TheRetroCritic

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Michael Keaton's long overdue comeback is still on the right path as The Founder gives the actor yet another great role for him to sink his teeth into. He plays Ray Kroc, the man who saw the McDonald's brand back in the 50's and just knew he had to have it. This is one biopic that could have gone either way. The Founder could have easily just been an extended ad for the fast food chain or a highly critical look at it but this isn't so much a film about McDonald's as it is about the American Dream and how chasing it has its pluses and minuses. We first meet Ray Kroc as he struggles to sell milkshake mixers to various diners. He's married, lives in a nice house yet he feels like something is missing. It's when he discovers the first McDonald's restaurant, promising meals in 30 seconds instead of the half-hour it takes to get anything at a drive-in, that he has an epiphany. This strikes him as an idea too good not to expand all across America but the

Happy Madison returns with Sandy Wexler , another Netflix-exclusive release starring Adam Sandler. This time, it's a biopic of the titular talent manager, who managed Sandler among many others. The film focuses on Wexler's discovery of a talented unknown singer he also falls in love with. While this is a rare genre for Sandler to tackle, we're very much in familiar territory here between his usual team's countless cameos (Schneider, Vanilla Ice, Lovitz etc.), the actor himself doing a silly voice and reliably goofy humour throughout. Essentially, this is your typical agent-finds-talent/talent-outgrows-agent story in the vein of Broadway Danny Rose , except with a corny love story at its heart and a cartoonish tone. Jennifer Hudson portrays Courtney Clarke, the singer Sandy first meets performing in a duck costume for kids in a Six Flags amusement park and she's easily the most likeable aspect of this movie. She's obviously talented and never becomes the div

Back in 1992, Richard Attenborough directed Chaplin , a biopic of Charlie Chaplin chronicling the auteur's childhood and rise to fame starring Robert Downey Jr. in the titular role. The film was partly based on Charlie Chaplin's autobiography but we get the feeling that Attenborough probably thought Mr Chaplin was being tight-lipped about parts of his life in it hence why the movie's framing device is Anthony Hopkins' fictional biographer interviewing an older Chaplin further. Very early on, it becomes apparent that, despite him not being British, Robert Downey Jr. was the ideal choice to portray the comedian. The actor being not only physically close to how Chaplin looked but delivering a layered, convincing performance throughout. Attenborough appears to make a conscious decision to not recreate Chaplin's films instead focusing on the man himself and showing clips from the actual classics right at the end. The film gives us a lot of information on who Chapl

Tim Burton's latest, Big Eyes , tells the true story of 1950's-60's artist Margaret Keane and her relationship with then-husband Walter Keane in what is the director's first biopic since Ed Wood . Though the film does explore Margaret's (Amy Adams) art and its popularity, the focus here is on how Walter Keane's (Christoph Waltz) appropriation of his wife's work changed her life in a time when women had little say. After Margaret allows Walter to take all the credit for her big eyed creations (despite a clear initial reluctance), the become something of a sensation and the couple's lifestyle improves radically over the course of only a few years but the cost of giving up her artistic rights become too much for Margaret who is soon forced to live a lie. Tim Burton directing Ed Wood made perfect sense: a big fan of horror and sci-fi B-movies, the man behind the likes of Sleepy Hollow and Mars Attacks!  wanted to pay homage to another hugely enthusiast

Dustin Hoffman takes on the role of iconic 60's stand-up comedian Lenny Bruce in Lenny , director Bob Fosse's first post- Cabaret film. The movie, which is presented to us in gorgeous black and white, follows Bruce's relationship with stripper Honey (Valerie Perrine) as they get married and eventually share some tumultuous times together. We also, of course, see how Bruce's career as a comedian developed over the years and get a good glimpse of the sleazy side of his character and comedy clubs. Though the film is about Lenny Bruce, one of the most important comedians to date, I wouldn't expect too many laughs with this movie as it's far darker and moodier than you'd expect. There's a fascinating contrast throughout the movie between the cornier aspects of Bruce's early style of comedy and the raw and gritty 70's style of the film itself. Fosse certainly doesn't sugar-coat anything and even includes some documentary-style Q&A's w

