TheRetroCritic

After the resounding success of Twilight , director Catherine Hardwicke went on to direct a more teen-friendly, melodramatic take on a classic Grimm tale with Red Riding Hood . The film, it turned out, had very little to do with Little Red Riding Hood and was mostly just a thinly-disguised excuse to have yet another supernatural love triangle plot involving werewolves and young girls with mixed emotions. Oh, and Billy Burke. Gotta have Billy Burke. Amanda Seyfried is Valerie, the red hood-wearing gal who falls for a woodcutter when her family decides to set her up with another young man who is much more well-off. This is all mostly irrelevant and uninteresting and the movie itself seems more interested in its "whodunit" plot which involves a telepathic werewolf (don't ask) who is terrorising the village and some nonsense about how Mars, when aligned with the Moon, can affect the werewolf's bite or whatever. The big question throughout the film being who cou

Read the review HERE .

Twilight wouldn't be Twilight without its soppy, confused love triangle and, indeed, this is where that pretty much properly began. In this second installment of the Saga, Bella is afraid of growing old while Edward remains the same and Edward is worried he won't be able to protect Bella for much longer. Turning Bella into a vampire would make too much sense so instead the couple break-up and Bella goes into depression before bonding with a bulked-up Jacob (Taylor Lautner, Sharkboy). Edward spends most of his time off-screen or as some kind of smoke-ghost Bella can only see when she goes and does something dangerous and intense-TO-THE-MAX like riding motorcycles and jumping off cliffs. And... riding motorcycles. Yes, when Bella realizes she can catch a glimpse of her vamp ex whenever she is being absurdly stupid she proceeds to do that. A lot. New Moon is often quoted as being the best of bunch purely because we're introduced to those darn werewolves and therefor

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

I've wanted to do a stupid little comic series breaking down movie franchises as absurdly as possible for a while now... Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: The Twilight Saga .  In a nutshell. Got a few more planned so let us know what you think!

It's crazy to think that True Blood came out the same year as Twilight . It's just nuts. I mean, Twilight is the bad Disney movie take on vampire lore! True Blood is just... Good. The show sees that modernized Twilightness and gives it a very welcome, and very clever, tongue-in-cheek anything-goes rock-n-roll attitude combined with an effortless Near Dark cool you certainly haven't seen in a while when it comes to vamp flicks/series. The first season takes a familiar route with random murders being committed by a mysterious killer, typical TV plot ( Twin Peaks , anyone?), the whole thing being a whodunit that just happens to also be about vampires and a whole hidden world humans have no idea about. The show is set in a time where humans and vampires have learned to live side by side with vampires settling on a blood substitute, a drink conveniently called "Tru Blood", but obviously unspoken tensions between both still exist. As the season goes on, wh

lol

Ok, two new trailers for Twilight: Breaking Dawn Pt. 2 and it's looking good. By that, of course, I mean lolgasmic. "She was born, not bitten. She grows every single day!" Gotta love that line. Then there's this one. "We have the same temperature now." Edward has a way with words. Also check out the last bit of that trailer, where Bella stalks a deer : GENIUS. Love that shit.

If Twilight: Breaking Dawn Pt.1 brought as many tears of lol to your eyes as it did to me, then you've gotta be looking forward to this second part. Speaking of which, here's a newly released picture depicting the happy family together for the first time: I'm loling already. Now lets have a look at how they came up with the idea for this teaser pic... Simple maths, really. + ÷ It's gonna be great.

So you've got Lucy Liu and vampires... In other words: you've got a film. It should have been so straight-forward: Liu in Underworld -style leather catsuits battling vampires as a rebellious blood-sucker herself. Nothing too original, granted, but hell, I would have been happy with that. Alas it's all up to the iconic writer of Snakes On A Plane (and director of Elektra Luxx ) to handle that challenging premise and things are not looking good... The film starts fine with ominous goings-on, the THREAT (*gasp*) of lesbian sexual interaction and Liu's prompt transformation into the vamp we all wanted to see. Then, I'm sad to say, the rest is a blur. It really is criminal that a vampire film starring Lucy Liu would mostly involve the actress walking around badly-lit rooms and following a plot that, frankly, is about as memorable as The Monkees' drummer. It's a mess and Liu's revenge quest never feels urgent or involving. Basically there is no act

Whether you like it or not: Twilight is a big deal. Not in terms of quality or artistic value of course but in terms of what an impact it's had on our teen culture. It was inevitable, then, that ripoffs would arise trying to cash in on the money-sucking saga. Obvious attempts that suddenly spring to mind include Red Riding Hood , Beastly and the subject of this here review: Blood & Chocolate . Pretend the title's less terrible than it is, it'll make this way easier. So why can Blood & Chocolate be called a Twilight ripoff/B movie? Well, lets see. You've got a young human/werewolf relationship, sparkly supernatural beings running around in forests, LOTS of walking and talking, copious amounts of cheese and... topless werewolves. Need I say more? The good news is that it's not Twilight. The bad news? It's worse. I'd say it's on a par with Eclipse but no: it's worse. I'll let that sink in. And it's not just the Twilig

Edward from Twilight , that nazi from Inglourious Basterds and Legally Blonde walk into a circus... Sounds like a joke, right? Well now it's a film. With a title like that and Trapeze -style melodramatic visuals, I have to say I expected something pretty hilarious and in all fairness this wasn't big or fun enough to be hilarious, only amusingly idiotic I'm afraid. Still, there's loads to enjoy here! You've got Christoph Waltz who excels once again as a demented villain with a genial way of playing with people's emotions. One second he's a giddy, loveable weirdo, the next he'ssingle-handedly beating up an elephant (a strangely Polish and peaceful elephant at that). He's, in a word: mad. Which is great! If only everyone else had put in some heart and effort into their roles we could have had something half decent here. A less vampiric Robert Pattinson once again delivers what, at first, seems like a dark, brooding performance but soon enou

Robert Pattinson sparkles in this inexplicably hugely popular first outing of the Mormon Sexless Teen Vamp Saga...sorry, I meant Twilight . The film starts promisingly in a little town where we meet Bella (a whiny Kristen Stewart), her dad and her new life as the new girl in high school. The one thing the film actually has going for it, to be fair, is the way it portrays small town ennui so enjoy this first twenty minutes as you will sorely miss them. And then the vampires come in (lol), strolling in like Purity Ring-wearing badasses into the school canteen looking not-at-all suspiciously pale and blinking with their not-at-all strange yellow eyes. Pattinson's hair defies gravity and he always looks like he's lost a small olive and he's trying to figure out where he might have dropped it. He has tantrums about the perils of biology class and takes 5 days off school because his new lab partner smells like putrid virginity. In a highly perplexing scene, both meet for