TheRetroCritic

Released back in 1947, The Lady From Shanghai was a moody film noir directed by and starring Orson Welles about how a femme fatale (played by a blonde Rita Hayworth) lures an Irish seaman into sailing with her and her wealthy husband on a yacht. Eventually, a murder is committed and Welles' protagonist is framed for it and is even made to confess to it on paper. Based on Sherwood King's novel "If I Die Before I Wake", The Lady From Shanghai was not a huge hit upon its release and pretty much mystified its producers. Since then, it has received more critical acclaim, mostly due to Orson Welles' technical creativity in full force during the film's admittedly impressive and memorable funhouse climax. The use of mirrors, elaborate sets and projection making for a brilliant, much ripped-off stand-out sequence. This is what most remember from this movie, that and Rita Hayworth, whose one song in the middle of the movie may not have been Welles' own idea but

Robert Downey Jr. tries his hand at a more serious, low-key drama in The Judge , a film in which the actor plays a lawyer having to go back to the town he grew up in following the death of his mother only to find himself defending his father (Robert Duvall) in a court battle. Based on a true story, The Judge is both about a cocky dude coming to terms with his past and himself and about a father fighting for his honour despite it potentially costing him his freedom. As a character study of both characters, the film does a great job making us feel for both even with their obvious shortcomings and keeping us interested in this court case which could easily go either way. We also learn more about the truth bit by bit so you're kept suspicious throughout. The performances are very strong with Downey Jr. showing a wider range of emotion recent comic-book movies have allowed him to portray and Duvall giving a courageous, quietly affecting, layered performance which earned him an Osca

Werner Herzog famously cast then non-actor Bruno S. in this bizarre little film about a man who grew up being kept locked up in a dark basement who suddenly finds himself released in a small town. The townspeople don't really know what to make of him, treating him like a prisoner, an animal and a child at various points until a well-off man takes him under his wing and teaches him the ways of the world, even ultimately going as far as attempting to introduce him to high society. The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser begins almost like a silent film as we get a glimpse of Hauser's day-to-day life pre-freedom. It's sinister, odd and remains a bit of a mystery for the rest of the film as a man dressed in black releases him randomly then occasionally pops back into his life, following him like some kind of lingering shadow of doom. While not a documentary, Herzog doesn't over-stylise the film making it's Plato's cave-style plot more palatable and Kaspar Hauser's c

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Tim Burton takes a stab at a more personal story with this adaptation of Daniel Wallace's novel. The film follows a son trying to make sense of all the tall tales his dying father spoke about since he was a kid in order to maybe find a connection with him before it's too late. The tall tales in question lend themselves to a lot of fantasy and Burton imagery from werewolves to giants and witches. The tone of the film, however, is very different than what you'd expect from that particular director. A lot of it is surprisingly earnest and you even get a good chunk of the film set in the unaltered real world, a rarity for Burton. Billy Crudup plays the disapproving son and Albert Finney the story-telling dad with a pre-Oscar Marion Cotillard popping up as Crudup's wife. The dynamic between these characters is a tense, interesting one as it's Burton trying his hand at straight-up drama (with a touch of humour, of course) and, although fans of his most stylised stuff

Alexander Payne's latest enjoyed early Oscar buzz thanks to Bruce Dern's stand-out performance as an ageing father/husband on a (possibly futile) quest to claim his $1M prize which he believes to have won through the post. Despite the black and white cinematography, a new stylistic move for the director, Nebraska seemed like typical Payne fodder: like About Schmidt meets Sideways with a dash of The Descendants . Not many tell bittersweet tales of loneliness and screw-ups quite as well as Alexander Payne. This time, the focus is the relationship between Will Forte's average dude David and his father Woody, played by Dern, who brings a crystal-like fragility to the proceedings. After 12 Years A Slave and, possibly, Dallas Buyers Club , Nebraska was the most emotional film of last year since most people, especially those who have experienced taking care of an elderly family member, could instantly relate to David's situation and fear for Woody's well-being. Al

After popping up in The Wolf Of Wall Street and just before ruling the HBO airwaves with hypnotic new show True Detective , Matthew McConaughey appeared in the Oscar-nominated Dallas Buyers Club and, once again, knocked it out of the park. The film follows a Texan rodeo cowboy/electrician, Ron Woodroof (McConaughey), as he is diagnosed with AIDS and has to deal with the reality set by his doctor that he might only have 30 days to live. The film is set at a time when new experimental medication was being introduced to treat the disease by the FDA but there were doubts about the best approach to take. Woodroof is a dude that's hard to warm up to seeing as he's pretty homophobic and at times even racist. That said, the movie manages to still make you like the guy as he slowly educates himself about the disease and eventually becomes friends with Jared Leto's transgender woman Rayon, who is also HIV-positive. The change in Woodroof's character is one you'd expect

