TheRetroCritic

Well, the polls have finally closed and I can now reveal that the Best Film Of 2012 , for the faithful followers and visitors of The RetroCritic blog is none other than... SKYFALL Seeing as 007's latest was more or less shunned by both the Golden Globes and the Oscars, I'm quite happy that at least here, on this tiny-ass blog of mine, we finally all came together and agreed: Skyfall was awesome. Although I personally enjoyed every Daniel Craig Bond films to date, Quantum Of Solace was hardly a hit with most so Skyfall, in some ways, was a return to form. Not just that but it celebrated the 50 years of Bond considerably better than when Die Another Day tried to reference past Bond outings. After the whole MGM mess, the future of 007 was unsure and we waited quite a bit of time for his next adventure so the fact that Sam Mendes delivered the goods and didn't disappoint was very refreshing. What we got was a smart thriller, a gripping action movie which deve

Just when you thought the Lord Of The Rings movies couldn't possibly get any more epic, Return Of The King comes along and blows its predecessors completely out of the water. Which is not to say that the other two films weren't great but in terms of sheer cinematic grandeur, this really raised the bar for the swords and sorcery genre big time. All those plot threads and countless subplots which didn't always feel like they were going anywhere come together and we finally get the epic resolution we deserve. Between those crazy battles involving giant elephants, a Witchking, dragon-type things and about a gazillion people and the more quietly distressing ring-bearer quest, which looks pretty doomed to failure throughout, there's hardly a moment to breathe! It's even a bit hard to list everything that even goes on in this movie. Let's just say that the highlights include John Noble being awesome as crazy old Denethor, Legolas taking down an elephant all by hi

Alright, let's get the annoying technical stuff out of the way first. Unknowingly, I saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey  in "high frame rate", which means that my eyes not only had to take in 3 hours of crazy fantasy visuals but in 3D and at 48 frames per second. Forgive me if I sound a bit bitter about that, I'll make sure not to let that taint my review of the movie itself. I will say, however, that if you want to see The Hobbit: check it out in 2D or 3D, don't high frame rate that shit. The CGI stuff just doesn't gel with the real stuff and you just end up watching what feels like dudes with big fake noses and big-ass plastic feet wearing silly costumes. Which, in essence it is, but you're taken out of the movie SO quickly and so much that you're just left squinting your way through what looks like a low-budget 90's BBC fantasy TV series. Anything slightly fake-looking make-up/costume/background-wise is emphasized to the max and that rea

A new power is rising... The Fellowship is scattered: Boromir's gone, Gandalf is seemingly dead, Merry and Pippin have been captured, Sam and Frodo are on their own. Nothing seems to be going right. The Two Towers essentially follows these three plot threads (plus several subplots) as everyone goes on their own individual missions. Aragorn, Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) are on track to go and save Merry and Pippin, the latter, however, have escaped on their own and are hanging out with tree people (Ents). The trio's mission then changes and they're finally off to a big battle. We also get some terrific new characters, this includes Brad Dourif's Wormtongue, a guy who somehow, by looking like Tim Burton's Jim Carrey and being called "Wormtongue" managed to become the king's main advisor. You've got Dredd himself, Karl Urban, as Eomer, David Wenham as Boromir's bro Faramir and warrior princess Eowyn (Miranda Otto)

Happy Hobbit Day!  

Reviewing each film in Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings Trilogy individually or picking a favourite out of the three is actually not an easy task. They're pretty indispensable to each other but let's try and single this one out for now regardless. This is where it all began:  The Fellowship Of The Ring . You know the plot, bearded dude shows up on some old Hobbit's doorstep, sends his nephew on some huge, crazy suicide mission involving a ring of power that could potentially destroy everything good on Middle Earth through some big orange angry vagina eye on top of a scary tower. Preposterous? Yes. But in J.R.R. Tolkien and Peter Jackson's hands: magic. No fantasy epic has even come close before or since to reaching the scale and sheer grandeur of this trilogy and doing it this well (sorry Narnia), these are big far-out stories involving elves, dwarves and goblins and yet it feels important: you're invested. Not an easy thing to achieve. Back in the 80&

