TheRetroCritic

Before Blade Runner enjoyed a revival with a Director's Cut released 10 years after its original release in 1982, it was nowhere near the masterpiece it is now recognised to be. The film underperformed at the box-office, its more optimistic take not resonating with audiences. Indeed, this is the only version of the film with a happy ending of sorts as Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) and replicant love interest Rachael (Sean Young) leave Los Angeles together after fellow Blade Runner Gaff (Edward James Olmos) spares her life. The infamous voice-over unconvincingly explains to us that Gaff just assumed she would only live for 4 years but luckily Tyrell told Deckard otherwise off-camera. Most people, including Ridley Scott and Harrison Ford, would agree that this voice-over, which pops up pretty randomly and abruptly, sometimes stating the blindingly obvious, was a mistake. Its content, delivery and placement just don't work. It constantly interrupts Vangelis' beautiful sco

Here's the video version of my Pete's Dragon review.

I talk about the original Ghostbusters after checking out the re-release. Boo!

I review Popeye 2 for the original Game Boy.

As Disney once again attempts a live-action version of its own 1967 masterpiece based on Rudyard Kipling's classic story, I take a look back at the original The Jungle Book . Growing up, this was one of my favourite old Disney films along with Alice In Wonderland and Robin Hood and, to this day, it remains one of the best. Right off the bat, the opening titles show off beautiful drawn depictions of the titular jungle and an excellent, timeless score. What follows is the tale of Mowgli, a human child raised by wolves who is led by panther Bagheera (voiced by Sebastian Cabot) towards the human village so he can be protected from the evil tiger Shere Khan, who has returned to the jungle and who famously hates Man. Along the way, a reluctant Mowgli shows he can't really look after himself as a run-in with hypnotist snake Kaa (Sterling Holloway) almost ends very badly for the "man-cub" and he is later kidnapped by monkeys. He meets friendly, lazy bear Baloo who tak

In the early days of Pixar's world domination, this little film about a universe where monsters harness the fear of human children which they frighten at night (through their closets) to use as energy came out and although on paper it sounds like the most terrifying thing you'll ever see, the movie was quite the opposite. Aimed at younger viewers, Monsters Inc. is closer to, say, the likes of A Bug's Life or Cars in terms of its target audience but better than both. Thankfully, it's just about charming enough to keep older viewers' interest there throughout. We follow two monsters, one voiced by John Goodman, the other by Billy Crystal, who mistakenly end up with a kid human transcending the human world into their own. This causes all sorts of shenanigans, as you can imagine, since children are seen as the monsters in this world, and it all builds up to a confrontation with Steve Buscemi's chameleon-style monster (the last part of that phrase sounds a bi

Sleeping is bad for you. I think if there's one thing horror movies have taught me it's that. After movies like Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and its badass 70's remake, it was time to freak teenagers out again with yet another film which sees its characters go to sleep and regret it instantly. A Nightmare On Elm Street also famously gave a young Johnny Depp a prominent-ish role and introduced us to one of the most lasting movie monsters to date: Freddy Krueger, a character Robert Englund would go on to play many, many times. Wes Craven's original film is a trashy but competently made and always entertaining mix of jump-scares, tense build-ups and cartoonish violence. It's one of those horror movies that isn't really all that scary unless you're a kid seeing it for the very first time. Watching it as a kid, it did leave its mark on me but revisiting it now I can appreciate it as just a solid horror movie with an enjoyably tongue-in-cheek overall vi

If you thought the Batman Forever soundtrack was uneven, wait till you get a load of this one... Believe it or not, this OST starts off really well with a Smashing Pumpkins song that, regardless of whether you like the band of not, you gotta admit is pretty darn cool. It's the usual moody, high-pitched angst we expect from the Pumpkins but "The End Is The Beginning Is The End" is definitely worth a listen. It's actually so good there's two versions of it on the album, the slower "The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning" (what's with the silly titles, you guys?) ending the soundtrack in style. In between you get the usual mix of teen-friendly rock and hip-hop/R&B. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's "Look Into My Eyes" is a catchy effort and strangely, I quite like it. R. Kelly's "Gotham City" is fine, I guess, if you like that sort of syrupy ballad but frankly if you're gonna sing about Gotham City choose someth

Courtesy of Empire , you can now listen to the soundtrack for The Dark Knight Rises . Wow, sounds awesome.

