TheRetroCritic

Jonesy, the overdramatic cat from Ridley Scott's  Alien , takes on the movies!

Remember when that movie came out? How excited we were? I know I was! A perfectly cast Angelina Jolie playing the one game character EVERY geek fantasized about in a full-blown action adventure flick? Finally? I couldn't wait. Then I watched it... I hadn't been this disappointed in a video game movie since Street Fighter and at least that one was enjoyable in a so-bad-it's-good kind of way, it was entertaining at the very least! Not that this Tomb Raider outing is completely joyless: there is a sense that they were trying to make a fun movie complete with loads of action, playful one-liners and comic relief characters (both of which are awful here, by the way) but somehow it managed to completely miss the point. It's really quite simple: what Tomb Raider should be is nothing more than a modern Indiana Jones with a quietly badass female lead and cool, cartoonish villains. Yet this movie finds it necessary to spend no less than 40 minutes building exposition f

Talk about a good set-up! You've got a cool title, a kickass Duran Duran theme song, Christopher Walken, Grace Jones, all in a Bond film! How is this not widely known as THE best 007 flick out there? I'll tell ya: HORSES . Yeah, you know what's not cool to have in a Bond film? An extensive amount of time spent talking about or riding horses. I mean, I like the countryside and the pooey smell of stables as much as anyone but... Remember that scene in Goldfinger where Bond is playing golf with the titular villain? Now imagine if that scene was about an hour long. Ouch. Alright, I know it sounds like I'm panning A View To A Kill pretty harshly, but don't get me wrong: I like the movie! Christopher Walken's Max Zorin is a cool villain, Grace Jones is as striking as ever as henchwoman May Day, I like the opening ski scene, as silly as it is, and the third act is actually pretty darn decent. You've got a chase up and down the Eiffel Tower, Bond a

How insulting. You don't think I have that?! I AM Conan The Destroyer [DVD] [1984]!!!

From the Young Indiana Jones game Instruments Of Chaos on the SEGA Genesis, I give you the most heartbreaking game over screen you'll ever see: Shit man! That's depressing... But wait, what about Old Indiana Jones?

You ever wonder what would happen if the Guns N Roses , Duran Duran and The Sex Pistols all got together somehow and made an album? Well, why wonder when you can HEAR? Boys and girls, I give you: Neurotic Outsiders. A supergroup formed back in 1995 made up of Steve Jones (Sex Pistols), Matt Sorum (Guns N Roses), Duff McKagan (Guns N Roses) and John Taylor (Duran Duran). I’ll let the awesomeness sink in. The band only really made the one album (with an EP the following year), a self-titled release which I recall owning back in the day. I loved it but being French the lyrics were lost on me, which was a bit awkward since songs like Nasty Ho were pretty graphic throughout. “Oh nasty ho…” You know, for kids! Regardless, it was great. But how does it stand up today? Well, lets just say it more than lives up to the term “supergroup”. Vocally, Steve Jones may not be Axl Rose but he fits in perfectly in this punk/grunge/metal hybrid and although the prospect of the band being led

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

Philip K Dick film adaptations come and go. Usually we get either the Good ( Minority Report ), the Bad ( Impostor ) or the Silly ( Next ). Here though, Duncan Jones appears to have found a good balance. The Moon director being no stranger to sci-fi flicks about guys stuck somewhere trying to make sense of a crazy, brain-twisting puzzle, Source Code seemed like the perfect project. As outlandish as the Moon story was, he made it work and you soon forgot you were watching a Sam Rockwell twin movie with a cute Kevin Spacey robot. With Source Code, he also manages to make a potentially lame throwaway sci-fi B movie into a very decent A-list thriller. Jake Gyllenhaal is good fun, as are Jeffrey Wright and Vera Farmiga, the whole thing is entertaining, well paced and pretty gripping throughout. Plus it looks fine and has some neat Dickian twists and turns here and there. Annoyingly, it trips on its own shoelaces near the end as Russell Peters takes over with some awkward, cringe-wor