TheRetroCritic

Yippee... well, you know.

There's a fine line between over-the-top and just plain preposterous. Back in the late 90's, a bunch of people actually thought that having Nicolas Cage and John Travolta literally switch faces in a big-budget action thriller was a good idea and thus, Face/Off was made. To be fair, that does sound like the best thing ever. And, in a way, it kind of is. I mean, don't get me wrong, this is one really dumb flick but in terms of sheer ridiculous fun, it works brilliantly. Not only do you have John Travolta overacting his face off but you've got The Cage himself overacting his face off, both actors somehow trying to outdo themselves throughout in the let's-be-cartoon-characters department. It certainly helps that directing the film is the king of clichéd OTT cop thrillers, John " Mission: Impossible 2 " Woo, a man for whom doves and Mexican stand-offs are not only worth having in every movie but are a must. The plot is utter goofball nonsense from t

It’s no secret that Nicolas Cage has a thing for the medieval and antique weirdness in general: castles, sorcery, all that stuff. So when long time friend and financial benefactor Jerry Bruckheimer approached him with a tale which would see him play Merlin’s apprentice, he no doubt jumped at the chance. I’m assuming this all happened before an initial glance at The Sorcerer’s Apprentice ’s script. There’s something about a Disney Nic Cage movie that doesn’t sit right. For one thing he can’t go all out Bad Lieutenant style and that means he can’t be the Cage we love and demand. Also, it means that the movie he’s in won’t exactly live to become a cult classic. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is every bit as bland as the trailers suggested and this looks set to be the one Cage flick EVERYONE will completely forget about. Yup, even more so than Season Of The Witch . The aforementioned script is mostly to blame. In a clumsy opening montage, we’re roughly told about

I wonder how many kids growing up reading Dr Seuss' Cat In The Hat ever pictured an overweight Alec Baldwin holding a six-pack of beer in the story let alone Mike Myers in cat drag! Oh well... Initially the film looks appropriately quirky and cartoonish but soon we realise that the story mostly takes place in a living room so goodbye slick CGI suburbia, hello boring pastel-coloured...indoors. Because that's what kids enjoy: Indoors. Anyway, you remember everything that didn't work in Ron Howard's The Grinch ? The noisy, chaotic direction, the messy musical numbers, the intrusive score, the erratic editing, the overacting... Yeah that's all back. The Grinch could be forgiven for being a Christmas movie and for having an ever entertaining Jim Carrey as the titular green grump. Here, however, we're given a rushed, dumb, predictable mess of a kids film with Mike Myers desperately trying to insert some jokes here and there and there's really no re

Licence To Kill is one of those Bond titles I remember watching several times over the years and enjoying ok. When I think about it, all I can ever picture is someone getting eaten by sharks and a freakishly young Benicio Del Toro falling to his death down some kind of conveyor belt. A re-watch later and that's still all I remember from that movie! Not that it's bad, it's actually pretty decent, but something about it just fails to make it stand out from the pack for me. The plot is actually really good with Bond's long-time American pal Felix Leiter getting chomped on by the villain's sharks on his wedding day and Bond defying M by officially resigning from MI6 and going on a rogue revenge mission. Helping him on his quest is Bond girl #1 Pam Bouvier, played by Carey Lowell, who gets a strange, if yummy, makeover about halfway through and, believe it or not, Q who proves himself to be one hell of a friend by showing up mid-mission and helping out with

One year before Die Hard , a little film called Lethal Weapon came out and gave us a solid mix of 80's cop action and Christmas spirit. The film spawned several sequels, of course, and became one of the action franchises to follow. But how does the very first film hold up? Probably the darkest film in the franchise, Lethal Weapon focuses more on Riggs' (Mel Gibson) depression and Murtaugh's (Danny Glover) family life than the actual crime plot at hand, which almost feels like a subplot at times. The villains, Gary Busey's Joshua, a tough ex-army guy turned ruthless killer, and Mitch Ryan's General do pop up now and then, offering the odd action beat but all in all, this first film is more of a character piece about the slow building of an unlikely friendship. A lot of emphasis is put on Riggs' suicidal state following the death of his wife as we see him get dangerously close to killing himself and almost jeopardising various cases. Luckily, he's

Released earlier this year to the sound of mass groans and facepalms, The Emoji Movie was Sony Pictures' attempt at "Pixar-ing" a very current trend despite the fact it'll probably look and feel incredibly dated only 5 years from now. The main concept for this movie, a world inside all our smartphones where emojis live and show up whenever their specific emotion is called upon, might have been original and interesting had it been done before Inside Out or even Monsters Inc. Or any Pixar movie, for that matter. As it stands, The Emoji Movie is built upon a fatally flawed idea and whatever comes next is poisoned by that. There's also the fact that emojis don't exactly lend themselves to interesting character designs: mostly, the film just adds arms and legs to them and calls it a day in the hope that the celebrity voices will somehow distract from that laziness. The cast includes T.J. Miller as Gene (the "Meh" emoji), James Corden as Hi-5 (the o

