TheRetroCritic

After the success of Once Upon A Time In China , it was time for Jet Li to set aside his serious face for a bit and try something a tad lighter. The Wong Fei-hung films are great, don't get me wrong, but the tone throughout these movies is all-over-the-place, so much so that whenever it does attempt to lighten things up a bit that tends to come off as a bit distracting. The Legend does have its weird tone-shifts but they work well as a whole. Jet Li's Fong Sai-Yuk is much less of a flawless superhero than Fei-hung, he's a mischievous kid who happens to be good at martial arts due to his mother being a true badass. Yes, his mother. It's not everyday that a film's hero is upstaged by his mommy but Josephine Siao is so good she actually steals the show rather effortlessly. At first it's all a bit dodgy with her and her son having to take a beating from Kong Chu's father in order to keep his reputation as the strong head of the family intact but later

Legend is one of those movies you remember watching as a kid but don't remember what it was even about. Thinking back to it I could only picture a young Tom Cruise wearing no pants, Tim Curry's demonic villain and... unicorns? It turns out the movie's about a young princess who decides to be an idiot one day and screw up the very balance of nature and everything that's good in the world leaving some young Peter Pan-esque dude to set-off on a quest to sort it all out. Hm, girls back then weren't given the best parts, were they? But yeah, because she touches one of only two sacred unicorns in the universe, this alerts what is essentially the Devil (aka Darkness) and his goblin minions and they're soon on the way to destroy them and their pure, good-hearted human fans. She also throws some ring out into a river and Baby Cruise, because he's so damn in love (read: NUTS), jumps off a cliff to try and retrieve it. When he finally comes out of the water to fi

Here's a review of the classic Batman NES game from our good friend Nintendo Legend ! Head over to his site for the review to this game and MANY more. You can follow him on Twitter @Nintendo_Legend and check out his other badass retro gaming site 1MoreCastle.com .  Look out for my own reviews on there also every Wednesday.

Now Prometheus is finally out, I thought I'd take a quick look back at visionary director Ridley Scott's career and outline which of his films I've personally enjoyed the most so far. Here goes... 10 1492: CONQUEST OF PARADISE Well aware that this isn't THE most popular choice out there but I'm putting it in the list because of how... weird of a project this actually is. It's Ridley Scott basically making a Werner Herzog film with Gerard Depardieu playing Christopher Columbus and Sigourney Weaver as Queen Isabella I. The film itself is a dark, atmospheric, brutal mess with a lot going for it despite being a million hours long (I'm exaggerating). Underrated. 9  AMERICAN GANGSTER Did not expect to like this one. By the time the film was released I'd pretty much given up on seeing another good Ridley Scott movie ever again (walked out of the unforgivably irritating A Good Year ) but I gave it a shot and found myself weirdly getti

CREAM away San Diego, cream away... ...and now it's THIS teaser's time to play.

The Legend Continues...

Um... why didn't I purchase this again? Clearly THE best object I've held this year.

The prospect of Mark Dacascos kicking zombie ass in a post-apocalyptic city in an I Am Legend B movie was almost too glorious to put into words. Sadly, the only ass I ended up kicking was my own, for putting myself through such a dull, sluggish watch. Production company The Asylum have had the odd nice, creative surprise: Sherlock Holmes battling dinosaurs being one of the highlights. Here though, they've somehow managed to make a sci-fi epic with a martial-arts master fighting zombies about as boring and uninteresting as it could possibly get. An achievement in itself? Yeah... The sad thing is that had the film stuck to Dacascos and the creepy army guys things could have potentially become somewhat entertaining but Jennifer Lee Wiggins' insufferable tacked-on love interest, which comes in about halfway through, is just a pain to sit through. The bad acting coupled with the annoying little comedy routines she gets with Dacascos are definitely not the film's shining mom

Some directors are great at one thing in particular. Some are very versatile. Scott thinks he belongs to the latter category when really he's part of the former. Ever since his sci-fi/fantasy days ( Alien , Blade Runner , Legend ) he has avoided those genres like the plague focusing instead on Russell Crowe-led bore-fests like A Good Year or, indeed, Robin Hood. Which is not to say some of his ventures into the unknown haven't been successful: Gladiator , Thelma and Louise and Matchstick Men were all fine but Scott's original style got lost somewhere along the way and his films these days could have been done by pretty much anyone else comfortable with generic fare. Robin Hood is by no means a terrible film it's just unnecessary. Do we care how Robin Hood became Robin Hood? Do we care about his inner turmoils? Do we need to see a boring, gritty, "realistic" Robin Hood prequel? Or do we want to see a good Robin Hood film with Robin happill

In many ways, Leprechaun 2 is a superior sequel. Then again, it is a sequel to  Leprechaun  so how good could it possibly be? Kinda like how  Evil Dead 2 is a sequel to Evil Dead , this Leprechaun is really more of a remake or a reimagining of the first film with only Warwick Davis' evil fantastical critter in common: the plot doesn't continue from the first instalment and it seems like this time there is some kind of budget involved despite the (unsurprising) absence of Jennifer Aniston. Whereas the first film took place in and around some old house, this time we actually have a story with characters you actually sort-of care about (not Shevonne Durkin, she's rubbish) and *gasp* numerous locations! Now the Leprechaun is looking for a bride to... cover in gold and impregnate (as you do) but he can only do that with a descendant of the daughter of a past slave of his and that'll only work if she sneezes three times and no-one says "God bless you".