TheRetroCritic

Few things in 2016 looked quite as ridiculous as the trailer for Alex Proyas' Ancient Egypt-set epic Gods Of Egypt . The film itself turned out to be just as over-the-top as expected and, although it did well internationally, the movie bombed domestically and critics panned it. One of the first things to turn audiences off was the controversial casting of white actors as Egyptian gods. While definitely not the best decision from the producers, I would argue that this is the least of this film's worries. Besides, realism isn't exactly what we should look for in a fantasy film as out there as this. The plot follows young thief Bek (Brenton Thwaites) as he helps God Of Air Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) to fight back against Set (Gerard Butler), the God Of Darkness, who has taken over Egypt, stolen his lover and even his eyes. Bek is hoping that the gods will bring back Zaya (Courtney Eaton), his girlfriend who was killed by one of Set's men. Making a big blockbuster a

Steven Spielberg directs this live-action adaptation of Roald Dahl's timeless story in a film that may not have done all that well domestically but was a success everywhere else. The Summer release may not have been a good fit for what seemed like more of a Christmas-friendly film but it did OK. The BFG stars Mark Rylance in the titular role and follows young orphan girl Sophie (Ruby Barnhill) as she is taken by The Big Friendly Giant one night because she knows about his existence and can never reveal it. On paper, this may sound like a somewhat creepy synopsis but the film couldn't be sweeter as Sophie and The BFG become friends and the latter shows her where dreams literally come from. Unfortunately, some man-eating giants who live nearby start sensing a human in the vicinity and The BFG fears for Sophie's safety. The motion-capture and visual effects used to bring the giants and their world to life are impressive and make something like Jack The Giant Slayer look

Robin Williams stars in this surreal comedy from 1992 directed by Barry Levinson in which a toy factory is handed over to a sadistic army General who uses its resources to create war toys. A box-office flop, Toys famously did not exactly wow critics and audiences alike even if it did receive some praise for its creative visuals. Indeed, the René Magritte-inspired art direction and costumes earned the film some Oscar nominations but little else about it managed to charm anyone. The main complaint being that, while Toys is rich in fancy sets, it is weak in terms of story and character and with a running time of over two hours that's a legitimate concern. On paper, this is a simple, straight-forward story and yet in Levinson's hands it's borderline incomprehensible. Every scene aims to entertain by showing you increasingly whimsical stuff but it all falls flat due to a lifeless, unfunny script and some criminally underwritten characters. Tonally, the film is also off as

The Doctor is in...

I talk about Tim Burton's latest. Along with a few other recent releases.

After stealing the Summer earlier this year with Captain America: Civil War, Marvel are back with a somewhat more experimental project as another classic character's origin story is crossed off the list. Benedict Cumberbatch takes on the role of Doctor Strange , the Master of the Mystic Arts. This was always going to be a challenge for Marvel as adding what is essentially a wizard to a vast superhero universe could go either way. Fans might call it jumping the shark, liken it to Harry Potter and dismiss it entirely. But for comic-book readers, Doctor Strange is a pretty important character who has always been closely linked to most of the heroes we've come to know and love in the movies so introducing him to the Avengers ' universe was a no-brainer and an exciting prospect. Dr. Stephen Strange is portrayed as a charming, very talented and extremely intelligent neurosurgeon whose vanity and arrogance almost kills him. After a devastating car crash, Strange's hands

Several years before Tim Burton rebooted Lewis Carroll's surreal masterpiece with all the 3D bells and whistles, we got this Alice In Wonderland TV movie in 1999 as an all-star cast took on the classic story. There was something irresistible about this interpretation of Alice In Wonderland as, not only would it be packed with great actors in familiar roles but it was the perfect opportunity to explore parts of the tale the older versions never explored and show off some creative new visuals. The film starts very differently from the book, which is a little off-putting at first, but soon enough Alice goes to Wonderland and the story finally begins in a faithful way with some added moments from "Through The Looking Glass" thrown in. The first thing you'll notice is Tina Majorina (known for  Napoleon Dynamite and Veronica Mars ) feels somewhat miscast as Alice: her performance is much too awkward, her English accent isn't convincing and that yellow dress she&#

I talk about Disney's latest remake Pete's Dragon .

