TheRetroCritic

Despite the lukewarm reception of both The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons , this year saw Ron Howard bring us yet another instalment based on Dan Brown's popular series of novels. Inferno continues Robert Langdon's (Tom Hanks) quest to save the world through running around museums and solving obscure historical puzzles. We first meet Langdon as he wakes up in hospital following some kind of accident he can't remember. His vision blurred and memory fuzzy due to head trauma, he is led out of the hospital by Dr. Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones) who sees an assassin heading her patient's way. Strange, apocalyptic dreams and a hidden item lead Langdon and Brooks to slowly uncover the truth behind a mystery linked to Dante's Inferno. The real challenge for Robert Langdon this time is having to try and stop a potential terrorist plot despite not knowing who to trust because of partial amnesia. This being a Ron Howard film, it is competently made: the tense hosp

I talk about new reboot/spin-off/whatever 24: Legacy . This Vlog occurs in real time.

I compile some of the "best" moments from the film Wolf .

Here's the video version of my The Frozen Ground review.

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

Directed by Joel Coen and released back in 1991, Barton Fink is a dark comedy about a playwright who gets the opportunity to write a wrestling picture for a big Hollywood studio but quickly experiences writer's block. This is perhaps one of the Coen Brothers' least well-known yet best movies. It failed at the box-office upon its release but sweeping the Cannes Film Festival, earning a few Oscar nominations and being a critical hit more than made up for that. The film follows Barton Fink (John Turturro), a passionate playwright who wants to create important work for the "common man", as he travels to Los Angeles to write a wrestling film for a Hollywood producer. He soon experiences writer's block in his dingy hotel room and befriends his neighbour Charlie (John Goodman) before slowly but surely spiralling down into confusion and despair. Part-Hollywood satire, part-surreal thriller, Barton Fink is a strange little movie that explores various big themes witho

It's a fine line between a good thriller and a silly one but the first John Wick movie walked that line effortlessly delivering a tongue-in-cheek action flick with the perfect balance of cool and goofy. The film gave Keanu Reeves the comeback he deserved and a sequel soon followed. John Wick: Chapter 2 picks up roughly where the last film left off with John Wick facing the Russian mob in order to retrieve his beloved black Mustang. Of course, this leads to a big fight scene where John Wick goes around punching, kicking and shooting anything that moves in a parking garage before calling it even with Peter Stormare's mob boss. There's a short cameo from John Leguizamo, who played Wick's mechanic friend in the first movie, and the plot finally kicks in. This time, John Wick is forced to pay back his debt to an ex-assassin colleague when the latter blows up his entire house after Wick initially refuses to help. Pissed off but looking to quickly end this, Wick promptl

Written by Graham Greene, The Third Man was a 1949 film noir starring Joseph Cotten as a writer arriving in post-WWII Vienna only to find that his friend was killed in a car accident. After some inconsistencies with that story come to light, he starts to look deeper into the case. A British production, Carol Reed's film is not your typical film noir with its unusually upbeat yet genuinely inspired zither-led score and the rarely seen broken Vienna setting offering a particularly atmospheric backdrop for the mystery to unfold. Joseph Cotten's Holly Martin is a likeable makeshift detective who wants to know the truth about what happened to his friend Harry Lime yet the closer he gets to figuring it all out, the darker his path becomes. Italian actress Alida Valli is very good as Lime's actress girlfriend Anna Schmidt who assists Holly on his search and Orson Welles almost steals the show when he shows up randomly near the end of the second act. The Third Man has some cl

I talk about Gore Verbinski's latest horror thriller A Cure For Wellness .

The famously confrontational Joan Crawford and Bette Davis duo finally shared the screen in What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? , a 1962 horror thriller directed by Robert Aldrich. The making of the film is the subject of new FX series Feud starring Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon. Like a cross between Sunset Boulevard and Psycho , What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? explores themes like madness, jealousy and guilt in a Hollywood setting as Bette Davis' ex child star "Baby" Jane Hudson keeps her disabled sister Blanche (Joan Crawford) imprisoned in their house feeding her rats and scaring the crap out of her. The film first gives us some background on the sisters as we see Baby Jane singing to a crowd of fans very much in her element: she is talented but also a spoiled brat. Blanche, on the other hand, is cast aside by her father who is too busy pushing Jane down the path of stardom. Skip to a few years later and the tables have turned with Blanche being a respected Holl

Gore Verbinski directs this strange horror thriller about a young executive who is sent to Switzerland to bring back his company's CEO. The latter has been staying in a spa or "wellness center" in what can only be described as Dracula's castle so what could go wrong? Dane DeHaan is Lockhart, the cocky up-and-coming employee who is essentially blackmailed into retrieving his own boss and who discovers just how unusual that mysterious establishment really is, the hard way. What was meant to be a quick job soon becomes a descent into Hell as Lockhart suffers a car crash, is forced to stay in the spa as a patient and slowly uncovers the sordid truth about this seemingly idyllic Swiss Alp location. This is a surprisingly derivative thriller as it evokes Shutter Island heavily in terms of plot and tonally resembles a reliably messed-up season of American Horror Story with shades of Guillermo Del Toro thrown in for good luck. On the plus side, A Cure For Wellness deli

In this live stream, I talk all things Keanu. More specifically: John Wick: Chapter 2 .

