Kieran

Look. I’ve made no bones about the fact I found the idea of this film pointless and cash-grabby. Guess I should book a table and get my fork out because I’m about to eat humble pie with a side of crow. Solo: A Star Wars Story (really? They’re persisting with that subtitle?) is the latest […]

Han Solo: Solo: A Solo Star Wars Story, is opening this week. In honour of this, I felt I should highlight some similar characters in pop-culture who similarly deserve to have their story expanded upon. Who knows, maybe one day these too could be the subject of their very own unnecessary cash-grab prequel. Supreme Leader […]

Despite how smugly pleased I am with the title I came up with for this column, I rarely do it. Because, as still a new stand-up, I don’t really feel it’s my place to give advice on something I’m still figuring out. That said, every time I have a bit of a breakthrough, I can’t […]

I’ve never done this before but if you’ve already seen this weeks AWIMA (official acronym, get hashtagging) you’ll see its already far too long. And I can’t work for a UK media outlet without talking about the sodding wedding can I?! So, here’s part 2 of this week’s mild amusement solely focusing on the wedding […]

Whey Eye pet Plans to build Europe’s biggest observation wheel on the banks of the Tyne in Newcastle have been revealed. The “Whey aye” would be 140 metres tall. That’s 5 metres taller than the London eye. So take that, the south. You may have increased funding for education, housing and employment but our hypothetical […]

Many of us know the struggle of trying to organise friends into finally getting the deposit down on that flat. The search for housemates at uni is arduous and taxing. Except for council-tax, obviously. It’s understandable why some impressionable young people would decide: “you know what, screw it. I’m gonna live with a superhero”. I […]

I’d like to do a fourth wall breaking joke here where I talk directly to the reader referencing pop-culture. But I sort of do that anyway so… Hi everyone… the spice girls were good weren’t they? Deadpool 2 is the sequel to 2016’s unexpected box-office steamroller and features more of the trademark shtick. Irreverent humour, […]

National Wealth service Prince William has praised the ‘wonderful’ NHS staff in a video message to be played at an awards ceremony. The ceremony coincides with the anniversary of the formation of the NHS. The service turns 70 this year and like many 70-year-olds, it’s crumbling under its own weight, struggling to function and neglected […]

They say that at a job interview, you should talk about what you know. Avoiding areas where your knowledge is sketchy. For me though, that’s difficult. When 60% of your brain space is taken up by film opinions, trivia and upcoming release dates, it’s hard to appear employable. The other 40% is ABBA lyrics, by […]

The A Series of Unfortunate Events book series was one of my favourite reads as a child. It was darkly mature, funny and utterly distinct from anything else at the time. When I heard Netflix was producing a TV series, then, it naturally intrigued me. Long form storytelling is really the only way to tell […]

The first Beep podcast was released last week and I was honoured to be chosen as the host. The show is the audible adaptation of my regular A Week in Mild Amusement column. Unlike that column though, it features THREE people desperately trying to be funny instead of just me. With this occasion, I felt […]

Gnome country for old men Scottish police have appealed to the public after someone stole 37 garden gnomes from a front garden in Angus. Against all odds, this doesn’t even appear to be guerrilla marketing for that Sherlock Gnomes movie that’s, for some reason, coming out. Police describe the kidnapped collectables as the ‘usual gardening […]

Schadenfreude is a German word meaning ‘pleasure derived from someone else’s misfortune’. As such, it’s my middle name, my planned tombstone and my tinder bio. Sometimes studios, actors or even fans just make you beg for a movie to flop. Sure, it’s mean spirited but, in my opinion, those are the funniest type of spirits. […]

In reality, the only film you cannot avoid watching is the friendversary clip Facebook puts together for you and your mam. And that’s only because she’ll tag you in it every year. However, essential movie lists are always fun and a good way to get people watching classics and smaller films to celebrate the very […]

5. Black Panther is completely fine Everyone really went mad for this movie. And, look don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it. But when people were saying it was the best Marvel movie I have to strongly disagree. The first 30 minutes are completely irrelevant. The CGI looks like it’s from 2007 at points. T’Challa’s […]

Domain tout commence A man is suing the French government over the way it took over the France.com web domain. Joel-Noel Frydman registered the domain in 1994 which is impressive for a man who sounds like a character from a musical cartoon series about sentient fast-food. He used the domain as an information hub for […]

