TheRetroCritic

So good, I had to post it.

SPOILERS Well, this is it, people. The final chapter of " The Twilight Saga ". ... REALLY?! THIS is it? Wow. After sitting through every single Twilight movie, I can safely say that this new installment is one big disappointment. Not so much in terms of lols, it does deliver a good bunch of those, as ever, but just in terms of sheer drama and cinematic competence. Yes this is meant to be like a cheesy vampire Harlequin romance type thing but it's also meant to be a story worthy of an entire franchise and, most importantly, a movie. As it turns out, this "saga" fails on all accounts. Shame, with Breaking Dawn Part 1 , things were finally starting to get borderline insane and mean-spirited just the way I wanted it to! Ah Part 1... You beautiful bastard. Here we have Bella, finally a red-eyed vamp, complete with super-strength, super-powers, moody doochiness and wood-like posture. FINALLY Bella is resembling a strong female lead and an actua

There were some great spoofs back in the day: Airplane! , Top Secret! , The Naked Gun . Hot Shots: Part Deux , I recall being pretty good also. But as for the original Hot Shots! nothing rang a bell expect that it was a Top Gun piss-take and that Charlie Sheen was once again the lead. One re-watch later and, although Hot Shots! does have its amusing moments, I wouldn't list it on the same level as the aforementioned bunch. Maybe I've just grown-up or maybe a lot of the humour hasn't dated terribly well, I don't know. Watching it now, it was more miss than hit I felt. One of the jokes sees an old Native American dude listening to a walkman and asking Sheen to bring back some AA batteries. I guess back then that was like the equivalent of an iPod reference or something (for the kids?). Thing is: random "modern" technology references in spoofs are rarely funny, they're just... there. Remember those ads the Scary Movie gang parodied in their franchise?

Talk about a 90's cast... Yes Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen, Chris O'Donnell and Oliver Platt face-off against Tim Curry's villainous Cardinal Richelieu in this Disney-produced Hollywood adaptation of the classic Alexandre Dumas tale. No, I never pictured Jack Bauer as a musketeer either but hey, he makes a good Athos. Actually, the three musketeers work pretty well despite not matching the characters from the book to the letter. Charlie Sheen's Aramis is far too 'winningly' jokey and Oliver Platt's Porthos has one one-liner too many I think but on the whole you buy that these guys could be a team, and that's the main thing. The plot takes key elements from Dumas' novel but reduces the plot to a more simplistic good people vs bad people kind of thing which is a bit of a shame but considering they're telling this whole story in under 2 hours, that's fair enough. The film starts off surprisingly well actually. Chris O'Donnell, o

  "Hey you guys, we need someone to play a tiny obese evil clown, is John Leguizamo free?". This is the kind of question the producers of 1997 supernatural comic book film Spawn were asking themselves. Who did they originally cast as Spawn then? Danny DeVito? Against all odds, Leguizamo's trippy turn as a Joker-style maniacal clown turns out to be the film's driving force and best asset. Which is not to say there's nothing else appealing about the film: a lot of effects are pretty creative and the whole thing is admittedly entertaining. Unfortunately once you see what Hell looks like you soon forget the good stuff and find yourself wishing you were playing a 90's PC video game instead of watching a film in which entire sequences could have been directly lifted from one of those very games. Like I said, some effects are creative and some do work but that Devil thing and its army of minions all standing around moving like tiny CGI puppets in a sea of fire i

Never a big fan of the original Tron myself, I can't say the prospect of a sequel to Disney's 80's creation got me jumping up and down with anticipation. Then I heard Daft Punk were doing the soundtrack. Then I saw the trailers...So I thought I'd give it a go. Unfortunately what annoyed me about the first Tron remains but what worked in the original thankfully still works here, in a different way. Visually, Legacy looks amazing and, with a good script, could have potentially surpassed both Matrix sequels at least. This neon-lit world is definitely worth letting yourself be immersed into for a couple of hours. And needless to say Daft Punk's fantastic score adds a welcome 80's feel to the whole thing and pumps up the action scenes perfectly. Bridges does well, even with the dodgier lines ("Bio-Digital jazz, man!"), Olivia Wilde is stunning and Michael Sheen effortlessly steals the show as a dodgy and delightfully camp club owner. Then there's G