TheRetroCritic

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,

Tom Cruise is back. In Jack. Reacher, that is. In what may start some kind of lasting Bourne-style action franchise (but probably won't), Jack Reacher sees tough cookie ex-army Sherlock dude Jack Reacher (well, duh) being hired to help shed light on a case involving a sniper taking out a seemingly random group of people for no apparent reason. Of course, Reacher suspects there's much more to it than just another psycho losing it and leads his own investigation. What follows is a CSI-meets-Mission-Impossible hybrid which sees Tom Cruise, as usual, taking his top off and acting way taller than he actually is. Oh, also Werner Herzog, of Werner Herzog fame, pops up as mysterious villain "The Zec" who doesn't do much besides talking and sitting but manages to be awesome nonetheless thanks to his inherent, unparalleled Herzoginess. Give the guy a dead eye, a gnarled hand, a dark setting to monologue into and voila! That classic documentary-friendly soothing v

Although many will tell you that this is the best adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' story, those people probably haven't read the book. Yes Richard Lester's film has a lot going for it and gets a lot of things right, it also gets a lot of things wrong not only in terms of staying close to the story but also dramatically. The cast, for the most part, is spot on. Oliver Reed steals the show as Athos and proves to be perfect casting for the role. Heston's Cardinal, Dunaway's Milady and Lee's Rochefort are all brilliant. Unfortunately, Raquel Welch proves to be this film's splinter which refuses to go away no matter how much you try to take it out. Her performance is absolutely abysmal and the director's decision to turn Constance into a bumbling clumsy fool is unnecessary and frankly DUMB. Whatever happened to the Queen's cunning spy maid? You know when you've been Clouseau-ed. Michael York is fine as D'Artagnan although once again Lester makes

Horror films are a funny thing. Very often, their ability to influence the overall genre overpowers the quality of the films themselves. The Blair Witch Project may have been an uneven effort but it paved the way for a variety of other films and franchises to this day. Similarly, Halloween reinvented the slasher genre but how does the original film itself fare today? It's fine. Honestly nothing special. Now I'm a big John Carpenter fan myself and the likes of Christine , The Thing , They Live , Starman and countless others are all-time favourites of mine but I really feel like Halloween hasn't dated well at all and is actually one of Carpenter's films I feel least drawn to. It's a decent enough slasher with a terrific concept and a great killer but it really fails to be anything more than watchable. The film is consistently slow which, were the payoffs satisfying, wouldn't be so bad but a lot of the time we either get a loud and confusing kill or a false

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