TheRetroCritic

Another lesser known Christmas comedy, The Ref  (aka Hostile Hostages) was released in 1994 and it starred Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey as a bickering couple on the verge of a divorce who are taken hostage by a petty thief on Christmas Eve. We first meet the couple as they attend a marriage counselling session which quickly goes off the rails. Meanwhile, criminal Gus (Denis Leary) is in the process of robbing jewelry from a nearby home but that also backfires and the thief is forced to get a ride from someone so he kidnaps Lloyd and Caroline (Spacey and Davis) and gets them to drive him back to their house where he ties them up. Gus' plan to wait for his bumbling partner to come up with an escape plan proves more difficult than anticipated when Lloyd and Caroline's incessant disputes prove to be more than distracting. Then there's the couple's rebellious son who comes home unexpectedly and the rest of the dysfunctional family, led by Lloyd's cold, possessive mot

Trapped In Paradise was a comedy released in 1994 about two ex-con brothers Dave and Alvin (Jon Lovitz & Dana Carvey) who convince their brother Bill (Nicolas Cage) to rob a bank with them in the small town of Paradise on Christmas Eve. Despite trying desperately to not be like his petty thief brothers, Bill nevertheless agrees to help steal the money from the bank when he believes himself to be a fugitive after an earlier incident involving the kleptomaniac Alvin trying to rob a convenience store. The robbery itself is a bit of a mess but it is successful, it's escaping from Paradise which proves to be the real challenge with bad luck and distractions getting in the way. As they meet more and more of the city's genuinely friendly and caring inhabitants, they start to have second thoughts about keeping the money. The Lovitz, Carvey & Cage team is an unlikely one and, indeed, Nicolas Cage feels very much like the odd one out but this is quite appropriate for the ch

It was never going to be easy for this 1994 remake of the Christmas classic Miracle On 34th Street to capture the charm of the beloved original. Writer and producer John Hughes was no stranger to holiday-themed movies after the success of the Home Alone franchise so if anyone was going to make it work, it would have been him. The inspired casting of Richard Attenborough as Kris Kringle right away should have been a clue that we were in safe hands. Indeed, there aren't many on-screen Santas who are more charming than Attenborough's in this film and that's with no confirmation at any point that this Kris Kringle is the real thing. Real or not, this Santa certainly feels like the real deal. Elizabeth Perkins plays Dorey, a mother who fears any kind of disappointment, going as far as to teach her daughter Susan (Mara Wilson) about how Santa doesn't exist, and who is reluctant to give a relationship with Dylan McDermott's friendly lawyer (paradox?) a chance. Whe

As the first season of the new Westworld series on HBO finally wraps up, it's time to look back at the film that started it all. Penned by Michael Crichton and released in 1973, the movie was a descent into hell as the world's most ingenious theme park slowly but surely meets its end. Guests pay a lot of money to visit Westworld, a recreation of the Old West with realistic-looking robots populating the town. You can interact with them however you please, you can even shoot them but they can't hurt you. There's also an equally convincing Roman World and Medieval World not too far away. We follow two guests, Peter and John, played by Richard Benjamin and James Brolin respectively, as they enter the park and try out some of its key features like duelling with enemies, drinking, fighting, breaking out of jail and, of course, visiting the brothel. When the scientists running the show discover some discrepancies with the robots, whose sensors have become temperamental,

After taking a general, critical look at the pros and cons of the Internet in Lo & Behold: Reveries Of The Connected World , which also came out this year, Werner Herzog turns back to nature to focus on volcanoes. Released through Netflix, Into The Inferno  presents itself as sort of a follow-up to Herzog's own documentary Encounters At The End Of The World since that's where he first met volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer who appears in and co-directs this latest outing. The film takes a look specifically at active volcanoes and how their isolated life affects the people living around them. The real theme explored here being the spiritual impact left by nature and Man's need to attach a higher meaning to his mysterious, timeless surroundings. Typically, the documentary isn't predictable as Herzog travels the world not only looking at volcanoes themselves, capturing beautiful images in the process, but also reflecting on significant events in history relating to

I finally talk about Arrival . Or will I finally talk about Arrival? Or have I...?

Released in 1988 and directed by Richard Donner, Scrooged was a modern retelling of Dickens' classic story  A Christmas Carol with Bill Murray as a particularly grouchy TV producer who is visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve. This marked a mini-comeback for Bill Murray after The Razor's Edge failed to make a dent at the box-office and despite Scrooged not sitting well with the likes of Roger Ebert, it's enjoyed something of a cult status since its release. This was certainly not the Scrooge re-imagining anyone was expecting as it's far stranger and more mean-spirited than you'd think, which might explain some reviewers' reservations. The tone throughout yo-yos between creepy and goofy so when the inevitable uplifting climax happens, you might find yourself too weirded out to really buy it. Perhaps part of the problem is that Murray sells his character's meanness too well so his 360 switch to "happy mode" needed more work to be convincin

One of Robin Williams' last films, A Merry Friggin' Christmas got a limited release in 2014 so you shouldn't be too surprised if you missed it. Unfortunately, good Christmas movies are hard to come by so let's see if this one is worth checking out. The film sees Boyd Mitchler (Joel McHale) and his wife Luann (Lauren Graham) having to spend Christmas with Boyd's father Virgil (Williams), who doesn't get along with his son, and the rest of the family. Boyd's primary goal, to keep the magic of Christmas alive for his young son, is soon put in jeopardy when he realises he forgot the kid's presents back home. He jumps in his car and sets off to recover them but he faces several setbacks along the way. In the vein of Bad Santa , this is a black comedy with a dash of Christmas spirit and it's a refreshing change from the sappy releases this season tends to churn out. This one isn't too focused on gross-out humour and, instead, it prioritises the t

Released in 1932,  Pack Up Your Troubles was Laurel & Hardy's second feature film and it threw the clueless duo in the middle of WWI as they are sent to fight in the trenches despite them initially trying to dodge the draft. They are quickly found to be incompetent and are sent to work in the kitchens but they eventually redeem themselves by (accidentally, of course) capturing a whole bunch of enemies when they take over a tank and ride it out-of-control over the trenches. When one of their soldier buddies is killed in action, Stan and Ollie have a new mission: take care of his little girl until they can find her grandfather. Most Laurel & Hardy features tend to be just farce but this one has a bit more heart and is therefore more reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin's films like The Kid or City Lights . There's something refreshing about seeing Stan and Ollie actually care about someone else and do everything they can, however clumsily, to see their good deed thro

Laurel & Hardy star in A Chump At Oxford , a feature released in 1940 in which a reliably down-and-out Stan and Ollie go to an employment agency and try out a couple of different jobs before realising that what they really need is an education. They first attempt a butler and maid job with Laurel pretending to be the maid, of course. A shambolic dinner party ensues as they unsurprisingly trash the classy gathering, and they are soon chased out at gunpoint. After unwittingly catching a bank robber who bumps into them when trying to flee while they were working as street sweepers, Stan and Ollie are offered a job by the thankful bank manager but, since they lack a proper education, he enrols them at Oxford University instead and they are promptly off to England. There, they somehow get lost in a garden maze where some undergraduate students play a bunch of pranks on them. This lands everyone in trouble with the Dean but then we discover that Stan is in fact Lord Paddington, an e