TheRetroCritic

I talk about Season 5 of Marvel's Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. .

Review available on the new website .

I finally talk about seasons 3 and 4 of Marvel's Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. .

A few months before the release of Alien: Covenant ( Ridley Scott's latest entry into the long-running sci-fi franchise), comes Life : another creepy space-set horror thriller in which a group of astronauts are forced to face a thoroughly unpleasant monster. While some reviews for this movie might not go much further than mentioning how derivative it is since it is essentially a mix of Alien , The Thing and Gravity , one could argue that what it lacks in originality it makes up for in sheer terror and, in fact, surpasses some of the aforementioned films in some ways. Life may seem like a B-movie but it is so well made that dismissing it as just that would be unfair. The way in which the inside of the space station is shot really makes you buy the setting with its zero gravity and tight compartments as we follow the crew members floating through the station convincingly, something that Gravity didn't quite capture. The reasonable running time actually means the tension is

After finally letting go of his (and our) beloved Dark Knight trilogy, Christopher Nolan finally ventured into the unknown, to more ambitious cinema where no man has gone before. Well, maybe Kubrick... Still, with Gravity greedily and, some would say, undeservedly claiming the space opera genre last year, only Mr Nolan could swoop in and reclaim it with a movie crazy enough to make you completely forget that Sandra Bullock was once spinning around somewhere. The film, of course, is Interstellar : a grand sci-fi blockbuster in which an ex-engineer/space pilot-turned farmer leads an expedition through wormholes and strange planets in what is essentially Earth's very last hope for survival as our world literally turns to dust. We spend some time with Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) and his family which includes his young daughter Murph (later played by Jessica Chastain) who seems to believe in ghosts and his father-in-law, played by a sadly once again restrained John Lithgow. C

If there's one thing we've really learned, since the resurfacing of 3D, it's that cramming a movie with CGI, no matter how good, does not make a great film. Avatar got away with it at the box-office, so did Alice In Wonderland (though the critics panned it) and John Carter simply didn't. So here comes another over-hyped example. It's called Gravity . Now, critics love this movie: it's Oscar-bait at its purest. Gravity is a concept movie with two main leads: George Clooney, who is going for the quirky and loveable Best Supporting Actor nomination and Sandra Bullock, who is going for the big prize. No plot, no brains, no point but boy is it trying. I'll give the film that: it looks pretty good. You're clearly looking at buckets of CGI with tons of stuff flying at you to cater for the 3D aspect but the effects are solid enough to make you suspend your disbelief. Bullock's character is the rookie who somehow got a job in space despite her ner

There was an obvious way to adapt a novel geniusely called "The Space Vampires" : Planet Terror -style, with Grindhouse tongue-in-cheek mayhem and gallons of blood being thrown at you. Director Tobe Hooper, it turns out, was the right man for the job when it came to turning The Space Vampires into Lifeforce , a much more interesting take on a pretty silly premise. The movie sees astronauts reach a planet, fly through its space colon and uncover a bunch of giant bats and three naked people in glass coffins. The plan? Bring all that shit back to Earth, of course! Because war, disease and poverty aren't quite enough: we need space vampires in our lives. Soon enough, one of those alien beings wakes up and causes mayhem. Turns out, those good-looking weirdos from outer space can literally suck the life out of you through intense electrical make-out sessions and turn you into one of them. It becomes up to a total of two dudes with bad haircuts to try and sort out this whol

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

I love the Hellraiser movies. After sitting through Hellraiser III , which was certainly a big step down from both previous films, and learning the next movie was directed by Alan Smithee... I was expecting something exceptionally bad. Hilariously bad, even. Like Leprechaun IV: In Space type nonsense. Weirdly, Hellraiser IV: Bloodline got my attention very quickly and held it all the way until the end. It actually starts in space which... I did not really expect. But then we're told what happened ages ago with the inventor of the infamous box and how the bloodline led to Pinhead actually trying to take over the world! It's crazy stuff but it's fun. The acting throughout is pretty bad but not distractingly so, Hellraiser movies were never known for their Oscar-nominated performances anyway. It's an ambitious sequel to say the least but it handles its goofy ideas surprisingly well, althewhile peppering the whole thing with the occasional bloody lols. And Hellra

Love 'em or hate 'em, the Roger Moore years were certainly worth a watch. I mean, look at the above poster. Why would you NOT go and see that? Ah Moonraker . I had forgotten this entire film but I had a feeling that re-watching it might just prove it to be so bad it would actually tower above Never Say Never Again and On Her Majesty's Secret Service as the ultimate best worst Bond movie. The very idea of 007 IN SPACE sounded ludicrous but kind of awesome so I was really looking forward to revisiting this one properly. Hm, how do I put this... Moonraker... Isn't THAT bad. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's silly, but not in the hilarious "bad movie" way I was expecting. The main problem with Moonraker isn't it's OTT plot but rather that the build-up to the whole space thing is crazy-boring. You know where the movie is going right off the bat, you've seen the poster! And yet it's like the film spends 90 minutes fumbling i

Here's a plug for a new blog I'm working on called We, The MindThinkers   which will see me writing random, silly sci-fi stories under various, increasingly dumb-sounding pen names. I will upload short stories one chapter at a time, 2 to 3 times a week so if you're in any way interested, don't hesitate to check it out! ;) The first short story is called The Red Moons Of NeOrion by Norman L. Brisbane, the first chapter is now up. It involves moons and bubbles.

