TheRetroCritic

Remaking genius cult B-movie Death Race 2000 was either going to end up being a very bad idea or a very good idea. The film (think Wacky Races with gore, Sylvester Stallone and boobs) said pretty much all it had to say it seemed. But here we are with a Jason Statham B-side actioner that's... Neither bad or good, really. More the latter than the former, though. The film opens with a cool car chase involving masked driver Frankenstein (played by David Carradine in the original film and rocking a cameo here), a really good start: the cars look great, the action's fine... That is, until the character is killed off! Yeah, then it becomes a prison movie for some reason with Jason Statham getting locked up after being wrongfully accused of killing his own wife. It's like Steven Seagal came in and rewrote the movie! It's not bad but it's not quite what you expect walking in, frankly. Thankfully, though, things finally get down to business and the movie gets bac

It's funny how some movies shouldn't work and technically don't but totally do. Mallrats is one of those movies. Cinematically, it's all over the place. As a romantic comedy, it gets pretty corny and you could literally take out TS's (Jeremy London) subplot out entirely, replace it with more dick jokes and the whole movie would be even better for it. Not classier but better. As it stands, the tone is kinda hit-and-miss and some of the performances either fall flat (Claire Forlani's Brandi) or are hammy as hell (Michael Rooker). The result is a film which feels like many different types of movies stuck together randomly into some sort of post-modern 90's collage: the dialogs have a Woody Allen-esque verbosity to them every so often, all the Jay and Silent Bob stuff is pure Wile E. Coyote cartoon, the gross out jokes are straight out of something like Caddyshack so it's a weird mix to say the least. That said, as with several other Smith flicks,

Some jokes never get old. Then again some do. Sadly, the whole American Pie thing started getting old with American Pie: The Wedding , and that was before all those straight-to-DVD ones. So yeah, a reunion I guess could have been a good way to update the franchise a little bit and maybe do something epic with those characters for once... Unfortunately, studios went for the safer route: American Reunion is the typical comedy sequel with everyone having a bit of a mid-life crisis before all growing up and settling down like good little human puppets. YAWN. Now I suppose they can take comfort in the knowledge that American Reunion is the best American Pie film since the second one but it's a pretty big drop-off in between and with all the cast back for a full-on reunion, they could have put a tad bit more effort into telling some kind of memorable and different story. You know the drill: everyone shows up, Stifler screws up their lives after a (mildly) crazy week-end, ever

There is an irony about Teen Wolf Too that, if intentional, is pretty tragically clever in its own way. I mean the film is essentially about how everyone expects Jason Bateman to become the wolf and live up to Michael J. Fox but due to him... not being Michael J. Fox it proves more difficult to accept than it should. Teen Wolf Too is basically Teen Wolf . You've got a sporting event our hero needs to win NOT as the wolf to redeem himself in the end, you've got a stern principal (dean, whatever), you've got a bitch bimbo, a bully, goofy best friends, a sweet father figure, the red eyes scene, the hairy hands scene, the transformation scene.... it's the same movie! But Teen Wolf Too is to Teen Wolf what, say, Big Top Pee-Wee was to Pee-Wee's Big Adventure . The sequel lacks something that made the original film that little bit more enjoyable. It's not bad, some stinker lines aside it's not bad, just... it lacks something . For one thing it takes some ti

And I thought I'd seen every messed-up David Cronenberg film around... Settling down to newer, tamer efforts like A Dangerous Method with the misguided belief that "It's better than no David Cronenberg film, right?..." while in fact secretly pining for another Scanners , Videodrome or even Dead Ringers . Then eXistenZ is lent to me and I'm sitting there, expecting a kind of fast-paced Gatacca meets The Matrix type sci-fi thriller. That would have been fun enough but... Oh man... This is true, CLASSIC Cronenberg. Complete with gore, f***ed-up genius imagery, super creative concepts and disturbed individuals by the thousands. Where do I even start with this?! You've got this new game being tested called "eXistenZ" which is meant to be extremely realistic. Its controllers are basically living slabs of flesh with ombilical cords which plug into an anus in your back. Are you following? Good. Along the way, Jude Law tries his hand at an Ame

I'll come right out and say it: I didn't really grow up with The Muppets. Oh sure I saw the odd show and the odd movie, A Muppets Christmas Carol is almost unavoidable every December, but I was never much of a fan. I mostly watched The Muppet Show for the guest stars but going into this Jason Segel homage I was nonetheless familiar with all the characters and was looking forward to seeing those furry bastards again. And with all the praise this new outing has been getting I must say I was left somewhat underwhelmed and overall disappointed. Now, I like Jason Segel as much as the next guy: his "Dracula Puppet Musical" at the heart of Forgetting Sarah Marshall made the film and he's a lot of fun in most films he's in but this just isn't a very good Muppets movie. Don't get me wrong: it's cute, heartfelt and decent in parts but everything that doesn't take place during the reborn Muppet Show itself mostly falls flat and feels a tad awkwar

