TheRetroCritic

Adventures In Babysitting was a 1987 comedy directed by Chris Columbus about a babysitter who is forced to drag the kids she was meant to be watching to downtown Chicago in order to help out a friend thereby having to deal with more chaos than she bargained for. Elisabeth Shue is Chris Parker, the babysitter in question who we first meet dancing around her bedroom as she gets ready for a date. She is unfortunately then told by her boyfriend, played by a young Bradley Whitford, that the date is a no-go so she reluctantly agrees to babysit someone's kids: the rather geeky Brad (Keith Coogan), who has a crush on her, and his Thor-obsessed little sister Sara (Maia Brewton). When Chris' friend Brenda (Penelope Ann Miller) runs away from home then promptly regrets it, Chris now has to go and pick her up downtown with the kids, including Brad's goofy friend Daryl (Athony Rapp) who decides to tag along. After their car loses a tire, it all goes downhill from there are they mee

The film that cemented for many of us the awesomeness that is Karate, the film that made Ralph Macchio into an eternal teen movie star, the film that gave true meaning to fence-painting and car-waxing, the film that turned showers into a legitimate Halloween costume, the film that made children befriending strange old men totally ok... I'm talking, of course, about The Karate Kid . Here's a perfect example of what makes a great sports movie: a film which glorifies the sport at hand to the point where it really makes you feel like it's super-important and actually quite deep without really being about the sport itself and focusing on the characters and their story arcs. The philosophy at the heart of Karate is the key component which drives the film and gives this troubled Daniel-san focus. It's also the reason why good old Mr Miyagi (Pat Morita) is as iconically loveable as he is in these movies, always dispensing abstract yet ever-valid wisdom and effortlessly k

Kevin Bacon is the invisible man in a film directed by Paul Verhoeven where Bacon loses it and starts using his newfound power in creepy, disturbing, criminal ways. Why wouldn't you like this movie?! I mean, ok, so as an effects-led flick, Hollow Man was always going to risk looking dated really quickly and, admittedly, whenever we see invisible Bacon surrounded by smoke or water, it looks a little too clean CGI-wise. That said, most of the effects are still pretty cool and do the job so, 14 years on, the film still stands up surprisingly well. After all, Paul Verhoeven has made a career our of movies which really shouldn't work and yet work completely, often becoming instant cult classics. Arnie on Mars? Space bug wars? Robot cops? Really boring Michael Douglas movies? The man can make anything work. Even Showgirls ! Can't deny how hilarious that movie is. Hollow Man takes H.G. Wells' classic invisible man, leaving behind John Carpenter's more light-hearte