M. Night Shyamalan had something of a mini-comeback with The Visit , a found-footage horror movie from 2015 about two kids going to live with their grandparents, whom they've never met, for a week. Audiences and critics didn't pan this one quite as much as the director's last few movies and it did well at the box-office so it was considered a success. The premise for The Visit sounded pretty silly and the trailers underlined that quite a bit as it showed two old people acting strangely and two kids being terrified of them for no real reason. The film itself, it turns out, mixes comedy and horror convincingly and is refreshingly self-aware. This was something The Happening attempted years prior but the whole thing ended up being unintentionally funny and the "scary" parts came off as goofy throughout, despite the sinister premise. The two kids who supposedly film the events in this movie, Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler (Ed Oxenbould), are decent actors

Ever since The Happening , every new M. Night Shyamalan movie has been met with cynicism. His last film The Visit was surprisingly well received, however, and so was  Split , a horror thriller starring James McAvoy as a man with 23 split personalities who kidnaps three teenagers. The serial killer premise sets the tone for the rest of the film, which is easily one of Shyamalan's creepiest efforts. We follow Kevin (McAvoy) as he incarcerates three innocent girls while still attending his psychiatrist's sessions. Meanwhile, Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) and the other two teens try to figure out what's going on and look for a way to escape. Some of Kevin's personalities include a 9 year-old kid called Hedwig, the super intimidating Dennis and female mastermind Patricia. Your enjoyment of this film will depend completely on how you rate James McAvoy's performance which is both excellent but also wacky as hell. A lesser actor could have easily rendered Split either unwatc

I finally count down my Top 10 Best Films Of 2016 . Sorry Sausage Party ...

From the director of The Fugitive comes Collateral Damage , an action thriller from 2002 starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a fireman who is out for revenge after his family is killed by terrorists. The film was a flop at the box-office and that's not too surprising seeing as it was released only under a year after 9/11 and it's unlikely that everyone was already in the mood for this kind of movie. That said, this was a very decent, action-packed flick with an Arnold Schwarzenegger on top form. After the underwhelming (and very wacky) The 6th Day , Collateral Damage was a welcome return to good old-fashioned over-the-top action films, even if audiences hardly flocked to it and critics didn't exactly praise it. Apart from a few dodgy CGI effects, the film looks great and it's just good to see Arnie going around punching people in the face, throwing people off cliffs, setting fire to everything and bursting into rooms shouting and wielding a baseball bat. There'

From the director of Take Shelter and Mud comes another cult oddity starring Michael Shannon. Midnight Special is a science-fiction film about a young boy with unpredictable abilities who is being driven out of the city by his father as government agents hunt them down. Very much a nod to all those E.T. -style sci-fi films of the 1980's, Midnight Special remains a modern update rather than a straight-up homage like Stranger Things . The tone and pacing throughout is about as gloomy and slow as you'd expect from a Jeff Nichols film so if you're looking for big action sequences or tons of trippy effects then this will probably disappoint. The cool thing about Midnight Special is it really doesn't feel like a science fiction movie so when something out of the ordinary happens it has an impact. The mood is pretty depressing from start to finish which is rare for a movie of that type but appropriate as the characters all journey towards a goal that can only mean one

Another year, another Nicolas Cage film you never knew existed but which somehow got made and was released when you weren't looking. Dog Eat Dog can now be found on Netflix, it co-stars Willem Dafoe and it is, believe it not, pretty good. The opening sequence of the film is arguably one of last year's most brutal scenes, which sets the tone for Dafoe's character, a pathetic yet psychopathic ex-con nicknamed "Mad Dog" who joins his partners in crime Troy (Nicolas Cage) and Diesel (Christopher Matthew Cook) for one last job. Directed by veteran filmmaker Paul Schrader, known for co-writing some of Martin Scorsese's very best films and for making off-beat thrillers himself, Dog Eat Dog definitely has a quirky plot that feels like something the Coen Brothers would tackle or have tackled since one of the scenes even involves Cage stealing a baby à la Raising Arizona . There is humour in the film but the several funny lines or moments you'll find are super

As the first season of the new Westworld series on HBO finally wraps up, it's time to look back at the film that started it all. Penned by Michael Crichton and released in 1973, the movie was a descent into hell as the world's most ingenious theme park slowly but surely meets its end. Guests pay a lot of money to visit Westworld, a recreation of the Old West with realistic-looking robots populating the town. You can interact with them however you please, you can even shoot them but they can't hurt you. There's also an equally convincing Roman World and Medieval World not too far away. We follow two guests, Peter and John, played by Richard Benjamin and James Brolin respectively, as they enter the park and try out some of its key features like duelling with enemies, drinking, fighting, breaking out of jail and, of course, visiting the brothel. When the scientists running the show discover some discrepancies with the robots, whose sensors have become temperamental,

There are plenty of Stephen King movie adaptations out there, enough to fill a small country, and this is one of them.  Children Of The Corn was released in 1984 and was based on one of the legendary horror writer's short stories. Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton play a couple who struggle to make their way back to civilisation after driving into an already dying child on a road near a cornfield. As it turns out, they have entered a town completely populated by kids who not only killed off every adult around brutally but who are part of some bizarre corn-themed religious cult. When poor old Vicky (Hamilton) is kidnapped, it's up to Burt (Horton) and a couple of younger kids to save her from being another human sacrifice. The film starts off on a gory note as we see the creepy children turn a diner into a bloodbath in what is the start of their grown-up eradication. After that, the film slows down quite a bit and we spend some time following Vicky and Burt wandering around