TheRetroCritic

Yes it's Golden Globes time again and the results are in! As ever, it's a mixed bag but hey, when are awards ceremonies ever completely right? Let's begin with: BEST MOTION PICTURE - DRAMA Ben Affleck sure has come a long way since Daredevil.  His film Argo winning Best Motion Picture over the favourite, Steven Spielberg's  Lincoln , Kathryn Bigelow's other intense war-themed flick  Zero Dark Thirty , Ang Lee's visual treat Life Of PI and Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained is definitely confirmation that Affleck is finally getting recognised as not only being a good actor but a fine director as well. Argo, to be perfectly honest, wasn't the best film I'd seen all year and I don't think it's one I'll remember years from now. That said, I can't deny that I enjoyed watching it and that it was, indeed, very well made. The more light-hearted parts of the film I didn't find quite as sharp as they should have been but oth

It's so hard to find good Christmas movies these days, let alone animated ones. Could it be that The Nightmare Before Christmas was the last word on that? Well, from the looks of this latest Dreamworks outing, it seems that there's still hope for holiday movies yet! Rise Of The Guardians , while far from perfect (I'll get to that), still boasts enough creativity and popcorn entertainment to make it a fair attempt at something good and festive. The plot sees Jack Frost (Chris Pine) being taken in by the likes of Santa (an unrecognisable Alec Baldwin), The Easter Bunny (Hugh Jackman), The Sandman and The Tooth Fairy (Isla Fisher) to join them as a "Guardian" (basically a Moon-appointed superhero of sorts). Their goal usually being to keep kids safe and their imaginations intact, this time they're having to face off against Pitch Black (a fun Jude Law and a damn good sci-fi B movie) whose plan it is to fill everyone's heads with nightmares and make fear

Iconic enough for ya?

Well, here's one for the ladies: Oh, who am I kidding? This is something we can all enjoy! Bring on The Wolverine !

Back in the day, I was crazy-excited about every X-Men movie release. A fan of the comics, I enjoyed the first film and was certainly looking forward to seeing more of my favourite characters in a sequel. Of course, all this positive anticipation for the franchise ended after (or actually, during) X-Men 3 but that's another story. I had forgotten how much better than the first film this second instalment was. It's ridiculously better. Not amazing or anything but certainly a vast improvement. For one thing, the scale was much more suited to an X-Men film. Also, you had a much better villain with a much better masterplan in Brian Cox's William Stryker with Magneto (Ian McKellen) and Mystique (Rebecca Romijn) given more interesting things to do this time around besides just being one-dimensional douchebags. It's a bit less of a cliched doomsday machine plot in that although Cerebro is a big part of Stryker's plan, it's not really all we get plot-wise from