TheRetroCritic

Some thoughts on the new Flatliners .

I talk about new reboot/spin-off/whatever 24: Legacy . This Vlog occurs in real time.

From director Alex Proyas comes Dark City , a modern film noir detective flick with a difference. While its story may develop in a similar way to other films in that genre, you've got a mysterious group of powerful, bald, vampire-like weirdos in there and a good bunch of bizarre twists which add a layer of surrealism to the whole thing. Dark City stars Rufus Sewell as John Murdoch, a man suspected of killing several prostitutes who finds himself on the run after waking up in a hotel room he doesn't remember. In fact, his memory is pretty much all gone so it makes finding out the truth even more tricky. William Hurt is the detective tasked with the case, Jennifer Connelly is John's concerned wife and Kiefer Sutherland is a shady doctor who appears to know more than he claims. As a piece of neo-noir, Dark City is pretty fascinating as it, about halfway through, defies your expectations and goes in a direction you wouldn't expect. As the plot moves towards more of a

Released back in 1990, Flashback was a buddy comedy about a hippie New Left radical on the run for years being transferred for a trial by an uptight FBI agent. Huey Walker, the hippie in question, is played by a perfect Dennis Hopper who has a ball throughout teasing Kiefer Sutherland's agent John Buckner, evading the law, referencing the 60's (even Easy Rider ) and saying "man" a lot. It's refreshing to see Hopper in a lighter role not playing a bad guy as he so often used to. He and Sutherland play polar opposites which makes for an amusing contrast but the film does a good job at showing that they have more in common than they realise. At first, those two characters inevitably clash, especially when Walker gets Buckner drunk and makes him believe he's been slipped some acid before switching places with him and getting him thrown in jail. Very quickly, they realise that they are both in danger of getting disposed of by Cliff De Young's dodgy Sherif

Jack Bauer is back and, this time, he's got 12 hours to not let London explode at the hands of some very bad people. Yes, 24: Live Another Day doesn't exactly stay true 100% to the whole 24 hours thing. Well, it does by fast forwarding to 12 hours later right at the end I guess, but, right off the bat, with a different setting and a different time scale to work with, this was set to be a rather unique season of the long-running show. This time, the big threat is an override which allows anyone to control weaponised drones and this terrorist's widow Margot Al-Harazi (Michelle Fairley) is planning to use it on London if the US President (William Devane's James Heller) doesn't give himself up. It's a promising idea and those first six episodes do a really good job of building up that threat and delivering some kickass moments including the dramatic death of a major character (kinda), a full-on chase in which Jack Bauer (the ever enjoyable Kiefer Sutherland) h

Season 3 of 24 had the misfortune of following Season 2 , which upped the ante a huge amount, giving CTU a new threat to deal with which had to somehow feel as deadly and large-scale as a nuclear bomb being detonated in Los Angeles. Good luck with that. To be fair, Season 3 did pretty well to keep the threat somewhat compelling, replacing a possible nuclear strike with a biological attack with a spreading virus. On top of that, good old Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) is given a darker character arc as he is made to deal with addiction after a mission saw him become a heroin addict in order to go undercover as a drug dealer convincingly. Meanwhile, David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) is back on President duties and, although his subplot isn't exactly quite as gripping as the one he was given one season prior, it's interesting to note how not that great of a leader he is this time around. There's definitely a will to blur the lines between hero and screw-up in this season

Jack Bauer has finally met his match: the word "President". (from Episode 11, Season 8)

Also known as Jet , Ground Control was a 1998 Kiefer Sutherland flick about a disgraced ex-air traffic controller called back in to help manage a particularly difficult situation. The film sounded like it could offer some cheap Airport 1975 or Die Hard 2 -style entertainment. Man did it not do that, like, at all. As it turns out, the entire film was made to show how difficult air traffic controllers' jobs are, having to monitor several aircrafts on several different paths just by looking at abstract Atari-style monitors. It's a fair enough endeavour but this was also meant to be a film and in terms of drama and excitement, Ground Control is about as fun as a night spent sleeping on one of those uncomfortable airport seats. If you close your eyes and listen to Kiefer Sutherland's voice speaking over the score, you could fool yourself into believing you were watching the worst season of 24 ever made but even that would have been miles better than what the film offer

Film premises don't get much simpler than that. A dude answers the phone in a phone booth and ends up being kept there by a maniacal sniper-wielding stranger who makes him do whatever he wants and sounds exactly like Jack Bauer. The entire film takes place, you've guessed it, in and around a single phone booth and attempts a Hitchcockian thriller within that limited setting. Colin Farrell plays the put-upon Stu, a douchy New York publicist "romantically" interested in one of his clients, played by the reliably squeaky-voiced Katie Holmes, despite being married. The voice on the phone, Kiefer Sutherland's voice that is, forces Stu into making awkward, morally grey decisions and the suspense rests on both whether Stu is smart enough to pull through and whether Sutherland's creep is as truly insane as he seems. It's unclear what the mysterious caller wants so, as the viewer, you're left to slowly make your mind up about that, which really helps bui

Jack Bauer's back and it's a darn good thing he is because, this time, a nuclear bomb is about to hit L.A. and kill thousands. The stakes are much, much higher and, despite David Palmer being president, it's not looking good for CTU or the US in general. The season opens on a morose note as we find Kiefer Sutherland's Bauer depressed after the untimely death of his wife and retired from CTU. Also, his relationship with his (annoying) daughter Kim (Elisha Cuthbert) is damaged and she, once again, gets her own subplot where she runs around being all kinds of stupid and distracting hard-working people from what's actually important. Once again, she's the season's worst asset but luckily, her main "contribution" more or less ends about halfway through. After ruining several innocent people's lives, by the way. Poor old Billy Burke is dragged in as her own personal antagonist and isn't very convincing as a dude who just happens to be a cold

Ever wondered what the story of Little Red Riding Hood would be like with added crack whores? I know I have! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Freeway . A film so not for kids it might as well be called "Little Bitch Red F***ing Hood". A Twilighty Amanda Seyfried flick, this is not. The film follows a young Reese Witherspoon as she attempts to leave her delightful life of incest, prostitution, drugs and whatnot to find her good ol' grandma with her trusty little red picnic basket. Her car soon breaks down in the middle of a freeway but Big Bad Kiefer Sutherland comes to her rescue and gives her a ride. It all goes fine until Jack Bauer turns out to be a freakin' maniac. It's, believe it or not, all downhill from there. Along the way, our hero meets a positively not all there Brittany Murphy, a LOT of messed-up peeps and... Brooke Shields (?). Here's one cult movie that doesn't like to sugar-coat things. It starts off rough and ends... prett