TheRetroCritic

I talk briefly about new sci-fi horror film Life .

A few months before the release of Alien: Covenant ( Ridley Scott's latest entry into the long-running sci-fi franchise), comes Life : another creepy space-set horror thriller in which a group of astronauts are forced to face a thoroughly unpleasant monster. While some reviews for this movie might not go much further than mentioning how derivative it is since it is essentially a mix of Alien , The Thing and Gravity , one could argue that what it lacks in originality it makes up for in sheer terror and, in fact, surpasses some of the aforementioned films in some ways. Life may seem like a B-movie but it is so well made that dismissing it as just that would be unfair. The way in which the inside of the space station is shot really makes you buy the setting with its zero gravity and tight compartments as we follow the crew members floating through the station convincingly, something that Gravity didn't quite capture. The reasonable running time actually means the tension is

With Lara Croft: Tomb Raider doing well at the box-office despite it failing to be the cinematic adaptation of the classic game people were waiting for, a sequel was nonetheless inevitable. New director, new adventure, new hope. Could this be the Tomb Raider film we were all waiting for? Sadly... far from it. Once again, the film misses the point of the game and replaces what should be an Indiana Jones -type of vibe with more of a Mission Impossible approach. Angelina Jolie's Lara Croft is paired with Gerard Butler's agent to uncover Pandora's Box thanks to a big, glowing... Dragonball. The film opens with Lara already on a mission and although there is something really messy and uninvolving about that opening scene, it's all worth it just to see her punch a shark in the face: by far the best and funniest moment in either film. The plot sees a competing douchebag, some evil scientist guy, following the trail of the orb and the Box while Lara attempts to retri

Blaming Twilight entirely for the recent burst of corny teen nonsense (shriek! abs!) is easy but one mustn't forget all the Hannah Montanas and High School Musicals which helped kick start the new trend of (shriek! abs!) pseudo-romantic teen movies. Yes Dear John , I'm pointing at you too. You wartime-set, letter sending...bastard. Anyway, so one could say Twilight is partly to blame for the spread of (shriek! abs!) naivety throughout modern cinema but the real culprit really is Disney. And with the company now proud owner of the rights to Marvel films, god help us all... And so we get to Zac Efron (shirek! abs!). I managed to avoid 17 Again but I have to say the trailer for Charlie St Cloud was unintentionally funny enough to spark my interest. The High School Musical alumni's puppet-like stare and Mentos-selling grin might just provide some welcome comedy! Charlie St Cloud, indeed, was pretty funny. But also pretty harmless. As a film I was expecting something n

Here’s a film which might as well have been called « Giant Cock and Balls ». The testosterone involved in this Sly-directed pumped-up action best-of is simply overpowering. And yet, I would say, not quite overpowering enough. By this I mean the lack of so many other worthy action stars such as Kurt Russell, Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal, Vin Diesel, JCVD, The Rock (and yes even Hulk Hogan, Wesley Snipes and Jackie Chan would have been welcome!) makes this feel like HALF of the biggest, most badass action film ever, not the actual thing. And yet all this isn’t even the film’s biggest problem. With awful dialogs, dire direction and terrible acting plaguing such a potentially awesome film, The Expendables just fails to impress on almost all accounts. Instead of showing off how cool these guys were, Sly manages to show up how bad, how unspeakably bad their acting really is. Rourke, Roberts and Statham just about get away with it but pretty much everyone else is painful to watch. Lundgren’