TheRetroCritic

Ah Nemesis... The last of the "old school" Star Trek movies, Star Trek: Nemesis had the misfortune of following the least liked film of that franchise so it was either going to confirm that Insurrection was no accident and the Picard crew had really gone as far as they could or completely the opposite. And although critics and audiences had nothing too positive to say about Nemesis and the film ended the Star Trek franchise promptly, never even giving the Voyager , Deep Space Nine or Enterprise crews a chance to make it on the big screen, for me Nemesis did exactly what it set out to do and delivered something as good as First Contact , if not better. Now I won't pretend that Nemesis doesn't have its problems, every Star Trek movie does. For one thing, Tom Hardy's villain, a young Romulan-made Picard clone, is a bit more cartoonish than he probably should be and looks nothing like Patrick Stewart. He's not bad, it's a decent, very entertaining

And then things took a weird turn... Star Trek: Insurrection , the ninth film of the franchise, is quite probably the least respected of all Star Trek films, and although it's much more watchable than most would give it credit for, it's easy to see why it is often last on people's Top 10 Star Trek Movies lists. Look out for mine on here very soon, by the way. First Contact gave the Picard team solid ground to build on with a respectable outing full of action, gross leathery Borgs and time-travel. With Insurrection, the idea was to go for more of a Voyage Home vibe: a lighter, more one-setting based, more personal story. Problem is, Shatner and co. could indulge in such a holiday flick after three iconic, more serious efforts but The Next Generation peeps only had the vastly uneven Generations behind them and First Contact, their first decent movie. No time to go on holiday, surely! Time to nip it in the bud, I would say. Alas, right off the bat, Insurrec

There was an obvious way to adapt a novel geniusely called "The Space Vampires" : Planet Terror -style, with Grindhouse tongue-in-cheek mayhem and gallons of blood being thrown at you. Director Tobe Hooper, it turns out, was the right man for the job when it came to turning The Space Vampires into Lifeforce , a much more interesting take on a pretty silly premise. The movie sees astronauts reach a planet, fly through its space colon and uncover a bunch of giant bats and three naked people in glass coffins. The plan? Bring all that shit back to Earth, of course! Because war, disease and poverty aren't quite enough: we need space vampires in our lives. Soon enough, one of those alien beings wakes up and causes mayhem. Turns out, those good-looking weirdos from outer space can literally suck the life out of you through intense electrical make-out sessions and turn you into one of them. It becomes up to a total of two dudes with bad haircuts to try and sort out this whol

After director Bryan Singer did his best to introduce Marvel’s team of multi-talented mutants to the world and develop their story further in a superior, if still somewhat restrained, second instalment, he eventually chose to leave the franchise opting for a chance to direct 2006’s  Superman Returns  instead. This was a blow to the series which, after that, underwent several changes in directors and cast members even threatened to leave the franchise. In the end, Brett Ratner, mostly known at the time for giving us the   Rush Hour  movies, took the job and completed a film which had already gone through a lot of messy rewrites. Not an easy feat, in all fairness. X-Men: The Last Stand  is one of those comic-book movie adaptations that gets a handful of things right but drops the ball on 90% of everything else. X-Men  lacked the scale it should have had and its plot revolved around the usual doomsday machine cliché. The sequel provided us with a bigger film, more villains, mor

Post Batman & Robin , back when superhero movies weren't quite as common and quite as expensive as they are today, Marvel decided to take advantage of Batman's irritating demise and kick-start their own rise with the X-Men franchise. Being an X-Fan myself, this was a big deal and, although the result wasn't quite as mind-blowing as I had expected, there was still a lot to enjoy in this first instalment. For one thing, the character introductions were excellent: whether it was Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) cage-fighting or a young Magneto prying open the doors of a concentration camp, the pieces were perfectly set and the show was ready to begin. Only, it doesn't so much begin as it does... go on. This first movie really is just one slow build-up to the X-Men finally becoming a team. And, for the most part, director Bryan Singer does get the characters right: Patrick Stewart makes a spot-on Xavier, Jackman is great (if tall) as Wolverine, Ian McKellen's turn