TheRetroCritic

Cowboys & Aliens may still be fresh in our minds but that doesn't mean we should NOT have another movie with cowboys and aliens, right? ...right? Come on, you know those two things kick ass and you know you want it... again. That's how John Carter begins: like a moody old western complete with saloons, the cavalry, feather-wearing native Americans and Sergio Leone-style swagger. "Beans: beans is the first item..." "My name is Carter. John Carter." Cut to: MAGIC! Shazam! WHOOSH! Mars. Fair enough. I mean there's no need for Disney to screw around with horses and sarsaparilla and shit when you can just beam to Mars! So anyway, Mars looks great. It's like CGI heaven but the effects are actually awesome. Like Avatar awesome. You've got these kinda gross-looking green guys with four arms, their even grosser-looking babies, some bulldog-type fast-as-shit mutt and loads more goodies. The Mars humans, on the other hand, are

Excited about Dark Shadows ? I am! Then again it's in my DNA to flock to Tim Burton movies regardless of what they are so... Groovy posters! Heeeere's Johnny... Eva Green looking fab... Cool ghost lady... Hit Girl putting the "cool" in... Dark Shadows... A Burton graduate back for more strangeness... And last but not least Mrs Burton herself. Yes, she is in this. Crazier things have happened. Anyway, movie looks fun, lets hope it is! More posters available on the Empire website.

Going into The Hunger Games with no prior knowledge of the story or the book, with only a really vague trailer and a rough guess of it being like a kid-friendly Battle Royale -type deal, I was hardly dying to see it. But, desperate for a popcorn movie and half-aware of some decent reviews for it I decided to check it out in the hope of finding some sort of originality, simple entertainment or maybe, just maybe, some good old fashioned Battle Royale teen cruelty. So how did The Hunger Games "play out"? Not bad, as it happens. I mean, I'm amazed it's done so much better than John Carter financially since both films are just as enjoyable but I can understand the film being more accessible going in. For one thing the concept is fairly straight-forward and bears no resemblance to Flash Gordon in the slightest, and there's no sign of any intimidating use of Avatar -style CGI in what can only be described as the plot for a really epic, campy Saturday morning 8

My 2012 preview on Fotorater.com .

Colin Firth excels once more with this new, highly lauded effort and provides us with yet another pitch-perfect, smart performance. The film itself is confident, entertaining, well made and amusing if not quite as Earth-shattering as the critics claim. Then again it's Oscar season so why wouldn't they exaggerate a tad? Truthfully, there's not much to this film. Here we have the usual template for a character study: man has problem, gets someone to solve it, problem solved. The journey is very pleasant though and there are good performances all around, especially from Firth and Rush. The film only slightly falters when it attempts to be too cute, which happens a few times and isn't completely necessary as the situation highlighted here is whimsical enough without piling on the "lols". Not much more to say about that one really: it's good, a tad forgettable and of course overrated but good. It's never quite clear what the film is trying to conve