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OZ: THE GREAT AND POWERFUL - REVIEW

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After Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland received mostly unimpressed reviews from critics and audiences alike, that the studio jumped right into yet another fantasy classic reboot/sequel/prequel/whatever is surprising and somewhat risky. Then again Alice In Wonderland made a badgillion dollars at the box office... So yeah, never mind. It makes perfect sense lol This time around, we get Sam Raimi taking on the works of L. Frank Baum, and when I say that I mean it very loosely because we don't get a sequel involving Dorothy and co or even an amalgamation of Baum's third and fourth Oz books (tackled brilliantly in the 80's by Return To Oz ). No, we're following the wizard himself! Not quite what you'd expect but an interesting take on the whole thing, let's see if it works. After all, the first film was called The Wizard Of Oz not "Dorothy's Big Adventure". Mostly... yes. It does work. Ok, I'll get the bad stuff out of the way

BEST FILM OF 2012 - THE PEOPLE'S CHOICE

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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

SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS - REVIEW

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Here's a movie the trailers and posters really didn't help. Quite the opposite, in fact. The trailer passing the film off as some kind of Farrelly Brothers-style farce mostly involving Sam Rockwell laughing his ass off and the posters misrepresenting the psychopaths in question and giving us one of the worst taglines you'll ever hear: "They Won't Take Any Shih Tzu" Urgh... The film itself is actually closer to something like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang : a clever, sharply written, funny little dark comedy with an almost poetic look at its seemingly cartoonish characters. Colin Farrell is a depressed alcoholic writer trying to write a script for a film incidentally called "Seven Psychopaths", but he's stuck and needs to find several more psychos before he can finish it. His dog-kidnapping friend, played by a scene-stealing Sam Rockwell, is very keen to help, though, by ANY means necessary. By stealing a nutty Woody Harrelson's dog, this begin

SKYFALL - VLOG 07/11/12

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I talk Skyfall for aaaages. Warning: SPOILERS ahead.

SKYFALL - REVIEW

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How do you revive a formula over 20 movies in? How do you keep the series fresh and interesting? You Skyfall . If Casino Royale  was the reboot the Bond franchise needed, then Skyfall is the boot up the reboot the Bond franchise needed. After a long wait, this new installment had to deliver, especially seeing as Quantum Of Solace was pretty poorly received by critics and audiences. With a mammoth running time of two and a half hours, a cool trailer preceding it and a promising cast, Sam Mendes' new Bond looked set to be something pretty special. And indeed, I'm happy to report, it is. Here we have a Bond film which not only sets out to tell a compelling 007 tale but honor the now 50 year-old franchise with tons of clever, sometimes quite subtle, references to classic Bond films not to mention a more personal and, ultimately, more meaningful approach to the character. Yes you've got your old Aston Martin, your baby Q (played by Ben Whishaw), new gadgets but Skyf

SPIDER-MAN 3 - REVIEW

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Widely recognised as THE worst Spider-Man film to date, Spider-Man 3 was Sam Raimi's final outing as the Marvel hero's puppetmaster. Watching it back when it came out I was left entertained but a little bit confused to say the least. It looked like a decent Spider-Man movie and yet... Something was a bit off. Spider-Man 3 sees Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) yet again screwing things up with Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) and donning the black Venom suit as a million other things happen. You've got Thomas Haden Church turning into The Sandman and causing havok around the city for whatever reason, you've got James Franco's Harry Osborn finally taking over the Goblin suit (well, a  snowboard and a Cobra outfit), you've got Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard) being introduced... it's certainly a handful and much more than just the usual mad-scientist-goes-nuts scenario. By the end you'll be wishing for a straight-forward mad scientist plot though... A lo

WRATH OF THE TITANS - REVIEW

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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

SKYFALL - TRAILER

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Finally, here is the first teaser trailer for 007's next: Skyfall . Doesn't give much away but man are they going for "epicness" this time around. Looks fab. Bring it on.

SKYFALL - TEASER POSTER

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Here's the first teaser poster for 007's new Sam Mendes-directed outing Skyfall , expect a trailer on Monday! It doesn't tell us much more about the movie itself but it'll have to do until Monday. Lets hope that Bond isn't actually 5cm tall and doesn't walk inside an actual gunbarrel in the finished film though, that would be ridiculous...   Hilariculous in fact! 

