TheRetroCritic

Oh dear... I don't know what annoys me most, that this movie was ever made or that people actually really like it and even go as far as saying it surpasses the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre sometimes! Let's call it a draw. Both statements annoy me equally. Michael Bay once again gets one of his music video director friends onboard and, once again, they royally screw it up. Hey, how about getting a real FILM director next time? With all these awful horror remakes, Bay really has revealed himself to be an incompetent producer as well as an incompetent director. The first Friday The 13th I could see being remade so that didn't bother me too much, A Nightmare On Elm Street didn't need a remake, especially a dull one, but Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of those classic horror films you just don't remake. There's just no point. It's like that remake of Psycho or that Stephen King The Shining TV movie. Who asked for THOSE?! Anyway, here we hav

What kind of a world do we live in where people are remaking Arnold Schwarzenegger movies and making them worse?! I mean, it's not like they're remaking the shitty ones either, Conan The Barbarian and Total Recall get remade when the likes of Red Sonja , Hercules In New York and Junior  still roam the Earth? I don't get it. But ok, fine. It's a Philip K. Dick short story so there's room for interpretation and I guess with all the new CG technology available to us, a slicker version of Paul Verhoeven's film could serve at least as decent popcorn entertainment. Or, if it's smart enough, as a kind-of-good companion piece to Minority Report . The trailers promised striking visuals, loads of action and a solid cast so chances were we'd get something half-decent if not quite as retrogasmic as the original film. Alas, what we got was a mixed bag to say the least. Technically, Total Recall is not a bad film. It follows the basic formula of the orig

Back when Tim Burton films were still awesome and not "just ok", Mars Attacks! came out and gave us a delightful piece of 50's-style sci-fi B movie goodness complete with a stellar cast and Burton's own brand of surreal, nasty wackiness. It's funny to think that Independence Day came out the same year as Mars Attacks! since the latter feels like a complete spoof of Roland Emmerich's disaster cheese-fest. Burton's film takes the clichéd alien invasion formula we've seen in movies like War Of The Worlds , Earth vs The Flying Saucers or The Day The Earth Stood Still and gives it a playful edge. We see our world react to a potential alien encounter stupidly and naively. Rather than fearing the Martians, we're in fact pretty darn welcoming and peaceful about the whole thing. It's a clever take on that plot because in those old movies people are usually terrified of an alien invasion and completely overreact. Here, we only acknowledge how scre

Johnny Deep is "Worst Director Of All Time" Edward D. Wood Jr. in this stylish Tim Burton biopic/hommage which looks at the man's rise to... making Plan 9 From Outer Space , his biggest and "best" movie, and his friendship with ageing icon Bela Lugosi. How much of the movie is based on facts is hard to say, parts of it are clearly anecdotal, others feel put on for the sake of the narrative or character development. Did Ed Wood really help Bela Lugosi check into rehab? Possibly. Did he ever bump into Orson Welles in a bar and have a deep conversation with him? Probably not. It doesn't matter though, this isn't so much about presenting an accurate depiction of Wood's personal life as it is celebrating the guy's passionate drive for what he does (or at least tries to do) and his quirky-ass career. Was he deluded? Perhaps. His films were certainly not well made. But this is a guy who went through hell trying to make his trashy sci-fi monster mo

Following a popular franchise like Austin Powers was never going to be easy so it's no big surprise that The Love Guru tanked upon its release. What is surprising though is the general hate the film generated from critics. I mean, ok, I'm not gonna pretend this is any good but there are far worse films out there. One only needs to look to Myers' buddy Dana Carvey and his little nugget Master Of Disguise , a film so unfunny it's actually sad. Admittedly The Love Guru does a lot of things wrong: Justin Timberlake and Jessica Alba are both typically awful, Ben Kingsley as a cross-eyed Indian guru is disturbing, the whole thing is a sports movie (*puke*) and the central romance is about as interesting as Fat Bastard's ass. Oh, and a lot of the jokes just don't work. Then again, Mike Myers is genuinely fun even if he does turn into Dr Evil or Austin Powers occasionally, there are some good jokes here and there and the whole thing is pretty entertaining. Sure

One of the best bits of Grindhouse was definitely the fake trailers. And one of the best bits of the fake trailers was Machete , which promised flying motorbikes, killer priests, threesomes and Danny Trejo kicking a whole lotta ass. Three years later, we finally got the promised feature. Better late than never, I say. Shame  Sin City 2 took decades... Robert Rodriguez excels at mimicking 70's exploitation films, whether it be horror movies ( F rom Dusk Till Dawn , Planet Terror ) or Mexploitation action flicks ( Once Upon a Time in Mexico , Desperado ) so Machete was always going to be a shoe-in. That it took so long to make is therefore surprising but as long as it exists, I'm not about to complain. So does Machete get the job done? Perfectly capturing the sleaze and silliness of Grindhouse action B-movies, Machete is about as badass, random and fun as it gets. Rodriguez's film certainly shows weak efforts like A-Team and The Expendables (out the same year)