TheRetroCritic

Good Christmas specials are so hard to find these days. Most of my and your favourites are probably extremely dated by now. Luckily, here comes Marvel Super Hero Adventures: Frost Fight! to save the day. The animated feature takes The Avengers and sends them on a quest to find Jolnir, the legendary Santa Claus, before Loki does since his plan is to steal his powers of bending space and time. They travel to space using a portal built by Tony Stark and end up on a Christmas planet, because why not. Meanwhile, Thor and The Hulk stay behind on Earth to help fill in for Claus should he not be found. Rocket Raccoon and Groot, from the Guardians Of The Galaxy , are also involved as they land on the same planet and meet with Mrs Claus. The entire thing is, as you can tell, completely ludicrous but it doesn't take itself seriously at all, remaining tongue-in-cheek throughout. In fact, Frost Fight! is surprisingly very funny: you've got Rocket Raccoon fighting Gingerbread Men, Gr

I talk briefly about X-Men: Apocalypse . 80's style!

Released in 2014, Avengers Confidential: Black Widow & Punisher was an anime-style animated feature produced in Japan taking The Punisher and throwing him in an Avengers storyline led by Black Widow, of all people. How does that work? As it turns out, surprisingly well. Taking a page out of DC's book, Marvel lends its characters to a group of competent animators who, much like most of the Batman animated features, not only deliver a visually appealing film but respect the source material. The film doesn't take the easy route either: it would have been a breeze to just make an Avengers movie like the poster suggests, packed with familiar characters throughout, but the fact that this focuses on The Punisher and his unlikely collaboration with Black Widow is refreshingly daring and original. The plot sees S.H.I.E.L.D. clash with The Punisher (voiced by Brian Bloom) over a specific case which Nick Fury explains goes deeper than Frank Castle knows. The latter therefore

As the X-Men franchises continues its journey through time, Bryan Singer is back to direct X-Men: Apocalypse with Oscar Isaac taking on the role of the iconic titular villain. Set in the 1980's, the film follows the timeline of the last two movies and throws in some nods to the original trilogy. If there's one thing the pre-titles sequence promises it's a much bigger scale but also one of the most out-there X-Men movies to date. If you thought a time-travelling consciousness and big evolving robots were too much then wait till you get a load of this adventure which opens in Ancient Egypt and leads us to the world's near-destruction. With the exception of a cool poster (above), the marketing for this new X-flick was clumsy and, as a result, I had little hope it would be any good. The first pictures released of Apocalypse looked awful and the Internet soon compared him to Power Rangers villain Ivan Ooze, then the trailers made it seem like it was essentially The Je

Following the success of the first two films, it was obvious the turtles trilogy would soon be completed and, sure enough, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III was released in 1993 and it did well enough at the box-office despite receiving mostly negative reviews. The plot this time sees April O'Neil (Paige Turco) get sent back in time to feudal Japan because of some magical sceptre she found in a flea market. The turtles soon go after her but they find themselves quickly separated and in the middle of a local conflict between Lord Norinaga (Sab Shimono) and his own children who disagree with his desire for war and his dealings with shady English trader Walker (Stuart Wilson). Meanwhile, back in the New York sewers, Casey Jones (Elias Koteas) returns to babysit Splinter (now voiced by James Murray) and the Japanese warriors who have exchanged places with April and the turtles. The time travel aspect of the story is promising and yet you get the feeling right off the bat that it c

I review Popeye 2 for the original Game Boy.

Gotham is a weird one. The first season of Fox's Batman prequel series was an uneven mess with the odd clever moment or likeable performance here and there. What should have been a simple detective show focusing on a young Jim Gordon trying to bring the person who killed Bruce Wayne's parents to justice turned out to be packed with over-the-top obscure and familiar villains all entangled in conflicting subplots. For my review of Season 1, you can check it out  HERE . Season 2 promised the "Rise Of The Villains" and we certainly got a few more key baddies including the likes of Hugo Strange, Mr Freeze, Clayface and Azrael. The first half of the season is focused on Theo Galavan (James Frain), a member of the Dumas family out for revenge against the Waynes who supposedly disgraced his ancestors: he hires the help of Jerome (this season's Joker), his niece Silver St. Cloud (Natalie Alyn Lind), his sister Tabitha (Jessica Lucas) and the newly unhinged Barbar

I taste Hawaiian Punch , the Fruit Juicy Red kind. Whatever that means.

Released in 2012, Ultraman Saga was a Japanese superhero movie set in a post-apocalyptic world where cities are being invaded by Godzilla-style monsters as a team of big robot-controlling tough gals and the last remaining giant heroes try to defend what's left. Mixing CGI, colourful anime visuals and dudes in monster/Ultraman costumes, this is a modern precursor to Pacific Rim with a proudly retro look and feel. It is a sequel to Ultraman Zero: The Revenge Of Belial , released two years prior, and stars familiar faces from the series as well as members of the J-pop group AKB48 because pop stars make excellent actors, as we all know. The good thing about this one is you don't need to know anything that happened before because, fear not, the film is packed with flashbacks and exposition so it's all pretty self-explanatory. Hell, even without the subtitles I'm sure any non-Japanese speaker would easily figure out the plot: monsters bad, everyone else good. The afo

I rant and play a bit of X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse for the SNES as Capcom once again destroys me with yet another tough-as-nails beat 'em up.