TheRetroCritic

As he took on the very first Star Trek movie, director Robert Wise certainly had his work cut out. Pleasing fans of the original series while translating a somewhat cartoonish 60's show into a legitimate, impressive 70's space opera to rival Star Wars was never going to be easy. How to bring these characters back together? How to update the look of the show without sucking all the iconic charm out of it? Turns out: by making a really long episode :S Yes this Star Trek isn't so much the big, awesome movie you'd expect but rather an extended episode of the original series with different sets, different costumes and better (but still mostly cheesy) effects. Which is not to say it's bad, even if critics and audiences over the years have panned it quite a bit, it's actually very decent (a very decent episode that is). As a movie... Star Wars this isn't. To give you an idea: it takes about 35 minutes for the main crew of The Enterprise to come togeth

It's cream-your-pants time! I simply cannot wait.

Looking forward to the new Iron Man flick? Same here.

Tom Cruise is back. In Jack. Reacher, that is. In what may start some kind of lasting Bourne-style action franchise (but probably won't), Jack Reacher sees tough cookie ex-army Sherlock dude Jack Reacher (well, duh) being hired to help shed light on a case involving a sniper taking out a seemingly random group of people for no apparent reason. Of course, Reacher suspects there's much more to it than just another psycho losing it and leads his own investigation. What follows is a CSI-meets-Mission-Impossible hybrid which sees Tom Cruise, as usual, taking his top off and acting way taller than he actually is. Oh, also Werner Herzog, of Werner Herzog fame, pops up as mysterious villain "The Zec" who doesn't do much besides talking and sitting but manages to be awesome nonetheless thanks to his inherent, unparalleled Herzoginess. Give the guy a dead eye, a gnarled hand, a dark setting to monologue into and voila! That classic documentary-friendly soothing v

I've wanted to do a stupid little comic series breaking down movie franchises as absurdly as possible for a while now... Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: The Twilight Saga .  In a nutshell. Got a few more planned so let us know what you think!

After The Polar Express , one of the weirdest-looking animations of recent times, Robert Zemeckis then decided to (wisely) go down the Pixar route and gave up on trying to get his characters to look as real as possible, instead keeping them stylized and cartoonish to a certain extent. This worked out ok for A Christmas Carol and this earlier, Halloween-themed effort which he produces. Monster House sees a group of 3 kids find out that the house across the street, where a scary old man lives, is not only haunted but alive and literally attacking people if they get too close. It's an odd but kinda genius take on the slasher genre as our serial killer isn't even flesh and blood but wood and brick! I love the design of the house, by the way, director Gil Kenan ( City Of Ember ) finds a whole bunch of clever ways to make it into a real threat for our characters: its walls become teeth, the trees around it become its arms and hands, it swallows anything that lands on its front

Well, here it is, the new trailer for Iron Man 3 . Dark enough for ya? Looks like Iron Man's got his own Bane to worry about. Can't wait, y'all ;) (Ben Kingsley lol)

The film that started it all... kind of. Jon Favreau's Iron Man was really the moment where Marvel revealed to the world their mad intentions of putting together crossover mega-movie  The Avengers . As we all know, they pulled it off remarkably but it could have all gone pear-shaped super early. I mean, with the likes of Captain America and Thor it wasn't going to be a walk in the park to make each character and their far-fetched stories plausible, let alone cram everybody into one movie. But Iron Man showed early on that you can make a silly superhero flick without screwing it up, creating a movie that, even to this day, is simply a lot of fun. Robert Downey Jr is genius billionaire douchebag Tony Stark, who is made to face the reality of his misguided work directly and henceforth grow a conscience. The entire movie is one big build-up to the creation of that badass armored suit with some cool action scenes and a last-minute villain thrown in for good measure. Because

lol

Ok, two new trailers for Twilight: Breaking Dawn Pt. 2 and it's looking good. By that, of course, I mean lolgasmic. "She was born, not bitten. She grows every single day!" Gotta love that line. Then there's this one. "We have the same temperature now." Edward has a way with words. Also check out the last bit of that trailer, where Bella stalks a deer : GENIUS. Love that shit.

Here's one I was really looking forward to. When you're a fan of David Cronenberg's stranger works, seeing him make relatively straight-forward films like History Of Violence or A Dangerous Method is always a bit disappointing. No matter how good those movies are, you just want the guy to go all out Videodrome -style, blow-up some heads or just put messed-up images in your head (the birth dream sequence from The Fly , anyone?). I guess the director's style had to mature at some point but personally, with the exception of Eastern Promises , I haven't truly been impressed by the director's work since eXistenZ . And I still haven't. Cosmopolis has received mixed reviews thusfar with some praising its daring, mostly limo-set plot and message, while others calling it "shallow" and "self-indulgent"... because it is. Frankly, this is not a good movie. And I don't say that because I didn't get it, quite the opposite, Cosmo

If Twilight: Breaking Dawn Pt.1 brought as many tears of lol to your eyes as it did to me, then you've gotta be looking forward to this second part. Speaking of which, here's a newly released picture depicting the happy family together for the first time: I'm loling already. Now lets have a look at how they came up with the idea for this teaser pic... Simple maths, really. + ÷ It's gonna be great.

In his third outing as Bond, Pierce Brosnan sure gave us a good show bringing his trilogy to an end in style with a film that, although not quite as good or memorable as its predecessors, made a worthy conclusion to one of 007's best eras. Before Die Another Day , that is... But The World Is Not Enough starts off with one of the longest (and best) pre-titles sequences around: Bond in an MI6 speedboat chasing a female terrorist around The Thames only to end with a hot-air balloon explosion and 007 rolling down the Millenium Dome. Check out Bond fixing his tie while underwater, boating on the road and cheekily splashing parking wardens. Then the plot kicks in as we learn that Robert Carlyle is Renard, a superhuman dude with a bullet in his head and Sophie Marceau's stripper-named Elektra King is an important part of the puzzle. Along the way, Bond meets Robbie Coltrane's always welcome sleaze-bag Valentin Zukovsky and Denise Richards who plays, ahem, nuclear physici

Can it be that the old, nutty, genius David Cronenberg we all knew and loved... is back? lol I like the dinosaur!

Ok... Looks badass.

It's doubtful that many shared Guy Ritchie's pumped up vision of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic sleuth, and after films like  Swept Away  as well as unflattering reshoots which delayed the film's release, Guy's Sherlock Holmes wasn't looking good. On many accounts, what was expected (and somewhat feared) is indeed present, with Sherlock and Watson busting bad guy butt like a James Bond and John McClane team-up and of course numerous silly, overblown moments.  That aside, one can't deny that this Sherlock Holmes is a lot of fun. No matter what its flaws are, this is good old fashioned Hollywood nonsense: it's stylish, very engaging, clever, silly and works both as a detective story and a buddy comedy. Law makes a fine Watson and Downey Jr is appropriately charming ( if a little short) and makes an entertaining Holmes. Rachel McAdams also offers fine support and gloriously manages to avoid being the usual annoying, thrown-in-as-a-love-interest-for-the-

Edward from Twilight , that nazi from Inglourious Basterds and Legally Blonde walk into a circus... Sounds like a joke, right? Well now it's a film. With a title like that and Trapeze -style melodramatic visuals, I have to say I expected something pretty hilarious and in all fairness this wasn't big or fun enough to be hilarious, only amusingly idiotic I'm afraid. Still, there's loads to enjoy here! You've got Christoph Waltz who excels once again as a demented villain with a genial way of playing with people's emotions. One second he's a giddy, loveable weirdo, the next he'ssingle-handedly beating up an elephant (a strangely Polish and peaceful elephant at that). He's, in a word: mad. Which is great! If only everyone else had put in some heart and effort into their roles we could have had something half decent here. A less vampiric Robert Pattinson once again delivers what, at first, seems like a dark, brooding performance but soon enou

For a film about a magical brain pill, Limitless really isn't that clever at all. That said, if you allow yourself to stay brainless throughout this is one enjoyable, silly ride. Bradley Cooper's first film as the main lead fits in very well in between this month's other two dumb sci-fi action thrillers Source Code and The Adjustment Bureau . Limitless could have easily been set in a Minority Report -style near future and it would have made just as much sense. More sense even because as it stands I could spend all day outlining the film's gaping plot holes. The film starts off strangely rather well with some cool, hypnotic effects, a cliffhanger and some almost Spike Jonze-esque storytelling. Then we're shown the pill... *flashback to the trailer* Oh man this is gonna suck. "I finished my book in 4 days!" From the moment Cooper ingests that first pill you know what's next, you know Limitless is about the jump the shark. Cue Brad jumping i