TheRetroCritic

(SPOILER-FREE REVIEW) Hey, remember when movies didn't flat-out lie to your face? I mean, I know all trailers are lies to a certain extent but... I gotta say: this one takes the cake. What Iron Man 3 promised during its kickass marketing campaign seemed so right, so perfect, and yet somehow the movie I was faced with while sitting comfortably in the cinema sipping on a large, watered-down Diet Coke, was not what I expected and, by extension, not what I wanted. Or, I feel, what the franchise itself deserved. Surprises can be a great thing in movies: Psycho killing off its main actress early on, for example, worked as a surprise because it made sense with what happened next, it was masterfully executed and left the audience feeling lost but curious and ultimately hooked. Iron Man 3 is no Psycho. The film boasts a couple of shock reveals which you wouldn't even think about from watching the trailers but instead of adding an extra layer of awesomeness to the film,

New posters are up for the new season of Arrested Development , coming soon to Netflix. Here's one of 'em: For more, go to empireonline.com . ...COME ON!!!!

Not sure why the trailer opens on a truck but otherwise... Looks pretty good :P

And Dwayne Johnson does it again... It's looking like The Rock has not only made a comeback but he's decided to go around stealing franchises. To some extent that's what he did with The Scorpion King and Journey 2 but as of late, with Fast Five and now   G.I. Joe: Retaliation , it looks like we'll be seeing a whole lot of him in the near future. Sadly, no word on a Southland Tales spin-off yet... This sequel to the wildly ridiculous but strangely enjoyable first G.I. Joe film, The Rise Of Cobra , follows the story some time later, not right after. Yes Jonathan Pryce's evil twin is still the President, yes Channing Tatum is still around but Dwayne Johnson's now part of the gang, everyone's following the President's crazy orders, Cobra and Destro have been captured and are now kept in glass coffins in some impossible-to-reach location, Bruce Willis is... Joe? Basically this movie is one cast member and plot thread away from being a complete reb

We discuss the ending of new Tom Cruise flick Oblivion (see review below) in new podcast The Big Rewind . (SPOILERS)

From the director of Tron Legacy comes this Tom Cruise-starring post-apocalyptic sci-fi in which a drone repairman with a testicle-shaped helicopter goes around a devastated Earth working on his final task before being sent to the next planet humans have decided to inhabit. Cruise is Jack Harper, a normal-enough dude with a penchant for white leather who starts having regular nightmares depicting a life he can't recall. Which makes sense since he and his partner, along with many others, all agreed to have their memories erased after the war... for some reason. Slowly but surely, he starts to find out that his reality isn't quite as straight-forward as he originally believed. It's hardly a new premise but with its cool visuals and fresh-ish approach, Oblivion certainly looked like a promising sci-fi thriller. Director Joseph Kosinski once again delivers a great-looking film full of interesting futuristic technology and big ideas. Once again, however, there is someth

From new podcast: The Big Rewind . Whole thing available HERE . And here's the trailer for The Manitou (1978): Review coming soon ;)

Here's the new Man Of Steel trailer. Still lookin' good ;)

With the box-office proving repeatedly that 3D fantasy films do very well financially these days, it's no surprise that, following the successes of both Alice In Wonderland and Oz: The Great And Powerful , yet another contender would come along and attempt to do just as well. Which brings us to: Jack The Giant Slayer . Directed by Bryan Singer, the film merges Jack And The Beanstalk with Jack The Giant Killer to tell a story in as traditional a way as possible without having to resort to that recently in vogue steampunky Hansel And Gretel: Witch Hunters -style Hammer horror vibe. The film actually opens on our two main characters as kids in their respective beds, one is poor, one is a princess, being told fairy-tales involving giants and a world in between Heaven and Earth. Then the film stumbles around for a while feeling like a mix between a flat episode of Blackadder and an ugly, live-action retelling of Disney's Aladdin . Seriously: this movie's Aladdin.

After Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland received mostly unimpressed reviews from critics and audiences alike, that the studio jumped right into yet another fantasy classic reboot/sequel/prequel/whatever is surprising and somewhat risky. Then again Alice In Wonderland made a badgillion dollars at the box office... So yeah, never mind. It makes perfect sense lol This time around, we get Sam Raimi taking on the works of L. Frank Baum, and when I say that I mean it very loosely because we don't get a sequel involving Dorothy and co or even an amalgamation of Baum's third and fourth Oz books (tackled brilliantly in the 80's by Return To Oz ). No, we're following the wizard himself! Not quite what you'd expect but an interesting take on the whole thing, let's see if it works. After all, the first film was called The Wizard Of Oz not "Dorothy's Big Adventure". Mostly... yes. It does work. Ok, I'll get the bad stuff out of the way

It's cream-your-pants time! I simply cannot wait.

Looking forward to the new Iron Man flick? Same here.

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

Oh boy... Just when you think a franchise can't sink any lower... That Michael Bay-produced remake was just what I expected it to be: dumb, annoying, shot like a music video, missing the point of the original completely. I frankly couldn't stand that movie. Then, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning came out and, as unnecessary as it was, it was surprisingly not that bad. It still ripped off Tobe Hooper's first film to death but it was harmless enough as far as random prequels go. Then we get Texas Chainsaw 3D and, shockingly, we get what is quite probably the worst of the bunch! Boy I'm glad we rebooted that franchise! Aren't you? The film opens on blurred, cheaply 3D-ed footage from the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre film and although they've somehow managed to make it look rubbish, it's still good enough to put you in the right mood. We're then brought forward to just after the events of the film and it turns out that a bunch o

Are you ready? You better be: *creams*

At this point The Coen Brothers could pretty much do anything and I'd zombie my way to the cinema without thinking twice about it. With Gambit , a remake of sorts, it looked like they might have written another farce in the vein of The Ladykillers , a film which I've always felt was wrongly underrated. Alas, they aren't on directing duty this time... We follow Colin Firth's art curator as he hires Cameron Diaz's rodeo queen to help him pull off an elaborate heist involving a rare Monet painting. The goal being to piss off Alan Rickman's odious art collector and make quite a few bucks in the process. The film is going for a 60's-style screwball comedy vibe and with a strong cast like this one and a script by the Coens, you'd expect nothing less than a sharp, fun, clever little flick. Sadly, whatever wit we found in the likes of Fargo and whatever cartoonish shenanigans we found in The Ladykillers are nowhere to be seen in Gambit. Sure the film o

Over the years, Paul Thomas Anderson seems to have perfected his journey into tackling big themes through personal stories and through flawed, toxic characters. Case and point: The Master . Religion was a prominent theme in Anderson's previous effort There Will Be Blood and you could say that the whole film, despite outlining the rise and fall of Daniel Day Lewis' oil tycoon, was indeed about the relationship between business and religion. With his latest, we take a look at cults, yes, but also humanity in general. Here we have a Scientology-style organisation, "The Cause", based on the idea that Man is not an animal and, in fact, is far more important and deeper than he realizes and along comes Joaquin Phoenix's drifter, a down-and-out alcoholic drifter with a sex fixation. Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffmann), the cult's "master", decides to make him his pet-project, his guinea-pig. But it seems that proving the core theory that man isn

SPOILERS Well, this is it, people. The final chapter of " The Twilight Saga ". ... REALLY?! THIS is it? Wow. After sitting through every single Twilight movie, I can safely say that this new installment is one big disappointment. Not so much in terms of lols, it does deliver a good bunch of those, as ever, but just in terms of sheer drama and cinematic competence. Yes this is meant to be like a cheesy vampire Harlequin romance type thing but it's also meant to be a story worthy of an entire franchise and, most importantly, a movie. As it turns out, this "saga" fails on all accounts. Shame, with Breaking Dawn Part 1 , things were finally starting to get borderline insane and mean-spirited just the way I wanted it to! Ah Part 1... You beautiful bastard. Here we have Bella, finally a red-eyed vamp, complete with super-strength, super-powers, moody doochiness and wood-like posture. FINALLY Bella is resembling a strong female lead and an actua

I've wanted to do a stupid little comic series breaking down movie franchises as absurdly as possible for a while now... Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: The Twilight Saga .  In a nutshell. Got a few more planned so let us know what you think!