Based on R.L. Stine's popular kid-friendly horror books (and the TV series), Goosebumps was a theatrical feature adaptation released in 2015 starring Jack Black. It did well at the box-office despite a surprisingly healthy budget. I say "surprisingly" because you wouldn't really think that a studio would go all-in for a Goosebumps movie but this is a project that was in development for a long time so I would suspect that a good portion of the dough went into various scripts, casts and crews. In fact, as expensive as it may be, this movie still feels like a TV movie update on the old series. Sure the monsters are huge, detailed CGI creations but they are nowhere near as polished and impressive as you'd expect from a modern day blockbuster. This is a colourful, action-packed adaptation that playfully mixes together several memorable characters from the books including evil garden gnomes, creepy ventriloquist dummies, blobs and abominable snowmen as they are al

A mere week after the release of The Jungle Book , we are given yet another live-action Disney movie to swallow, The Huntsman: Winter's War being the follow-up to Snow White & The Huntsman , a film which received mixed reviews from critics and audiences upon its release. The marketing for this sort-of sequel was nothing short of puzzling with trailers and posters not exactly clarifying whether this was meant to be a straight-up sequel, a prequel or just a mostly unrelated spin-off. With the likes of Charlize Theron and Chris Hemsworth returning (Nick Frost also) but no-one else, this looked set to be a wholly unnecessary, confusing mess so it's no wonder Jungle Book, as bland as that remake may be, is currently trashing the film at the box-office. As it turns out, The Huntsman takes place both before the first film and after with Snow White getting a mention but no screen time. Theron's witch now has a sister (played by Emily Blunt) who becomes The Ice Queen follo

After his sci-fi romantic comedy Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind looked at how memories can affect matters of the heart, Michel Gondry then directed The Science Of Sleep , another bittersweet rom-com, this time focusing on the world of dreams. This feels much more like a French film than Eternal Sunshine with Gael Garcia Bernal being the only non-European cast-member and the likes of Alain Chabat (who steals every scene he's in), Charlotte Gainsbourg, Miou-Miou and Emma de Caunes forming the rest of the cast. This is something which actually works to the film's advantage since Garcia Bernal's Stephane is a bit of a fish-out-water as he moves into his mother's old apartment in Paris despite not knowing anyone or speaking French very well. Hence why Stephane constantly seeks refuge inside his dreams and through his imagination. Unfortunately, that all backfires slowly but surely as he starts to confuse his dreams with reality, which is clearly too cruel for hi

Long before Robert Zemeckis motion-captured the heck out of Beowulf , Christopher Lambert starred in this low budget sci-fi version of the story and the good news is that it was, indeed, about as good as it sounds. And by that I mean both terrible and extremely amusing. The 1999 film sets itself up as some kind of epic but it quickly runs out of budget after a mere one minor battle and 90% of the action then takes place inside a poorly-lit castle where, we're told, Beowulf must battle the beast Grendel and his vengeful mother. Unfortunately, the creature only seems to show up at night and the movie doesn't seem to have anything planned for the daytime scenes so expect a ridiculous amount of dull conversations about nothing and people inexplicably eating in current-day foil take-out boxes. Also, since the film finds itself visibly desperate for anything watchable about 20 minutes in it soon resorts to gratuitous cleavage and sex scenes, cheap comic-relief and slasher movi

Back in 1977, George Lucas released Star Wars , an epic sci-fi fantasy space opera with a save-the-princess plot and it soon became a phenomenon, to say the least. It would later be retitled Episode IV: A New Hope as Lucas decided to expand the storyline further. The film was such a commercial hit that two (soon to be three) more films would follow, then three prequels, countless tie-ins, endless novels, tons and tons of merchandising, several cartoon series, it made Harrison Ford's career and Jedi even became a legitimate (-ish) religion! And the crazy thing is the franchise is still as huge as it ever was, with many, many more films planned so let's take a look back at the movie that started it all. Star Wars opens with a captured Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) sending a couple of droids off to planet Tatooine to bring back help. She is being held by iconic baddie Darth Vader (played by David Prowse, voiced by James Earl Jones) who is running a gigantic space station f