Are you ready? You better be: *creams*

The Wizard Of Oz is great, and I LOVE Return To Oz . I even enjoy The Wiz , as strange as it is. So Wicked , as teen-friendly as it seemed, I was expecting to enjoy at least as a diagonal look into the darker side of that world. The result was pretty much what I expected with the odd surprise here and there. Some good, some not so good. The musical plays out like a Harry Potter / Legally Blonde crossover with green-skinned Elphaba taking her sister to Shiz University where she is soon ridiculed and cast-aside because of her peculiar looks. On the other end of the spectrum is the crazy-popular Glinda, a typical dumb blonde stereotype you've seen in every single US high-school teen comedy. The musical follows both characters as they clash, become the best of friends and come apart again when life in Oz gets a tad too complicated. You've got a basic love triangle going on in which some dude called Fiyero goes out with Glinda at first only to later fall in love with Elpha

Up-and-coming young reviewer FraserLazer22 tackles Batman Begins and The Dark Knight . Thanks! :)

Master piss-taker Axis Of Ornament contributes his geniusely tacky take on The Dark Knight Rises with a poster you'll never forget. Click on the image below to see it! Also check out his loltastic mini Bat-comic . Thanks for the contribution!

Well, it's the weekend and although many more Batman things are in store for the rest of Bat Month, including my thoughts on The Dark Knight Rises , here's more DC goodness in the shape of the first teaser trailer for Zack Snyder's Man Of Steel starring Henry Cavill. Wow, a "gritty" Superman movie?! It's so crazy it just might work... 

More Bat-related genius from AxisOfOrnament . Click on the jacket-wearin' bat for more.

Yay! Fellow BFF Axis Of Ornament contributes one of his genius comics to Bat Month! Click on baby Batman to read ;) You can find him on Twitter @AxisOfOrnament and on our goofy observational blog enterthesnowman .

Starring Billy Dee Williams, sci-fi turkey  Alien Intruder gets the Best Of treatment.

I knew it! You remember how ass Clash Of The Titans was? Man, now THAT was one boring-ass blockbuster completely with near-absent 3D, blank characters and a serious lack of imagination. When the trailer for Wrath Of The Titans came out, I was surprised: this actually looked like a film! It looked like they might just have fixed the original film's shortcomings... And lo and behold: they did! Wrath Of The Titans is exactly what Clash should have been: a cool, stylish action movie that throws everything at you leaving you feeling all pumped-up, ready to punch an eagle in its stupid face. Non-event Sam Worthington's back but this time he's got a better haircut and a lot more stuff to do so we thankfully get very little of him being essentially a potato from which sounds come out of. The look of the film is much grittier and dustier making the action sequences feel much less like plain CGI fests and more like big, impressive, fuck-off scenes that actually do deserve t

After the success of Casino Royale , Daniel Craig's second Bond movie came with a lot of anticipation. The heat was on and people wanted confirmation that the first movie wasn't a fluke and that Craig was indeed a worthy 007. Unfortunately, Quantum Of Solace failed to wow audiences and since then the film is often dismissed as either the lesser of the latest Bond films or simply a disappointment altogether. Complaints usually involved the grittier Bourne-style approach (shaky cam, destructive indoor fist-fights, lots of jumping around), the somewhat underwhelming opening title sequence and the super serious tone palpable throughout. But you know what? The so-so Jack White/Alicia Keys musical theme aside (check out the actually great rejected theme "Forever - I Am All Yours" ), Quantum Of Solace is still one badass Bond outing and, in some ways, outdoes Casino Royale. Yes the film is very much inspired in style by the Bourne movies but frankly, I personally r

Cowboys & Aliens may still be fresh in our minds but that doesn't mean we should NOT have another movie with cowboys and aliens, right? ...right? Come on, you know those two things kick ass and you know you want it... again. That's how John Carter begins: like a moody old western complete with saloons, the cavalry, feather-wearing native Americans and Sergio Leone-style swagger. "Beans: beans is the first item..." "My name is Carter. John Carter." Cut to: MAGIC! Shazam! WHOOSH! Mars. Fair enough. I mean there's no need for Disney to screw around with horses and sarsaparilla and shit when you can just beam to Mars! So anyway, Mars looks great. It's like CGI heaven but the effects are actually awesome. Like Avatar awesome. You've got these kinda gross-looking green guys with four arms, their even grosser-looking babies, some bulldog-type fast-as-shit mutt and loads more goodies. The Mars humans, on the other hand, are