TheRetroCritic

Tom Cruise is back. In Jack. Reacher, that is. In what may start some kind of lasting Bourne-style action franchise (but probably won't), Jack Reacher sees tough cookie ex-army Sherlock dude Jack Reacher (well, duh) being hired to help shed light on a case involving a sniper taking out a seemingly random group of people for no apparent reason. Of course, Reacher suspects there's much more to it than just another psycho losing it and leads his own investigation. What follows is a CSI-meets-Mission-Impossible hybrid which sees Tom Cruise, as usual, taking his top off and acting way taller than he actually is. Oh, also Werner Herzog, of Werner Herzog fame, pops up as mysterious villain "The Zec" who doesn't do much besides talking and sitting but manages to be awesome nonetheless thanks to his inherent, unparalleled Herzoginess. Give the guy a dead eye, a gnarled hand, a dark setting to monologue into and voila! That classic documentary-friendly soothing v

Love him or hate him, Tom Cruise chooses his movies carefully and, more often than not, he picks some damn good ones. And, more often than not, he's damn good in them! Which is why I've picked 10 of my personal favourites. Of course, I haven't seen every single one of his films but based on the many I've seen, this is the list I came up with. A few guilty pleasures just missed out on the Top 10 including Cocktail and Days Of Thunder , as did a good bunch of decent ones like  A Few Good Men or The Firm . Jerry Maguire , a film I do enjoy very much, would have made it if Renee Zellweger wasn't so darn irritating in it and Legend just fell short due to Cruise's pants just being, well... much too short. Oh and I'll tell you right now: Top Gun puts me to sleep. Planes are boring. You heard me. On that note, let's fly through these bad boys! One maverick at a time... 10 RISKY BUSINESS Yup, Risky Business . Was going to file that one under g

Legend is one of those movies you remember watching as a kid but don't remember what it was even about. Thinking back to it I could only picture a young Tom Cruise wearing no pants, Tim Curry's demonic villain and... unicorns? It turns out the movie's about a young princess who decides to be an idiot one day and screw up the very balance of nature and everything that's good in the world leaving some young Peter Pan-esque dude to set-off on a quest to sort it all out. Hm, girls back then weren't given the best parts, were they? But yeah, because she touches one of only two sacred unicorns in the universe, this alerts what is essentially the Devil (aka Darkness) and his goblin minions and they're soon on the way to destroy them and their pure, good-hearted human fans. She also throws some ring out into a river and Baby Cruise, because he's so damn in love (read: NUTS), jumps off a cliff to try and retrieve it. When he finally comes out of the water to fi

As much as I love the Mission: Impossible movies, this first installment has always been my least favourite. Which is weird because being the first movie you'd expect it to easily be the best one, especially when it's directed by someone who knows what they're doing. And yet a re-watch confirms that this is still not the Mission: Impossible movie for me. Don't get me wrong: it's a decent movie and far less silly than its successor (what isn't?). It starts off strong with the team being taken down one by one in a mission that, ironically, really does prove impossible. Turns out a mole set everyone up and Ethan Hunt, being the only survivor, is the prime suspect. Luckily he's got old men masks, a shitty old PC and chewing gum bombs to keep him safe. He bolts and the rest of the film sees him having to retrieve a mega-important list of spies from a super-safe over at Langley thereby proving his innocence. To do this, he hires the help of Ving Rhames and

A lot has been said about M:I 2 . Most of it... not good. And yet it's always the first film that springs to mind when I think back to Tom Cruise's blockbusting franchise. The long hair, the motorbike, the slow-motion: THAT'S the ego-trip I'm talkin' about! Brian De Palma's slow-burning, tense first film and J.J. Abram's high-octane second sequel both great but somehow not quite as memorable as John Woo's overblown, over the top, super silly effort. And boy is it silly. From the offset, it's clear that The Cruiser has taken the idea of the ego-trip to a whole new level. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Cruise couldn't climb a mountain by himself, without any safety equipment whatsoever and I'm not saying that this isn't a fun way to spend one's vacation but... Ok I'm saying that. But I like when he throws his sunglasses at us! In cornea-splittin' 2D! This Mission:Impossible outing really

M:I III didn't perform quite as well as expected at the box office upon its release but is widely regarded by critics as the best of the bunch. Mr Bird: your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to do better. This playful reference will auto-destruct in 5 seconds... ... *pfffffff* Well, mission pretty much accomplished profit-wise it seems. But how does the film fare in comparison to its predecessors? In their own way, I've enjoyed every Mission Impossible film to date: the stylish and kinda boring one, the hilariously overblown one and... the smarter one. I'm happy to say that Ghost Protocol is no exception: this is one fun movie from start to finish and the closest the films have gotten to resembling the classic TV series since Brian De Palma's first effort. Finally, Hunt has another team to work with. No wires to cut or waxy masks but you can't have it all I guess... The team in question, however, is hit and miss. You've got Simon Pegg

Ok, so I'm actually watching Knight And Day while posting this and I still have no idea what DAY is in that god forsaken ass title. Why?! I mean, I know Cruise's character's parents are called Knight but he's actually called Roy Miller and Diaz's character is called June Havens so... Well, I guess her sister's called April which is another month which contains days... Nope.  That can't be it. They fucked up: they fucked up bad. You can't just sacrifice sense for THE cheesiest pun out there! See! Oh dear, looks like I'll have to check out what my country of origin, La France, has to say about that translation-wise... No no no no NO!!! Bordel de merde!!! KNIGHT makes sense!!! Then again, Night And Day makes sense but... that's the pun! You've unpunned the pun! Now it both makes sense and is completely altogether meaningless. Night And Day... that could be about anything! Come on Italy, you can do this, you can fix it! Rea

Now I'm no illustrator or poster designer... at all. Hell, I don't even have Photoshop at the moment. That said, I do enjoy a challenge. Which is why from now on I'll be attempting to make a poster for every coming blockbuster. I warn you: they'll likely all suck. Hence why I encourage you guys to help me and make your own! They don't have to be perfect, just fun. This month we're starting with Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol which has already had its share of posters. Most of them ass, like the ones involving Mr Cruise wearing hood. Some of them decent. I like that one, although is Cruise's nipple on fire? I like that one. Some of them good. This Olly Moss-style IMAX poster is pretty minimalist but it's cool. Here's mine: Yeah, I know. It's bloated and childish. OMG it's M:I 2 !!! Your mission, if you choose to accept it is to send all your entries to razorheadfilmsltd@gmail.com My favourites will be posted on t

Cruise and Diaz are reunited for the first time since Vanilla Sky in this silly, sunny Hitchcockian spy comedy and although the film never reaches high levels of intelligence, what it lacks in brains it makes up for in gusto. Although it has been compared with the likes of North By Northwest , this is actually much closer to the lighter To Catch a Thief or even the Goldie Hawn/Chevy Chase 80's comedies. Cruise is clearly having a ball in a Mission Impossible -style role with added OTT silliness and Diaz is fine as his ditzy sidekick, if slightly annoying in places. The plot is nothing to ride home about, something about a powerful battery (MacGuffin) which may or may not be useful to something or other. Whatever. It provides little more than silly lines ("Because it's filled with POWER!") and a thin strand of reason to hold everything together. What really hurts the film strangely is the CGI. It works mostly but sometimes the green screen is jus