TheRetroCritic

Pee-wee Herman returned only a few years following his big screen debut Pee-wee's Big Adventure in this sequel which saw the off-beat man-child living on a farm and encounter a circus following an impromptu storm. Tim Burton sadly did not come back to direct this one though Danny Elfman stayed on as composer delivering a very circusy score. The first thing you'll notice watching Big Top Pee-wee is that gone are the toys and gadgets, Speck and the iconic bike Pee-wee worked so hard to recover the last time. There's something a little off-putting about seeing Pee-wee live on a farm in a completely normal and unexciting room after the colourful treat that was the last film. Add to that the fact he lives in a small town where everyone inexplicably hates his guts and this looks set to be a depressing watch. Luckily, Pee-wee soon reveals a secret room where he's working on silly secret experiments (hot dog trees etc.) and the circus soon appears thereby giving the film

Pee-Wee Herman finally returns with a new movie outing nearly 30 years after Big Top Pee-Wee and this welcome return comes courtesy of Netflix, director John Lee and producer Judd Apatow who helped make Paul Reubens' long gestating project a reality. Pee-Wee's Big Holiday sees everyone's favourite 60 year-old man-child having seemingly moved on with his life somewhat since he chased his beloved bicycle all over the country in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and grew hot dog trees on the farm: he's got a job working in a diner, he hasn't left small town Fairville in ages and he's in a rut with the world changing around him, much to his despair. That's until he meets and befriends actor Joe Manganiello who invites him to his birthday party in New York and urges Pee-Wee to go on a journey across America and live a little. Which he, of course, does. Pee-Wee may be in a rut and you actually see him in a more miserable state than ever before, but his wacky lif

I finally review cult alien comedy Earth Girls Are Easy starring Geena Davies, Jeff Goldblum, Damon Wayans and Jim Carrey.

Based on Richard Matheson's short story, Duel is a 1971 TV movie about a guy being taunted by a big truck on the road for no apparent reason. It stars Dennis Weaver and is directed by then newcomer Steven Spielberg who made the film on a 500K budget. Duel is often quoted as being the best TV movie out there and, although on paper it doesn't sound like much, it's easy to see why once you do check it out. It's not so much the story which makes Duel as memorable as it is but the suspense and the cinematography, Spielberg using every Hitchcockian trick in the book to not only keep the film entertaining but make the vehicular antagonist into a convincing threat. The movie opens with everyman David Mann (Weaver) driving across the Californian desert for a business trip in his red Plymouth Valiant casually listening to a radio show where Dick Whittington can be heard conducting silly interviews. Eventually, a rusty tanker truck pulls up in front of him, blocking his way,

There's never been a better time to revisit a movie which basically started a whole sci-fi subgenre and led to one of this year's best blockbusters. Mad Max was the film which gave Mel Gibson his big break and provided a welcome alternative to Hollywood's movie-making machine. Now, if you've never seen Mad Max, don't sit and watch it expecting Mad Max: Fury Road . Those two movies may share the same character but one is expensive and is set in a post-apocalyptic desert world with some, admittedly pretty, CGI thrown in while the other is very low-budget and is set in what looks like pre-apocalyptic small town Australia. There are trees, houses, cops, Halls Of Justice (of sorts), there's still some form of society present here. For something closer to Fury Road, you might want to just check out Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior but why would you not want to know how Max became "Mad" Max? This is one character arc that's worth sitting through, trus

The problem with sequel/reboots (sequoots, if you will) is that you never know what you're going to get but, most likely, you're not getting the good stuff. And just when you're getting sick and tired of those reboots (and sequoots), obviously a great one comes along to make you rethink the validity of the whole thing. Yes, Mad Max: Fury Road is pretty awesome. With Tom Hardy taking over the role of Max Rockatansky, a role which put Mel Gibson on the map back in the day, George Miller returning to directing duties and a killer trailer promising great things, this looked set to be a good time, at the very least. Then again, the Conan The Barbarian remake had a cool trailer too so it could have all gone pear-shaped very quickly. Thankfully, Miller's insistence that all the cars in the film would have to be built for real along with often stunning cinematography by John Seale, a great cast and some brilliant character design means that Mad Max: Fury Road is, in fa