In most cases, comedies work depending on how good or clever their original premises are. And if that's true then Horrible Bosses should be amazing. Its not. And that it's not is something of a miracle. I mean, you've got Colin Farrell doing the mother of all Michael Keaton impressions with a combover, you've got a perfectly psychotic Kevin Spacey, a masturbating Jennifer Aniston...do you NEED more? Well good jokes would have been a plus. Sadly, Horrible Bosses is one of those movies where a bunch of funny dudes are left rambling in loud improv mode for hours as a golden set-up and potential hilarity go to waste. Sure there are some good lines here an there, amidst Charlie Day's relentless high-pitched screaming but a film like this, where the villains and the concept are the real stars, there really is no need to milk our main characters for on-the-spot lols. Try writing jokes next time, perhaps? I'm just sayin'... Admittedly, our bosses are stil

I bet you never thought you'd see Zach Galifiniakis, Ted Danson and Jason Schwartzman in a movie together let alone an entire TV series! Well, show creator Jonathan Ames clearly had a unique vision and his latest show Bored To Death makes it work seamlessly. The series follow Schwartzman's struggling writer as he goes through a painful break-up, puts an ad on Craigslist as an unlicenced private detective and becomes just that. Ted Danson is his charming, ever so slightly eccentric boss and Galifiniakis is his bearded, weary cartoonist friend. The first season focuses primarily on Ames (Schwartzman) leaving little room for George (Danson) and Ray (Galifiniakis) to develop their own storylines. They mostly pop up here and there to make themselves useful and add some quirkiness to the proceedings. That said, the last 3 episodes of the first season finally gives us what we want as our main cast finally unites and everyone is given a fair chance. From the terrific "Beautif

Whatever happened to the Farrelly Brothers? Now don't get me wrong, these guys were never the Fellini Brothers but for a while they were the go-to guys for gross-out, dumb but cute comedies. But after the genius of Dumb & Dumber , the creativity of There's Something About Mary and the extreme silliness of Me Myself and Irene things got too dumb ( Shallow Hal ) or too cute ( Perfect Catch ) leaving the brothers in a sort of comedy no man's land... Then Hall Pass comes along. Yes it's set in Providence, yes it's about two buddy idiots...but alas Dumb & Dumber this most certainly isn't. For one thing it's barely funny. Barring a couple of amusing build-ups or observations there's really nothing here to count on laughs-wise. Even the likes of Richard Jenkins, Christina Applegate, Jenna Fischer and Stephen Merchant fail to raise a single smile, it's really quite astonishing. That said, Owen Wilson is great and manages to create a surpri

You don't see shit weasels around that much anymore... Thankfully they are immortalised in this madcap Stephen King adaptation which gloriously throws everything at you no matter how ridiculous or nonsensical the result may be. Dreamcatcher is like a best of (and worst of) Stephen King with every possible King cliche at the rendez-vous: Stand By Me -style backstories, aliens, creepy cabin in the woods, telepathy, farts...it's got it all. There are obvious reasons why Dreamcatcher will never be up there with the likes of Christine , Carrie or other, more focused, King efforts. For one thing the last half hour is a mess to say the least and is way funnier than it probably originally intented to be, with the whole thing ending in a giant brown blob of CGI mush. But it is a guilty pleasure and the very idea of a shit weasel, a mentally challenged alien with a Scooby Doo lunchbox, Damian Lewis' hilariously schizophrenic "Mr Gray", Jason Lee's irr

Here’s a film which might as well have been called « Giant Cock and Balls ». The testosterone involved in this Sly-directed pumped-up action best-of is simply overpowering. And yet, I would say, not quite overpowering enough. By this I mean the lack of so many other worthy action stars such as Kurt Russell, Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal, Vin Diesel, JCVD, The Rock (and yes even Hulk Hogan, Wesley Snipes and Jackie Chan would have been welcome!) makes this feel like HALF of the biggest, most badass action film ever, not the actual thing. And yet all this isn’t even the film’s biggest problem. With awful dialogs, dire direction and terrible acting plaguing such a potentially awesome film, The Expendables just fails to impress on almost all accounts. Instead of showing off how cool these guys were, Sly manages to show up how bad, how unspeakably bad their acting really is. Rourke, Roberts and Statham just about get away with it but pretty much everyone else is painful to watch. Lundgren’