TheRetroCritic

A couple of years ago, man of a thousand voices Seth MacFarlane brought his brand of humour to Western comedy A Million Ways To Die In West , a feature he directs, co-writes and stars in (not as a bear, this time). The film didn't exactly wow critics and it basically flew by, somehow making a profit on the way despite less-than-flattering reviews. The film itself goes for an old-fashioned look but a defiantly anachronistic and modern take on the subgenre with characters speaking like people would today and the odd pop culture reference. It's not a completely new idea and it's something that works much better in a cartoon than it does in a live-action film but it can definitely work. Mel Brooks always could make that kind of thing funny. Unfortunately, here, it's like the film is trying much too hard to make that a hilarious aspect of the movie when it's, in fact, one of its weakest ideas. The concept that people in the Old West could die of pretty much anythi

Director David Fincher is back with a new, reliably strange thriller and, mercifully, it's not another "Girl With The...", not yet anyway. Based on Gillian Flynn's novel, Gone Girl sees Ben Affleck play a husband who finds out that his wife has gone missing all of a sudden. If there is one movie that's nearly impossible to review without spoiling anything it's this one, but I'll give it a go. The trailer for the film, which was pretty clever, turns out to be way more clever than we thought as nothing, we soon realise, is as it seems. The movie's plot sort of reinvents itself as the story develops so whatever you're expecting, it's very likely it's not that. There's a good bunch of effective twists and turns throughout the film and seeing as it is by Fincher, the M. Night Shyamalan of dark "realistic" thrillers, they're handled brilliantly and should keep you hooked from start to finish. And Gone Girl isn't a sh