day that I had an awesome time at those parties. So it is with Project X.

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In pictures: 7 possible plots for The Hangover: Part III

Movie Feature | Ali | 6th June 2011

Hollywood's most talented writers are already hard at work doing a find and replace on the script for The Hangover: Part III. Maybe they'll find some inspiration from our possible plot devices.

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The Hangover: Part II

Movie Review | Ali | 26th May 2011

"It happened again..." groans Bradley Cooper down the phone in The Hangover: Part II's opening scene. "Worse than you can even imagine." Woah. Pretty bold to open your sequel with a line that could so easily be interpreted as prophetic there, Mr Cooper. While Hangover 2: The Drunkening isn't quite as bad as you can imagine, it is precisely what you expect: same shit, different continent.

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Due Date trailer #2: Robert Downey Jr spits in a dog's face

Movie Trailer | Ali | 17th September 2010

Well, I don't think any of us saw that coming. Obviously you will now, but... y'know, it was surprising to me at least.

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