Once Joel Schumacher took over the Batman franchise, it became instantly apparent that Warner Bros. were looking to attract a wider, younger audience. Part of that was achieved through making the films themselves more light-hearted and more cartoonish (and more ASS) but also through releasing teen-friendly soundtracks. So here we go… The Batman Forever soundtrack starts off with U2’s “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” , a song I actually quite like. Used to like it even more as a kid but over the years it has kind of dissolved into a near non-event. If an enjoyable one. It’s not bad at all, especially for a U2 song. It goes for a dark, moody tone but unfortunately only half-achieves it because, lets be honest here, how dark and moody can U2 realistically get? There are songs I genuinely like in this album. For one, Michael Hutchence’s take on the classic Iggy Pop tune “The Passenger” is really unique. I mean, the original is hard to beat and I still vastly prefer

Checked out the LFCC preview tonight, just thought I'd "Batmobile" you guys. Man I love that car... Yes, that is Dr Who walking around next to The Bat's vehicle: He wouldn't last a DAY in Gotham lol

A long-time fan of Blake Edwards' iconic franchise, I grew up seeking out and watching every single Pink Panther film. Yes, even those wimpy Clouseau-less ones, that bizarre Roberto Benigni effort, the unofficial Alan Arkin spin-off and, more recently, the Steve Martin remakes... It's been a tough road, to say the least. Anyway, time to delve into my childhood's colon nice and deep to revisit one of my many cinematic obsessions. The first Pink Panther film was never my favourite. For one thing, Peter Sellers' dim-witted inspector was nothing more than a side character while a majority of the film was spent with David Niven's cat burglar The Phantom, Claudia Cardinal's gobby Princess and a young Robert Wagner as The Phantom's nephew... oh and Clouseau's scheming, two-timing wife. Too many main characters, you say? That's right. Really this is my main complaint with this first instalment. A lot of it is fun but every so often it's

After the catoonish lunacy of the Adam West 60's TV series which had the Dark Knight dancing, surfing, running to crime scenes ON FOOT and stroking his chin repeatedly speaking bat-nonsense and adding the word "bat" before any device, it was definitely time for something a little more, shall we say, edgy? Not that the old series weren't fun: they were great! But as far as comic book heroes go, this one had more potential than the West series could ever produce. So who better to bring out the gothic weirdness and quirky theatrics of The Bat than Beetlejuice maestro Tim Burton? Michael Keaton is the troubled caped crusader, an unlikely choice but one which proved to be surprisingly spot-on: he brings humour and likeability to a character which could easily be bland and "one-note". Of course, the real scene-stealer here is Jack Nicholson's devilish joker who prides himself on being the world's first "homicidal artist" by trashing a museu

Gloomy, unsettling, creepy as hell, Ringu was real landmark in horror cinema. Imitated countless times but never equaled, it reinvented Japanese horror and spawned countless ripoffs, sequels, remakes right up until the genre quietly died with retarded fare like Korean horror film The Wig ...about a killer wig. Not that a VHS is much scarier than a wig but if some gnarled monster woman came out of my TV, I would happily shit myself. So why did Ringu work and fare like The Grudge or Premonition didn't...not really? Well, for one thing Ringu was a concept movie: it introduced a new idea, a new template and built a suitably creepy and unsettling atmosphere around it in order to create something fresh and genuinely scary. Other similar films struggled to find something which would match the VHS tape as a starting point: phones, websites...wigs. None of it really worked. Only certain films like Dark Water , The Eye or A Tale of Two Sisters which put more effort into th