October 2012
4 posts
22 tags
12 October 2012
So this week we have Bradley Cooper with dreads, a naked Kristen Stewart and an insight into Paul Dano’s deepest carnal desires, while the most star-studded film is a documentary about an ex-homeless guy in New York. As always, click the images to open the trailers in another window.
Here Paul Dano writes about a girl only for said girl to suddenly appear in the flesh....
6 tags
‘10 THINGS…’ IN NOT QUITE BEING PERFECT SHOCKER
This guy, old enough to see early Black Flag shows or be DJ Qualls’s dad, is the one blemish on an otherwise perfect movie:
What a wanker.
16 tags
5 October 2012
This week we get a film written, directed and starring Ted from How I Met Your Mother, one from the producers of Paranormal Activity, a film from Transformer sound-a-like Olivier Megaton, and a novelist who was given the job of adapting his own book for screen and then directing it too.
As the only film on this list that I have already seen, I can honestly say that Taken 2...
14 tags
LOOPER ATTEMPTS TO ANSWER AN AGE OLD QUESTION
I can’t remember any other film ever attempting to answer this question and yet it was definitely one asked fairly often on the playground from year six on-wards. It’s not quite as exciting as ‘would you kiss Miss Snaggletooth in an assembly for £100?’, but it is certainly a big one.
In case you haven’t seen the film...
September 2012
5 posts
9 tags
BEST SIX SECONDS IN THE MIGHTY DUCKS TRILOGY
Hit us up on twitter
8 tags
MIGHTY DUCKS DVD TITLES CATASTROPHE
This post will contain some spoilers for the first Mighty Ducks movie. However, if you have ever bought the DVDs, then I am not going to spoil it more than they do.
This is the DVD case for the second Mighty Ducks movie:
As you can see, the title simply reads, The Mighty Ducks.
Here is the case for the first movie:
The title for this movie is the...
17 tags
21 September 2012
This week we get films directed by the acclaimed Oliver Stone (Platoon, Natural Born Killers) and Andrew Dominik (Chopper, Assassination of Jesse James…) as well as one by the writer of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Can’t win them all but there will be worst weeks, that I can reluctantly promise you. Click the images to link to the trailers.
Dakota Fanning...
11 tags
WHO THOUGHT THAT PARANORMAN MADE BRAVE SEEM INTERESTING?
Verdict: Spunk
DAN
Hit us up on twitter
16 tags
HOW EXCITING IS THE ABOVE STILL FROM A FILM THAT YOU’RE YET TO SEE?
You know when your friend comes back from travelling and shows you the couple thousand photos that they took of the couple dozen countries they visited and, while they all appear quite terrifically exotic and whatnot, it’s just your mate wearing a funny mask outside a cathedral or eating a strange sandwich sat next...
July 2012
32 posts
16 tags
TVSpunk | The Newsroom
Currently airing on Sky Atlantic every Tuesday
This episode is the best so far. Sure there are no rousing speeches attacking the establishment, no moments of triumph over other news broadcasters, or Coldplay songs swelling over moments of unity, but instead we get drama. I realise that the items listed above have given the show great drama over the previous four...
17 tags
WANK OR WATCH | Love & Other Drugs
It is incredibly rare that the lead actress goes topless in a romantic comedy. Unless you’re Charlize Theron or another serial boob-barer, ladies tend to keep their breasts in their shirt until they are in a role that people respect so that, by extension, they will be respected for getting naked. So, while Hathaway hasn’t been one to shy away...
14 tags
27 July 2012
The Lorax
Another Dr Seuss adaptation that, while maybe no worse than Despicable Me and other shit like that, is way below what should be expected from a Dr Seuss book. Here we have Zac Efron voicing a kid who has been brought up in a Truman Show town where nature no longer exists who, in an attempt to impress a girl, finds a way out and discovers the natural world and the...
16 tags
WANK OR WATCH | Brokeback Mountain
The second film in 2005 in which Anne Hathaway agreed to go topless is
a very different proposition to the first, Havoc. Released a few
months after, Brokeback Mountain had a highly and widely regarded
director in Ang Lee, two leads who had just started to reach their
potential in Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, a main character from a
recently ended,...
12 tags
MUMBLESPUNK STREAMER | The Pleasure of Being Robbed
Currently available via Lovefilm
This is one of those movies that you watch and instantly have to check
the internet to see if other people hated it as much as you did.
