TheRetroCritic

You'd think with a film called Cowboys & Aliens there'd be very little room to mess things up. I mean, how much more straight-forward can you get? Just get some cowboys, a bunch of aliens...voila! And yet Cowboys & Aliens doesn't quite get there... Now don't get me wrong: it's a decent film and I really enjoyed it. But alas it falls just short, like all the other summer blockbusters we were treated to this year, of being actually awesome. Which is pretty frustrating as, much like Super 8 and Horrible Bosses , they had the material and everything served up to them on a plate. All they had to do was not spill anything! Here's the thing, it's really quite simple: if you're going for something purely retro like an 80's Spielberg flick or a cowboy sci-fi in the style of Westworld it's your DUTY as a filmmaker to leave the CGI out of it as much as you can. Yes stop-motion monsters can look animated but so does CGI and at the very least

Indiana Jones faces off one final time against those dastardly nazis who, once again, are after a powerful religious artifact and ultimately world domination (of course!). This time, Indy is joined by his father (Sean Connery), Alison Doody's deadly femme fatale and his long-time bumbling pal (played by Denholm Elliott). After a rather strange trip down the Temple Of Doom , here we are back to the basics, so how does it fare? Rather "intolerably" well, to put it simply. For many, Raiders Of The Lost Ark will forever remain the best Indy movie but for me, just the fact that we've got Sean Connery along for the ride rather than Karen Allen's damsel in distress makes it the better film. It just feels bigger, slicker and overall more entertaining than any other Indy movie. The film itself plays out like The Da Vinci Code (but GOOD) crossed with Raiders and although there's a lot of familiar things here from past Indy films it still feels as fresh and origi

People often tend to forget the nature of Indiana Jones films, that is to say what they're actually meant to be: B movies. Sure, glossier, more stylish, more entertaining, ridiculously GOOD B movies but B movies nonetheless. So saying an Indy movie is silly... It's about an archaeologist who fights nazis WITH A WHIP, ok? On that note: yes, Temple Of Doom is sillier and really more of a horror film than Raiders. But we are warned from the offset that this is a very different type of movie than the first instalment as we begin with a flamboyant, cheesy musical number. From then on it plays off a lot like a Bond film before getting back to true Indy territory...and going off into child slavery and black magic about halfway through. This one really is a good companion piece to Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull in that both films stray pretty far from the general concept Raiders and Crusade tried to establish. Of course, Crystal Skull strays a little too far but Temple Of Doom

Many have tried before or since the Indy franchise to recapture the magic and the fun of the old adventure serials with efforts like Romancing The Stone , The Phantom , Doc Savage or Alan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold but all have come short of Spielberg's classic trilogy. So what makes Indiana Jones so successful? For one thing you've got the iconic casting of Harrison Ford as the archaeologist-turned-adventurer which feels like the role Ford was born to play: cool, witty, always on-the-ball, occasionally goofy, strong, good-hearted, a ladies' man...he's the ultimate action hero. He's Han Solo with a whip and leather jacket, can't go wrong with that. Then you've got the Lucas/Spielberg/Williams trilogy of movie masterminds, a team which, in the 80's anyway, were at the top of their game. Fresh from Star Wars , Lucas knew how to produce a catchy flick, The Berg could direct a masterpiece in his sleep and John Williams' scores were ab

Had Morning Glory not been directed by the man behind *shudder* Notting Hill and had it not been built specifically for the Devil Wears Prada audience, we could have had a decent, original, funny, even touching little film here. Unfortunately though, what we get is Anchorman's great grandmother. There was potential here to really explore the inherent absurdity of morning TV daytime shows: the subject matter pretty much gives everything on a plate. Alas, the film finds Rachel MacAdams' painfully irritating lead way more interesting than all that and we are forced to sit through endless scenes of her acting all cute, all professional, all self-involved before we get to the good stuff, namely: Ford and Keaton. Devil Wears Prada worked because of its seemingly heartless "villain" and a just about bearable protagonist in Anne Hathaway. Pretty much exactly the same formula is applied here with a terrific "villain" in Harrison Ford (on wonderfully grumpy fo