TheRetroCritic

Released earlier this year to the sound of mass groans and facepalms, The Emoji Movie was Sony Pictures' attempt at "Pixar-ing" a very current trend despite the fact it'll probably look and feel incredibly dated only 5 years from now. The main concept for this movie, a world inside all our smartphones where emojis live and show up whenever their specific emotion is called upon, might have been original and interesting had it been done before Inside Out or even Monsters Inc. Or any Pixar movie, for that matter. As it stands, The Emoji Movie is built upon a fatally flawed idea and whatever comes next is poisoned by that. There's also the fact that emojis don't exactly lend themselves to interesting character designs: mostly, the film just adds arms and legs to them and calls it a day in the hope that the celebrity voices will somehow distract from that laziness. The cast includes T.J. Miller as Gene (the "Meh" emoji), James Corden as Hi-5 (the o

Review available on the new website .

I talk a bit about the 3rd Season of Rick & Morty .

In this new episode of Review Overview, I talk about the Astérix animated features.

I talk a bit about the new DuckTales .

Released in 2016, Justice League vs. Teen Titans was an animated feature attempting to give a bit more of a grown-up edge to the Teen Titans by making them useful to the Justice League as they deal with a new significant enemy. The film opens with the Justice League in the middle of a battle against the likes of Lex Luthor, Toymaster, Cheetah and Solomon Grundy. After Damian Wayne/Robin (voiced by Stuart Allan) disobeys Batman's orders by ending the fight all by himself, he is sent for training with the Teen Titans so he can learn teamwork. Unsurprisingly, he initially clashes with the other members of the team but grows to work with them instead of against them when demon Trigon (Jon Bernthal) starts posing a threat to the entire world. Damian Wayne is just as much of a moody brat as he was in the Son Of Batman trilogy, if not more so, and he's pretty dislikable throughout. He quickly becomes friends with Raven (Taissa Farmiga), who is somehow even more emo than he is,

Hotel Transylvania being the box-office success that it was, a sequel was pretty much inevitable. The first film was your typical Romeo & Juliet type of scenario except silly and... about a human and a vampire. This sequel continues the story as Mavis and Jonathan welcome their first child. Once again, plot-wise this isn't exactly the most original thing out there but it works as Count Dracula (Adam Sandler) tries to encourage his grandson to become a monster just so his daughter will have to stay at the hotel instead of starting a new life somewhere else. When animated sequels start to bring babies into the mix, you know it's probably the end of that franchise being good ( Shrek Forever After , Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs ) but Hotel Transylvania 2 actually does a decent job at keeping afloat. The animation is, once again, fantastic with all the larger-than-life Tex Avery-style characters constantly doing something random and funny, the voice cast clearly havin

Based on the 2004 The Batman  series, this feature-length animated movie sees the Dark Knight come face to face with Dracula himself in a potentially really fun, if probably quite silly, crossover. When The Penguin and The Joker get a tip from a fellow patient in Arkham Asylum that there is a hidden treasure beneath a specific grave in the cemetery, they both escape and compete to recover it. Batman soon shows up to fight The Joker and the latter, surprisingly, falls to his death as he electrocutes himself with his own weapon. The death of The Joker could have been its own film, to be honest, as Bruce Wayne's reaction to this event clearly affects him but this is only used to set the darker tone and give us a vampire Joker later on in the film. Meanwhile, The Penguin accidentally revives Dracula who promptly starts to feast on random people in order to regain his strength. Batman is not very smart in this as he struggles to guess that creepy-looking Dr Alucard is in fact Dracu

I talk about the first season of Castlevania  on Netflix.

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

I talk briefly about The Batman ... the animated series from 2004.

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

Much to most anime fans' displeasure, Hollywood finally delivered on its promise to adapt the hugely influential animated classic Ghost In The Shell from 1995, directed by Mamoru Oshii, with Scarlett Johansson playing the lead role. After a controversy which saw the project get accused of "whitewashing" and persisting complaints that such an adaptation is basically sacrilegious, this looked set to be the least popular remake since Ghostbusters . Indeed, after hardly glorious anime adaptations like Dragonball: Evolution and Speed Racer , it's no surprise why so many were nervous about this new venture. Early trailers looked uninspired yet the more we saw from the film, the more interesting it looked with its slick Blade Runner -meets-Neo Tokyo look and all the potentially cool action scenes on display. It's very clear, right off the bat, that a lot more effort was put into this film than the criminally lazy Dragonball: Evolution. Visually, this new Ghost In T

I talk about Disney's latest live-action remake Beauty And The Beast .

As DC prepares his new live-action blockbusters, Batman returned in The LEGO Batman Movie , a spin-off from The LEGO Movie in which the Dark Knight (voiced by Will Arnett) takes centre stage in his very own adventure. Very much in the spirit of the first LEGO Movie, this spin-off is a fast-paced, tongue-in-cheek romp packed with silly jokes, familiar characters and colourful LEGO action. The genuinely cool, relentless opening sequence sees The Joker (voiced by Zach Galifianakis) join forces with other Batman villains, even the wacky ones, to execute his latest evil plan. Batman, of course, shows up to save the day and we get a more honest look at what happens with Bruce Wayne after a wild night taking care of the bad guys. Lonely, bored, microwaving lobster thermidors, watching Jerry Maguire on his own: it turns out that working solo has its disadvantages. The film captures the strengths and weaknesses of the Batman character brilliantly and although it's technically a spoof,

Another year, another Disney live-action adaptation of one of their most beloved animated classics. This time, it's Beauty And The Beast 's turn with Emma Watson taking on the role of Belle and Dan Stevens as the Beast. It's been a hit-and-miss road for Disney with even its best remakes being just about average and still very much inferior to the originals. The Jungle Book may have killed at the box-office but it failed to capture the charm of the old film so this new outing, with the tons of CGI the trailers promised, looked like more of the same. The film opens with a ball taking place in the Prince's castle when an Enchantress in disguise shows up and puts a spell on him and everyone there. The expanded yet well-handled sequence leads us to more familiar territory as Belle is introduced and a big musical number follows. These first few minutes set the tone for things to come: some parts of the story are stretched longer, other parts are pretty much shot-for-sho

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