Upon hearing that a movie adaptation of Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events starring Jim Carrey was in the works, I was excited to say the least. In case you don't already know: A Series Of Unfortunate Events is awesome. The books, I mean. The film... slightly less. Which is not to say that it's bad in any way or that I don't like it, quite the opposite. It's just that the film's overall more lighthearted approach took a lot out of what claimed to be a dark, super-downbeat tale of how unfair, cruel and miserable the world can be to innocents who deserve better. The film's admittedly clever opening, which tricks us into watching a ridiculously cute, colourful and happy cartoon before slapping us in the face with a rather gloomy Jude Law voice over and warning us about the unpleasantness of the story about to follow, is perfect and captures the spirit of the books really well. While characters in the film refer to some horrible things t

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

Ever wonder what a mini series about the Wizard Of Oz but not really about the Wizard Of Oz following Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion and Toto but not really Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly and Toto in a brand new adventure would be like? No? Well too bad: Tin Man exists and that's that. Zooey Deschanel stars as the annoyingly named D.G., a waitress living in Kansas, as she is swept back into a strange land known as The O.Z. by a tornado. Because... why wouldn't you travel by tornado? Once she gets there, we find ourselves in very familiar territory and yet rather alien territory as well. Numerous changes are made to the classic tale by L. Frank Baum and, although some of them are admittedly interesting updates, it feels like the mini series is almost trying to hide its Wizard Of Oz-ness as much as possible. It's unclear whether we're following Dorothy's first journey back to Oz or whether this is a completely unrelated adventure or whethe

Some movie concepts are just too good to pass up. Nicolas Cage as a weatherman, John Travolta as an overweight woman, Keanu Reeves as a samurai... Thank goodness for 47 Ronin for suggesting the latter! Unfortunately, the film ended up costing nearly $200M and it's looking like 10 people went to actually see it, and that's including me. Problems between the studio and the director causing the budget to inflate ridiculously due to endless reshoots and stuff like that. Unlike flops like, say, John Carter or The Lone Ranger , you really can't tell where the money went with 47 Ronin, a film which looks like a $10M flick with some decent effects and some really awful ones not exactly helping justify the huge budget. The film doesn't look that great and is more akin to a B-movie like Season Of The Witch visually, which is not a good thing. Another issue is the ridiculous marketing which accompanied this movie: Hiroyuki Sanada, who plays the real main character in t

Watching Spirited Away at the cinema upon its release was something of a personal event for several reasons. For one thing, it was the first anime feature I'd ever seen on the big screen but it was also my first Hayao Miyazaki film and it was, on top of that, really bloody good. Coming at a time when 2D animated films looked like they were on their way out with Disney focusing its attention on CGI animation, the anime was a breath of fresh air and proved once and for all that this kind of animated feature more than deserved to stay. The film follows a young girl called Chihiro who is about to move into a new house with her parents. She's reluctant to leave her old life behind and start a new one. Her father drives towards what he believes to be a shortcut but instead finds an abandoned old fair accessible through a creepy tunnel (as all the best fairs are). They wander aimlessly until Chihiro's parents decide to stuff their faces with random food they find lying arou

Most kids movies these days tend to lack either creativity or a certain refreshing simplicity. Occasionally, a movie comes out and makes the most of a clever concept, like Zootopia  or even Wreck-It Ralph , but many fail to grab kids' attention by being too adult or talking down to them like they're idiots. Jumanji is one that most definitely worked. The concept of this movie alone captured my imagination as a kid: a board game that not only comes to life but which you can literally enter and is packed full of messed-up stuff? No wonder we all flocked to the cinema back in the day like a stampeding bunch of CGI rhinos. The film opens with a couple of kids in the late 1800's trying to get rid of the titular drumming board game before we cut to the 1960's where young Alan Parrish uncovers the game and, after having a heated argument with his father, invites his friend Sarah to play only for his turn to go horribly wrong leaving him stranded for 26 years inside the

To celebrate the release of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug today, here is a little parody/homage to the whole thing in the form of a chapter from little known writer J.R. Dallas' opus The Small Man Chronicles: There Be Dragons . (click the picture below to read) And, if you get lost, here's a map: