TheRetroCritic

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The Avengers are back in a sequel that promises to be even bigger and more epic somehow. Joss Whedon once again directs and, though you'd expect juggling that many main characters (plus about a dozen new recruits) would make for a complete cinematic mess, the man somehow pulls it off once again and delivers a blockbuster every bit as ambitious and entertaining as it suggests. Well, apart for that weird half hour where Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) takes us for a particularly dull ride back to his "safe house". Urgh... Other than that, this sequel fixes a lot of what made the first movie a little too uneven. While the first Avengers suffered from a ropey opening sequence and an altogether sluggish first half hour, this movie throws us directly into the action and doesn't let go for a good while which is instantly refreshing. Again, everyone gets their chance to shine but also screw up. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), whom, I assume, has amnesia and therefore can&#

Tropic Thunder sure made noise when it came out. You had an all-star comedy cast, with Robert Downey Jr. famously and controversially playing an African American character... or, rather, a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude, and ultimately winning an Oscar for his performance. The film also included a nearly unrecognisable Tom Cruise in a rare goofy comedy role at a time where his popularity really needed a boost. The movie's plot revolves around a group of egomaniacal Hollywood actors working on a super-expensive Apocalypse Now -style war movie. When the film goes massively over budget and looks like it'll flop harder than John Carter , the film's director (played by Steve Coogan) decides to follow Nick Nolte's advice (he plays the writer of the novel the film is an adaptation of) and land all the actors in the real Vietnamese jungle so they can somehow shoot a gritty and more realistic version of the movie. Which is odd since that doesn't really

(SPOILER-FREE REVIEW) Hey, remember when movies didn't flat-out lie to your face? I mean, I know all trailers are lies to a certain extent but... I gotta say: this one takes the cake. What Iron Man 3 promised during its kickass marketing campaign seemed so right, so perfect, and yet somehow the movie I was faced with while sitting comfortably in the cinema sipping on a large, watered-down Diet Coke, was not what I expected and, by extension, not what I wanted. Or, I feel, what the franchise itself deserved. Surprises can be a great thing in movies: Psycho killing off its main actress early on, for example, worked as a surprise because it made sense with what happened next, it was masterfully executed and left the audience feeling lost but curious and ultimately hooked. Iron Man 3 is no Psycho. The film boasts a couple of shock reveals which you wouldn't even think about from watching the trailers but instead of adding an extra layer of awesomeness to the film,