TheRetroCritic

 Hey, remember that film where Joey from Friends befriends a chimp and they start sharing a flat and playing baseball together? Sure you do. Ed is one of those films which had a rubbishy trailer in every single VHS tape bought in and around 1995. You'd basically see it and rejoice that you only owned the trailer to this odd creation rather than the entire thing. 16 years later and there I was in a train witnessing Ed for the very first time in its entirety. Feeling the initial awkwardness of trying to figure out whether the ape was real or not (mostly not), flashing back to a simpler time when Matt Le Blanc was pretty much everywhere and feeling the slight embarrassment of being a grown man watching a fake ape and Joey piss in the same toilet 16 years prior. Although I can never fully relate to any sports movie, I know I would have enjoyed that little nonsensical treat as a kid. Even now it's pretty harmless and watchable, although when my adult brain is

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It was somewhat inevitable that the Coen Brothers would end up making a straight-up western, especially after modern-day effort No Country For Old Men . This time we get True Grit, a remake of a John Wayne classic but with an alcoholic Dude and a pipe-smokin’ Matt Damon. Borrowing not much more than the core story from the original, the Coens introduce us to a familiar setting and a very simple plot but add their own spin on it, whether it is through touches of black comedy or dark undertones which few John Wayne films would have been comfortable with. Newcomer Hailee Steinfeld is the little girl who drags Jeff Bridges' "meanest" US Marshall and Damon's unsure Texas Ranger across the desert to find her father's killer. Steinfeld is great and really steals the show: she is strong-willed, tough, determined, courageous and doesn't take no for an answer. Bridges is always a safe bet and he does well here but his thick accent, grungy voice and constant mumbl