TheRetroCritic

Ever since Spider , we've seen a very different David Cronenberg at work. A slightly more mature Cronenberg perhaps? Or just more grounded? After all, this is the guy who turned Jeff Goldblum into a fly, put a gun inside James Woods' chest, cloned Jeremy Irons and exploded heads on a whim! A film about Freud and Jung hardly comes across as the man's most daring venture. That said, some of his later, non-sci-fi/horror projects have made their mark: from the quietly unsettling gloom of Spider to Viggo Mortensen's towering performance in Eastern Promises , Cronenberg has proven he can still make an impact. I just miss those exploding heads... This time, Mortensen is once again given a meaty role as none other than Sigmund Freud whom, despite being something of a secondary character, certainly stands out as the film's Joker. He is joined by a terrific Michael Fassbender (Jung) and a... (we'll get to that) Keira Knightley as Sabina Spielrein, Jung's troubl

Remember in my Robin Hood review when I told Ridley Scott off for not going back to sci-fi and doing what he does best instead of these endless half-assed attempts at macho-pretentious thrillers, epics and comedies? Probably not. Well I said it and, you know what? After seeing the new Prometheus TRAILER (aka Alien prequel-ish, but not really, or is it?) I might have just developed super-powers because lo and behold: something which looks light years better than ANYTHING Scott's produced since the 80's! And it's sci-fi! *gasp* And give me a break, Gladiator was fine but an Oscar for Crowe? Really? I can grunt. Anyway, Alien prequel or not, Prometheus looks fab and if Scott's film is half as good as it seems I will gladly bow to him once more and have intercourse with my Blade Runner  DVD boxset. It's been too long...

The rise and fall of the X-Men films sure went quick and fast. Not that the first two were all that perfect but when the messy third came along that was something of a blow. The lacklustre Wolverine Origins prequel followed and pretty much confirmed that the X magic was well and truly...ex magic, So how do you follow a lifeless X-Men prequel? With another of course! The weird thing is that looking at the reviews the film received so far, people liked it! They lapped it up! And here I was facepalming my way through yet another damp squib X-Men film which not only managed to miss the point entirely but delivered what has to be the least interesting X film so far. Lets forget for one second the overall quality of the film and its hit-and-miss links to the other films and the comics: is this honestly the X-Men film we want to see? Who was this made for? Who demanded yet another prequel starring mostly uninteresting mutants doing mostly uninteresting things in the 60's? Will we