TheRetroCritic

Today we mourn the loss of one of Hollywood's very best and one of my personal favourite actors around. Philip Seymour Hoffman's impressive career, which looked like it was only going to get better and better with time, is sadly cut short and all we can do now is remember his great work and posthumously thank him for his important contribution to American cinema. I first noticed Hoffman as an actor when watching Magnolia , an ensemble piece from Paul Thomas Anderson packed to the brim with great actors doing great work. Hoffman did genuinely stand out as easily one of the best of the bunch, however, with his portrayal of a male nurse going through a particularly emotionally draining night. Handling the drama seriously and convincingly, the actor subtly captured how difficult this situation was for his character and brought out of him a real sadness and goodness. He also injected the odd humorous moment, in order to light things up a little and emphasise the surreal asp

Long before Ben Stiller travelled the world looking for Sean Penn, or a piano, or whatever that Walter Mitty movie was about, he starred in light-hearted comedy Along Came Polly alongside Jennifer Aniston and introduced the notion of blind ferrets and naked Hank Azaria to the world of cinema. As a romantic comedy, Along Came Polly is exactly what you'd expect: typical by-numbers boy-gets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-new-girl, boy-loses-new-girl, boy-gets-new-girl-in-the-end fare with the obligatory corny moment here and there and the obvious third act epiphany. Nothing original there, alas. That said, as just a goofy comedy, it works surprisingly better than you expect. Remember The Heartbreak Kid ? That movie wishes it was Along Came Polly. The Stiller/Aniston pair-up works and admittedly makes for a solid central relationship to focus on but this is the supporting cast's movie. I mean, it's like these side characters were written and cast first, long before the

After the huge success of the first The Hunger Games movie, finally we get this sequel and await not one but two more movies, the franchise therefore proudly following in the footsteps of The Twilight Saga and the Harry Potter franchise by ending in a two-parter. Catching Fire follows the story pretty much where we left it except, this time, victor Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) have become the people's rebellious inspiration and good old evil Donald Sutherland isn't happy. The latter wants to avoid a revolution at all costs so he changes the rules of "The Games" a little and Katniss gets selected once again. This makes for an interesting subplot but also for a very familiar movie. Save for what drives the characters, the political stuff that happens off-camera and the end reveal, this is basically the first film all over again. Beat by beat, we find exactly the same structure developing as we spend some time in the p

"Happiness"? REALLY?! That's like calling Requiem For A Dream : "Smiles". These characters are anything but happy, they are freakin' foul, miserable bastards and yet... it feels like they could just be real people you would meet in everyday life and never even imagine what perversions they'd be hiding. Think of Happiness as the Magnolia of perv movies: an ensemble of brilliant actors playing messed-up weirdos each going through their own uncanny plot. Except here they don't all come together through Aimee Mann songs and frogs but instead are all linked together through this one family. Think Hannah And Her Sisters ... with extra cum shots. The film begins with an awkward break-up scene where Jane Adams and Jon Lovitz brilliantly set the mood for the rest of piece: smart and funny but dark as hell and kinda unpleasant. We're introduced to Philip Seymour Hoffman's Allen, a sweaty fellow with a penchant for calling up random women fro