TheRetroCritic

Putting such a crazy-epic cast together should really be enough to make a good movie. And yet the past has shown that no matter how many famous faces you cram into a flick, it's just not sufficient. Remember the original Casino Royale ? Yeah, that had Peter Sellers, Woody Allen and Orson Welles: terrible. Mars Attacks! had a crazy-big cast but that was a good, fun movie. The Expendables , however, was not. The first movie really was a missed opportunity to say the least. You had a cast that included Stallone, Statham, Rourke, Lundgren, Jet friggin' Li and yet what we got was an instantly forgettable mess. Now with The Expendables 2 we've got more Arnie, more Bruce Willis, a good bunch of newcomers (Van Damme, Norris), how could that movie be anything BUT awesomeness itself? Well, frankly I have no idea but this sequel certainly isn't "awesomeness itself". That said, I gotta admit it is better than the first film in that it at least gives us a dece

It really takes a genius to undo all the work that went into making Batman more than just a hilarious joke. But it takes A GOD to bring an evolved franchise back 30 years in the space of one movie. Now I have nothing against the old campy Adam West TV series but they really were the last word on that type of spoof/comedy take on the character. With Tim Burton's darker, edgier efforts it looked like we were finally getting to know the comic-book hero... That is, until we realised that this was the type of guy who carried around Bat credit cards and had ice-skates built into his shoes in the event that an impromptu ice ballet might break out. Yes, Joel Schumacher, who had done rather well with the admittedly silly but completely entertaining Batman Forever , just couldn't resist the urge to Adam West the franchise to the max. The result was, fair enough, pretty darn funny but at what cost? Joke or not, Batman & Robin is one astonishingly dire effort on every conc

How insulting. You don't think I have that?! I AM Conan The Destroyer [DVD] [1984]!!!

lol Pretty great.

Watch it HERE ! It's all worth it for that last shot. *cream*

It's TESTOSTERRIFIC!!!

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

Pregnant man movies are never as good as their one poster joke. Junior had Arnie pregnant, Rabbit Test had Billy Crystal pregnant...anything else? Nope. Now we have Marcello Mastroianni pregnant. Yes, the cool Italian guy from all the best Fellini movies. So how does it hold up compared to these other, later efforts? Well, sadly about the same. Arguably, this is the "technically" better film in that it doesn't try too hard to be hilarious, it just exists. Unfortunately that's also one the film's biggest shortcomings: it really doesn't try anything. It's like whoever comes up with these pregnant man movies just wrote "pregnant man" on a piece of paper and handed it to the director: "make this!". Why not just make like a hilarious version of La Dolce Vita where Mastroianni's going to all these parties...but he's pregnant? Stylistically, at least, it would be fun. But no. A Slightly Pregnant Man spends a lot of time building

Here’s a film which might as well have been called « Giant Cock and Balls ». The testosterone involved in this Sly-directed pumped-up action best-of is simply overpowering. And yet, I would say, not quite overpowering enough. By this I mean the lack of so many other worthy action stars such as Kurt Russell, Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal, Vin Diesel, JCVD, The Rock (and yes even Hulk Hogan, Wesley Snipes and Jackie Chan would have been welcome!) makes this feel like HALF of the biggest, most badass action film ever, not the actual thing. And yet all this isn’t even the film’s biggest problem. With awful dialogs, dire direction and terrible acting plaguing such a potentially awesome film, The Expendables just fails to impress on almost all accounts. Instead of showing off how cool these guys were, Sly manages to show up how bad, how unspeakably bad their acting really is. Rourke, Roberts and Statham just about get away with it but pretty much everyone else is painful to watch. Lundgren’