This film has been ten years in the making. This review… roughly 12 hours. Avengers: Infinity War is the multi-franchise, colossal-budget, box-office assault that everyone from your sister to your grandma is excited for. It acts as a sequel to the first Avengers, Civil War and Thor: Ragnarok and is the culmination of all the […]

I actually felt thirsty after watching this it was that dry. Isle of Dogs is the latest film from, in my opinion, the most visually distinctive director in film history. And it does absolutely nothing to contradict that view. This is the most Wes Anderson movie that ever Wes Anderson-ed. It focuses on the story […]

Prince TBC, mighty is he An unemployed woman on state benefits has had her third child at the cost of the British taxpayer. Or, as The Sun didn’t write it, the Duchess of Cambridge has given birth to a baby boy. At the time of writing, they have not released the child’s name. I’m hoping […]

I swear about 80% of The Rock’s lines in this film are just the word ‘George’. Rampage is the second movie to technically be based on a video-game released this year and also the second giant-monster smashing movie in the past month. It stars Dwayne ‘The John’ Rockson as primatologist Dwayne Johnson. Johnson’s apparent best […]

Due to this, apparently, being Dwayne Johnson season, there were two trailers back to back starring the wrestling megastar in the cinema this week. This week’s Rampage and July’s Skyscraper both position Johnson as the audience’s protagonist. What they both do, though, is write him into a character that doesn’t fit his physicality at all. […]

Environ-mental A US lawyer has died after setting himself on fire in a protest against climate change. In response to this, everyone immediately bought Toyota Prius’ and the ice caps returned to normal. The prominent attorney left a note saying that he had immolated himself using fossil fuels to symbolise the damage humans do to […]

Well… firstly- What are the infinity stones? Well, as the collector said in Guardians of the Galaxy, they’re concentrated ingots of singularities that existed before the universe was formed. Blah blah blah comics nonsense, they’re basically coloured gems that each hold ultimate power over a certain aspect of the universe. Bringing them together basically makes […]

If there’s any film that supports my idea of abolishing food in the cinema, it’s this one. A Quiet Place is the latest joint from US Office alumni John Krasinski. It’s a horror film where the premise is that the majority of the film is completely silent. Krasinski and Emily Blunt play the parents of […]

SS Enterprise We start, this week, with the cheery subject of Nazis. Facebook has been urged to prevent the sale of Nazi memorabilia on its site, presumably because it’ll make the next Indiana Jones movie a bit boring. Items posted on Facebook’s marketplace include an SS badge, a Nazi military cross and propaganda. This is, […]

Oh boy. Ready Player One is the latest offering from Steven Spielberg (you may have heard of him) and focuses on… erm… the world’s a video-game?… The government is corporations?… There’s a chosen one?…  Look, its a young adult novel. It features everything that that genre entails. Dystopian future? Check. Young team of resistance fighters? […]

Remember when people thought Charlie Hunnam could lead a film franchise? Lol. See ya Hunnam. Get on the pile with Sam Worthington and Taylor Kitsch. Pacific Rim: Uprising is the sequel to the 2013 robot/monster flick that did well enough in Chinese markets to merit a franchise. The film concerns humanity’s continued efforts to survive […]

Time at the bars A pair of Colombian prisoners got their guard drunk and escaped from a maximum security jail. You have to feel for the guard whose double vision initially made him think he’d let four of them out. He let them out under the impression that they were going to go and buy […]

With so many video game movies planned for the coming year, the statistical chance of the game movie curse being broken has never been higher. Despite the constant failure, studios seem determined to keep grasping for this slippery rope of potential. And I can see why. In principle, it appears so easy. A built-in fan-base […]

After the brake A car has smashed into a Worcester home where a family was watching TV. Personally, I think Ant is taking the interactive element of Saturday Night Takeaway a bit too far. Robert Beattie said it was ‘a miracle’ that he and his family were still alive but added that it would make […]

Tomb Raider (2018) is one of the very best video-game movies of all time. Regrettably, that’s really not saying a lot. Tomb Raider tells the story of the 2013 game of the same name… sort of. It features a young Lara Croft on a quest to the island of Yamatai to investigate her father’s mysterious […]

Follow the M40 brick road Fictional locations such as Narnia, Gotham City and Middle Earth have mysteriously appeared on road signs in Oxfordshire. The county council has condemned this as vandalism. I personally believe it’s merely a quiet advertising campaign for the upcoming release of C.S Lewis’s lost manuscript: The Lion, The Witch and the […]

