TheRetroCritic

Critically acclaimed and comfortably ruling the top of the box-office, it looks like nothing can stop Pixar's Coco from becoming another significant hit for Disney, not even sticking a vastly unpopular Frozen  20 minute short at the front of it. Coco is the story of 12 year-old Miguel who dreams of becoming a musician like his idol Ernesto De La Cruz except his family has firmly been anti-music for generations so when they destroy his home-made guitar and forbid him to follow that path, he runs away to prove himself by playing music during the Día De Muertos festival. As he attempts to steal the long-dead De La Cruz's guitar in a cemetery, he is somehow transported to the Land Of The Dead where he learns that he'll need to get his family's blessing in order to come back to the land of the living. Revealing any more than that would be cruel so let's leave it at that story-wise. There's something familiar about Coco from the musical skeletons ( Corpse Bride

A selection of my deaths at the hands of the Grim Reaper during my last Castlevania playthrough.

After travelling through time in order to ace a school assignment, Bill and Ted are back and, this time around, they're not so much time travelling as they are dying and coming back to life, like a couple of rock Jesuses. The plot, this time, is much more intricate (well, for a Bill & Ted movie, anyway) as an evil baddie from the future (Joss Ackland) sends back a couple of Bill and Ted robots to kill off the original Bill and Ted, take over their lives and ruin the battle of the bands they're meant to be participating in thereby denying the world of a hard-rockin' future. Everything goes according to plan as the dudes are disposed of and their "princesses" are tossed aside by their evil counterparts. The duo's adventure then mostly takes place in the afterlife where Bill and Ted foil Death by giving him a "melvin" (wedgie), hang around as ghosts for a while then try to escape from Hell, attempt to break into Heaven and challenge Death to a

Shot at the same time as Charlie And The Chocolate Factory , Corpse Bride was Tim Burton's first animated feature as director despite having tried his hand at stop-motion animation before with early short effort Vincent and, of course, The Nightmare Before Christmas , which he produced but didn't direct. Like the title suggests, this one's both very wedding themed and death themed. The plot sees nervous Victor Van Dort (Johnny Depp) be forced into an arranged marriage with Victoria Everglot (Emily Watson) except everything goes wrong, or even more wrong, I suppose, when Victor mistakenly proposes to a corpse he mistook for a tree branch. The corpse in question, bony, maggot-infested Emily (Helena Bonham Carter) accepts the offer and soon drags poor Victor down to the land of the dead to meet her pals. To further complicate things, Victor had taken a shine to Victoria and sinister fellow Lord Barkis (Richard E. Grant) is trying to step in as her husband while Victor&#

Remaking genius cult B-movie Death Race 2000 was either going to end up being a very bad idea or a very good idea. The film (think Wacky Races with gore, Sylvester Stallone and boobs) said pretty much all it had to say it seemed. But here we are with a Jason Statham B-side actioner that's... Neither bad or good, really. More the latter than the former, though. The film opens with a cool car chase involving masked driver Frankenstein (played by David Carradine in the original film and rocking a cameo here), a really good start: the cars look great, the action's fine... That is, until the character is killed off! Yeah, then it becomes a prison movie for some reason with Jason Statham getting locked up after being wrongfully accused of killing his own wife. It's like Steven Seagal came in and rewrote the movie! It's not bad but it's not quite what you expect walking in, frankly. Thankfully, though, things finally get down to business and the movie gets bac

What do you get when you cross Mad Max with The Cannonball Run , Wacky Races and Rollerball ? I'll tell you what: the best thing ever! AKA: Death Race 2000 . In the dystopian future of... the year 2000, a super-violent race takes place between nutty drivers in silly costumes and goofy-ass cars during which you're expected to score points through multiple hit-and-runs. It's a cruel, messed-up world where the US President approves of and promotes a mindless, murderous sport, where euthanasia is performed by wheeling patients onto the road and waiting for Sylvester Stallone to run them over in a knife-wielding car and where David Carradine walks around in tight, leather overalls, a mask and a cape under the name Frankenstein. Sorry Grand Theft Auto but you've got nothing on this one. Here's a cult 70's flick which doesn't stop being bonkers from start to finish. It's a cartoon and it knows it, occasionally going off into Wile E. Coyote tange

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

I bet you never thought you'd see Zach Galifiniakis, Ted Danson and Jason Schwartzman in a movie together let alone an entire TV series! Well, show creator Jonathan Ames clearly had a unique vision and his latest show Bored To Death makes it work seamlessly. The series follow Schwartzman's struggling writer as he goes through a painful break-up, puts an ad on Craigslist as an unlicenced private detective and becomes just that. Ted Danson is his charming, ever so slightly eccentric boss and Galifiniakis is his bearded, weary cartoonist friend. The first season focuses primarily on Ames (Schwartzman) leaving little room for George (Danson) and Ray (Galifiniakis) to develop their own storylines. They mostly pop up here and there to make themselves useful and add some quirkiness to the proceedings. That said, the last 3 episodes of the first season finally gives us what we want as our main cast finally unites and everyone is given a fair chance. From the terrific "Beautif

Blaming Twilight entirely for the recent burst of corny teen nonsense (shriek! abs!) is easy but one mustn't forget all the Hannah Montanas and High School Musicals which helped kick start the new trend of (shriek! abs!) pseudo-romantic teen movies. Yes Dear John , I'm pointing at you too. You wartime-set, letter sending...bastard. Anyway, so one could say Twilight is partly to blame for the spread of (shriek! abs!) naivety throughout modern cinema but the real culprit really is Disney. And with the company now proud owner of the rights to Marvel films, god help us all... And so we get to Zac Efron (shirek! abs!). I managed to avoid 17 Again but I have to say the trailer for Charlie St Cloud was unintentionally funny enough to spark my interest. The High School Musical alumni's puppet-like stare and Mentos-selling grin might just provide some welcome comedy! Charlie St Cloud, indeed, was pretty funny. But also pretty harmless. As a film I was expecting something n