TheRetroCritic

While I managed to skilfully 90% of what looked to be a bad bunch of movies from Jem And The Holograms to Poltergeist, I was still subjected to a few stinkers. Some of them I somehow didn't hate though understandably everyone else did ( Mortdecai , The Ridiculous Six ), some of them just didn't do it for me at all. This is THEIR Top 10! 10 SPY/FURIOUS 7 Couldn't decide which of these two to include or not include so let's go with both. Truth be told, I didn't hate these two films: Spy was a passable comedy, Furious 7 was amusingly over-the-top. Problem is, Spy is instantly forgettable and felt forced more than it didn't and Furious 7 was way dumber than it probably should have been not too mention about an hour too long and inferior to most of its predecessors. Decent send-off to Paul Walker at the end, though. 9 CHAPPIE Ok so here's the thing: I really like Neil Blomkamp's other movies ( Elysium , District 9 ) but, despite

Outcast is one of those Nicolas Cage movies which looks like such a half-assed effort it could only be entertaining. The casting of Hayden Christensen as his co-star and yet another ghastly-looking, misleading poster covered in fire being further proof of this. It also seems odd that Cage would take on yet another Crusader flick so soon after Season Of The Witch but heck, why not? It's not like it's an overdone subgenre. Besides, Season Of The Witch was more of a fantasy film and Outcast is like a Zhang Yimou epic minus the budget, the battle scenes or the talent. The plot follows a Chinese prince and his sister, who escape when the prince's warrior brother kills the King. They meet a Crusader-turned-drunk (Christensen) and he helps them take back the throne. On the way (read: an hour into the movie), they meet an old pal of Christensen's (Cage) who also deserted the Crusades. Of course, everyone in China speaks perfect English all the time, even to each other,

After the runaway (and deserved) success of Birdman , director Alejandro Iñarritu is back with yet another Oscar-nominated effort, this time taking on a bigger project following a mad journey of survival and revenge from legendary frontiersman Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio). Set in the early 1800's, The Revenant is a grim, bloody, cruel piece of work set in beautiful snowy, frozen backdrops which makes for an interesting contrast. Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight also went for a wintery feel but it's hard to call Iñarritu's film a Western since it really feels like something else entirely. The first big sequence involves a large group of frontiersmen being overrun by Native American opponents: it's an epic scene in the old sense of the word complete with arrows piercing through people's faces, horses getting sliced-up and bones breaking left and right. It's an extremely detailed battle filmed in such a sweeping, steady way that it all feels lik

One of the two films Nicolas Cage starred in last year was Pay The Ghost , a supernatural thriller about a father whose son disappears all of a sudden on Halloween night. Of course, the film then doesn't try to say anything about loss or neglect like, say, The Orphanage , instead going for a ludicrous horror mystery plot you'd have to be pretty darn high to even consider believing. The film's first mistake, really, was to have Cage running around frantically looking for his son dressed up like a cowboy. If that doesn't suck all the potential drama out of the scene, I don't know what could. Oh sure it's a riot and as a fan of the actor's wackier efforts I'm loving it! But silly stuff like this doesn't help the film much, unless giving us an early hint that it builds up to a truly absurd ending counts as helping. Now, you could have easily told an interesting, heartfelt story here about a bad father who loses everything but tries to make up for

Left Behind was sold to us as a disaster movie with only a soupçon of religion included in it to benefit the film's big concept. We were promised mostly CGI destruction with some Nicolas Cage thrown in and that didn't sound too bad, even if the film itself looked ridiculous. And ridiculous it is! Ah if only that was this movie's biggest flaw... If you don't already know, the film follows a pilot (Cage) fly a plane while, everywhere, the Rapture is taking place: people are disappearing out of their clothes leaving chaos to settle on the Earth. While that may sound entertainingly apocalyptic, Left Behind makes it feel about as plausible and threatening as that event did in Seth Rogen comedy This Is The End , a far superior film in every single way, I should point out. The disaster part of the movie doesn't kick off until half an hour of mostly Cage-less exposition where the pilot's daughter Chloe (a godawful Cassi Thomson) has sleep-inducing discussions

