TheRetroCritic

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I talk a bit about Alien: Covenant . 

I n this 73rd episode of  The Big Rewind , we review   Alien: Covenant ,   talk about  Ghost In The Shell and play Ridley's Believe It Or Not . 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

Ridley Scott's long-awaited return to the science-fiction genre was met with both praise and cynicism as Alien prequel (of sorts) Prometheus delivered in the stylistic department but failed to convince those more demanding fans of the franchise who perhaps expected something slightly different. Alien: Covenant is very much a direct sequel to Prometheus with Michael Fassbender returning as dodgy robot David and the story picking up some time after he and Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) departed for the Engineers' planet in the alien ship. Initially, however, we focus on new ship The Covenant and its crew who are travelling with thousands of human colonists and embryos in order to start a new life in a specific planet. Following a destructive accident in space which kills its Captain (an odd James Franco cameo), new robot Walter (also Fassbender) wakes up the crew and the new Captain decides to follow a radio transmission down to a nearby unknown world despite the fact it is

I talk briefly about new sci-fi horror film Life .

A few months before the release of Alien: Covenant ( Ridley Scott's latest entry into the long-running sci-fi franchise), comes Life : another creepy space-set horror thriller in which a group of astronauts are forced to face a thoroughly unpleasant monster. While some reviews for this movie might not go much further than mentioning how derivative it is since it is essentially a mix of Alien , The Thing and Gravity , one could argue that what it lacks in originality it makes up for in sheer terror and, in fact, surpasses some of the aforementioned films in some ways. Life may seem like a B-movie but it is so well made that dismissing it as just that would be unfair. The way in which the inside of the space station is shot really makes you buy the setting with its zero gravity and tight compartments as we follow the crew members floating through the station convincingly, something that Gravity didn't quite capture. The reasonable running time actually means the tension is

Based on a Michael Crichton novel, Sphere was a 1998 sci-fi film about a team of experts in various fields exploring some crashed underwater spaceship. Directed by Barry Levinson, the film boasts an all-star cast with Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone, Samuel L. Jackson, Peter Coyote and Liev Schreiber all being part of the main team. Sphere is a psychological thriller that's a bit like a cross between The Abyss , Event Horizon , The Thing and Alien as the more the selected experts investigate the spaceship, the creepier the tone of the film becomes. Eventually, characters start dropping like flies as various unexpected threats start popping up randomly from killer jellyfish to giant squids. The discovery of a gold alien sphere in the middle of the spaceship leads to growing paranoia among the crew and various twists and turns. There are references here and there to 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and, indeed, the film attempts to capture the book's sense of adventure and cla

Jonesy, the overdramatic cat from Ridley Scott's  Alien , takes on the movies!

It's not easy being a claustrophobic sci-fi horror. For one thing you have to compete with every Alien movie out there, then you need to adapt to a certain formula while introducing new aspects to the genre yourself. You can go the arty route with something like Solaris , or go for pure cheesy B movie lols Event Horizon -style, or go for something in-between like Sunshine . Being produced by Paul W.S. Anderson, you'd think Pandorum would be closer to Event Horizon and yet it feels more like The Descent . Think that movie directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Pandorum does look great and almost feels like a low-budget Prometheus or a less boring version of Dante 01 . As you can see, I've already listed like 10 other movies. Derivative much? Yes Pandorum is pretty much almost exactly like any other horror sci-fi film you've ever seen. Which is a shame because it does have its own good ideas and unique style. Rubbishy Descent-style monsters-aside, I like how gross

Back when Tim Burton films were still awesome and not "just ok", Mars Attacks! came out and gave us a delightful piece of 50's-style sci-fi B movie goodness complete with a stellar cast and Burton's own brand of surreal, nasty wackiness. It's funny to think that Independence Day came out the same year as Mars Attacks! since the latter feels like a complete spoof of Roland Emmerich's disaster cheese-fest. Burton's film takes the clichéd alien invasion formula we've seen in movies like War Of The Worlds , Earth vs The Flying Saucers or The Day The Earth Stood Still and gives it a playful edge. We see our world react to a potential alien encounter stupidly and naively. Rather than fearing the Martians, we're in fact pretty darn welcoming and peaceful about the whole thing. It's a clever take on that plot because in those old movies people are usually terrified of an alien invasion and completely overreact. Here, we only acknowledge how scre

