TheRetroCritic

Alright, let's get the annoying technical stuff out of the way first. Unknowingly, I saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey  in "high frame rate", which means that my eyes not only had to take in 3 hours of crazy fantasy visuals but in 3D and at 48 frames per second. Forgive me if I sound a bit bitter about that, I'll make sure not to let that taint my review of the movie itself. I will say, however, that if you want to see The Hobbit: check it out in 2D or 3D, don't high frame rate that shit. The CGI stuff just doesn't gel with the real stuff and you just end up watching what feels like dudes with big fake noses and big-ass plastic feet wearing silly costumes. Which, in essence it is, but you're taken out of the movie SO quickly and so much that you're just left squinting your way through what looks like a low-budget 90's BBC fantasy TV series. Anything slightly fake-looking make-up/costume/background-wise is emphasized to the max and that rea

A new power is rising... The Fellowship is scattered: Boromir's gone, Gandalf is seemingly dead, Merry and Pippin have been captured, Sam and Frodo are on their own. Nothing seems to be going right. The Two Towers essentially follows these three plot threads (plus several subplots) as everyone goes on their own individual missions. Aragorn, Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) are on track to go and save Merry and Pippin, the latter, however, have escaped on their own and are hanging out with tree people (Ents). The trio's mission then changes and they're finally off to a big battle. We also get some terrific new characters, this includes Brad Dourif's Wormtongue, a guy who somehow, by looking like Tim Burton's Jim Carrey and being called "Wormtongue" managed to become the king's main advisor. You've got Dredd himself, Karl Urban, as Eomer, David Wenham as Boromir's bro Faramir and warrior princess Eowyn (Miranda Otto)

Reviewing each film in Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings Trilogy individually or picking a favourite out of the three is actually not an easy task. They're pretty indispensable to each other but let's try and single this one out for now regardless. This is where it all began:  The Fellowship Of The Ring . You know the plot, bearded dude shows up on some old Hobbit's doorstep, sends his nephew on some huge, crazy suicide mission involving a ring of power that could potentially destroy everything good on Middle Earth through some big orange angry vagina eye on top of a scary tower. Preposterous? Yes. But in J.R.R. Tolkien and Peter Jackson's hands: magic. No fantasy epic has even come close before or since to reaching the scale and sheer grandeur of this trilogy and doing it this well (sorry Narnia), these are big far-out stories involving elves, dwarves and goblins and yet it feels important: you're invested. Not an easy thing to achieve. Back in the 80&

Going through a Dario Argento phase it seems. I started watching/re-watching the director's 'classics' the other week starting with the goofy but completely enjoyable Phenomena . And now it's Tenebrae 's turn. Well, no apes this time I'm afraid. This one sees a writer being stalked by a serial killer who keeps getting rid of young ladies all over town in increasingly creative ways. It's a somewhat self-involved whodunit with the semblance of a plot and some inventive camerawork. That's pretty much it. Oh, and the usual mix of shattered glass and breasts thrown in, of course. I think one of the reasons why Tenebrae is so hard to warm up to as a movie is that you don't really get a main character. You don't really get one person you can get behind and follow through the whole thing. Peter Neal's writer is our beacon keeping the plot afloat, for sure, but he's not interesting, he has little personality and his scenes tend to drag

Fright Night was certainly a rarity: a vampire comedy that actually works both as a vamp flick and as a horror movie satire. The film had an irresistible charm with its cool 80's score, its turtle neck-wearing villain and its genius Peter Cushing/Hammer homage. This sequel takes the same formula and introduces new dastardly vampires to add to the mix. It's years later, Charlie (William Ragsdale again) has undergone a lot of therapy and has accepted that everything that happened in the first film had been the result of group hypnosis and never actually happened. Peter Vincent (the ever-reliable Roddy McDowall), however, still remembers the truth of the events that unfolded but being the only one who believes that reality, it's hurting his work to say the least. Basically, the first half of the film is nothing but build-up to resuming the status quo of the first movie: Charlie being a douche to his girlfriend, Peter Vincent losing his job, vampires orgy-biting victims

Well, it looks that the (likely) ill-conceived RoboCop remake is finally going forwards as the news that Michael Keaton will replace original pick Hugh Laurie as the film's villain is made official. Not to mention the early viral campaign which seems to be there mostly to serve as kind of warning that CGI will most definitely replace practical effects, not a huge surprise seeing as that other Paul Verhoeven remake Total Recall , out this year, as you know, did just that. Ah ED-209, I'm guessing this new model's stair-tested. Not sure what RoboCop himself will look like but if the teaser promo above and whatever concept art is floating around the internet is anything to go by then I think it's fair to say that we won't be getting our favourite 80's design but something completely different. Darker? More intimidating? Or... Hm. I wonder what Peter Weller thinks of this potential character design...

