TheRetroCritic

Some Halloween movies are just perfect. Perhaps not perfect as movies but perfect movies for that season and Hocus Pocus is definitely one of those. The film sees Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimi play the Sanderson Sisters, a trio of witches from Salem who thrive on stealing the lifeforce from children. One day, they are hung after essentially murdering a child and turning some kid into a cat (talk about a busy day) but a curse on the town prophesizes their deadly return. Cut to 300 years later and some idiot kid gets the bright idea to light the black fire candle which brings the witches back to present day (well, 1993) Salem. The latter have one night to recover their beloved spell book and feed some potion to whatever virgin they can get their hands on otherwise they're gone for good so the race is on. Cue quite a few Dark Shadows -style temporal fish-out-of-water jokes, a lot of Halloween-related shenanigans and the usual clichés that come with most

Gothamized  is a completely unofficial guide to new series  Gotham  and a debate arena for all things Batman. CLICK HERE TO PLAY THE EPISODE CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE EPISODE In this ninth episode, we discuss the fourth and fifth episode of  Gotham , Batman Forever , girl Robin, Viper juice and Christopher Lambert's laugh. (for my written review of the Gotham Pilot,  click here! ) Hope you enjoy it! You can also find us on podcast  The Big Rewind  (available on iTunes) and send us emails with your Bat-questions, Six Degrees challenges and riddles here:  gothamized@gmail.com (for the pilot episode  CLICK HERE )

This week, I taste the milkiest of all milks. Peanut milk.

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

Megan Fox sucks. Now the elephant in the room's finally out of the way and I've clarified that for ya right off the bat: let's take a look at the new Michael Bay-produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or, as it is also called, Ninja Turtles . This looked set to be a disaster from the get-go with Bay attached, the casting of Fox and major changes to the Turtles' story all announced at the same time. Then came the very dumb trailer which didn't look all that amazing and actually turned off a lot of people who thought the turtles looked too freaky. Because we all know what a teenage mutant ninja LIVE ACTION turtle should look like, don't we? And what we're all picturing right now isn't weird at all, right? Come on, mutated turtles that can talk, fight and eat pizza were always going to look bizarre not in a cartoon or a comic book. The biggest surprise the film had to offer wasn't the new "roided-out" look of its titular characters

Gothamized  is a completely unofficial guide to new series  Gotham  and a debate arena for all things Batman. CLICK HERE TO PLAY THE EPISODE CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE EPISODE In this eighth episode, we discuss the third episode of  Gotham , eggs, The Balloonman, Sean Penn, Pyg Balloons, The Flash and we end with a riddle. (for my written review of the Gotham Pilot,  click here! ) Hope you enjoy it! You can also find us on podcast  The Big Rewind  (available on iTunes) and send us emails with your Bat-questions, Six Degrees challenges and riddles here:  gothamized@gmail.com (for the pilot episode  CLICK HERE )

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

There are movies. And then there is Manborg . When nazi vampires from Hell take over the Earth, a soldier is killed by Count Draculon (Adam Brooks) after witnessing his brother's death. Somehow, the soldier is soon reborn as a half-man, half-cyborg entity known only as Manborg. His goal? To learn to master his powers (before he accidentally kills someone he shouldn't), get revenge for what Draculon did to him and take down those Hellish forces before all hope is lost. Basically, RoboCop meets Hellraiser meets Toxic Avenger meets... I guess the 80's in general. Along the way, Manborg meets some resistance fighters including martial arts expert #1 Man (voice-dubbed by Kyle Hebert), Australian Billy Idol-esque gunfighter Justice (Conor Sweeney) and his sister Mina (Meredith Sweeney) whose fighting style is very much steeped in anime. Together, they escape the dastardly (and in-love) Baron (Jeremy Gillespie) and, in an odd Star Wars -esque turn of events, start tr

In this 43rd episode, Adam (aka The RetroCritic) and fellow film buff Jamie discuss movie news, review Gone Girl  and talk retro stuff. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE EPISODE 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  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

Gothamized  is a completely unofficial guide to new series  Gotham  and a debate arena for all things Batman. CLICK HERE TO PLAY THE EPISODE CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE EPISODE In this seventh episode, we discuss the second episode of  Gotham , cats, The Dollmaker, Jenna Haze, AOL, James Franco and we end with a riddle. (for my written review of the Gotham Pilot,  click here! ) Hope you enjoy it! You can also find us on podcast  The Big Rewind  (available on iTunes) and send us emails with your Bat-questions, Six Degrees challenges and riddles here:  gothamized@gmail.com (for the pilot episode  CLICK HERE )