These past couple of weeks, which saw the Broken Lizard gang start a campaign on Indiegogo.com to produce a sequel to their 2001 cult comedy Super Troopers , certainly showed that the film definitely did have an audience as the comedy team reached their £2M goal within only a day. So, before Super Troopers 2 gets truly underway, I thought I'd look back at the first film to check that it does still hold up. Alright meow, first things first, while the film could most definitely be described as a stoner cop comedy, its writing is sharp and funny enough to work as just an all around great comedy so if drug humour and/or you're not a Police Academy superfan, fear not: you're in safe hands. The plot sees a group of goofy, juvenile state troopers face off against the local police department (led by the late, great Daniel Von Bargen) when a potential weed-trafficking ring is discovered in Vermont. The state troopers' Captain (a perfect Brian Cox) informs them that any

From Bryan Johnson comes a black comedy with more than just a little edge to it. Vulgar sees a pathetic, down-and-out clown, played by Clerks ' Brian O'Halloran, respond to an ad which would require him to perform a joke at a bachelor's party only to find that a psychotic father and his two sons are planning to rape him. Now that's a synopsis! Must have been a shoo-in pitch at Lionsgate Entertainment. Who would have thought that Shakes The Clown and I Spit On Your Grave would combine their plots to create a whole new movie? The depiction of Will "Flappy" Carson's (O'Halloran) unpleasant day-to-day life is handled with a sarcastic sense of humour at first with his mother being so over-the-top vile and his job not exactly working out the way he was hoping it would. Bryan Johnson himself also pops up here and there as Will's best friend to cheer him up or shoot the shit. Then the film takes such a dark detour that, right there and the

New York gets a bad rep. So much so that back in 1981 John Carpenter pictured a Manhattan so run down and chaotic that it was set in the dystopian future of *dramatic sting* 1997 when the U.S. decided to turn the whole island into a prison complete with big walls surrounding it, armed guards everywhere, mined bridges and friendly cabbies. Unfortunately, when rebels send Air Force One crashing into the city and steal the president (who managed to land in an adorable red pod), Lee Van Cleef's intense police chief is forced to hire the help of a tough renegade called Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell in a career-defining role) who walks like a badass and speaks like Batman in order to find the president and bring him back safely for an important summit. Although Cleef doesn't so much "hire" him as he does inject him with a deadly serum and literally land him in one tricky situation to say the least with some fancy electronic bracelet and a walkie-talkie. There, he encou

Some Halloween movies are just perfect. Perhaps not perfect as movies but perfect movies for that season and Hocus Pocus is definitely one of those. The film sees Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimi play the Sanderson Sisters, a trio of witches from Salem who thrive on stealing the lifeforce from children. One day, they are hung after essentially murdering a child and turning some kid into a cat (talk about a busy day) but a curse on the town prophesizes their deadly return. Cut to 300 years later and some idiot kid gets the bright idea to light the black fire candle which brings the witches back to present day (well, 1993) Salem. The latter have one night to recover their beloved spell book and feed some potion to whatever virgin they can get their hands on otherwise they're gone for good so the race is on. Cue quite a few Dark Shadows -style temporal fish-out-of-water jokes, a lot of Halloween-related shenanigans and the usual clichés that come with most

Wes Anderson's debut feature, Bottle Rocket may have very little to do with bottles or rockets but, what it is, is a cool cult indie movie which introduced us to both Owen and Luke Wilson so that should soothe your bottle and rocket disappointment. Based on the director's own short of the same name, Bottle Rocket is actually a heist movie with a difference. That difference is that it involves two quirky dudes mostly in the game for the hell of it. They treat robbing like it's a legitimate career and get off on the rebellious thrills when they're clearly not cut out for a life of crime. We're first introduced to Luke Wilson's character Anthony as he gets ready to leave a psychiatric hospital: he's a mild-mannered, harmless-looking guy with nothing in his life except the will to make his career as a burglar work, even if he does mostly steal from family members, and his over-keen brother Dignan (Owen Wilson). The latter takes every single thing very seri

