TheRetroCritic

Occasionally a comedy comes along that's just so weird or mean-spirited that studios just don't know how to market it. I'm thinking The Cable Guy , Super or even Neighbors , back in the day. Observe And Report , be warned, isn't the Paul Blart: Mall Cop -style knockabout cartoon comedy it was sold as. In fact, this is the much darker tale of what happens when a deluded, if well-meaning, sociopath goes off his meds. Seth Rogen, in possibly his best role to date, plays Ronnie, head of mall security, who takes his job a little too seriously. When a flasher repeatedly invades the mall, the police are called in and Ray Liotta's cop begins a routine investigation which Ronnie promptly interferes with, thinking he's on some sort of one-man crusade to protect Anna Faris' odious perfume salesgirl. He takes the case into his own hands, which inspires him to try and join the police force and ask Faris out. Both plans, of course, backfire. It's good to see

Still my most popular Bat-video to date ;)

If you thought the Batman Forever soundtrack was uneven, wait till you get a load of this one... Believe it or not, this OST starts off really well with a Smashing Pumpkins song that, regardless of whether you like the band of not, you gotta admit is pretty darn cool. It's the usual moody, high-pitched angst we expect from the Pumpkins but "The End Is The Beginning Is The End" is definitely worth a listen. It's actually so good there's two versions of it on the album, the slower "The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning" (what's with the silly titles, you guys?) ending the soundtrack in style. In between you get the usual mix of teen-friendly rock and hip-hop/R&B. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's "Look Into My Eyes" is a catchy effort and strangely, I quite like it. R. Kelly's "Gotham City" is fine, I guess, if you like that sort of syrupy ballad but frankly if you're gonna sing about Gotham City choose someth

lol 

After Disney's big comeback  The Little Mermaid , it was now the dawn of a new era and the opportunity for the studio to think big and stop just making animal versions of things, for a little while at least. So here we have Beauty And The Beast , another classic fairy-tale being given the Disney treatment, and if you watched it growing up then you probably know there's not much to whine about: it's definitely one of the good ones. The film looks fantastic, the score is excellent, the story is timeless. You've got some great voice acting from the likes of Robby Benson (Beast) and Paige O'Hara (Belle), not to mention Angela Lansbury as... a talking teapot. The songs in the film are celebrated, the title song even won the Academy Award, but they're arguably not quite on the level of the songs in The Little Mermaid, Aladdin or even The Lion King . This is one of those rare Disney movies where the score is actually way better than the songs themselves. "Be

It really takes a genius to undo all the work that went into making Batman more than just a hilarious joke. But it takes A GOD to bring an evolved franchise back 30 years in the space of one movie. Now I have nothing against the old campy Adam West TV series but they really were the last word on that type of spoof/comedy take on the character. With Tim Burton's darker, edgier efforts it looked like we were finally getting to know the comic-book hero... That is, until we realised that this was the type of guy who carried around Bat credit cards and had ice-skates built into his shoes in the event that an impromptu ice ballet might break out. Yes, Joel Schumacher, who had done rather well with the admittedly silly but completely entertaining Batman Forever , just couldn't resist the urge to Adam West the franchise to the max. The result was, fair enough, pretty darn funny but at what cost? Joke or not, Batman & Robin is one astonishingly dire effort on every conc

As seen in Hannah And Her Sisters : Coincidence?! Just sayin'...

You'd think with a film called Cowboys & Aliens there'd be very little room to mess things up. I mean, how much more straight-forward can you get? Just get some cowboys, a bunch of aliens...voila! And yet Cowboys & Aliens doesn't quite get there... Now don't get me wrong: it's a decent film and I really enjoyed it. But alas it falls just short, like all the other summer blockbusters we were treated to this year, of being actually awesome. Which is pretty frustrating as, much like Super 8 and Horrible Bosses , they had the material and everything served up to them on a plate. All they had to do was not spill anything! Here's the thing, it's really quite simple: if you're going for something purely retro like an 80's Spielberg flick or a cowboy sci-fi in the style of Westworld it's your DUTY as a filmmaker to leave the CGI out of it as much as you can. Yes stop-motion monsters can look animated but so does CGI and at the very least

Probably the most hilarious thing you'll ever see. Prepare yourselves...