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MARS ATTACKS! - REVIEW

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Back when Tim Burton films were still awesome and not "just ok", Mars Attacks! came out and gave us a delightful piece of 50's-style sci-fi B movie goodness complete with a stellar cast and Burton's own brand of surreal, nasty wackiness. It's funny to think that Independence Day came out the same year as Mars Attacks! since the latter feels like a complete spoof of Roland Emmerich's disaster cheese-fest. Burton's film takes the clichéd alien invasion formula we've seen in movies like War Of The Worlds , Earth vs The Flying Saucers or The Day The Earth Stood Still and gives it a playful edge. We see our world react to a potential alien encounter stupidly and naively. Rather than fearing the Martians, we're in fact pretty darn welcoming and peaceful about the whole thing. It's a clever take on that plot because in those old movies people are usually terrified of an alien invasion and completely overreact. Here, we only acknowledge how scre

BOND MONTH

Just a little post to explain the new 007-themed banner (otherwise that's just weird!). This month on TheRetroCritic is "Bond Month" so expect plenty of Bond reviews, 007-related articles, Skyfall goodies and, depending on how the vote goes for Best & Worst Bond Films (see top-left + top-right of Home page), Bond video reviews. The films chosen by the polls as Best & Worst Bond films to date will indeed be given the video review treatment. That is all :) Have fun!

GOLDENEYE - REVIEW

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It's 1995, the hairy scientist out of The Lawnmower Man is James Bond, Tina Turner is still kicking ass and the world still believes in Alan Cumming's value as a hilarious comedian. 1995 lol Yes Pierce Brosnan is 007 in GoldenEye , the film responsible for N64's most popular game title and, by extension, Perfect Dark (N64's not most popular but actually better game title). Very quickly, it's easy to why the studios wanted to cast the actor since The Living Daylights . Brosnan is a good all-rounder with a certain Connery-style charisma paired with corny puns and one-liners Roger Moore would kill for. On top of that, this is the most convincing action-hero Bond we've seen so far with past incarnations usually settling for skiing in front of blue screens or letting stuntmen shot from really really far away do the job. No, Brosnan is our Tom Cruise 007. It's the 90's, bro! Totally radical to the max and shit! GoldenEye starts with 007 and 006 (S

DIE ANOTHER DAY - REVIEW

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Hardly the most popular of the Bond films, Die Another Day marks the end of Pierce Brosnan's run as 007 and, by extension, the end of the super-suave, wisecrackin' agent with all the best (read: worst) puns this side of MI6. Yes it was time for a change. After a great start to the Bond franchise, Brosnan's films started losing whatever little edge they had instead opting for a lighter, Roger Moorian cartoonish tone. Die Another Day is when Bond really became pure sci-fi. Which meant good news for fans of G.I. Joe but bad news for Ian Fleming purists. To be fair: you are warned pretty darn quickly about what you're in for with Bond surfing his way to North Korea in a scene so implausible you'll be making faces long before 007 reveals himself as one of the surfers. The pre-titles sequence proves to be much more promising though with Bond ending up getting captured and tortured throughout Madonna's hit-and-miss theme song. So far, so messy. The key plot is

MONTY PYTHON'S SPAMALOT - REVIEW

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For a Monty Python fan, the idea of a musical celebrating one of the iconic comedy group's finest achievements ( Monty Python And The Holy Grail ) was nothing short of spamgasmic. Nudge nudge...? In many ways, the marriage of Monty Python and musicals is a perfect one: the tackiness of some musicals crossed with The Pythons' bad taste humour promising a bit of a match made in heaven. That said, I'm not convinced that Holy Grail was the right musical to do. Now don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Spamalot . As silly as it was, there was a lot of good stuff there and it really was complete,  glorious escapism: entertaining nonsense the whole way through. But even then I must admit that it is one hell of a hit-and-miss effort. The way I feel about it is that the best songs come from Eric Idle poking fun at Broadway musicals and most of the Holy Grail stuff falls flat either due to it being so familiar or it just not really working on stage. Sure hearing the Camelot song i

TOMORROW NEVER DIES - REVIEW

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The second in the series of Pierce Brosnan Bond flicks, Tomorrow Never Dies had to follow Goldeneye . Not an easy task at all but looking back, what's the verdict? It's still great. I mean, I've always loved Tomorrow Never Dies. Sure it wasn't quite as sexy or brutal as its predecessor but it had a compelling plot, a fun villain, lots of cool set pieces and a Brosnan on good form. Here was a classy, modern Bond film which retained the melodramatic/OTT feel of early outings whilst adding some nifty new toys and countless more corny one-liners. Just the way I like 'em. After a thrilling opening action sequence, we get our surreal opening titles to the sound of a surprisingly good Sheryl Crow song and we know we're in good hands. For me, it's one of the most underrated James Bond films out there: it does everything right and has all the ingredients that make a good 007 outing. The bike chase is fantastic, the cast is a lot of fun and there are no invi