George Clooney's latest film, The Monuments Men , sets out to tell the little-told true story of a group of ageing American soldiers (and a French dude) whose mission it was to recover as many precious art pieces as possible from the nazis who had stolen them from all over an occupied France. The film opens by giving us some background and Clooney's lieutenant is soon off to gather his team of all-stars including Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban and Hugh Boneville... together at last! After a promising Indiana Jones-esque first few minutes involving Cate Blanchett's cartoonish French (at least I think that's what she was going for) spy, the film's tone switches to something more akin to Stripes or the MASH TV series before occasionally dipping back into serious mode. Clooney clearly wanted to even out the film by putting in a sad, emotional moment for every jokey, light-hearted scene, Disney-style, but, after watching The Monu

In the early 90's, one film taught us how to handle the truth. That film was an all-star cast courtroom drama known as  A Few Good Men . Starring the likes of Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, Demi Moore, Kevin Bacon and Kiefer Sutherland, the movie could have easily been a dull affair seeing as it all revolved around a trial but somehow it managed to be not only universally accessible but actually surprisingly gripping and memorable. The plot follows a couple of US Navy men as they are arrested for the murder of a fellow soldier. Cruise's cocky military lawyer Daniel is hired to defend them and what could have easily been an open-and-shut case turns out to be much more complicated than that as the accused claim to have been acting under orders. We pretty much know who is to blame early on but it's whether Daniel can prove it or not in court that becomes a primary source of suspense. Also, the military "code" and its unspoken extra rules constantly get in the w

With The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty , it was looking like Ben Stiller finally wanted to get recognised as the talented director he genuinely is, giving a more serious, restrained performance in the process. The trailers for the film promised a deadpan sense of humour, thrilling visuals and a positive message. The plot of the film sees Walter (Stiller) working as the negative assets manager of Life Magazine, which is shockingly still around, apparently. The magazine is taken over by a bunch of patronising dorks who are planning to lay off everybody and redirect everything online but Walter has misplaced the cover photograph provided by Sean Penn's photographer so it's up to him to go out and find the adventurous fellow in order to somehow recover the lost picture. Oh, and there's also a subplot in which Walter likes his co-worker Cheryl (played by Kristen Wiig) and sends her a "wink" on an internet dating site before a guy working at eHarmony keeps calling hi

Based on a manga by Mamoru Oshii ( Ghost In The Shell , Patlabor ), Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade is set in an alternate universe Japan where Germany has conquered the country and things look bleak to say the least: the cops are scary as hell, women and children have turned to suicide bombing... It's not looking good. The film opens on a little girl nicknamed "Little Red Riding Hood", some member of a guerilla group called The Sect, who is running through the sewers trying to escape the Panzer Cops, a bunch of armed cops with elephant-style gas masks. One of them, Kazuki, finds himself facing the little girl who reveals a bomb strapped to her chest. He is ordered to shoot her but doesn't and she sets off the bomb. He somehow survives but an enquiry is made into why he didn't carry out his orders and he is made to go back to training. After visiting the little girl's grave, he meets her sister Kei and develops a sort of friendship/relationship with her. The

Having not seen a Tom Hanks film that wasn't a Toy Story sequel since Angels & Demons (yes, I missed Cloud Atlas , I know), I went into Captain Phillips  (the movie, that is...) looking forward to see the actor back in action. Besides, the solid trailer promised a tense sea-set thriller. Based on a true story, the film follows Captain Richard Phillips (Hanks) as he is tasked with taking a cargo ship through the Persian Gulf. Unfortunately, Somali pirates show up with the intent of hijacking the ship. After several attempts at keeping them from entering the ship and taking hostages, they do finally come aboard and Muse (Barkhad Abdi), the leader, uses Phillips to try and find the rest of the crew. That doesn't go quite according to plan so the pirates end up taking Phillips hostage on a lifeboat instead. After a low-key opening in which we see Phillips and his wife (played by Catherine Keener) wake up early in the morning and drive to the airport, we are shown how t

Soon after the success of Lost In Translation and in between Wes Anderson projects, Bill Murray once again went down the indie route and starred in Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers , an odd little movie about a guy on a mysterious quest to find an estranged son he may or may not even have. Upon seeing the film back in 2005, I was hoping for a clever mesh of laughs and quirky goings on but left the cinema feeling way more confused than expected. Yes the film was funny and Murray's deadpan deliveries did bring the occasional lol here and there but this "felt" more serious. Throughout the film there's a nostalgic, passive vibe in the air which increasingly gets more negative in tone. Murray's journey starts off fun enough but by the end you really start to feel the emotional weight of his quest that's being carried on his shoulders. It should have been so straight-forward and yet every time he meets an ex wife to try and find out whether they're the m

Taking a break from over-budgeted blockbusters, a Bonnie And Clyde -style Casey Affleck indie flick sounded like a safe bet. Especially after the likes of The Assassination Of Jesse James and The Killer Inside Me, with Affleck proving himself to be one of the most interesting and promising actors working today. Taking a somewhat more romantic approach, Ain't Them Bodies Saints starts off feeling a lot like a Terrence Malik film, Badlands meets Tree Of Life , something like that. Then we go into the more straight-forward story of woman (Rooney Mara) waiting for her locked-up dude (Affleck) to come back to her. The situation is made slightly more complicated as Bob (Affleck) is only in jail to cover for Ruth (Mara) shooting a cop back when they were both outlaws, a cop who now seems to be interested in pursuing a romantic relationship with Ruth. Yes, it's basically a love triangle movie but unlike, say, Twilight , this is held together very well through terrific performan

