TheRetroCritic

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Guillermo Del Toro's Pacific Rim was something of a breath of fresh air back in 2013. The increasingly tedious Transformers franchise was still going strong so finally seeing a genuinely fun and well made movie about giant robots fighting was hugely satisfying. For all its flaws, Pacific Rim was exactly what it sought out to be: a modern yet proudly cheesy version of Robot Jox crossed with a deadpan Japanese Kaiju movie. This was a thoroughly entertaining visual treat with some memorable city-set fight scenes and one delightfully over-the-top Idris Elba speech. Pacific Rim: Uprising takes place some years later as we meet Elba's character's son Jake Pentecost (John Boyega), a former Jaeger pilot turned thief who sells Jaeger parts on the black market. When he encounters Amara (Cailee Spaeny), a street-smart young orphan who has managed to make her own Jaeger, they are both caught by the Defense Corps and put to work as new recruits. As China's Shao Corporation g

I rant at length about Transformers: The Last Knight .

Michael Bay returns to direct yet another Transformers sequel as the popular yet also critically reviled franchise again promises a darker, more emotional film packed with big, bombastic action scenes and a post-apocalyptic setting. Transformers: The Last Knight opens on a perplexing note as we're thrown into a full-on battle involving the 12 Knights of the Round Table including Merlin the Wizard (not kidding): a Stanley Tucci in full Monty Python mode. As it turns out, Merlin's magical powers were lent to him by early Transformers who allowed him to unleash dragons and such. Somehow, this has an impact on present day where Transformers are outlawed because they are blamed for reducing parts of Chicago to dust. Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) is given a talisman by a dying Transformer Knight and he becomes the titular "last knight" as he is supposedly chosen to help defeat evil. With Optimus Prime busy floating in space and talking to octopus-haired robot villaine

In this 39th episode, Adam (aka The RetroCritic) and fellow film buff Jamie discuss movie news and get an exclusive interview with Batman at this year's London Film & Comic Con. Also look out for a full review of  Transformers: Age Of Extinction  with special guest Dale (@Silent_Consumer).  CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE EPISODE CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE EPISODE Email us here if you have any questions, requests or contributions:  bigrewindpodcast@gmail.com Or simply comment below :) Oh and you can also find us on  iTunes  where you can subscribe to the podcast and download every episode thusfar! @TheRetroCritic @Silent_Consumer retrocriticblog.blogspot.com thebigrewind.blogspot.com youtube.com/SilentConsumer youtube.com/TheRetroCritic youtube.com/Cablogula

As we enter the Age Of Incomprehension, so do the Transformers enter the Age Of Extinction . In other words: what WAS this movie?! Now, a lot has been said about the Transformers franchise and about its director. With each release comes a backlash usually mocking either Michael Bay's incompetence, how silly the films are, the leads' miscasting or the bots themselves. Well... This one won't be any different, I imagine. Which is a shame seeing as this is easily the best (read: least painful) Transformers film since the first one. Having said that, Bay's asking for it, at this point. After the surprising return to form that was Pain & Gain , this would have been the perfect opportunity for the director to take the money-grubbing franchise into a new, more involving, better direction. On the plus side, the grating Shia Labeouf is absent this time around, replaced by the infinitely more appropriate and likeable Mark Wahlberg, a man who can make even the wo

Ok, so Michael Bay's latest Transformers movie, Transformers: Age Of Extinction , finally got a trailer this week, thanks to the Superbowl, and it was... well, interesting. Now, unfortunately you still have human characters running around screaming, which I'm guessing is all they can do in this movie since the Autobots look a bit too busy with those Dinobots and Decepticons to really pay any attention to them. The trailer opens with some fun Autobot action in the countryside: Complete with dramatic moments: And cars being sliced in half: Punkass Decepticons... Alright, so the trailer does a good job at keeping your attention throughout but, just in case, it still finds the time to fit in a big-ass gun: And some space action: After some awkward slo-mo shots of Mark Wahlberg and co, we finally get some short glimpses at the main action sequences in the film: Green Autobot with parachute jumping out of a building before taking

You'd think something as simple as big robots and big monsters would be super easy to get right in a movie, but with the likes of the Transformers trilogy and 1998's Godzilla in its back catalogue, that kind of flick badly needed a makeover. Good thing Guillermo Del Toro knows roughly what he's doing! Yes, Pacific Rim is the Hellboy director's take on monster movies and big robot movies: the result? A decidedly fun, brainless mesh of anime-style melodrama, epic nonsense, cartoonish lols and  Robot Jox -type live-action 80's goofiness. It's very retro, very silly but very cool. It's one of those movies you can't take too seriously and demands that you sit down, suspend your disbelief quite a bit and enjoy yourself. Nitpicking Pacific Rim would really be missing the point. Now the reason that some pan the Transformers movies, me included, is that their flaws really are completely distracting and do affect the style the films themselves are going

And you thought Pacific Rim was a crappy title... Yes, Atlantic Rim is the infamous B-movie-making machine that is The Asylum's own take on the new Robot Jox -style blockbuster. Taking the rough idea of big robots (with people in 'em) versus big reptilian monsters, we are once again given a healthy dose of godawful performances and cheap CGI. The one kinda known actor in this one is Graham Greene, who was most recently seen in The Twilight Saga . He plays an admiral in a movie which, sadly, isn't much of a step up from the teen vampire franchise. After an oil rig gets sunk by something no-one can explain, a group of pilots are sent down underwater inside giant robots to find the wreckage and stop whatever is causing such chaos. Why the army had Transformers in the first place and why they couldn't have just sent cameras down to the ocean floor instead of risking lives and billions of dollars is still beyond me. In any event, we focus on a pilot trio who are all

It's hard to describe my anticipation for Michael Bay's new attempt at a Transformers live action film. On the one hand, seeing a good Transformers film would blow me away so there's always THAT hope, on the other hand... Transformers 2 ... The prospect of sitting through another 2 and a half hours of moronic, nonsensical, offensive cheese with robots thrown in was a painful one but I just had to know if Bay could sink any lower than Transformers 2 or, god forbid, make something half decent! But Mr Pearl Harbor did not disappoint with a follow-up every bit as childish, stupid and tasteless as its predecessor but minus the fun and 10 more minutes thrown in. Now that said, I should point out that this effort is probably better than the last one if only for some impressive effects, no Megan Fox and no racist robots. Yes the pain is diminished slightly but new pain is introduced through countless stereotypes, macho homophobic humour, rampant sexism, music video-style