TheRetroCritic

Roger Moore's second outing as 007 is a weird one... For one thing the film opens by zooming into Christopher Lee's nipples. Of which he has three. Lee plays Scaramanga, a wealthy entrepreneur with a secret desert island where he's not only building some kind of sun-powered death ray but also toying with a psychedelic fun-house-style room designed to discombobulate whoever enters it and get them killed. He's also extremely proud of his one-bullet golden gun made out of a cigarette case, a pen, a lighter and whatever else. He's one of the great Bond villains mostly because he is so darn happy with his absurd achievements and isn't afraid to show off a little. His henchman, Nick Nack, isn't quite as intimidating as the likes of Goldfinger 's OddJob (his one weakness is luggage ) but he is nevertheless just as memorable. The plot involves 007 being sent some golden bullet which MI6 believes to have come from Scaramanga and Bond is sent on a new s

Reviewing each film in Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings Trilogy individually or picking a favourite out of the three is actually not an easy task. They're pretty indispensable to each other but let's try and single this one out for now regardless. This is where it all began:  The Fellowship Of The Ring . You know the plot, bearded dude shows up on some old Hobbit's doorstep, sends his nephew on some huge, crazy suicide mission involving a ring of power that could potentially destroy everything good on Middle Earth through some big orange angry vagina eye on top of a scary tower. Preposterous? Yes. But in J.R.R. Tolkien and Peter Jackson's hands: magic. No fantasy epic has even come close before or since to reaching the scale and sheer grandeur of this trilogy and doing it this well (sorry Narnia), these are big far-out stories involving elves, dwarves and goblins and yet it feels important: you're invested. Not an easy thing to achieve. Back in the 80&

Over the years, Paul Thomas Anderson seems to have perfected his journey into tackling big themes through personal stories and through flawed, toxic characters. Case and point: The Master . Religion was a prominent theme in Anderson's previous effort There Will Be Blood and you could say that the whole film, despite outlining the rise and fall of Daniel Day Lewis' oil tycoon, was indeed about the relationship between business and religion. With his latest, we take a look at cults, yes, but also humanity in general. Here we have a Scientology-style organisation, "The Cause", based on the idea that Man is not an animal and, in fact, is far more important and deeper than he realizes and along comes Joaquin Phoenix's drifter, a down-and-out alcoholic drifter with a sex fixation. Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffmann), the cult's "master", decides to make him his pet-project, his guinea-pig. But it seems that proving the core theory that man isn

Iconic enough for ya?

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.

Tangerine lol

More posters! I like the Bane one. That's some Tarantino shit right there...

Lets begin with a riddle: ‘What weighs six ounces, sits in a tree and is very dangerous’? Answer at the end of this review...   With the release of The Dark Night Rises   drawing ever closer, let us take a nostalgic trip back in time to the year 1966. Bring on the exaggerated acting and props that looked as if Blue Peter had made them. For anyone not familiar with Blue Peter: it’s a British children’s TV show which demonstrated how to make everything from cardboard sea creatures to rockets (I hated that show with a passion!!!!). If you liked the Batman TV series starring Adam West (as Batman/Bruce Wayne) and Burt Ward (as Robin/Dick Greyson) then you will love this film. It’s basically an extended version of the TV show. But having said that, it does stand alone as a movie and feels as if you are watching something more substantial than just a long episode. It has a good plot, lots of retro visual effects and all the mad Gotham villains we have come to love, assemb

It could have gone either way. After Batman Begins , a film that was half about slowly rebuilding the iconic character and his franchise in the eyes of the fans and half about being a kickass Batman flick, it could have all started going downhill straight away or the sequel could have used Begins as a template to build something bigger and better on. Yeah they got it right. What Batman Begins really needed was a good villain and The Dark Knight certainly delivered that. The late Heath Ledger giving a unique, unsettling performance as The Joker and Aaron Eckhart, so good as Harvey Dent, giving us THE best and most intimidating Two-Face ever put to screen. And that's saying a lot seeing as the Two-Face from the Animated Series scared the shit out of me as a kid in that first couple of episodes. It's the first time in a Batman film where you really feel that the hero is actually in danger of losing everyone he cares about and losing the fight overall. The unpredictable J

If you've never been to my Youtube channel, this won't make much sense lol

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