TheRetroCritic

Ranting about the new Hellboy movie.

Based on the 2013 video game, Tomb Raider is Hollywood's latest attempt at bringing Lara Croft to the big screen. Alicia Vikander plays the iconic character in a prequel story that has Croft travel to a Skull Island-like location in order to find out what happened to her father, who is presumed dead. Whenever anything is rebooted, it tends to divide fans quite a bit as some embrace the new take on their favourite character and others reject it entirely. The recent game gave Lara Croft a new look, a bow and arrow instead of her usual two guns as well as more of a backstory. Those hoping for a movie reboot to the Angelina Jolie-starring Lara Croft: Tomb Raider films, which were very much inspired by the older games, might have to wait a lot longer as this new movie aims to tell a modern and somewhat more grounded story. Vikander's Lara Croft is no witty super-spy or Indiana Jones -type explorer, she's a normal person who just happens to be very smart (when the plot dema

We discuss the possibility of a live-action Cowboy Bebop TV series on The Big Rewind .

Some thoughts on the new Flatliners .

Some thoughts on the upcoming Blade Runner 2049 .

I talk a bit about the new DuckTales .

Before Tom Cruise battled it out with Universal's latest Mummy, James McAvoy was Victor Frankenstein in this 2015 Frankenstein reboot. The film was a flop and another failed attempt at building some kind of new monster movie franchise or universe. Daniel Radcliffe plays a hunchbacked circus clown (need I say more?) who suddenly develops a passion for medicine (don't ask) and becomes mad genius Victor Frankenstein's colleague under the name Igor. They first attempt to make a living being out of various dead animal parts then move on to bigger, and more familiar endeavours. There's something consistently unclear about this movie: is it a prequel to the original classic or is it a prequel to a reboot Frankenstein movie that doesn't and will never exist? Of course it's the latter but the film's early claims that we all know Frankenstein's story along with various references to the iconic original constantly clash with the new interpretation of thes

I n this 73rd episode of  The Big Rewind , we review   Alien: Covenant ,   talk about  Ghost In The Shell and play Ridley's Believe It Or Not . CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE EPISODE Email us here if you have any questions, requests or contributions:  bigrewindpodcast@gmail.com Or simply comment below :) Oh and you can also find us on  iTunes ,  Stitcher ,  Soundcloud  and  Player FM  where you can subscribe to the podcast and download every episode thusfar! @TheRetroCritic #TheBigRewind retrocriticblog.blogspot.com thebigrewind.blogspot.com youtube.com/TheRetroCritic youtube.com/Cablogula

I finally talk about the new Ghost In The Shell .

Because found-footage surprise hit The Blair Witch Project was made for peanuts back in 1999 and made a ridiculous amount of money at the box-office, it was inevitable that a remake would happen at some point. Finally, in 2016 we got Blair Witch , a sequel/reboot looking to revamp the franchise. Like with most modern horror remakes, this is a thinly veiled reboot dressed up like a sequel but there's really nothing about it that directly connects Blair Witch from the original except for the fact that one of the characters is the brother of the girl from the first movie but it's not like we ever see her so it might as well have been a completely unrelated bunch entering the creepy woods many years later. Amusingly, none of the people involved in this new expedition appear to have learned anything from previous events making these guys far dumber than the last ones. James (James Allen McCune) is the brother looking for his sister even though he doesn't seem too concerned

Also known as Godzilla Resurgence , this was Japan's answer to Hollywood's own reboot about the iconic monster released a couple of years ago with Toho coming back to re-introduce Godzilla once again in style. The film initially shows Godzilla when he first appears in modern day Japan, in a lesser form. Out-of-control and extremely destructive, he of course creates a lot of carnage even before morphing into an evolved and more familiar form. Members of the Japanese government and the military, along with the US are therefore forced to figure out the best way to take him out before he reaches Tokyo. Everything you'd expect from a Godzilla movie is in this one including boring talks between officials, buildings toppling left and right, people being evacuated, planes dropping bombs on the beast. There is definitely more cool stuff to look at in Shin Godzilla than there was in the American Godzilla reboot, which was basically unwilling to show us Godzilla until the very e

