Magic Mike XXL

Posted 2:01pm Sunday 26th July 2015 by Shaun Swain

Rating: 4/5 Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike was a low-budget arthouse tragicomedy about male strippers that surprised audiences with its narrative depth. Now removing the “tragedy” and substituting the “arthouse” with “road trip”, Gregory Jacobs’ Read more...

Paper Towns

Posted 2:03pm Sunday 26th July 2015 by Mandy Te

Rating 3/5 Like all things John Green, Paper Towns is a metaphor. With last year’s release of The Fault in Our Stars, comparisons will inevitably be made between these two films. However, Paper Towns — while similarly containing teenage characters who speak unnaturally — takes Read more...

Scream Season 1 (Episode 1)

Posted 2:07pm Sunday 26th July 2015 by Mandy Te

TV With slasher films being seen as a fad of the 1980s, the Scream franchise was said to have revitalised the horror genre in a way that was both satirical and enjoyable for teenagers in the 1990s. MTV’s Scream: TV Series is the television adaptation of the popular franchise and, in several Read more...

A Vision of Fire: Book One of the Earthend Saga

Posted 2:15pm Sunday 26th July 2015 by Bridget Vosburgh

AVision of Fire: Book One of the Earthend Saga is a science-fiction thriller by Gillian Anderson and Jeff Rovin. As a sticker on the front aggressively proclaims, Gillian Anderson is the actor who played Dana Scully in The X-Files. After an attempt is made on India’s ambassador to the United Read more...

The Chemical Brothers - Born in the Echoes

Posted 2:23pm Sunday 26th July 2015 by Basti Menkes

Rating: 4/5 Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons occupy a place of honour in the museum of electronic dance music. Alongside acts like Fatboy Slim and The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers defined the rave scene of Europe in the ’90s. Their kaleidoscopic music saw big beats and druggy, euphoric pop Read more...

The Falling

Posted 2:02pm Sunday 19th July 2015 by Jaxon Langley

Rating: 3/5 Following her heartbreaking docu-drama, Dreams of a Life, Carol Morley brings us The Falling — a bewitching, deadpan period portrait of female adolescence that explores the subject of mass psychogenic illness and treads into other dark territory. Although it is well-written and Read more...

Ted 2

Posted 2:05pm Sunday 19th July 2015 by Shaun Swain

Rating: 1/5 If I described Seth MacFarlane’s sequel to Ted as incredibly masturbatory, I would only be lowering myself to the level of MacFarlane’s tasteless sense of humour. But it doesn’t matter. Ted 2, despite its painfully large budget, provides no inspiration for good Read more...

The Goddess of Buttercups and Daisies

Posted 1:31pm Sunday 19th July 2015 by Bridget Vosburgh

Martin Millar’s novel, The Goddess of Buttercups and Daisies, is set in Athens, 421 BC. During this time, the city-state of Athens is at war with Sparta, and has been for ten years. The playwright Aristophanes wants to put on a comedy called Peace for the Dionysia Festival, as his entry in a Read more...

Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward

Posted 1:37pm Sunday 19th July 2015 by Cheyanne Intemann

Rating: 4/5 Heavensward is the recent expansion to the Square Enix massively multiplayer online (MMO) game, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. Final Fantasy XIV had a particularly bad 1.0 launch, with daily experience gain limits, huge empty maps, shockingly poor optimisation and clunky combat. Read more...

High On Fire - Luminiferous

Posted 1:44pm Sunday 19th July 2015 by Basti Menkes

Rating: 3/5 High On Fire is a heavy metal trio from Oakland, California. The band was formed in 1998 by Matt Pike, the once and future guitarist of pioneering doom metal group, Sleep. High On Fire has since earned itself a reputation for its genre-straddling style and vehement live shows. On its Read more...