TheRetroCritic

As Die Hard fans all over the world, me including, hang their heads in shame, it appears they've finally done it. They have finally run this franchise into the ground. So much so that I now see Die Hard 4.0 as the last GOOD Die Hard flick and I was no fan of that one, frankly... First up: the plot. Nonsense. You've got John McClane going all the way to Russia to try and help his son not get locked up for a bunch of crimes it turns out he only committed as part of a secret CIA mission set in motion to try and recover some file from some bearded dude, along the way McClane and son meet a carrot-eating, tapdancing villain and go to Tchernobyl. Like, what? That's the story they went with? Jeesh, I wonder what other plots they must have passed on before settling on this trainwreck. To give you an idea, the film opens and it looks and feels nothing like a Die Hard film: no charm, no wit, no brains, no creativity, no suspense, no hook, no concept. If anything, it fe

Yippee... well, you know.

Hardly the most popular of the Bond films, Die Another Day marks the end of Pierce Brosnan's run as 007 and, by extension, the end of the super-suave, wisecrackin' agent with all the best (read: worst) puns this side of MI6. Yes it was time for a change. After a great start to the Bond franchise, Brosnan's films started losing whatever little edge they had instead opting for a lighter, Roger Moorian cartoonish tone. Die Another Day is when Bond really became pure sci-fi. Which meant good news for fans of G.I. Joe but bad news for Ian Fleming purists. To be fair: you are warned pretty darn quickly about what you're in for with Bond surfing his way to North Korea in a scene so implausible you'll be making faces long before 007 reveals himself as one of the surfers. The pre-titles sequence proves to be much more promising though with Bond ending up getting captured and tortured throughout Madonna's hit-and-miss theme song. So far, so messy. The key plot is

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

The poor man's Knight and Day ? Perhaps not. Depp and Jolie are hardly the B sides of Cruise and Diaz. If anything The Tourist is a more laid-back alternative to the pumped up nonsense of Knight and Day. Both films have similarities though in that they are both throwbacks to Hitchcockian spy movies in the vein of North By Northwest and To Catch a Thief . So which works better? I suppose it depends what you're in the mood for. If you're in need of some Mission Impossible -style silliness with multiple chase scenes and explosions then Knight and Day just about hits the spot. If however you want something just as silly but a tad more focused and sophisticated then The Tourist is a better bet: no dodgy CGI or slo-mo plane explosions there. Although The Tourist is far from perfect and is closer to Salt than anything else, it feels like it's suffered some unfair bashing. The chemistry between both leads and the predictable end "twist" being the k

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

In many ways, Leprechaun 2 is a superior sequel. Then again, it is a sequel to  Leprechaun  so how good could it possibly be? Kinda like how  Evil Dead 2 is a sequel to Evil Dead , this Leprechaun is really more of a remake or a reimagining of the first film with only Warwick Davis' evil fantastical critter in common: the plot doesn't continue from the first instalment and it seems like this time there is some kind of budget involved despite the (unsurprising) absence of Jennifer Aniston. Whereas the first film took place in and around some old house, this time we actually have a story with characters you actually sort-of care about (not Shevonne Durkin, she's rubbish) and *gasp* numerous locations! Now the Leprechaun is looking for a bride to... cover in gold and impregnate (as you do) but he can only do that with a descendant of the daughter of a past slave of his and that'll only work if she sneezes three times and no-one says "God bless you".