Sure cop movies are cool but... you know what else is cool? Freakin' robots that's what. Good thing the 80's knew that, otherwise we wouldn't have been able to enjoy Paul Verhoeven's RoboCop , a film with a premise so awesome it must have taken about a minute to greenlight. Peter Weller, of Buckaroo Banzai "fame", is Murphy, the Detroit cop who gets his ass handed to him in a particularly unfriendly gun-fight. What's left of him is soon turned into a badass robotic crimefighter with an apt for genius one-liners and incredible shooting accuracy. Sadly, his hardware is owned by corrupt company OCP which makes ridding the city of all its scum a bit of a challenge. The "scum" in question includes big cheese Dick Jones (the ever intimidating Ronny Cox), the dad from That 70's Show and... Leland Palmer? Twin Peaks reference. It's funny, go watch the show. So yes, it turns out that having the police owned by a big-ass,

The trailers for Peter Jackson's latest may not have boasted any truly fascinating plot points but at least it looked good and had a decent enough cast, so how bad could it be? Turns out very. Very very bad indeed. In many ways this is a film which was doomed from the start. When the director is miscast, the best you can hope for is a clunky but honorable attempt. After all, this is the guy who brought us horror classics such as  Bad Taste  and  Braindead , fun comedy  The Frighteners  and of course the epic  Lord of the Rings  trilogy. The Lovely Bones is by far the director's worst hour: a complete disaster from start to finish with some of the worst acting I've seen in a long time.  Films like  The Wolfman  or  Precious  may have been overall uneven and clumsy affairs but at least they had some redeeming features about them. This, however, misses the mark on all accounts. The script is loathsome in that it adapts a novel in the dullest, most nonsensical way humanel

Soon after the first Pink Panther film, Blake Edwards jumped straight into a second instalment, this time focusing on the first film's scene-stealing inspector in an infinitely more cartoony outing. This was always my favourite. For one thing its Agatha Christie-style plot works brilliantly and is far more involving than David Niven's rather bland cat burglar story: it all builds-up to a classic ending reminiscent of Hercule Poirot's last-minute suspect reunions but far more goofy and catastrophic. The film is beautifully made and once again boasts a fantastic score from musical deity Henry Mancini, one which boldly doesn't solely rely on that famous Pink Panther theme but instead blends a new terrific theme with haunting, amazing tune The Shadows Of Paris . Edwards has done it again: another instalment which looks, sounds and feels just perfect. Peter Sellers is given more of the same to do in the first act but he soon gets a chance to really get silly: cue cou

Growing up in France I was pretty much pre-programmed as a Tintin fanatic from the start. Owner of all the books (yes, even the infamously racist one), proud addict of the animated series and devout follower of all things Tintin, the prospect of a film based on Herge's comics directed by Steven Spielberg was a pretty exciting one to say the least. Looking forward to a full-on live action Tintin film, the announcement that the whole thing would be motion-captured was a tad disappointing. I mean, there hasn't been a good live action Tintin flick since 1961's Tintin And The Mystery Of The Golden Fleece : it felt right. But an animation? How could it ever measure up to the TV series or even the 1972 animated feature Tintin And The Lake Of Sharks ? I guess the idea was to stay true to Herge's designs (...by changing them?) but the cartoons did that pretty well so that sounded like a bit of a redundant move. Like Superman Returns being a homage to a franchise which alre

Just like probably 99% of French and Belgian people out there, I'm looking forward to Steven Spielberg's take on the classic Tintin franchise. Yes a live action film would have been amazing since the only genuinely good live action Tintin film to date remains Tintin and The Mystery of the Golden Fleece which, as adorable and charming as it is, was made back in 1961. And in terms of animation we have the Tintin animated series (made in the early 90's) which, although they tended to rush through a lot of the books, were near perfect. Growing up with these cartoons, they always felt exciting, smart and grown-up (lets assume Tintin in Congo was a bad dream, yikes). Both the books and the animated series never talked down to its audience, which made it that much better to follow. Now after several unpleasant attempts at "realistic" looking CGI animations ( Polar Express anyone?) and some underrated efforts ( A Christmas Carol ) we're getting a Tintin anima

Green Lantern is no Superman. As a character, green ring-toting Hal Jordan can be as likeably cocky as he wants he'll never be taken as seriously as his DC comics buddy. For one thing: his story is absurdity itself. Something about free will having a colour (?), purple aliens and magical glowing lanterns...? If only there was a live-action film! Oh... Well, they gave it a go. After the trailers popped up ages ago online, it seemed pretty clear that although clearly a lot of money was pumped into the project, a lot of Green Lantern would still fail to transcend the inherent silliness of the whole premise. Ryan 'Van Wilder' Reynolds alone seemed to lack a certain je-ne-sais-quoi one looks for in a superhero. Just look at Brandon Routh: adorable Clark Kent but The Man Of Steel? Surely you jest. Surprisingly though, Green Lantern is no disaster. In 3D, at least, it is visually fun even if the effects are very hit-and-miss. The CGI costume is a tad off-putting, a lot of

Frankenstein Created Woman indeed...or rather...a man within a woman. Yes, don't be fooled by the straightforward title, this is as random as a Frankenstein film can get. Not really actually, there's always Frankenstein Conquers The World . One of Hammer's last films, this is also one of its best. Peter Cushing has never been cooler, the whole thing looks fab, Thorley Walters is a lot of fun as Frankenstein's bumbling right-hand man and the villains are a positively odious lot and not too dissimilar from the Clockwork Orange gang or the nasty fox-hunters from Plague of the Zombies . The real strength of the film is that it introduces us to a young troubled couple we actually get attached to only to turn everything upside down as Frankenstein's well-meaning (or not) experiment once again backfires. As tragic as the story is, the film never forgets to be fun and, indeed, as preposterous as it all is, the silliness feels essential. Besides, those ann