TheRetroCritic

Here's a movie the trailers and posters really didn't help. Quite the opposite, in fact. The trailer passing the film off as some kind of Farrelly Brothers-style farce mostly involving Sam Rockwell laughing his ass off and the posters misrepresenting the psychopaths in question and giving us one of the worst taglines you'll ever hear: "They Won't Take Any Shih Tzu" Urgh... The film itself is actually closer to something like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang : a clever, sharply written, funny little dark comedy with an almost poetic look at its seemingly cartoonish characters. Colin Farrell is a depressed alcoholic writer trying to write a script for a film incidentally called "Seven Psychopaths", but he's stuck and needs to find several more psychos before he can finish it. His dog-kidnapping friend, played by a scene-stealing Sam Rockwell, is very keen to help, though, by ANY means necessary. By stealing a nutty Woody Harrelson's dog, this begin

Talk about a good set-up! You've got a cool title, a kickass Duran Duran theme song, Christopher Walken, Grace Jones, all in a Bond film! How is this not widely known as THE best 007 flick out there? I'll tell ya: HORSES . Yeah, you know what's not cool to have in a Bond film? An extensive amount of time spent talking about or riding horses. I mean, I like the countryside and the pooey smell of stables as much as anyone but... Remember that scene in Goldfinger where Bond is playing golf with the titular villain? Now imagine if that scene was about an hour long. Ouch. Alright, I know it sounds like I'm panning A View To A Kill pretty harshly, but don't get me wrong: I like the movie! Christopher Walken's Max Zorin is a cool villain, Grace Jones is as striking as ever as henchwoman May Day, I like the opening ski scene, as silly as it is, and the third act is actually pretty darn decent. You've got a chase up and down the Eiffel Tower, Bond a

Further proof that the Depp/Burton formula CAN work beyond Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood , Sleepy Hollow sees the tale of the Headless Horseman being told through a Hammer horror-style flick complete with a creepy forest, dodgy townspeople, witches, curses and a cowardly prim-and-proper lead. Depp is Ichabod Crane, a character usually depicted as butt-ugly but this time... not so, the science-minded investigator from New York who finds himself looking for logic in the small town of Sleepy Hollow when strange head-choppin' murders start mysteriously taking place. Soon enough, a skeptical Crane finally gives in to the idea of a headless horseman and adapts to the supernatural in order to find who really is behind all this. As straight-forward as it sounds, this is one surprisingly complex plot so you'll have to pay attention if you're going to even get the 'Scooby Doo' reveal at the end. This is Tim Burton still at his most creative and although I've sai

Some films sound so good they shouldn't even exist. Shame it's a comedy, for a second there I thought this was gonna be dead serious. And therefore hilarious. Sadly, being built as a joke it might end up feeling a little too self-aware. Fuck it, I'm seeing it.