TheRetroCritic

I crawl through the last couple of tough bosses in this final chapter of my Castlevania playthrough.

Here's the trailer for Hayao Miyazaki's final (?) film The Wind Rises , which should be out early next year:

Before Sylvester Stallone breathed new life into the Rambo franchise with a particularly violent new outing, he gave Rocky one more shot with Rocky Balboa and miraculously did not mess it up. This sixth Rocky instalment should have been a disaster or at least an unforgivably bland retread. Instead, Sly takes what made the old Rocky movies great, updates all the characters to what they would be like in present day and makes it work. He doesn't go down the dumb, "let's make Rocky into James Bond" route Die Hard 4.0 style focusing more on the emotional baggage those much older characters are carrying. Adrian has died, so has Mickey, Rocky's on his own running a restaurant, his son (played by Heroes ' Milo Ventimiglia) wants nothing to do with him and although he's got the respect of those people who recognise him as the legendary boxer he is, there's just something missing. Meanwhile, some new boxing champion is dissatisfied with the criticis

Indiana Jones faces off one final time against those dastardly nazis who, once again, are after a powerful religious artifact and ultimately world domination (of course!). This time, Indy is joined by his father (Sean Connery), Alison Doody's deadly femme fatale and his long-time bumbling pal (played by Denholm Elliott). After a rather strange trip down the Temple Of Doom , here we are back to the basics, so how does it fare? Rather "intolerably" well, to put it simply. For many, Raiders Of The Lost Ark will forever remain the best Indy movie but for me, just the fact that we've got Sean Connery along for the ride rather than Karen Allen's damsel in distress makes it the better film. It just feels bigger, slicker and overall more entertaining than any other Indy movie. The film itself plays out like The Da Vinci Code (but GOOD) crossed with Raiders and although there's a lot of familiar things here from past Indy films it still feels as fresh and origi

Climbing back up the hill after cult classic cinematic catastrophe The Happening was always going to be a tough one. With The Last Airbender, Shyamalan takes a small step in the right direction but still falters on so many levels making this last effort better than his Mark Wahlberg turkey but just about. M Night Shyamalan's de-evolution as a filmmaker could be traced back to when he really became Shyamalan the "auteur" with Lady in the Water . The latter had its merits and was wrongfully underrated upon release but it was flawed, clunky and uneven like no other Shyamalan film had been before. Even a lesser effort like Signs felt focused and acutely paced and executed compared to it. One can only conclude that M Night is just not a good screenwriter. The naivity and annoyingly juvenile undertones of his ideas just fly through his script pages like concords cancelling all senses of danger, suspense or darkness from the finished material. A horror film like The Happeni