This thriller from 2011 sees Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman play a couple who are taken hostage in their own home by a group of thieves. Most of the action takes place in one location in a somewhat gimmicky outing from director Joel Schumacher. This isn't the first time Schumacher has worked with Cage as they collaborated on 8MM some time back and the actor is given a decent challenge with Trespass since he is portraying a victim but one who is a smug rich dude on the surface while in fact being a rather brave father and husband and a loser a little bit on top of it. That's actually the interesting thing about this film: it seems like the usual predictable home invasion B-movie with bland, clichéd characters but it does go out of its way to flesh out those family members (and their captors) as the story develops. Both the diamond-dealing husband Kyle (Cage) and his wife Sarah (Kidman) seem to be hiding something from each other, their daughter Avery (Liana Liberato) has

Another day, another great loss as actor Alan Rickman passes away unexpectedly leaving a big gap at the heart of cinema. And so I give you my Top 10 Alan Rickman Film Performances  with the promise to myself to make sure I watch all those Rickman films I may have missed as I'm sure I'm missing out on some great performances because, after all, that's what the man always delivered. 10 ALICE IN WONDERLAND While not everyone loved Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland , we can all agree that casting Alan Rickman as The Caterpillar was spot-on: that unique voice of his fitting the character perfectly. So there's one reason to actually give that movie a chance! 9 GAMBIT Easily the best thing about this old-fashioned farce was Alan Rickman who effortlessly stole every single scene he was in playing Colin Firth's nudist, art collecting boss. Whether acting rude or imitating Cameron Diaz's Southern twang, Rickman's having a great time in G

Steven Spielberg directs this new Cold War-set thriller which sees a lawyer (played by Tom Hanks) being tasked with defending a caught suspected Soviet spy. After War Horse and Lincoln , it feels like a long while since Spielberg had a little fun, the last time probably being The Adventures Of Tintin , a film which, at this rate, should be getting its planned sequel some time in the next two or three decades. That said, even in serious mode, Spielberg somehow manages to knock it out of the park and Bridge Of Spies is no exception. Painter and suspected spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) is caught by the FBI and is soon put on trial but when an opportunity presents itself to possibly exchange the prisoner for one of America's own, lawyer James B. Donovan (Hanks) has to make a decision whether to leave his family and oversee the whole process himself thereby hopefully redeeming himself popularity-wise or wash his hands of the whole business. Donovan is sent to East Germany where

After much deliberation, Quentin Tarantino's 8th movie The Hateful Eight  finally exists and is finally out on the big screen where it belongs. After Django Unchained , here we have another Western, this time presented in a 70mm format with Ennio Morricone himself scoring it. I have a good feeling about this. Indeed, from the get-go the film sucks you in with its beautiful snowy setting, its haunting theme and its reliably great cast not to mention some sharp writing from the maestro himself. The plot sees two bounty hunters meet right before a blizzard is about to hit the region. One of them is John "The Hangman" Ruth (Kurt Russell) who is planning to bring a dangerous criminal (played by an unrecognizable Jennifer Jason Leigh) to the town of Red Rock to be hanged. The other is Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a mysterious man who proudly carries around with him a letter from Abraham Lincoln. On the way to Minnie's Haberdashery, they meet Chris Mannix

2015 was a strange year for movies: a lot of Oscar-bait, a lot of mindless blockbusters, some gems in-between. Oddly, it turns out I didn't go to the movies quite as much as past years so take this top 10 with the knowledge that I shall amend the list eventually when I'm finally all caught up with some key indie flicks. In the meantime, here are my 10 Best Films Of 2015 : 10 RUN ALL NIGHT You could be forgiven for purposely missing this movie when it came out. Armed with an awful title and a synopsis not too dissimilar from every other Liam Neeson B action flicks, Run All Night could have had Neeson in a bikini on the poster and people would have still not wanted to see it. Which is a shame since it was actually a really good thriller with Ed Harris on top intimidating form as the main baddie, lots of well put-together, tense action sequences and some nifty cinematography. Like last year's A Walk Among The Tombstones , this is not only far better than Taken bu