The late nineties were a weird time. Nicolas Cage kept being cast in ridiculously overblown action movies ( Con Air , Face/Off ), Michael Bay was about to work with J.J. Abrams on Armageddon , dogs and cats living together: mass hysteria. Back in 1996, The Rock came out and combined the acting talents of Mr Cage and Mr Sean Connery in what seemed like an odd pairing, and, I suppose, in what  was an odd pairing, but which also worked surprisingly well. Knowing what we now know about Bay, The Rock is an interesting film to revisit because it's both very much his style and yet nowhere near as irritating or cheesy as the likes of Armageddon and Transformers 2 . I mean, of course you still get soldiers marching in slow-mo at sundown, insulting comic-relief stereotypes (look out for a gay hairdresser more concerned about hair than he is about bullets), perplexing one-liners ("How do you like how that shit works?") and ludicrous art direction but there's just somet

It's tough to beat a Bond movie at the box office, especially if your film is a B movie about cold fusion and goofy disguises. Tomorrow Never Dies was released the same year as The Saint and it's easy to see why the Val Kilmer-starring vehicle faded away into nothing. For crying out loud, Never Dies had a remote controlled BMW! The Saint had Elisabeth Shue with a heart condition. That the latter was turned down by a plethora of actors from Mel Gibson to Arnold Schwarzenegger is no surprise. All the ingredients for a fun light-hearted thriller are there and yet The Saint suffers from having one of the least inspired scripts I've seen in a long time. Who thought this was interesting? Some stock Russian gangsters want to steal the formula for cold fusion in order to fix some unlikely election. Meanwhile, some guy called Simon Templar helps them but then doesn't. THE END.  For aaaaages.  116 minutes on THAT boring-ass story? Surely you jest. The opening titles of T

Before Sylvester Stallone breathed new life into the Rambo franchise with a particularly violent new outing, he gave Rocky one more shot with Rocky Balboa and miraculously did not mess it up. This sixth Rocky instalment should have been a disaster or at least an unforgivably bland retread. Instead, Sly takes what made the old Rocky movies great, updates all the characters to what they would be like in present day and makes it work. He doesn't go down the dumb, "let's make Rocky into James Bond" route Die Hard 4.0 style focusing more on the emotional baggage those much older characters are carrying. Adrian has died, so has Mickey, Rocky's on his own running a restaurant, his son (played by Heroes ' Milo Ventimiglia) wants nothing to do with him and although he's got the respect of those people who recognise him as the legendary boxer he is, there's just something missing. Meanwhile, some new boxing champion is dissatisfied with the criticis

That Cop Out was so poorly received upon its release and became more well known for Kevin Smith's falling out with Bruce Willis than anything else is, frankly, a bit of a shame. Originally titled "A Couple Of Dicks" , Cop Out was meant to be a throwback buddy cop comedy in the vein of the Lethal Weapon series. Bruce Willis being the tough cop and Tracy Morgan being the goofy sidekick. The two cops are suspended after one of their cases goes stupidly wrong and this puts Jimmy (Willis) in a bind since he was planning to pay for his daughter's wedding instead of her irritating stepdad (played by Jason Lee). They find themselves getting back on the case since it coincides with Jimmy' lost pricy baseball card. Sean-William Scott pops up in what would have been the Jason Mewes role as a mouthy petty thief and he very nearly steals the show. Kevin Pollak does a good job as one of the rival cops from the station and Guillermo Diaz makes an intimidating villain, as

A new trend is born. Reboots of unpopular comic-book movies are treated as superior when really they're just as bad or as flawed as the films they're rebooting. Was The Amazing Spider-Man really miles better than Spider-Man ? Nope. Is The Wolverine really that much more watchable than X-Men Origins: Wolverine ? I know you're saying "yes" right now but... come on. The difference in quality is negligible. X-Men Origins: Wolverine is an unpopular Marvel outing. Why? With the exception of Hugh Jackman's ever reliable Wolverine, it got almost every secondary character wrong and went for mindless action rather than dark, raw, gritty yet heartfelt edge. Which is exactly what Darren Aronofsky's The Wolverine promised! So for a studio-friendly, 12A-rated film like THIS to come along and feel just as flawed as that other Wolvie pic did and, in fact, fail to bring anything new and different to the table, I gotta say, that's quite a slap in the f

Zack Snyder is a weird one. Directing career so far: 300 , Watchmen , OWLS, Sucker Punch, Superman. I can't say it's been a smooth, flawless ride so far but it's been...interesting. Even the best of the bunch, Watchmen, was far from perfect and failed to to live up to the source material's deeper aspects. What it seems to come down to is a disconnect between style and content. Snyder's films, Sucker Punch included, look fab from start to finish and the over-ambition is always welcome as it gives us the sense that there's nothing Mr Snyder will shy away from. Alas this can also prove to be something of a curse. Titanic scales, tedious slo-mos, gratuitous sex/violence, CGI up the ass, grungy pop music...these seem to be regulars now when it comes to Snyder's films. He's like a Michael Bay wrapped inside a Robert Rodriguez. And although I can't stand 300 and care not for owls I enjoyed Watchmen in parts and was looking forward to this new comic b