Back when Tim Burton films were still awesome and not "just ok", Mars Attacks! came out and gave us a delightful piece of 50's-style sci-fi B movie goodness complete with a stellar cast and Burton's own brand of surreal, nasty wackiness. It's funny to think that Independence Day came out the same year as Mars Attacks! since the latter feels like a complete spoof of Roland Emmerich's disaster cheese-fest. Burton's film takes the clichéd alien invasion formula we've seen in movies like War Of The Worlds , Earth vs The Flying Saucers or The Day The Earth Stood Still and gives it a playful edge. We see our world react to a potential alien encounter stupidly and naively. Rather than fearing the Martians, we're in fact pretty darn welcoming and peaceful about the whole thing. It's a clever take on that plot because in those old movies people are usually terrified of an alien invasion and completely overreact. Here, we only acknowledge how scre

Well, it took me 11 years but finally I sat through the entirety of Disney's The Emperor's New Groove. A film so odd-looking that it even alienated me at the time. I loved Mulan but the trailers for this one just seemed...weird and I really didn't feel like sitting through an hour and a half of a scary llama screaming around. It's a shame really, I'm sure I would have loved it. It's 11 years later and now I know who Patrick Warburton and David Spade are and I'm cool with llamas in general, I felt it was time to pay The Emperor a little visit. Interestingly, the humour in this one is much more goofy than I could have imagined: think the Looney Tunes crossed with the Genie from Aladdin . Pretty wacky stuff. You've got a random story with an off-beat setting, no gimmicky big stars and a dislikable character at the heart of it all and yet this is one strangely accessible, fun ride with David Spade at his best, a great villainess, a gloriously dense h

Up until this moment, the Leprechaun films were just a bunch of stupid but oddly enjoyable, trashy horror comedies. With Leprechaun 4: In Space, I'm pleased to announce, we're entering Ed Wood territory. Going in, I just wanted to know how in hell they were going to explain the Leprechaun's space presence. They don't. Not even a bit. I'm not even sure the word "leprechaun" is even uttered at any point throughout the film! We're told a group of human space marines are going on some planet to kill some alien...which turns out to be Warwick Davis' critter. Leprechaun 3 was no masterpiece but it did have quite a few redeeming qualities about it, but In Space is just...chaos. It's like a weird mix of a Starship Troopers -style action B movie, a Leprechaun horror film, a Mel Brooks, Spaceballs -type Dr Who spoof and a cheesy Star Trek The Original Series episode. Yeah... This is one of those rare films where nothing works. Story? Nope. Visuals

Yes Leslie Nielsen was a comedy genius, unfortunately this is one of his darkest hours. Which is not to say he doesn't have his moments but everything around him is so inept that it becomes impossible to appreciate his familiar buffoneries. With some of the most inept directing, writing and editing you're likely to see, complete with about a hundred terrible celebrity impressions and some poor acting all around, you really need to love Mr Nielsen to stand through this mess.   Him and some decent make-up effects here and there just about save this from 1 star ignominy but, in all honesty, 2001 A Space Travesty is almost unwatchable and the last half hour is just noise. Awful but Nielsen, at the very least, does his job relatively well, which is more than I can say for everyone else involved here... 

Ed Wood directs this masterpiece of mediocrity which stars Bela Lugosi as mad scientist Dr Erik Vornoff and Tor Johnson as his lumbering disciple Lobo. And although entertainment-wise it's no Plan 9 From Outer Space , there is definitely plenty to enjoy here. For one thing the dramatic score is pretty unforgettable and is about as perfect as an OTT monster movie can hope for. Then there's Bela Lugosi who defines the word HAM but does so with so much style that he is actually rather good. The slight story is essentially just an excuse to include stock footage of an octopus and atomic blasts. Ed Wood certainly doesn't disappoint here as his titular Bride acts more wooden than the sets themselves, scenes drag on for what seems like forever and the plot digs more holes into itself than...something with lots of holes. Damn metaphors... Overall, although the pace is a tad more soporific than Plan 9, there are enough ridiculous moments and clunky lines to make Bride Of The