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

Now Prometheus is finally out, I thought I'd take a quick look back at visionary director Ridley Scott's career and outline which of his films I've personally enjoyed the most so far. Here goes... 10 1492: CONQUEST OF PARADISE Well aware that this isn't THE most popular choice out there but I'm putting it in the list because of how... weird of a project this actually is. It's Ridley Scott basically making a Werner Herzog film with Gerard Depardieu playing Christopher Columbus and Sigourney Weaver as Queen Isabella I. The film itself is a dark, atmospheric, brutal mess with a lot going for it despite being a million hours long (I'm exaggerating). Underrated. 9  AMERICAN GANGSTER Did not expect to like this one. By the time the film was released I'd pretty much given up on seeing another good Ridley Scott movie ever again (walked out of the unforgivably irritating A Good Year ) but I gave it a shot and found myself weirdly getti

The film that started it all, Alien represents a director at the top of his game: Ridley Scott lends his classy, atmospheric, moody style to what is essentially a monster movie slasher horror flick and the result is both genuinely unnerving and unique. Not to mention friggin' great. Only very few Ridley Scott movies have that dream-like quality to them and although Alien is most definitely one of them, this is more of a nightmare than anything else. H. R. Giger's detailed, oppressive style shot so poetically creates an atmosphere that's comforting on the surface yet holds an underlying darkness and mean-spirited violent chaos at its heart. One second you're having a nice dinner with the crew, the next you've got blood spurting out of some guy's chest into your eyeballs. Yes Alien has that typical slasher template of people-being-killed-off-one-by-one-by-something-unpleasant but it's so well done you do get attached to those characters, no matter how

As I'm aware that Ridley Scott's latest sci-fi blockbuster isn't yet out in the US, I'll try to keep this review spoiler-free so the coast is clear. During my review of Scott's Robin Hood , I ranted the following: "Some directors are great at one thing in particular. Some are very versatile. Scott thinks he belongs to the latter category when really he's part of the former. Ever since his sci-fi/fantasy days (Alien, Blade Runner, Legend) he has avoided those genres like the plague focusing instead on Russell Crowe-led bore-fests like A Good Year or, indeed, Robin Hood" And here we are, several years later with Ridley Scott's sci-fi comeback which finally comes following some truly masterful marketing and several kickass, mouth-watering trailers. Big budget, big cast, big story: surely this is the comeback I was waiting for! Well, yes and no. On the one hand Prometheus is exactly what I wanted: Scott doing what h

Watching this third Alien film after a re-watch of Alien Resurrection certainly offered a contrast. Where one was somewhat reminiscent of Ridley Scott's original vision, the other felt more like a fun, if stupid, cartoon. It is quite a big leap between Alien 3 and Resurrection so lets see how the Alien Trilogy ended before it... began again. From the offset, Alien 3 stylistically pays homage to the first Alien with it's white/greenish tones and clinical feel rather than the bluey, sweaty look of Aliens . We are led to believe that this will be a back-to-basics outing with a focus more on atmosphere and subtle horror with less action but more impact. To a certain extent, this proves to be an accurate assessment: Alien 3 most definitely approaches the horror aspect of the franchise the way Scott went about it. You get several scenes where something thoroughly unpleasant is going on, whether it's gory surgery or an autopsy, and we mostly see the event through the charac

Reviews have sure been harsh with this one. I mean, I never hear anyone mentioning this fourth instalment into the Alien franchise without them groaning under their breath and complaining about how Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the man behind cutesy rom-com Amelie (and much less cutesy Delicatessen ) was the wrong choice as director blah blah blah... Ok, lets make this very clear: Alien Resurrection is by far the silliest, most grotesque Alien movie pre- AVP . It's hard to contest that. I mean, this one goes where no Alien movie has gone before: Crazy Town. You've got clones, gooey Alien birth scenes, basketball, that weird-looking guy from every JP Jeunet film, the not-so-clever premise that a thin sheet of glass could totally contain some 10 foot alien monsters no problem and...  SPOILERS    Winona-bot!   It's all-over-the-place, yes. But boy is it entertaining. A slow but involving build-up leads to the same type of walking-through-dark-corridors scenario Aliens was a

Remember in my Robin Hood review when I told Ridley Scott off for not going back to sci-fi and doing what he does best instead of these endless half-assed attempts at macho-pretentious thrillers, epics and comedies? Probably not. Well I said it and, you know what? After seeing the new Prometheus TRAILER (aka Alien prequel-ish, but not really, or is it?) I might have just developed super-powers because lo and behold: something which looks light years better than ANYTHING Scott's produced since the 80's! And it's sci-fi! *gasp* And give me a break, Gladiator was fine but an Oscar for Crowe? Really? I can grunt. Anyway, Alien prequel or not, Prometheus looks fab and if Scott's film is half as good as it seems I will gladly bow to him once more and have intercourse with my Blade Runner  DVD boxset. It's been too long...