TheRetroCritic

Review available on the new website .

I talk a bit about Pixar's The Incredibles 2 .

Review available on the new website .

Review available on the new website .

Review available on the new website .

It's not exactly breaking news that fans were generally disappointed with DC's animated film adaptation of The Killing Joke  so this new attempt at taking on one of the most popular Batman graphic novels seemed like a perfect opportunity to get something right. Batman takes on Jack The Ripper himself in this steampunk story loosely based on Brian Augustyn and Mike Mignola's one-shot  Gotham By Gaslight set in the late 1800's. When an exotic dancer (Poison Ivy) is brutally killed by The Ripper and the latter's victims keep piling up, the people of Gotham City start to suspect Batman. With the help of James Gordon and the police, Batman (voiced by Bruce Greenwood) attempts to stop further killings but Bruce Wayne is eventually jailed on suspicion of being The Ripper, which delays the Dark Knight's investigation somewhat. The film makes decent enough use of the familiar characters it does have including a trio of Robins as orphans, Hugo Strange, Selina Kyle (w

I talk a bit about Pixar's Coco .

Critically acclaimed and comfortably ruling the top of the box-office, it looks like nothing can stop Pixar's Coco from becoming another significant hit for Disney, not even sticking a vastly unpopular Frozen  20 minute short at the front of it. Coco is the story of 12 year-old Miguel who dreams of becoming a musician like his idol Ernesto De La Cruz except his family has firmly been anti-music for generations so when they destroy his home-made guitar and forbid him to follow that path, he runs away to prove himself by playing music during the Día De Muertos festival. As he attempts to steal the long-dead De La Cruz's guitar in a cemetery, he is somehow transported to the Land Of The Dead where he learns that he'll need to get his family's blessing in order to come back to the land of the living. Revealing any more than that would be cruel so let's leave it at that story-wise. There's something familiar about Coco from the musical skeletons ( Corpse Bride

Review available on the new website .

I review the Sonic The Hedgehog animated movie from the 90's.

I talk a bit about Netflix's new anime series Neo Yokio .

I play through the first level of the TaleSpin  TGfx-16 game.

Released in early 2017, Justice League Dark was an animated feature based on the DC comics run by Peter Milligan following the likes of John Constantine, Zatanna and Deadman as they battle various demonic/magical beings with some help from Batman and the Justice League. The prologue is surprisingly grim and more than earns the film's R rating as we see normal people in various cities panicking when they start seeing demons everywhere. They start killing others, even themselves thinking they're defeating monsters when, in fact, those turn out to only be hallucinations. The Justice League has an emergency meeting where they discuss the possible cause of all this and Batman's investigation leads him to John Constantine. The tone switches radically when the trench coat-wearing occultist and his magical pals enter the picture as we first meet Constantine (voiced by Matt Ryan) as he engages in a high-stakes poker game in Las Vegas with the Demons Three before a fight inevit

Written and directed by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, co-creators of the iconic Astérix comics, The Twelve Tasks Of Asterix was a feature-length animated film from 1976. While not based on any specific story from the books, it was later adapted into a comic. The plot for this film could easily work as the very last Astérix story since it basically gives the powerful Gauls one final challenge against Julius Caesar and the outcome is pretty final so that alone makes it a must-watch for fans. The story sees Caesar challenge the Gauls to 12 Hercules-type tasks in order to determine once and for all whether they are gods or not. If they lose, the Gauls must finally bow to the Roman Empire but if they win, it is Caesar who will have to relinquish all power to them. Of course, Astérix and Obélix are selected to take on all of the challenges and although some of the more Olympic tasks like throwing a javelin or sprinting are a walk in the park for them, there are also more psychologica

While Zootopia was the bigger non-Pixar animated hit for Disney in 2016, Moana was still a considerable success both at the box-office and with audiences who praised the stunning animation and its South Pacific setting. As the big "Disney Princess" movie of the year, complete with flashy musical numbers and cute animal sidekicks, Moana was a much more traditional Disney animated feature than Zootopia so had the latter failed to deliver, this would have no doubt been the studio's sure-fire hit. It is surprising, frankly, that the film was not given a Summer release considering its sunny, exotic setting as that might have actually given it a bit of a boost. Story-wise, the film follows Moana (voiced by Auli'i Cravalho), daughter to the chief of a small Polynesian island, who finds herself stuck with the responsibilities of being the chief's heir until she is compelled to leave the island in search of a way to stop its inexplicable curse. She encounters demigo

Following  Ratatouille , Pixar tackled the science-fiction genre with WALL-E , the story of a big-eyed little robot stuck all by himself in the middle of a post-apocalyptic Earth until he meets an unexpected visitor. This was Pixar's boldest concept since Toy Story as a good portion of the film is basically silent save for music and sound effects. The human characters don't show up until much later and when they do, they never steal the focus from WALL-E or his modern robot love interest EVE who is sent to Earth, we soon find out, to look for any source of vegetation. The world the film depicts is one overcome by garbage due to the environment having crumbled under the weight of industry and commercialism. Incidentally, the weakest aspect of WALL-E is probably its environmental message, which isn't exactly subtle, but it is admittedly done quite well in that it gives the characters something to fight for and presents a uniquely comfortable yet lazy and ultimately grim

As the world digests Hollywood's recent attempt at producing a live-action adaptation of Mamoru Oshii's much celebrated animated feature, there's no better time to revisit the original Ghost In The Shell from 1995. Based on one of the popular manga's stories involving a mysterious hacker known as the Puppet Master, this first film was not only groundbreaking as an anime but as a science-fiction film in general influencing pretty much every science-fiction film after it including The Matrix . We're introduced to a dangerous world where people can be cybernetically enhanced which creates new threats for special units to deal with. Major Motoko Kusanagi is the mostly artificial leader of an assault team tasked with various missions including finding the Puppet Master. The film is a complex sci-fi thriller which deals with self-identity, what it means to be human and technology gone mad in a subtle yet often brutal way. There are unexpected bursts of gore in this

Nearly 10 years after their last insect-themed movie Antz , Dreamworks released Bee Movie , an animated feature in which Jerry Seinfeld, of all people, voices a bee who discovers the ugly truth about how humans gather their honey and sell it without the bees' permission. There's something inherently wacky about this whole movie, from the look of the characters to the plot itself which is really over-the-top. In Antz, everything happened in the ant colony below Manhattan so you could easily suspend disbelief whereas Bee Movie goes all out and giddily breaks, if not a fourth wall, a third wall as the bees start interacting with the human characters directly and even sue humanity in a court of law over honey. As silly as this all sounds, Bee Movie knows exactly how goofy it is and it enjoys every minute of it. Co-written by Jerry Seinfeld himself, this film plays out both like a straight-up kids' movie but also a pastiche of animated films like Toy Story or other Disney

Before becoming one of Pixar's most valuable filmmakers, Brad Bird of course worked on The Simpsons but he also made The Iron Giant , an animated feature about a little kid who befriends a giant robot in the 1950's. Using a mix of 2D hand-drawn and computer animation to bring its characters to life, The Iron Giant was a critical hit and it soon became a beloved modern cult classic. Upon its release, however, it failed at the box-office and didn't come even close to matching its hefty $70M budget. This was due to Warner Bros. underestimating the film following a couple of financial set-backs and not wanting to invest in a proper marketing campaign. The movie eventually found its audience and the fact that it was once a flop is largely forgotten. The sweet, simple story is framed in post-war paranoia with the American government obsessed with competing against the Russians in the space race. When the titular Giant, who is far more adorable than its stature suggests earl

Here's the video version of my The Little Prince review.