TheRetroCritic

Reviews have sure been harsh with this one. I mean, I never hear anyone mentioning this fourth instalment into the Alien franchise without them groaning under their breath and complaining about how Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the man behind cutesy rom-com Amelie (and much less cutesy Delicatessen ) was the wrong choice as director blah blah blah... Ok, lets make this very clear: Alien Resurrection is by far the silliest, most grotesque Alien movie pre- AVP . It's hard to contest that. I mean, this one goes where no Alien movie has gone before: Crazy Town. You've got clones, gooey Alien birth scenes, basketball, that weird-looking guy from every JP Jeunet film, the not-so-clever premise that a thin sheet of glass could totally contain some 10 foot alien monsters no problem and...  SPOILERS    Winona-bot!   It's all-over-the-place, yes. But boy is it entertaining. A slow but involving build-up leads to the same type of walking-through-dark-corridors scenario Aliens was a

Ok, how many viking sci-fi film with giant monsters, spaceships and the line "Foxfire!" can you name, right now? OUTLANDER, that's how many! The ever charisma-free James Caviezel stars in this random but pleasantly entertaining and good-looking action adventure which also stars John Hurt as the king of...whatever, vikings. Sophia Myles is the inevitable love interest, like a clone of Keira Knightley from the film King Arthur , Jack Huston offers an unintentional homo-erotic relationship for Caviezel's "Outlander" and Ron Perlman sports a beard and yells a couple of times. It's all very silly but the first half hour is genuinely very entertaining and competently made, especially because the monster is kept hidden from us long enough to build up a fair amount of well-needed suspense. The rest is pretty predictable and feels less focused but is equally fun and miles more worthwhile than dull efforts like Ridley Scott's Robin Hood .

Oddball genius Nic Cage returns with yet another supernatural effort and although we're not getting the delightfully madcap Cage of Bad Lieutenant or Vampire's Kiss , this is restrained but silly NC. Always entertaining. He stars alongside Ron Perlman in this adventure which sees both knights/crusaders escort a witch to some castle. From the offset we get bad hair, silly helmets, dumb one-liners, American accents and epic slo-mo: all the ingredients of a true epic fail. And yet, from the genuinely very good opening sequence, this is a really fun ride from start to finish.  In what other film can you see Ron Perlman headbutting a demon repeatedly in the face? Well, perhaps Hellboy... But still, it's awesome! The whole thing feels very Hammer from the start and this feeling is confirmed when Christopher Lee himself shows up for a creepy but effective cameo. Everyone seems to be having a ball and although the ending relies way too much on CGI, it's well wor