TheRetroCritic

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We ask only the important questions on podcast  The Big Rewind .

Based on the Marvel comics, Big Hero 6 was a 2014 CG-animated Disney film about a young inventor who befriends an inoffensive robot called Baymax before training it to become a fighting machine. 14 year-old genius Hiro Hamada is introduced to us participating in illegal robot fights and conning others with his misleadingly unassuming creations. His brother, in the hope of steering Hiro towards a better path, encourages him to apply for a university with an impressive research lab in which a team of quirky inventors get to be as creative as they can. After an unexpected accident, a mysterious villain shows up using one of Hiro's inventions on a dangerous scale so he and his friends, along with inflatable healthcare robot Baymax, decide to fight back and unmask their powerful enemy. Similar to how the marketing for Pixar's The Incredibles relied heavily on an out-of-shape Mr. Incredible trying to fit into his old superhero suit, Big Hero 6 was sold mostly through the ball

I play some Atomic Robo-Kid Special .

Here's the video version of my Manborg review.

Based on a novella (and a novel) by sci-fi maestro Isaac Asimov, Bicentennial Man had one wacky premise to work with and it sure rolled with it: a robot butler living for 200 years and, in that time, becoming a living, breathing human being. Robin Williams stars as Andrew, the candid android bought by Sam Neill's family and, for a good portion of the film, he is in full robot attire looking like an old-fashioned automaton you'd see in a comic strip from the 50's. And, as odd as that sounds, seeing as the film is set in the not-so-distant future of 2005, that adds some retro charm to the film. Since Bicentennial Man, of course, spans a heck of a lot of years, the movie approaches Andrew's story a little like Forrest Gump as we skip through the years, occasionally checking in on what the android is up to. The character is pretty naive throughout, even if he does grow gradually and, by the end of the movie you do feel like he's been through a lot. That said, the

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

Based on an ongoing manga from 2006, the anime series of Nichijou followed a group of high school students as well as a robot girl, a child scientist and a talking cat as they embarked on very small but very significant (to them, anyway) random situations which they handled, more often than not, rather strangely. Early on, I wasn't sure if Nichijou even had a story or an arc to it. The first few episodes of the series really prioritising slapstick goofiness and emphasising the over-the-top reactions of the characters to certain minor events like bumping into someone or dropping a tiny sausage. It feels like a very cartoonish comic strip, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. The humour is a wacky mix of observational, sarcastic and OTT slapstick with the occasional mini slice-of-life "moment" breaking up the episode. Every so often, you get a quiet, detailed but blurry shot of a street as a breeze moves a drape or something like that, before they cut to the ne

Sure cop movies are cool but... you know what else is cool? Freakin' robots that's what. Good thing the 80's knew that, otherwise we wouldn't have been able to enjoy Paul Verhoeven's RoboCop , a film with a premise so awesome it must have taken about a minute to greenlight. Peter Weller, of Buckaroo Banzai "fame", is Murphy, the Detroit cop who gets his ass handed to him in a particularly unfriendly gun-fight. What's left of him is soon turned into a badass robotic crimefighter with an apt for genius one-liners and incredible shooting accuracy. Sadly, his hardware is owned by corrupt company OCP which makes ridding the city of all its scum a bit of a challenge. The "scum" in question includes big cheese Dick Jones (the ever intimidating Ronny Cox), the dad from That 70's Show and... Leland Palmer? Twin Peaks reference. It's funny, go watch the show. So yes, it turns out that having the police owned by a big-ass,

You ever wonder what would happen if your idiot dad died and was somehow reborn as some magical super being? And I don't mean any of that Jack Frost snowman bullshit. No, I'm talking Ra.One which, now that I think about it, owes more to Jack Frost than I originally thought. Shahrukh Khan plays a games developer who creates a new virtual reality game in which you fight an indestructible villain known as Ra.One. But that shit literally becomes real when the game villain transcends the virtual world into our own and wreaks havoc upon it. How this happens I'm not quite sure but lets just say that suspension of disbelief doesn't even begin to cover it. Cue big action sequences, most of them shot in London, a delicious Endhiran (The Robot) cameo appearance and lots of robot hijinks and tomfooleries. Oh and an entire scene dedicated to a "smoking kills" message. Just like The Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog . That takes me back... Anyway, it turns

  Actually being John Malkovich wouldn’t be too bad if it weren’t for… Making Mr Right . Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for silly movies involving Malkovich and defective robot clones but only as long as they reach heights of completely enjoyable dumb. Thankfully, parts of Making Mr Right definitely qualify. Take the scene where the android’s ass ends up on his belly button: great but oh so short. Unfortunately the film just doesn’t live up to its idiotically great premise. Too much time is spent with Ann Magnuson’s Frankie as she’s putting on make-up/talking shit/going to meetings/driving around when we were promised early on an android with awesome super powers. Needless to say that once Malkovich’s robotic man-child finally leaves the lab to face the real world none of the expected badass stuff actually happens. Instead we get to see him hang around a mall, buy a suit and screw some side character off camera. It all builds up to a wedding, which frankly isn’t important to the

Memoirs of a Geisha was a fine picture.  But where were the butt blades? The wig napalm? The giant castle robots? The killer breast milk? The shoulder guns? The rocket half-bodies? The chainsaw faces?  The answer: in 2009's intentionally goofy trash-terpiece Robo-Geisha .  It's no secret that modern Japanese horror died long ago. Some time after Dark Water and before all those rubbish evil Phone or Premonition movies. The first Battle Royale was a breath of fresh air and brought the gore and cartoon-like violence of anime into live-action cinema to create something completely insane, original and utterly brilliant. Alas, for years to come no film would even attempt to match the bold madness of the cult classic action/horror/black comedy... that is until Japanese horror was reborn into Grindhouse-style gore-fests mixing the crazy concepts of Troma films with the fighting, blood and guts of anime and classic action Japanese B movies. Films like The Machine

CGI babies, talking mosquitos, dancing aztecs, singing robots, lion-bots, a giant snake-bot, unmotivated violence and blood, naked suicides...these are all the wonders (and much more!) you can find in S. Shankar's latest sci-fi extravaganza! And I'm not even counting Rajnikanth 's hilarious wardrobe which makes him look alternatively like Ronald Chevalier out of Gentlemen Broncos or Deep Roy's Oompa Loompas from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory . The story itself is a cross between I, Robot , Frankenstein and Bicentinnial Man and is the typical "scientist creates monster, can't control him, monster turns against him" deal. The first half being the more light-hearted one, the second being darker and more action packed. And by action packed of course, I mean DEMENTED. Overall, this is very odd, very silly, very random and predominantly awkward BUT it is also a lot of fun and one of the wackiest 3 hours you'll ever spend. Plus, did I mention the g