Having missed most of the Donnie Yen craze ( Ip Man and all that), I went into Dragon expecting something conventional, a typical martial-arts flick with a straight-forward plot and loads of floating and kicking. Dragon is most definitely not something conventional. It's also not about dragons. Instead, here we have Donnie Yen playing a rather dodgy character who is being investigated by Takeshi Kaneshiro, who's basically Sherlock Holmes in this. The story kicks off with Donnie Yen defending an old man from two machete-wielding robbers, he kicks their ass but without really doing anything and in the end, one of them is killed. Self-defence or not, Kaneshiro's sleuth doesn't buy Yen as a simple fisherman and starts to dig deeper and deeper into what actually happened, focusing on details, Yen's past etc. It's gripping stuff and it works as a Holmes mystery because you're really not sure where the movie is going for most of it, what's truth, wha

Back in the day, Michael Keaton managed to fit this little flick in between Batman movies. One Good Cop isn't quite the big blockbuster you'd expect the man, The Bat-man, to take on but cop movies were in vogue so why not? The film sees Keaton and Anthony LaPaglia as NYPD cops, the former is married (to Rene Russo, typecast as a cop's wife in EVERYTHING back in the day), the latter is father to three kids, they follow various cases which always end up getting pretty messy. One day, Keaton's partner gets killed recklessly and he is left trying to deal with the best way to give his kids a new home. One Good Cop isn't so much a cop movie as it is a rough-edged melodrama with cops in it. A lot of emphasis is put on literally every character around Keaton so it's hard to pin his down, which means that when he finally does something completely out of character it's pretty jarring. The film's trying to tell this emotional story of a cop, a good guy with

I should start by confessing that I tend to miss Steven Spielberg's more serious efforts and instead usually wait patiently for his next sci-fi epic. I missed War Horse but flocked to Minority Report three times upon its release, to give you an idea. Maybe I'm an idiot but... Tom Cruise riding a jetpack! Come on! Lincoln is the type of film you don't need to watch to see, if you catch my drift. It's typical Oscar bait with loads of talking, loads of courtroom "action", loads of safe lighter-hearted moments, big performances and smoky rooms. You've seen the trailer: you've pretty much seen the movie. That said, I am happy I saw the whole thing. All in all, it's hardly unpredictable, especially if you know what historically happened, but it keeps your interest until the end mostly thanks to terrific performances and a sharp script. Daniel Day-Lewis is as good as you'd expect, as is Tommy Lee Jones and although Lincoln is pretty darn l

Watching this third Alien film after a re-watch of Alien Resurrection certainly offered a contrast. Where one was somewhat reminiscent of Ridley Scott's original vision, the other felt more like a fun, if stupid, cartoon. It is quite a big leap between Alien 3 and Resurrection so lets see how the Alien Trilogy ended before it... began again. From the offset, Alien 3 stylistically pays homage to the first Alien with it's white/greenish tones and clinical feel rather than the bluey, sweaty look of Aliens . We are led to believe that this will be a back-to-basics outing with a focus more on atmosphere and subtle horror with less action but more impact. To a certain extent, this proves to be an accurate assessment: Alien 3 most definitely approaches the horror aspect of the franchise the way Scott went about it. You get several scenes where something thoroughly unpleasant is going on, whether it's gory surgery or an autopsy, and we mostly see the event through the charac

Oh boy, where to start... Ok, basic structure of the film: Act I - Everyone's Happy, Act II - Everything Blows Up, Act III - Everyone's Sad. This is literally it guys, if you're expecting anything deeper or more complex than that...then you obviously don't know who's directing this masterpiece of patriotic, macho cheese. Michael Bay's film actually taught me many things about the war: apparently all women were sexy, retarded nurses back then, all black men were cooks and Franklin D Roosevelt had no less than four chins. Yes, this is one history lesson I'll never forget. Every cliché in the book is thrown at us full throttle as every shot sports a giant American flag, every line is peppered with Parmesan and people walk in slo-mo whenever things get dramatic (read: all the time). Historical inaccuracies aside, at the heart of the film is a love triangle so irrelevant and predictable that it makes you wonder how the script could have possibly been more

Basing a film on such an obvious metaphor usually calls for either artistic subtlety or visual compensation in order to make the core idea work on more than one shallow level. Thankfully, the points and emotions The Tree tries to put across are safely transmitted but with a little more creativity, the film could have been so much more. For one thing, the idea of a kid's dad being reincarnated into a tree is silly enough without making it as obvious as possible! No mention of the actual "reincarnation" could have added some welcome mystery to the whole thing and made some of the symbolism much less in-your-face. I mean, Charlotte Gainsbourg starts an affair with a new man and the tree crashes into the house shortly after... Why...you don't think... Could it be...? Is...is the tree/dead husband UNHAPPY about all this?! Duh, have you SEEN a movie before? But I'm being mean. Honestly this isn't a bad film at all. Visually it looks nice, the child ac