With computer-generated effects having reached a noticeable level of sophistication in the mid-90's, more and more films decided to use CGI in a bold way including Jumanji and Casper , both released the same year. The latter also jumping on the old cartoon/comic-book remake bandwagon. While critics were generally lukewarm towards this movie, audiences flocked to it making Casper a significant box-office hit back in 1995. The film opens with the obligatory nod to the classic cartoons as a group of kids enter a creepy mansion, take one look at the typically friendly Casper and freak out completely. We are then introduced to paranormal therapist Dr. James Harvey (Bill Pullman) and his daughter Kat (Christina Ricci) as Casper encourages them to visit him and they are hired by shady haunted mansion owner Carrigan (Cathy Moriarty) to get rid of its ghosts once and for all. Casper takes a shine to Kat but his Ghostly Trio "uncles" Stretch, Stinkie and Fatso start to cause

Seto No Hanayome (aka My Bride Is A Mermaid ) may not sound like the best show seeing as it's mermaid-themed and brings up all kinds of Splash flashbacks, or "Splashbacks", if you will. Splash was a fun comedy but an entire anime series like that? Hardly sounds worth it. And yet, here is a guilty pleasure I don't even feel all that guilty about enjoying! The plot sees a young dude, Nagasumi, almost drown before getting saved by a mermaid called Sun. All should be well that ends well except that humans aren't meant to know about mermaids, mermen, all that crap, so Nagasumi is brought in to meet Sun's family, who are basically mobsters, and he is given the choice to either die or marry Sun. It's a really random sitcom plot but boy do they make the most of it! We follow Nagasumi and Sun as they try to make their impromptu engagement work and Sun's father goes ape shit trying to resist the urge to destroy Nagasumi. Along the way, the couple get in

David O. Russell is back with yet another Oscar-nominated film starring both Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. This time, though, we're at the heart of 70's Jersey with added Christian Bale and Amy Adams. The plot sees con man Irving (Bale) get together with Amy Adams' sexy bad-English-accent-imitating gal Sydney as they start a relationship and form a partnership which both turn sour when cocky FBI agent Richie (Cooper) decides to use them in order to expose corruption high-up. The nutty plan involves getting close to Mayor Carmine Polito (a perfect, vastly underrated Jeremy Renner), getting the mob involved using a fake Sheik and taking dodgy dealings as far as possible so the FBI can just swoop in and pick up the pieces. Unfortunately, Richie is no convincing con man and his inexperience keeps getting in the way, as does Irving's mouthy wife Rosalyn (Lawrence) and about a thousand other things. Russell's film can be seen as a homage to Martin Scorsese

An early-ish Hayao Miyazaki effort, Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind  followed The Castle Of Cagliostro and was based on one of his own mangas and, although it was produced pre-Studio Ghibli, it opened the door for more classic anime features from the legendary director. The film is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi adventure in which a princess called Nausicaa, who flies around in a weird little portable surf glider... thing and has a special bond with nature, becomes Earth's saviour in the middle of a potentially devastating conflict. Her people are taken over by the Tolmekian kingdom who are planning to use some weapon to destroy all the mutated giant insects in the land. Nausicaa, whose father is killed in the struggle, sets out to stop this disaster since pissing off the insects would only result in yet another global disaster. The last of which was caused, you've guessed it, by Man's greedy bullshit. As you can tell, this plot's all pretty environment-themed, whic

Two years after Disney tackled the tale of Rapunzel with Tangled , we now get Frozen , a slightly more Christmassy outing based on The Snow Queen. Another one word title, again in the past tense? Is it the same movie? Happily, it's not really, though there are obvious similarities. For one thing, we're back worrying about princesses and their problems involving unpredictable magical powers. This time, we follow two sisters, one of which, Anna, has the power to control snow, ice and just about anything Wintery and cold. This isn't a big deal until she accidentally hurts her little sister Elsa. After that, their (crappy) parents erase Elsa's memory with the help of a bunch of rock trolls and decide to keep both kids locked-up in the castle for ages. I have soooooo many problems with this whole plot so far I don't even know where to start but I'll just keep going so you can understand what doesn't really work about this movie and then I'll talk abo

Having never been a fan of Roger Moore's take on Bond, I have to say that, with the exception of Live And Let Die , I barely remembered the likes of The Spy Who Loved Me or For Your Eyes Only . So revisiting those was a bit of a must. The Spy Who Loved Me is Moore's fourth movie and as such lacks the oomph and general quality of the first couple of outings but it does fit into the pre- Moonraker category not only literally (it IS just before Moonraker :P) but also in terms of it being before Moore's films started getting really, groaningly ridiculous. This one sees Bond face a nutty villain with an underwater/overwater lair who enjoys sending people through an elevator down to a shark-infested pool of death Team America 's Kim Jong Il-style. 007 is joined by Russian Agent XXX who is played not by Vin Diesel but Barbara Bach, queen of B movies and... whatever Caveman was meant to be. Sadly, she really is the weakest link in this movie performance-wise making her