TheRetroCritic

Why is America so reboot-phobic? Because some stories just don't need to be retold, especially when they were told extremely well the first time and are beloved by all just the way they are. Over the years, we've had so many awful horror remakes, from Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Evil Dead , and with the criminally boring, unnecessary Total Recall remake still fresh in our minds, a RoboCop reboot just sounded like a bad idea. The idea of a more earnest RoboCop movie grounded in reality, with a grittier, more down-to-Earth feel and a mostly CGI hero with more self-awareness and an inexplicable human hand was missing the point of the original film entirely and, after watching the film, I can confirm that it has, indeed, missed the point on various levels. That said, unlike Total Recall, this is, miraculously, not a complete disaster. Where some changes either don't really work or simply backfire, some make sense in the new world introduced within the movie and ther

With The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty , it was looking like Ben Stiller finally wanted to get recognised as the talented director he genuinely is, giving a more serious, restrained performance in the process. The trailers for the film promised a deadpan sense of humour, thrilling visuals and a positive message. The plot of the film sees Walter (Stiller) working as the negative assets manager of Life Magazine, which is shockingly still around, apparently. The magazine is taken over by a bunch of patronising dorks who are planning to lay off everybody and redirect everything online but Walter has misplaced the cover photograph provided by Sean Penn's photographer so it's up to him to go out and find the adventurous fellow in order to somehow recover the lost picture. Oh, and there's also a subplot in which Walter likes his co-worker Cheryl (played by Kristen Wiig) and sends her a "wink" on an internet dating site before a guy working at eHarmony keeps calling hi

Exciting stuff for Godzilla fans: the upcoming new Hollywood attempt at bringing the iconic monster to the big screen finally has a trailer! And it looks surprisingly kinda... good! Of course it's too early to tell but what do you guys think? As far as I'm concerned, the film will only officially have me as soon as it plays this theme in the next trailer:

Based on a manga (not an anime, I'm cheating a bit here), Oldboy was the second and, arguably, best part of Park Chan-wook's Vengeance Trilogy. It cemented Korean cinema in the West as something to really look out for and received a cult status pretty quickly, even spawning an upcoming remake by Spike Lee, starring Josh Brolin. Taking a page out of Alexandre Dumas' classic tale The Count Of Monte Cristo , Oldboy follows an average guy, played by Choi Min-sik, who is inexplicably kidnapped by an unknown enemy and kept locked away in a room for 15 years without any clue as to why he was taken or by whom. Finally, he is released and sets out to find his incarcerator and get his revenge. Along the way, he meets a young girl called Mi-do (a terrific Kang Hye-jung) who befriends him and starts helping him with his disturbing quest. What follows is a truly brutal and unpleasant journey full of teeth-pulling, live octopus eating, head hammering, tongue-cutting and horrible r

Rebooting/continuing the Star Trek franchise was never going to be easy. What were they supposed to do? Make a movie based on the flop series Enterprise ? Invent a brand new Star Trek crew, give them their own movie and hope for the best? Give one of the old crews their weight in gold to stick around and continue making Star Trek movies? With J.J. Abrams onboard, in the end the goal became to restart the franchise with the Original Series crew, except with a brand new, younger cast, tons of action, state of the art special effects and try to somehow create a parallel timeline within the film itself in order to keep things fresh and avoid remaking the old show and the old movies shot-for-shot. Probably the only logical approach, but still pretty risky. The result was an epic, expensive blockbuster with enough action to keep even the most reluctant viewers entertained. An origins story, we got to see Kirk and co.'s pre-Enterprise days and their earliest of missions which a

Oh dear... I don't know what annoys me most, that this movie was ever made or that people actually really like it and even go as far as saying it surpasses the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre sometimes! Let's call it a draw. Both statements annoy me equally. Michael Bay once again gets one of his music video director friends onboard and, once again, they royally screw it up. Hey, how about getting a real FILM director next time? With all these awful horror remakes, Bay really has revealed himself to be an incompetent producer as well as an incompetent director. The first Friday The 13th I could see being remade so that didn't bother me too much, A Nightmare On Elm Street didn't need a remake, especially a dull one, but Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of those classic horror films you just don't remake. There's just no point. It's like that remake of Psycho or that Stephen King The Shining TV movie. Who asked for THOSE?! Anyway, here we hav

Here's one horror remake I was actually looking forward to. I had heard some negative feedback but also some good things about it so as far as I was concerned it didn't look too bad in the trailer so there was a chance that it might actually be a decent remake. Nope. There was something about the original A Nightmare On Elm Street that made it an easy film to watch and re-watch. It didn't take itself too seriously, its villain was a prankster with a REALLY dark sense of humour, Freddy's dream kills were creative and pretty surreal to the point where you genuinely didn't know what was coming next and you got to see a Johnny Depp in serious trouble. It was a silly flick but it was a lot of fun and introduced us to one of cinema's most iconic killers. Here we have a slick, Michael Bay-produced remake starring the always reliable Jackie Earle Haley ( Watchmen , Dark Shadows ) as Freddy Krueger, a part which had been played for decades by Robert Englund.