After popping up in The Wolf Of Wall Street and just before ruling the HBO airwaves with hypnotic new show True Detective , Matthew McConaughey appeared in the Oscar-nominated Dallas Buyers Club and, once again, knocked it out of the park. The film follows a Texan rodeo cowboy/electrician, Ron Woodroof (McConaughey), as he is diagnosed with AIDS and has to deal with the reality set by his doctor that he might only have 30 days to live. The film is set at a time when new experimental medication was being introduced to treat the disease by the FDA but there were doubts about the best approach to take. Woodroof is a dude that's hard to warm up to seeing as he's pretty homophobic and at times even racist. That said, the movie manages to still make you like the guy as he slowly educates himself about the disease and eventually becomes friends with Jared Leto's transgender woman Rayon, who is also HIV-positive. The change in Woodroof's character is one you'd expect

So the Coen Brothers are finally back with yet another Oscar-nominated effort, Inside Llewyn Davis , starring the conveniently first-named Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake and John Goodman. The movie follows a fictional folk singer's journey to try and make his music relevant at a time when folk music was transitioning more towards commercial pop. Llewyn Davis is a bit of a loser, that's hard to deny, jumping from couch to couch, always crashing at family/friends/ex-girlfriends/strangers' apartments, not really working. At the same time, though, there's a purity and an honesty to his music you do respect and want to see be rewarded in the end. This is a much less caricatural Coen Brothers film than we're used to, none of it is over-the-top and, although Davis is a made-up dude, this still feels like it could easily be a true story. Much more so than Fargo , a film which actually claimed to be based on true events. You still get some memorable char

I should start by confessing that I tend to miss Steven Spielberg's more serious efforts and instead usually wait patiently for his next sci-fi epic. I missed War Horse but flocked to Minority Report three times upon its release, to give you an idea. Maybe I'm an idiot but... Tom Cruise riding a jetpack! Come on! Lincoln is the type of film you don't need to watch to see, if you catch my drift. It's typical Oscar bait with loads of talking, loads of courtroom "action", loads of safe lighter-hearted moments, big performances and smoky rooms. You've seen the trailer: you've pretty much seen the movie. That said, I am happy I saw the whole thing. All in all, it's hardly unpredictable, especially if you know what historically happened, but it keeps your interest until the end mostly thanks to terrific performances and a sharp script. Daniel Day-Lewis is as good as you'd expect, as is Tommy Lee Jones and although Lincoln is pretty darn l

So they're making a film about Alfred Hitchcock starring Anthony Hopkins as the legendary filmmaker and he looks like this: I honestly can't get over how bad this looks. I mean, have they ever  seen the real Hitchcock? This odd, plasticky fellow above looks more like French right-wing politician Edouard Balladur... Or even... Actually, he looks more like... Ok, to be fair the knife tie thing is pretty clever. Not sure it's clever enough to get me hyped for this one, though. After all, the tagline is "Good evening".

What makes a good biopic? An accurate cast? An involving story? Strong emotional conflicts? Yes, all of those, of course. But also a good biopic needs to tell us something new about the person being looked at. Otherwise, what are you left with besides people in funny disguises? Not much it seems, as My Week With Marilyn clearly demonstrates. From the offset it's clear that although there is a lot there story-wise to work with, the film will never even begin to scratch the surface of what's essentially the meat of the whole thing. Instead of focusing on Monroe's struggle to work in a film with Laurence Olivier, which could have had some dramatic potential, we instead follow the whole thing through the eyes of young Colin, some lucky-ass kid with no apparent personality, whose kinda-affair with the star is told through pretentious voice-overs, unlikely reconstructions and dialogs. All in all, we learn that Marilyn Monroe had trouble being recognized as a "rea