TheRetroCritic

In this eleventh episode, fellow film buff Jamie and I discuss movie news, review a recent release ( The Lone Ranger , this time) and rewind back to more retro cinematic topics. Guess what song was being sung in this week's  "I Shat Myself"  segment and get a shout-out in the next episode! You can email your answer here:  bigrewindpodcast@gmail.com Or simply comment below :) Oh and you can also find us on iTunes where you can subscribe to the podcast and download every episode thusfar! @TheRetroCritic retrocriticblog.blogspot.com thebigrewind.blogspot.com

Just something silly I cooked up to entertain y'all over the weekend :P

In this 10th episode, fellow film buff Jamie and I discuss the movie news headlines, review a recent release ( The Wolverine , this time), answer a couple of questions from some of our listeners and rewind back to more retro cinematic topics. Guess what film was being referenced (or which character) in this week's  "I Shat My Line"  segment and get a shout-out in the next episode! You can email your answer here:  bigrewindpodcast@gmail.com Or simply comment below :) Oh and you can also find us on iTunes where you can subscribe to the podcast and download every episode thusfar! @TheRetroCritic retrocriticblog.blogspot.com thebigrewind.blogspot.com

A new trend is born. Reboots of unpopular comic-book movies are treated as superior when really they're just as bad or as flawed as the films they're rebooting. Was The Amazing Spider-Man really miles better than Spider-Man ? Nope. Is The Wolverine really that much more watchable than X-Men Origins: Wolverine ? I know you're saying "yes" right now but... come on. The difference in quality is negligible. X-Men Origins: Wolverine is an unpopular Marvel outing. Why? With the exception of Hugh Jackman's ever reliable Wolverine, it got almost every secondary character wrong and went for mindless action rather than dark, raw, gritty yet heartfelt edge. Which is exactly what Darren Aronofsky's The Wolverine promised! So for a studio-friendly, 12A-rated film like THIS to come along and feel just as flawed as that other Wolvie pic did and, in fact, fail to bring anything new and different to the table, I gotta say, that's quite a slap in the f

In between Hollywood comic book movies, Edgar Wright goes back to Spaced territory and delivers another Simon Pegg/Nick Frost UK-set comedy. The World's End goes back to Shaun Of The Dead roots mixing small town everyday life, pubs and the supernatural, this time with more of a sci-fi vibe. Pegg plays a guy desperate to re-capture the best time of his youth, the time he and his best friends attempted an ambitious pub crawl, by getting everyone back together and attempting the 12 pubs, 60 pints crawl one more time. Problem is: everyone's now older, wiser and less willing to go out and mindlessly party in the middle of nowhere just for the hell of it. In the end though, through some nifty emotional and financial manipulation, Pegg gets his wish and the guys are soon on their way to finish what they started once and for all. What they hadn't counted on, however, is the small, seemingly peaceful town's BIG issue: it's been taken over by alien robot clones filled

With Zombieland bringing back zombie movies in a big way and spawning not only a TV series but zombie comedies like Warm Bodies , it was only a matter of time before we got our next big, serious zombie epic. Based on a popular novel by Max Brooks, World War Z stars Brad Pitt and boasted an epic scale in its otherwise somewhat underwhelming trailers. As it turns out, the movie failed in a very different way than I thought it would. This is the kind of movie I honestly expect to look fun in the trailers but end up being a bore,  Battle L.A. and Total Recall being prime examples of that. There are many things wrong with this movie but I can't really say I was bored by it as it kept the action going throughout and rarely wasted too much time with unimportant filler. It does slow down quite a bit near the end, though, but even those parts had some form of suspense to them. The film's first half hour really is its biggest turn off. In 3D (avoid the 3D at all costs, by the way

In this fifth episode, fellow film buff Jamie and I discuss movie news, review a recent release ( After Earth this time) and rewind back to more retro cinematic topics. Do you know the answer to The Big Game ? What song is being sung during the "I Shat Myself" segment? Send your answers here: bigrewindpodcast@gmail.com The winner will get a mention in The Big Shout Outs at the end of the next episode. @TheRetroCritic retrocriticblog.blogspot.com youtube.com/Cablogula youtube.com/TheRetroCritic

Poor M. Night Shyamalan... It's really weird to see a director be so respected one second and the next have every single one of his projects become the subject of ridicule. Now, I've seen The Happening . I get it. That was one BAD movie, but even as that, I still liked it. It was really entertaining, had some decent ideas in there, despite everything, and was altogether very funny (intentionally so, alas). The Last Airbender did not anger me as much as it did many others. Don't get me wrong, as an adaptation of the cartoon series, it fails completely but as an effects-heavy kids' action flick, I enjoyed it more than a lot of the kid-friendly crap we get these days. It was entertaining and I had fun with it, despite the poor script and shoddy performances from the young cast. With After Earth , there was a real opportunity to go back to something a little more imaginative, a little more edgy. In a way, After Earth  is more imaginative and edgier but it stil

In this fourth episode, fellow film buff Jamie and I discuss movie news, review a recent release ( Fast & Furious 6 , this time) and rewind back to more retro cinematic topics in a special, extra-long instalment. Do you know the answer to The Big Game ? What song is being sung in the "I Shat Myself" segment? Send your answers here: bigrewindpodcast@gmail.com The winner will get a mention in The Big Shout Outs at the end of the next episode. @TheRetroCritic retrocriticblog.blogspot.com youtube.com/Cablogula youtube.com/TheRetroCritic

Having missed most of the Donnie Yen craze ( Ip Man and all that), I went into Dragon expecting something conventional, a typical martial-arts flick with a straight-forward plot and loads of floating and kicking. Dragon is most definitely not something conventional. It's also not about dragons. Instead, here we have Donnie Yen playing a rather dodgy character who is being investigated by Takeshi Kaneshiro, who's basically Sherlock Holmes in this. The story kicks off with Donnie Yen defending an old man from two machete-wielding robbers, he kicks their ass but without really doing anything and in the end, one of them is killed. Self-defence or not, Kaneshiro's sleuth doesn't buy Yen as a simple fisherman and starts to dig deeper and deeper into what actually happened, focusing on details, Yen's past etc. It's gripping stuff and it works as a Holmes mystery because you're really not sure where the movie is going for most of it, what's truth, wha

Some of the currently released posters for Machete Kills :

Taco time!

(SPOILER-FREE REVIEW) "I. Am. Better." "At what?" "Everything." That's the conversation Benedict Cumberbatch's villain has with Chris Pine's Kirk in the trailers for this new J.J. Abrams Trek outing Star Trek: Into Darkness . And, you know what? This movie could have easily had the exact same conversation with the first Star Trek reboot. Yes, it is, indeed, better. At everything. As the title suggests, Into Darkness is darker (duh!) but it's also bigger and more fun. Which is not to say it's perfect, no Star Trek movie is, but it sets out to be a superior sequel and achieves just that. This time around, more emphasis is placed on the film's villain and, considering how forgettable Eric Bana's bitter future Romulan was in the first movie, this is certainly a good move. Especially since Benedict Cumberbatch's John Harrisson is such a good villain, the Sherlock actor stealing the show in almost every scene he&#