TheRetroCritic

I review Dreamcatcher , one of my favourites. No, really.

Directed by Ben Affleck, Gone Baby Gone was a 2007 neo-noir mystery starring Casey Affleck as a private investigator hired to solve a missing person case along with his girlfriend, played by Michelle Monaghan. This Boston-set drama follows street-smart P.I. Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) as he conducts his own investigation, occasionally sharing his information with the police. He gets closer and closer to the truth about the missing little girl's whereabouts through his, often dodgy, contacts. His ability to talk to people on their level, without sounding condescending or too much like a cop, means he manages to get a lot more information from locals, criminals and other suspects. The plot is set into motion when the missing girl's mother makes an emotional plea for someone to find her daughter on television and the child's aunt soon hires Patrick, despite his initial reluctance to take on the case. The deeper he gets into this story, the more secrets he discovers le

During the late 80's/early 90's, Kevin Costner could do no wrong. So it's no surprise he was cast as Robin Hood in this 1991 blockbuster despite the actor not having an English accent in the slightest or having any interest in even attempting one. I guess this was only a few years after we all accepted Sean Connery as an Egyptian from Spain in Highlander so an American Robin Hood probably didn't sound like too crazy of an idea. Incidentally, Sean Connery does cameo in this movie as King Richard the Lionheart. Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves is one of those movies that really should not work and yet does mostly thanks to the fact it's a shameless, mindless blockbuster with enough cheese and ham to entertain even the most stubborn viewer. The familiar tale of Robin Of Loxley and his gang of misfits is told without many surprises but what it lacks in unpredictability it makes up for in gusto. Kevin Reynolds' movie follows Robin's journey from prisoner

Well this was a movie and it happened. As to what movie this was and what happened in it, I'm not entirely sure. Initially, Luc Besson's latest looked like a fun but dumb sci-fi thriller about Scarlett Johansson going around kicking all sorts of butts with super powers. Admittedly, that does take place in this movie but somehow, it doesn't really work. The main problem is that Lucy is REALLY dumb, to the point where each aspect of it becomes distracting. Hell, even the film itself is distracted as, during its first half, it keeps cutting to random footage of animals or whatever someone's talking about. If someone mentions reproduction, we get a montage of people and animals having sex, if someone mentions space, we cut to space. Some of it is obvious symbolism, some of it I think was meant to be a joke, none of it is new, edgy, funny or clever in any way. It's mostly irritating, frankly. Luckily, the plot kicks in quick and it makes even less sense than Li

I never thought I'd ever say this but... Zack Snyder would have made this movie work. Now, nothing against director Timur Bekmambetov, I liked Night Watch and enjoyed Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter , but Wanted is a perfect example of how to make a movie adaptation of a comic-book and completely miss the point. Not that Wanted is as bad as something like Catwoman , far from it, but had someone like Snyder taken on the project Watchmen -style, he would have at least represented the visual style of the whole thing accordingly rather than settle for this watered-down, safe Hollywood template. Bekmambetov is a talented director who knows where to point the camera and make fun, dark, amusingly trashy comic-book style movies for relatively not that much money, so this should have been a shoe-in but clearly, for his first big-budget Hollywood outing, studios probably pushed for a safer, more obviously Matrix -ey version of a pretty out-there comic-book. The film made big bucks

Movies about magicians aren't exactly a prolific bunch. After The Prestige and The Illusionist brought back the notion that this type of movie could be done well, it's been a relatively slow and bare track record for the topic ever since. Then comes Now You See Me , easily one of the most random movies to come out this year so far, with its all-star cast and its silly premise and, after an impressive performance at the box-office, it looks like magic is most definitely back in business. I blame Arrested Development 's fourth season. Speaking of which, this is essentially "Gob Bluth: The Movie" : it takes itself somewhat seriously (as a heist thriller at least) and thinks it's super clever but it's just so ludicrous that chances are it'll generate more lols than genuine, intentional laughs. The film sees Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, Jesse Eisenberg and Dave Franco play magicians, each with their own area of expertise, who all meet through a