TheRetroCritic

A Netflix-distributed release, The Ritual is a British horror film about a group of friends who decide to go hiking in Sweden (and soon find more than they bargained for) following the shocking death of one of their friends when a liquor store robbery goes off the rails. The lost-in-the-woods subgenre of horror movies is one that tends to either surprise (for better or for worse) or fall completely flat. The Ritual aims to be a modern take on The Blair Witch Project crossed with Deliverance  as the protagonists encounter strange twig-made structures in the woods then get picked off one by one by an unknown element. The film mercifully doesn't attempt a hand-held shaky-cam style of storytelling: this is a well paced and acted movie with some excellent cinematography throughout, especially near the climax. Some dream sequences give certain scenes a surreal quality but, unfortunately, they fail to add much in the way of substance. And this is probably the film's biggest sho

Produced by Tony Scott, believe it or not,  Get Santa was a British Christmas comedy from 2014 starring Jim Broadbent as Santa Claus who crash-lands in London and ends up being jailed for attempting to steal back his lost reindeer. The film follows Steve (Rafe Spall) and Tom (Kit Connor), a father and son, as they try to help Santa find his reindeer and sleigh before somehow getting him out of prison so he can get ready in time for his yearly Christmas "flight". Steve is a down-and-out ex-con who wants to reconnect with his son and is thrown into this unlikely scenario when Tom insists that the old man in the Santa suit hiding in the garage is the real deal. Steve is forced to make a choice between convincing Tom that none of this is real or believing his son by pursuing this surreal mission thereby risking going back to jail. Get Santa is at its strongest when it focuses on this relationship as its heart really is in the right place and it delivers just the right amount