After starring in a modern day version of Charles Dickens' classic tale "A Christmas Carol" in Scrooged , Bill Murray once again decided to play a grumpy dude stuck in a magical time loop where he learns a valuable lesson, becoming a better person in the process in Harold Ramis' Groundhog Day . It should have all been so tiresomely familiar and predictable and yet Groundhog Day out-shined Scrooged almost instantly as a much more original take on the whole Scrooge thing, essentially becoming the new and improved It's A Wonderful Life . The film follows Phil Connors (Murray), a cynical weatherman sent to the little town of Punxsuntawney to cover "Groundhog Day", a cute February event in which the end of winter is determined by a groundhog. Phil hates the idea of spending an entire day in that place but he finds soon enough that, not only will he be spending the whole day there due to a blizzard blocking his route, but every day after that. As it tu

One year post- Aliens , a good chunk of the cast of that movie agreed to star in then relative newcomer Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark : a vampire film with a difference. For one thing, the word "vampire" is never uttered during the movie. Near Dark follows a normal dude, played by a young Adrian Pasdar (yes, Nathan from Heroes ), who meets Jenny Wright's adorable Mae one night and what starts off as an innocent-enough impromptu date soon turns to disaster when it's revealed that not only is Mae a vampire but night is quickly turning to day. Caleb (Pasdar) is bitten and stumbles home in the burning daylight before finally being captured by Mae's vampire pals/family which happens to consist of a dangerously mischievous Bill Paxton, an intense Lance Henriksen, Jenette Goldstein sporting a badass blonde poofy haircut and Joshua John Miller, an adult stuck in a child's body. As scary as they can be, they're also charming as hell and Caleb, despite not

Directed by Mike Judge and based on his own short cartoon series Milton , Office Space pre-dated The Office by a couple of years and although it kinda flew by unnoticed upon its original release, it eventually earned a deserved cult status. The film pokes fun at dull office settings and the ridiculous hierarchy and false urgency that these working environments can have while paying homage to Milton and telling its own Superman III -inspired plot. Ron Livingston plays a stressed-out guy who hates his life and just wishes he could simply sit back and do nothing. After a hypnotist mistakenly renders him perpetually laid-back and worry-free, he turns his life upside down and starts rebelling fully against the people that have been holding him back and his whole stagnant existence in general. He starts ignoring his boss, a show-stealing, mug-holding Gary Cole, he asks out Jennifer Aniston's waitress, and decides to jeopardise his tempting new job offer in order to help his soon-t

No, not THAT Braindead . (Peter Jackson's Dead Alive was actually called Braindead) (hence what I just said) This Brain Dead , however, is a cult B-movie starring the two Bills everyone confuses with each other: Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton. The former being the US President with that awful speech in Independence Day , the latter being that badass vampire from Near Dark . There, now you're all up to speed. In this movie, Pullman plays a scientist with an impressive collection of brains in jars who is conducting weird experiments, to say the least. He specialises in the cerebral dysfunctions which cause mental illnesses so when an old pal, Paxton, who now works for some dodgy corporation, shows up and asks him to find out some crucial information from a paranoid schizophrenic, he is reluctant but agrees to help out anyway. The patient (played by Bud Cort), we're told, was once a brilliant mathematician and it's Pullman's job to find out what part of his bra

Ah The Manitou ... How many movies do you know in which an old lady, out of nowhere, starts dancing, chanting, then hovering down a corridor before falling down a flight of stairs? Not many. This cult oddity courtesy of William Girdler, director of such hits as Project: Kill and Day Of The Animals , is certainly the weirdest movie I've seen in a while. And by "weirdest" I mean "most awesome". The film sees Tony Curtis play a psychic (of sorts) whose partner discovers a growth on her neck. Of course, the growth starts to expand until it becomes apparent that a foetus is living in it. Surgeons make attempts at removing it but in vain, as the lump holds no ordinary child but rather the spirit of an old Native American medicine man who is reincarnating himself through this random woman's neck. Why is that happening? Who cares!? It's happening and it's great. Curtis spends most of the movie trying to figure out a way to remove the blaste