Within minutes I realised that I was not alone in thinking that this
is an utter waste of your time with no redeeming elements and, when it
comes in at under seventy...
16 tags
TVMUMBLESpunk | Girls
Coming to Sky Atlantic in September
Spoilers included
Approaching the mid-point of the season, this episode amps up the
drama as all four of our females have shit hit their respective fans.
Of course, in keeping with Girls, the drama is not overly sensational
instead revelling in a slightly unlikely but utterly plausible
fashion. It was necessary for this to occur as,...
15 tags
TVMUMBLESpunk | Girls
Coming to Sky Atlantic in September
It is here, as the credits started to roll on the third episode, that
I realised Girls is exactly the show that I had hoped that it would
be. The attitude, the honesty, the sexuality and the everyday are
represented so perfectly here that it made me ask my girlfriend as to
whether she agreed with my conclusion. The idea that this show...
20 tags
REVIEW | The Dark Knight Rises
This is not Spiderman 3. It is not Iron Man 2. But this is also not very good.
The final chapter of Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy is beautifully shot, with the cinematography and direction being superb throughout. The acting is excellent from those who have been with the trilogy throughout and even better from Hardy as Bane, JGL as the new Gary...
19 tags
WANK OR WATCH | Havoc
Anne Hathaway was almost twenty-two when her second appearance as Mia Thermopolis in the Princcess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement hit UK screens. Now, while she was playing a twenty-one year-old in that film, it was obviously a children’s movie. Her only other major cinematic roles at that point had been Ella Enchanted and the first Princess Diary film and that was all...
11 tags
5 WAYS THAT KATIE HOLMES IS THE BAD GUY IN BATMAN BEGINS
I like Scarecrow and Liam Neeson is pretty fucking sweet but he is just a bloke so doesn’t really count. Ultimately Batman Begins isn’t as good as The Dark Knight because it doesn’t have the Joker. It is here, after re-watching both of them last week, that I realised the real baddie is the judgmental fun vacuum that is...
30 tags
20 July 2012
The Dark Knight Rises
Final chapter in the Dark Knight trilogy and the best comic book adaptation series of all time. New actors involved include Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Juno Temple and Matthew Modine, which, in itself, is a good enough cast without the others. I couldn’t care less for reviews with this movie, I will be seeing it as early as I...
13 tags
MUMBLESPUNK STREAMER | Puffy Chair
Currently available via Netflix US
This was the feature debut of the Duplass brothers in every possible way. It was the first time that they had both written and produced a movie as well as the first time Jay had directed and Mark had acted in one. In this way it reminds me ever so slightly of Bottle Rocket, a film that launched the careers of Owen Wilson...
18 tags
TVSpunk | The Newsroom
Currently airing on Sky Atlantic on Tuesday at 10pm
This is the episode that ended up changing my mind on The Newsroom. It is still an incredibly well-written and intelligently humorous show, but its complete disregard for the reality of working in news is becoming insulting. I have regularly defended this by stating that it is a drama and not a documentary and so it...
13 tags
MUMBLESPUNK STREAMER | Uncle Kent
Currently available via Netflix and Netflix US
A weekend in the life of Kent Osborne, a Spongebob Squarepants
illustrator, as he attempts to bed a friend, Kate (Prediger), that he
made online who is staying with him. That’s the plot and, at 72
minutes, this at times feels more like an episode of a faked reality
TV programme than it does a feature. But, as...
12 tags
TVMUMBLESpunk
Coming to Sky Atlantic in September
This episode seems to revolve around the issue of sex, focusing primarily on what females want from it and sexual health itself. Hannah shows an irrational fear of sexual diseases whilst being called out by Marnie for allowing Adam to cast her as a demeaning character in his sexual fantasies. Marnie herself is unhappy at the way Charlie only...
10 tags
REVIEW | Nostalgia For The Light
This is a poetically narrated, stunningly photographed, blissfully philosophical look at two groups of people who inhabit the Atacama desert in Chile. Firstly we are introduced to the astrologers who have descended on the desert to take advantage of the clear and thin skies. Telescopes have been built that stand in stark contrast to the dry surface of the...
14 tags
REVIEW | Magic Mike
Issues that blokes will have with this movie:
It’s about dudes stripping.
The cast has a bunch of fellas better known for rom-coms and chick movies.
That’s it, and neither of those are entirely fair.
This is a movie about strippers rather than stripping. Sure there’s a
fair bit of gyrating willies, thonged arse-wobbles and oiled torsos,
but...