Let it be known that I’m a big fan of karaoke. But it was at such an event last week that I discovered an unpleasant fact. It’s become clear to me that very few people are wise to correct karaoke etiquette. With this in mind, I feel it is my duty as an educator to […]

Leaving the EQueue Border check queues at ports may triple in size after Brexit. Apparently, lorries could form a traffic jam up to 29 miles long due to more stringent checks required. The Treasury said it was seeking ‘as frictionless trade as possible’ with the EU post-Brexit. ‘Frictionless’, in this case referring to the friction […]

Happy International Women’s day (at the time of writing) to all the women of the site! This day is remarkable in many ways, not least of which is that it’s one of the few where I’m willing to use an exclamation point. This is a day of marking the incalculable female contribution to the world. […]

Now. This may seem like I’ve been building up to this punchline for a month and in a sense I have. For the idiot who just finished spamming the site with endless Oscar talk to turn round and say they don’t matter seems cheap. And it is. However, I feel that the issue does need […]

Armagoingsleddin Heavy snowstorms battered Britain, closing off roads and providing every inane conversation you’ve had this week. The Observer estimated the weather cost Britain around £1 billion pounds a day. And that was just in productivity hours lost from us all showing pictures of our buried cars on our phones. The snow wasn’t all bad […]

I’m not a betting man. I’m not willing to stake actual money, which is worth something, on my hunches. I am, however, willing to stake my reputation, which is worth nothing, on them. These predictions are based on the awards season so far, the Academy’s historical preferences and last and probably least, the films themselves. […]

We did it. More specifically, I did it. The final Best Picture nominee and the 2nd coming of age drama featuring Timothée Chalamet at this years Oscars is Lady Bird. Lady Bird was always going to be how I ended what I perhaps unfairly call my ‘yearly Oscar slog’. I knew it was a comedy. […]

Hell of a cluck up KFC hilariously ran out of the one thing their company name outright promises. The fast-food chain’s switch to a different supplier left outlets across the country without chicken. Many stores were operating on a ‘reduced menu’, which is a phrase that comes gift-wrapped for anyone whose job it is to […]

Very much unlike the film, I’m writing about, I’ll get straight to the point. Call Me by your Name is the penultimate best picture nominee I have vowed to review ahead of the Oscars. It’s also the one I’ve heard the least about so I was curious to see what merit the academy had deemed […]

Say what you want about this film, it certainly features more human/fish sex than any other nominee. No one can take that away from it. The Shape of Water is a truly puzzling experience. Director Guillermo del Toro returns to his Pans Labyrinth weirdness in a disarming love story between a mute cleaner and a […]

I threw on Parks and Recreation the other night as a comfort watch. It’s my favourite US sitcom and my go-to for a few easy laughs mixed in with a healthy touch of gooey sentiment. However, as I chuckled at the cringey antics of MVP-wannabe Tom Haverford, a pang of guilt struck me. I thought […]

Durex-pect me to believe that Valentine’s day came and went, prompting every singleton’s Twitter account to read like an Adele album tracklist. NHS England revealed that the day of romance leads to a mini baby boom each year. An estimated 16,263 conceptions occurred in Valentines week in 2015. In other words, 16, 263 people forgot […]

Education secretary Damien Hinds has said more variety is needed in university pricing. The idea behind this is that tuition fees should reflect the degree’s value ‘to society as a whole and to our economy for the future’. This would presumably lead to a reduction in fees for certain uni courses and lessen student debts. […]

So I saw Black Panther. Rather than lengthen an already gruelling month of reviews, I thought I’d pinpoint a trend I’ve noticed in Marvel’s recent output. Without spoiling it, Black Panther has, amongst many motifs, a pervasive theme of dealing with a father’s failures. And T’Challa isn’t alone in the MCU with his daddy issues. […]

When I heard Daniel Day-Lewis had done a movie about sewing, my Oscar-bait senses lit up like a switchboard. No movie has been so clearly directed at the Academy since Eddie Redmayne dressed as a trans-woman for whatever that movie was called. Phantom Thread tells the story of Reynolds Woodcock (Day-Lewis), a couturier (someone who […]

Get Out was very much the surprise hit of 2017. Director Jordan Peele plucked himself out of comedy world and threw himself headlong into the horror genre with dizzying success. Not only that, the film is now nominated for Best Picture, director and actor at the Academy awards; in a series of commendations that have […]