Star Trek is back with yet another big-screen reboot sequel and, since the darker Star Trek Into Darkness  promised a return to the brighter tone of the old TV series in the next instalment, Star Trek Beyond had its work cut out, especially following its much-criticised first teaser trailer. The good news is that this is very easily the "Trekkiest" of all the reboot movies and, like a few of the old Star Trek movies, it feels like an extended episode of The Original Series... in a good way. Packed with lots of loving references from Spock's trademark eyebrow raise to Kirk always ripping his shirt and McCoy being thrown into situations he's not too keen on, this manages to be a fun homage without feeling like fan-fiction. With Justin Lin replacing J.J. Abrams as director, you can certainly expect more action, a LOT more action in fact, as this movie makes Into Darkness look like a business meeting. You've got the Enterprise being torn to shreds by space bees,

As the internet finally recovers from all the silliness that surrounded the release of this Ghostbusters remake, we can now actually watch the film and talk about it like sober adults. I should point out that the real problems skeptics had with this movie was not the cast but the idea of another by-numbers remake nowhere near as good as the original films in the vein of Total Recall or RoboCop . And with the mostly unappealing trailers we got prior to the new movie's release, this was frankly a fair concern. Luckily, the film itself is far better than the awful marketing for it suggested but, on the other hand, it's still an inferior by-numbers remake that's not as good as the originals, which is why most reviews for it are so up and down. The cast, I can confirm, is likeable and does a decent job throughout. Melissa McCarthy is not the one-joke Chris Farley wannabe she tends to be in a lot of other movies instead taking on the Ray role with a slightly squeakier voi

Remaker Alan Aalda talks about his remake of the Ghostbusters remake, among other things, in this potential new series. Did you enjoy this video? Would you like this to be a continuing series? And if so, should Alan remake Jumanji or Star Wars: The Force Awakens next?  Please let me know in the comments!

We talk at length about Star Wars: The Force Awakens on the first episode of podcast Force Majeure . Chewie, we're home.

With the help of @Silent_Consumer, Jamie and I review the Fantastic Four reboot on episode 61 of podcast The Big Rewind .

After Jurassic Park gave us the World last month,  The Terminator gave us Genisys, an oddly spelled sequel/prequel/reboot starring the franchise's very own Jason Voorhees, the unstoppable Arnold Schwarzenegger. The result was one messy Terminator film to say the least. The core premise of the film being to pull a Star Trek and deliver an alternate timeline thereby somehow creating a fresh and new storyline. This time, we go back to 1984 where the original Terminator film takes place only to find that a T-800 had already been around for 10 years training Sarah Connor to be a badass. Oh, also a T-1000 who doesn't look like Robert Patrick shows up. Everything is given a reason to be but it's all rather far-fetched, even for a series of films about time-travelling Austrian robots. Weirdly, the fact that Terminators can age ends up being the least distracting plot point. In what is easily one of the least respectful franchise moves I've seen, new Arnie literally an

Upon hearing that we'd be getting a new Dracula movie this Halloween and that it would star the usually reliable Luke Evans in the title role, I was definitely looking forward to it. It had been a while since the last Dracula movie and an epic period piece sounded like a good idea. Then the trailer happened. Then the movie happened. And then I started missing Dracula 2000 . As it turns out, this Dracula story was "untold" for a reason: it's mostly rubbish. The film is kind of a prequel to Bram Stoker's Dracula in that you see a fuller version of how Vlad The Impaler became a vampire but, of course, minus the style and poetic approach of Francis Ford Coppola's film (or Bram Stoker's novel for that matter). What we're left with is a by-numbers epic movie with some unlikely vampire theme thrown in. Dracula Untold , much like Man Of Steel , is a reboot for the sake of being a reboot: it serves a functional purpose, nothing more. Essentially, a