19 tags
REVIEW | Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
There are not enough movies about regular people at the end of the
world. Not sons of scientists (Day After Tomorrow) or amateur
astronomers (Deep Impact), but everyday people who can have fuck all
impact on the outcome. That’s what we get here when Dodge (Carell) and
Penny (Knightley) decide to join forces to live out their...
17 tags
MUMBLESPUNK STREAMER | Cold Weather
Currently available via Lovefilm and Netflix US
In my currently limited experience of Mumblecore, I have generally found the movies to have very little narrative. It’s basically a bunch of people doing something pretty simple (buying a chair off ebay, picking it up and taking to his dad’s house - Puffy Chair, or simply going to a mate’s...
30 tags
13 July 2012
Magic Mike
Ever wanted to see Channing Tatum, Matthew McConaughey, Alex Pettyfer and Joe Manganiello strip to their thongs? No? Then how about a Steven Soderbergh film with a 79% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes right now? If you can answer all three of the those questions with ‘no’ then you are a heterosexual man with no taste in film and I pity you...
15 tags
TVSpunk | The Newsroom
Currently airing on Sky Atlantic in the UK and HBO in the US
So, having gotten the team together, pitched the new vision for
Newsnight and persuaded Will McAvoy (Daniels) to get on board with
Mackenzie’s (Mortimer) intentions for the show, episode three opens
with Will making an apology live on air for his conduct over the last
few years. The entire speech is of the...
11 tags
REVIEW | Katy Perry: Part of Me
This is a fun movie. Sure it’s PR propaganda that never paints Katy
Perry in a bad light whether in conceiving her ‘art’, her family
history or the eventual downfall of her marriage, but it’s fun all the
same. If you’re not a fan of her music then you might find it hard
going what with large amounts of live footage carefully chosen to
represent the topic being...
9 tags
TVSpunk | Alan Partridge on Open Books with Martin Bryce
Currently repeated on Sky Atlantic tomorrow (07/07/12) at 12:45am
So last week we got Alan Partridge walking around Norwich describing the places that he apparently spends his time in ‘comical’ fashion, while this week we get him on a fake book review show promoting I,Partridge, the autobiography that Alan Partridge...
21 tags
6 July 2012
The Amazing Spiderman
Andrew Garfield plays Tobey Maguire and Emma Stone plays Kirsten Dunst and, while this all might seem pointless, they do better jobs than those they’re imitating. Read the full review here.
Katy Perry: A Part of Me
This film baffles me a little. Is it a documentary in the same vein as Scorcese’s Shine A Light or George Harrison:Living In A...
12 tags
REVIEW | God Bless America
Imagine, if you will, that John Doe from Se7en had completed his
sins-inspired spree and, in celebration, went for dinner with Charlie
Brooker to get some ideas for his next killings. The result is Frank.
Frank is divorced, unappreciated by his daughter, fired and has a
terminal illness, when he decides to set about killing those who he
regards as the most abhorrent...
13 tags
TVMUMBLESpunk | Girls
Coming to Sky Atlantic in September
It was no surprise to me when the bad reviews rained down on the first
episode of Girls. I had seen Tiny Furniture (Dunham’s SXSW and
Independent Spirit winning feature) earlier in the year and found the
characters to be spoilt little brats with absolutely no redeemable
qualities, the same complaints that were aimed at Girls. It also...
12 tags
MUMBLESPUNK STREAMER: My Effortless Brilliance
Currently available via Lovefilm
My Effortless Brilliance is effortlessly fine. I can’t really offer
more praise than that for it as there really is very little to it. A
pretentious, unlikable author is visited by his friend who calls him
an arse and then, sometime later, said unlikable author goes to visit
friend in his remote cabin in the...
17 tags
REVIEW| The Amazing Spiderman
So The Amazing Spiderman isn’t quite amazing but it is pretty darn
great. I would still argue that a reboot merely five years after the
last trilogy concluded is utterly unnecessary but this film is
definitely an improvement on any of Raimi’s offerings and, with the
exception of Ifans’s baddie, is better in every way to Raimi’s
original Spiderman. Here Garfield is...
12 tags
TVSpunk | The Newsroom
Airing 10 July on Sky Atlantic
So to the second episode and still people are ripping into this programme. Only yesterday I read Bret Easton Ellis annihilating it on Twitter because of the dialogue, the ideas that it covers and the self-righteous attitude that he perceives it to have. Unlike last week though, I have had time to think and I can see their arguments. This...