SPIDER-MAN - REVIEW

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Sam Raimi may not have seemed like the most obvious choice as director for this first proper Spider-Man movie at the time but he proved everyone wrong creating a popcorn movie with enough entertainment, humour and faithfulness to the comic books to feel like a worthy attempt. The film begins with tedious narration more suited to a Dr Seuss animation and closes with it as well so not the most promising of starts but from the moment we actually meet Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker things start making sense. Raimi goes for a lighthearted tone actually well suited to the character and the whole film feels very much like a comic book. The build-up to Parker becoming Spider-Man is perfectly handled with the film ticking all the right boxes in terms of superhero origin stories: teen romance, tragic family crisis, growing powers/puberty, bullies, clear villain... It's cliched but in a good way. There's a sense that it's all very self-aware and knows what it's doing. I sh

WRATH OF THE TITANS - TRAILER

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Ok, remember how boring and soulless Clash Of The Titans was? Wow. ACTUALLY badass. Well, we shall see... Lets not build a false myth!  *canned laughter*

SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS - PRE-PREVIEW

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Some films sound so good they shouldn't even exist. Shame it's a comedy, for a second there I thought this was gonna be dead serious. And therefore hilarious. Sadly, being built as a joke it might end up feeling a little too self-aware. Fuck it, I'm seeing it.

COWBOYS & ALIENS - REVIEW

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You'd think with a film called Cowboys & Aliens there'd be very little room to mess things up. I mean, how much more straight-forward can you get? Just get some cowboys, a bunch of aliens...voila! And yet Cowboys & Aliens doesn't quite get there... Now don't get me wrong: it's a decent film and I really enjoyed it. But alas it falls just short, like all the other summer blockbusters we were treated to this year, of being actually awesome. Which is pretty frustrating as, much like Super 8 and Horrible Bosses , they had the material and everything served up to them on a plate. All they had to do was not spill anything! Here's the thing, it's really quite simple: if you're going for something purely retro like an 80's Spielberg flick or a cowboy sci-fi in the style of Westworld it's your DUTY as a filmmaker to leave the CGI out of it as much as you can. Yes stop-motion monsters can look animated but so does CGI and at the very least

GHOST RIDER - REVIEW

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After watching Ghost Rider for the first time since I saw it at the movies back in 2007, I re-read the review I'd written at the time: in a nutshell "1 star, avoid". What's with the anger? What drove me to banish Ghost Rider to 1 star Hell? I seriously don't know. I mean, I remember hating the first bit where you see a young Johnny Blaze making a deal with the Devil, I remember hating Eva Mendes, I remember hating the direction... Now don't get me wrong, the first bit is pretty bland, Eva Mendes is annoying and the direction feels more suited to a music video than anything else. But then there's the Ghost Rider! Sure the CGI isn't exactly top of the line but the Rider scenes are all pretty gosh darn awesome: riding in town melting parking meters, riding up and down buildings, pulling down helicopters with chains, riding with a fiery Sam Elliott cowboy, melting a jail cell... pretty kick ass. It's just a shame Nic Cage feels misca

EVIL DEAD 2 - REVIEW

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Absolutely brilliant reimagining of the first Evil Dead as a slapstick comedy. Consistently creative and hilarious, Sam Raimi clearly has the time of his life here as Bruce Campbell gets drenched in every bodily fluid known to man whilst giving cinema some of its best and least subtle one liners ever. "Groovy!" indeed this is. And as if the first Evil Dead wasn't insane enough we now have evil hands, laughing deer heads, headless dancing corpses and god knows what else to worry about. Evil Dead 2 is probably one of the most chaotic films you'll ever experience but if you have a slightly twisted sense of humour and enjoy a good horror film, this is a treat. This sequel has a notably more significant budget than the first Evil Dead which relied mostly on DIY practical (and make-up) effects not to mention lots and lots of screaming to create the required atmosphere. Here, Raimi spends the dough wisely and makes this second instalment the best and most

HELL COMES TO FROGTOWN - REVIEW

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  Slightly disappointing, Hell Comes to Frogtown not only had THE best title (Hell is the main character's name) but also THE best premise. The result is definitely a fun ride but there's a lot of filler and the plot never becomes quite as glorious as the title suggested. This is one of those silly cult 80's movies which could actually benefit from a (CGI free, please) remake. Unfortunately Robert Rodriguez can't do everything. But as it stands, the froggy adventures of badass stud Sam Hell are only humorous, not quite genius. Shame. Roddy Piper, fresh from John Carpenter's excellent They Live , is a great sport here as he is sent to Frogtown to impregnate pretty much any human women he can find. The whole time he is forced to wear metal briefs with a small flap to allow...access. A lot of fun but the version in your head is probably way better.