There's a new judge in town and he's... slightly less bulky. Yes, Karl Urban takes on Judge Dredd in this slick reboot which sees the moody Mega City judge with the super-cool voice-activated gun make his way up a tower block with a blonde psychic rookie taking out any unlawful culprits along the way. Like a video game, it all gets harder and harder as the levels get higher and you can expect one-liners aplenty and a lot of gory action. That Dredd is an 18 and not a 12A is the best thing that could have happened to this movie. Proving once again that a dark, violent comic-book movie should, indeed, be dark and violent regardless of whether the kiddos will flock to it or not. Sometimes you just have to let movies be themselves. Here, the blood and gore  adds a tough edge to Dredd (a tough, edgy guy) and makes it not only a worthy action flick but a satisfying adaptation. Which, after months of watching that unimpressive trailer on and off, is not so much a surprise as

What kind of a world do we live in where people are remaking Arnold Schwarzenegger movies and making them worse?! I mean, it's not like they're remaking the shitty ones either, Conan The Barbarian and Total Recall get remade when the likes of Red Sonja , Hercules In New York and Junior  still roam the Earth? I don't get it. But ok, fine. It's a Philip K. Dick short story so there's room for interpretation and I guess with all the new CG technology available to us, a slicker version of Paul Verhoeven's film could serve at least as decent popcorn entertainment. Or, if it's smart enough, as a kind-of-good companion piece to Minority Report . The trailers promised striking visuals, loads of action and a solid cast so chances were we'd get something half-decent if not quite as retrogasmic as the original film. Alas, what we got was a mixed bag to say the least. Technically, Total Recall is not a bad film. It follows the basic formula of the orig

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...

Awesome poster, right? Yeah well don't get your hopes up, people, this is Never Say Never Again , the 1983 "remake" of Thunderball directed by Irvin " Empire Strikes Back " Kershner and starring an aging Sean Connery in his last outing as 007. Being an unofficial Bond flick, get ready for some unofficial Bond assness. For starters, Sean Connery not only looks waaaay too old for the part but he is barely trying giving a near-catatonic performance throughout. He also has THE worst wardrobe spending most of his time in pyjamas, bad cream-coloured suits or bath robes. Remember David Niven in the old Casino Royale ? Frighteningly, he made a more convincing Bond in that movie than... Bond himself! Next to Connery's performance in this, Harrison Ford in Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull looked like a fresh-faced newborn. From the offset, you know you're in for something thoroughly unimpressive. The theme song is about as exciting as a lullaby and the unin

Hands up who wanted a prequel to The Thing ? Really? Come on! No one cares about the Norwegians? Well now you have to, for here is their story. Yes it follows almost every single key scene from the original film to the letter, but why wouldn't something this crazy happen twice in two different places just around the corner from each other? Because Hollywood knows better, that's why. So indeed we finally get to see the untold story of the Norwegians, who were the first to uncover the Thing before Kurt Russell and the gang even had a look at it. This time we get Mary Elizabeth Winstead being called into a base in Antarctica to help dig the titular whatchamacallit out of the ice. You know what happens next: Thing breaks out, people scream, paranoia sets in, it all becomes a "whoisit" (as opposed to whodunit) and it all ends in flames. That this The Thing remake isn't a disaster is almost shocking. Replacing practical effects as amazing as the ones in J

Making a film called Conan The Barbarian and not expect people to compare and contrast it with... Conan The Barbarian is pretty dumb. Actually, a remake/reboot at this point really makes very little sense. Hell, if you're going to remake anything remake Conan The Destroyer or Red Sonja ! But oh well, we're here now and we'll just have to deal with it. This time around Jason Momoa (he was in Baywatch ) is our favourite barbarian and although physically the guy looks the part he's got about as much charisma as a cardboard cutout. Granted Arnold Schwarzenegger's performance in the original Conan was not exactly Oscar-worthy but it worked and Arnie had enough badass charm to make Conan feel like Conan and not just some blank generic action movie drone. And what a blank, generic action movie this remake is. The film lost me early on as we are led by a Morgan Freeman voice-over (penguins not included) into Conan's mum's uterus where baby foetus Conan is r

Good vampire movies are hard to come by these days so when a vamp flick remake comes along, it's near impossible to get interested. Chances are, no pun intended, it'll suck. Imagine my surprise, then, when I found myself sitting there loving every bit of this ridiculously fun Fright Night remake. It wasn't meant to work, goshdarnit! And yet... it really does. Even the 3D adds a certain welcome trashiness to the whole thing making it a good old-fashioned slasher (with pointy fangs) the likes of which John Carpenter and Wes Craven probably wish they could still do. What tends to often kill that type of movie is its whiny teen cast but here we're given a likeable bunch you actually don't necessarily want to see get munched on and/or torn to shreds. Anton Yelchin makes a decent weasely hero while Christopher Mintz-Plasse does his McLovin schtick with added (and welcome) paranoia. Fine support is also given by Imogen Poots and James Franco's bro Dave, who m

PART ONE PART TWO

Remaking classic horror films is now, of course, a common Hollywood trend. But back in 1998 such a thing was still regarded as sacrilege. And rightly so. As talented as a director Gus Van Sant may be, he is no Alfred Hitchcock. And remaking one of the latter's most beloved films almost shot for shot is not so much a hommage as it is an insult. Watching this remake is like watching someone butcher a classic. Not that it's a bad film, overall this new Psycho is pretty stylish and entertaining. But it just feels completely pointless and Vince Vaughn, as amusing as he may occasionally be, is not Anthony Perkins and he most certainly isn't Norman Bates. His Norman is bland, barely threatening and unconvincing. The rest of the cast does reasonably well but one could argue that there's very little challenge there when their jobs were essentially done 38 years ago...better. Van Sant's Psycho is worth seeing if you're a fan of the original and you feel