12 tags
MUMBLESPUNK REVIEW | Your Sister’s Sister
Your Sister’s Sister is the second ‘mumblecore’ movie to hit multiplexes this year (the first being Jeff, Who Lives At Home) and it is arguably a better adaptation of the genre to the big screen. Here we have Jack (Duplass) who is out of sorts emotionally going to spend a weekend at his best friend Iris’s (Blunt) family...
13 tags
REVIEW | Friends With Kids
This is a strange movie. It’s two stars are so unknown over here that
the studios instead decided to advertise their supporting cast (which
makes sense seeing that it’s the Bridesmaids cast). It’s forever set
in Autumn/Winter despite it’s summer release here and spring release
stateside. It’s so realistic that it becomes incredibly...
14 tags
REVIEW | Joyful Noise
It’s hard to find moments in this film that are palatable. If it’s not
some sub-Sister Act gospel crap that, unsurprisingly, gets too
religious too quick, then it’s them singing some sub-Glee pap made
even worse by those singing it being uggos in comparison to the Glee
kids. In between all of the far too sincere bellowing we get a
succession of sassy one-liners with a few...
June 2012
33 posts
9 tags
TVSpunk | Alan Partridge: Welcome to the Places of my Heart
Currently repeated on Sky One (Tonight) and Sky Atlantic (Saturday and Sunday)
After the tragically unfunny Fosters online skits, Mid Morning Matters, my expectations for this show were pretty low. However, having ditched Sidekick Simon who I was more than willing to blame for it’s shitness, I gave it the benefit of the doubt....
30 tags
29 June 2012
Killer Joe
Beautifully dark, twisted and funny, this is one of those films that will be on end of years lists purely because critics won’t be able to forget it. Read our full review here.
Friends With Kids
‘The Funnest Film Since Bridesmaids’ says a quote in the trailer. So the funniest film in the last 371 days then?
This is a strange beast as it was...
16 tags
REVIEW | Lay The Favourite
The themes and instances covered in this movie come pre-packaged with drama, tension and cool, yet somehow they spunk all of that up against the wall and make a mediocre flick where nothing happens. Rebecca Hall plays a stripper who decides to relocate to Vegas to become a cocktail waitress. There she ends up falling in with lovable Bruce Willis and working for him...
14 tags
REVIEW | Killer Joe
Gratuitous, yet not at all sexual nudity. Rare but relatively brutal
violence. Unpredictable characters doing unpredictable things within a
narrative outline that is as old as time. It’s the story of a father
and son (Hirsch and Haden Church) hiring the titular character
(McConaughey) to kill their ex-wife/mother for her insurance money so
that Hirsch can clear a debt with...
16 tags
TVSpunk| The Newsroom
Airing 10 July on Sky Atlantic
I feel like I might have seen this before. The pilot for an Aaron
Sorkin programme starting with a prominent, respected and yet
disillusioned senior staff member ranting to a captive audience as to
why his profession and society in general sucks the big one now. A
monologue given by people used to ad-libbing and yet still...
8 tags
Where Are The Perks To Being A Wallflower? - How Not To Promote A Film
I don’t think much needs to be said about this poster. That colour is fucking hideous. It is unnecessary, it is garish and it stands out for every wrong reason possible. The font used for the title looks similar to those used for Britpop bands in the mid-90s. The ‘We Are Infinite’ tagline looks like an...
13 tags
REVIEW | The Five Year Engagement
The Five-Year Engagement is a typical Apatow comedy and it made me
laugh. It didn’t make me laugh loads but I chuckled a fair few times
and I was in hysterics once. This is not too bad. The Five-Year
Engagement is also a drama and it moved me. It didn’t move me loads
but I had some genuine concern for our leads and it made me ask
questions of them and myself....
30 tags
22nd June 2012
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
At first I was excited for this film as for anything quite so mind-numbingly stupid to get made (ignoring the obvious marketing dream that this is) must surely mean that it is fantastic. But then I started worrying as, while killing vampires with a giant ax is awesome, the idea of politics being discussed in a movie of this sort is less...
11 tags
REVIEW | Jaws
We have all seen Jaws and so ‘reviewing’ it seems futile. The film
that invented the summer blockbuster. The film that, while not his
first, announced Spielberg as a director to be taken seriously. A film
that somehow became stronger because of its production issues and,
along with the likes of Casablanca, is forever a defence of modern
films who suffer the same setbacks and are...
