TheRetroCritic

I finally talk about DC's latest Suicide Squad . I'm known to be quite vexing, I'm just forewarning you.

The sequel to Son Of Batman , animated feature Batman Vs. Robin continues the story of Bruce Wayne and Talia Al Ghul's son Damian (aka the new Robin) as he is torn between being Batman's sidekick or joining Talon, an assassin working with The Court Of Owls. Still very much a wild card, Damian Wayne (voiced by Stuart Allan) is initially Batman's ally but he is constantly trying to do his own thing and is always conflicted about killing his enemies or sparing their lives. This affects his relationship with Batman (Jason O'Mara) to the point where he starts to consider joining another vigilante and eventually even fights his own father on the rooftops of Gotham. This is a tense, action-packed if loose adaptation of The Court Of Owls storyline and, while Son Of Batman was a little slight in terms of story, a lot happens in Batman Vs. Robin and it's never boring. The film makes an interesting parallel between Bruce Wayne's childhood and Talon's and we

Set before the Arkham Asylum video game but after Arkham Origins , Batman: Assault On Arkham is an animated feature by DC which sees the Suicide Squad attempt to retrieve The Riddler's cane from Arkham under Amanda Waller's orders. Two years before the Suicide Squad live-action movie, we got this animated adventure focusing on the dysfunctional team of villains which, this time, includes Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang and new recruits Killer Frost, Black Spider and King Shark. They are assembled after Batman (voiced by Kevin Conroy) captures The Riddler who may be holding information on the Squad he's planning to release to the public. Along the way, the team encounters Batman and The Joker (Troy Baker) who has his own agenda as he is plotting to unleash a dirty bomb in the city, just to make things more difficult for everyone. This is a busy little film with a lot of main characters to keep track of but it somehow holds together better than Suicide Squad

Based on R.L. Stine's popular kid-friendly horror books (and the TV series), Goosebumps was a theatrical feature adaptation released in 2015 starring Jack Black. It did well at the box-office despite a surprisingly healthy budget. I say "surprisingly" because you wouldn't really think that a studio would go all-in for a Goosebumps movie but this is a project that was in development for a long time so I would suspect that a good portion of the dough went into various scripts, casts and crews. In fact, as expensive as it may be, this movie still feels like a TV movie update on the old series. Sure the monsters are huge, detailed CGI creations but they are nowhere near as polished and impressive as you'd expect from a modern day blockbuster. This is a colourful, action-packed adaptation that playfully mixes together several memorable characters from the books including evil garden gnomes, creepy ventriloquist dummies, blobs and abominable snowmen as they are al

If you thought that going to a dinner party hosted by Niles from Frasier would be a lot of fun then think again as David Hyde Pierce proves he's not all there in The Perfect Host , a thriller from 2010 in which a criminal unexpectedly meets his match. Bank robber John (Clayne Crawford) is on the run, he somehow talks his way into a mild-mannered man's house in order to hide somewhere overnight. His host, Warwick (Hyde Pierce), mentions he's having a dinner party but, soon enough, John realises that he's stumbled onto one sick individual as he is drugged and shown graphic pictures of a man being gradually murdered. On top of that, Warwick's friends are all imaginary and John is forced to spend one crazy night indeed. This scenario feels very much like a rather tame version of The Human Centipede , Tusk or Texas Chainsaw Massacre in that someone stumbles onto a harmless setting that turns out to be quite the opposite. The Perfect Host definitely has its cree

Another month, another Disney remake... An update on the 1977 musical, Pete's Dragon sees a young child named Pete wander into the woods after his parents perish in a car crash and a friendly green dragon he calls Elliot takes him under its wing: years later, the inhabitants of a nearby town finally find Pete. Not that they were looking... The original Pete's Dragon may not have enjoyed quite as much praise as, say, Mary Poppins over the years but it remains one of Disney's most charming live-action films to date so a remake would certainly need to get Pete and his dragon right. Fortunately, the film achieves just that as young Oakes Fegley gives an appropriately wild performance as Pete and Elliot, while looking hairier and more dog-like, is still pretty adorable. Their friendship is once again the heart of the story and it still works. The big difference with this remake, however, is that Elliot isn't so much Pete's dragon as he is just a random

Here's the video version of my The Core review.

Here's the video version of my Pete's Dragon review.

In this special 70th episode of The Big Rewind , we talk movie news then play a Big-Ass Game! 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 ,  Stitcher ,  Soundcloud  and  Player FM  where you can subscribe to the podcast and download every episode thusfar! @TheRetroCritic #TheBigRewind retrocriticblog.blogspot.com thebigrewind.blogspot.com youtube.com/TheRetroCritic youtube.com/Cablogula

French comedy legends Louis De Funes and Coluche co-star in L'Aile Ou La Cuisse (aka The Wing Or Thigh?), a 1976 film in which De Funes plays a gourmet food critic who suspects that a fast-food chain is plotting to somehow stamp out good restaurants throughout the country and overseas. On paper this one may not sound like much but the fact that Charles Duchemin (De Funes) is so cunning when it comes to reviewing restaurants that he goes as far as dressing up like little old ladies and carrying around a bunch of test tubes in his pockets to carry samples of food he thinks might not be that fresh makes for some pretty creative and funny moments. There's a subplot in which his son and only heir Gérard (Coluche) secretly wants to be a circus clown and the villain Jacques Tricatel (Julien Guiomar) is an amusingly animated slimeball. Unlike many other films in which Louis De Funes plays an angry, ebullient character, in L'Aile Ou La Cuisse he's much more of a good guy a