TheRetroCritic

Alright, let's get the annoying technical stuff out of the way first. Unknowingly, I saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey  in "high frame rate", which means that my eyes not only had to take in 3 hours of crazy fantasy visuals but in 3D and at 48 frames per second. Forgive me if I sound a bit bitter about that, I'll make sure not to let that taint my review of the movie itself. I will say, however, that if you want to see The Hobbit: check it out in 2D or 3D, don't high frame rate that shit. The CGI stuff just doesn't gel with the real stuff and you just end up watching what feels like dudes with big fake noses and big-ass plastic feet wearing silly costumes. Which, in essence it is, but you're taken out of the movie SO quickly and so much that you're just left squinting your way through what looks like a low-budget 90's BBC fantasy TV series. Anything slightly fake-looking make-up/costume/background-wise is emphasized to the max and that rea

Johnny Deep is "Worst Director Of All Time" Edward D. Wood Jr. in this stylish Tim Burton biopic/hommage which looks at the man's rise to... making Plan 9 From Outer Space , his biggest and "best" movie, and his friendship with ageing icon Bela Lugosi. How much of the movie is based on facts is hard to say, parts of it are clearly anecdotal, others feel put on for the sake of the narrative or character development. Did Ed Wood really help Bela Lugosi check into rehab? Possibly. Did he ever bump into Orson Welles in a bar and have a deep conversation with him? Probably not. It doesn't matter though, this isn't so much about presenting an accurate depiction of Wood's personal life as it is celebrating the guy's passionate drive for what he does (or at least tries to do) and his quirky-ass career. Was he deluded? Perhaps. His films were certainly not well made. But this is a guy who went through hell trying to make his trashy sci-fi monster mo

Here are some new stills from Tim Burton's upcoming Frankenweenie . Doctor and creation. Comically chunky nosy neighbour. Sparky "in stitches". Some Igor-looking fellow that wasn't in the original short. Bride of... Poodlestein? Big lol Looks visually pretty great and it looks like Mr Burton might just have found his old wit. Can't wait.

Tim Burton's latest stop-motion venture gets a new poster: A return to form? We shall see...

Following on from a preview I made some time ago in regards to Tim Burton's latest stop-motion venture Frankenweenie , here's a new picture from the film just released. Not sure how Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea will come into play but we shall see... Lookin' good.

As many of you know, Mr Tim Burton is currently hard at work on an animated adaptation of his very own short Frankenweenie . It sounds fab with Martin Short playing no less than 5 characters, former Burtoneers Winona Ryder, Martin Landau and Catherine O'Hara all back in the game and the whole thing resembling Burton's animated short  Vincent . Here are some early stills: Looks pretty great indeed: Sparky's adorable. It's all in black and white. It's Frankenstein with a dog. I'm sold.

  Alfred Hitchcock's lighthearted thriller may not always be number one in people's top Hitch-lists and it may have been overshadowed by more sinister and daring efforts like Psycho or Vertigo but North by Northwest was never meant to be anything more than good, suspenseful fun. Which it is. Cary Grant is wittier than ever in a role which sees him being constantly bewildered, drink driving, pursued by a plane, hanging off Mount Rushmore and causing a ruckus at a sales auction. But throughout, he never seems to take things too seriously and takes it all in its stride as we sit back and enjoy the Bond-style adventure he's been forced into. The film contains all the classic tongue-in-cheek Hitchcock traits: an unsympathetic mother, a tortured blonde love interest, a case of mistaken identity and, of course, suspense by the buckets. The final jump cut and joke right at the end cheekily reminding you one last time that North By Northwest is indeed mostly a fun, silly action

  "Hey you guys, we need someone to play a tiny obese evil clown, is John Leguizamo free?". This is the kind of question the producers of 1997 supernatural comic book film Spawn were asking themselves. Who did they originally cast as Spawn then? Danny DeVito? Against all odds, Leguizamo's trippy turn as a Joker-style maniacal clown turns out to be the film's driving force and best asset. Which is not to say there's nothing else appealing about the film: a lot of effects are pretty creative and the whole thing is admittedly entertaining. Unfortunately once you see what Hell looks like you soon forget the good stuff and find yourself wishing you were playing a 90's PC video game instead of watching a film in which entire sequences could have been directly lifted from one of those very games. Like I said, some effects are creative and some do work but that Devil thing and its army of minions all standing around moving like tiny CGI puppets in a sea of fire i