It’s that time of year folks, pumpkins start to appear in windows and porches, leaves turn orange, the weather gets colder and scary movies are on the agenda. One film that has become a staple of Halloween since its release back in 1973 and is often considered one of the scariest films ever made is, The Exorcist. Nearly 50 years on from its initial release, I’m going to argue why it is still one of the greatest and most disturbing horror films ever made.
Continue readingCategory: Retro Reviews (Page 1 of 2)
Color is something we often talk about with movies. Movies like The Grand Budapest Hotel and Blade Runner 2049 are movies frequently discussed for their beautiful color palettes, but before we were talking about colorful movies, we talked about their colorful titles. Many of my favorite movies have colors in the title. Soylent Green’s political intrigue, R.E.D’s hilarious moments and witty dialogue, or the combination of all of those things in Primary Colors, which is a great movie which has not been thought of at all during this very fun campaign year in America.
However, if you ever asked someone to name a movie with a color in the title, they’d say The Pink Panther. A classic comedy which gave us a franchise that lasted almost fifty years before Steve Martin brutally murdered it with two very unfunny films. So how good was the starting point in order to form an eleven film franchise?
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No Time to Die was originally supposed to be released at the end of April. I had my tickets and everything. During my time in Quarantine, I’ve tried to satisfy my Bond craving in many ways. Watching the 1967 Casino Royale, which was actually the only Bond film that I hadn’t seen, listening to the Bond soundtrack while getting groceries, and writing my own script for a Bond film called More Time to Kill, but after the death of Honor Blackman last month, I rewatched 1964’s Goldfinger.
I have a ton of memories involving Goldfinger, for the most part involving the levels in the videogame 007 Legends, but it was always one of the few Connery’s that actually grabbed me. I also want to preface this review with the fact that I don’t want to use the word iconic too many times in this review, so I replaced every time I say “Iconic” with a song from Abba. So, to prevent us from killing more time, let’s start on Goldfinger. Continue reading
After last year’s bitterly disappointing Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, which presumably only received an Oscar nomination because of its subject matter, I decided it was time to revisit some of Tarantino’s classics. I’ve always been a huge fan of his work, but Once Upon A Time in Hollywood was such a drab, underwhelming, damp squib of a movie, I actually started to question my Tarantino loyalty.
Reservoir Dogs is a film that I have always hugely enjoyed though and, having not seen it for a good few years, what better place to start? The film was initially released in 1992 and the story behind production is a quite an interesting one. Made on a meagre budget ($1.2 million), Tarantino had to beg, borrow and steal to get his debut film made. Continue reading
In the words of Stanley Kubrick himself, it’s easy to make a good film, difficult to make a great one, and it takes a miracle to make a masterpiece. For many, The Shining (1980) sits firmly in that third group, a true masterpiece both of the horror genre and cinema at large.
You can imagine my excitement then, when I heard that my local Cineworld were hosting a limited screening of the remastered director’s cut of the film. Having been thoroughly terrified by The Shining during my first viewing well over 10 years ago, and with the upcoming release of its sequel Doctor Sleep only days away, I relished the chance to recapture the terror of the Overlook Hotel in remastered 4k. Continue reading
Retro Review: A.I Artificial Intelligence
In the early 1970s, Stanley Kubrick acquired the rights to the 1969 short story by Brian Aldiss titled ‘Supertoys Last All Summer Long.‘ Intellectually obsessed, Kubrick began working on a screenplay to turn Aldiss’ short story into a modern-day Pinocchio, hiring a team of writers to work on a script for over 20 years including the original author, sci-fi author Bob Shaw and eventual screen-story credit Ian Watson.
The film stagnated in development for years. Kubrick felt that a child actor would make David too human and that the CGI capabilities of the day weren’t quite up to scratch. Rather than give up on the project, Kubrick chose to wait for technology to catch-up with the demands of the film. Attempts were even made to create automated, robotic version of David, though efforts were quickly stopped as the robot was described as ‘too creepy’ by the production team. Continue reading
MM Retro Review: Grease
Grease is not a good movie. Grease is not a particularly good musical either. By any ostensible measure of quality Grease is average at best, and that’s being generous. It is poorly structured, poorly plotted, and poorly made… and yet there is something undeniably infectious about it.
Just look at the showstopping “Greased Lightning” to see what I mean. I use the word showstopping because it’s a wonderfully cheesy musical set-piece, akin to Gene Kelly singing in the rain in Singin’ in the Rain. I also use the word showstopping because it literally stops the movie dead in its tracks. There’s no reason for “Greased Lightning” to exist in the context of the movie. The song doesn’t progress the plot in any meaningful way and we don’t learn anything new about the characters either. Continue reading
Critical praise rained on the Coen brothers in 2008 for their work in No Country for Old Men. From creating an unforgettable antagonist to redefining a genre, No Country for Old Men left its impression on audiences and critics alike. But I think one of the biggest impression the film left can also be considered a huge gamble. Many passable movies today have the tendency to spoon-feed exposition through either uninspired dialog (Star Wars: Episode I) or plot devices (action scenes in the Transformers series).
No Country for Old Men takes the gamble of being a smart movie. Not smart in the sense that you need an impressive IQ or understand quantum physics to appreciate the movie. But smart in the sense that the movie is layered and meaning is found through attention to detail. The Coen brothers find success with No Country for Old Men by whole heartily trusting the audience. Continue reading
The Iron Giant review: Retro Review
Giant alien-robots, laser beams, sci-fi, oh my! The Iron Giant has everything to capture the imaginations of young space fanatic viewers. But the movie also touches on darker themes older viewers will catch and appreciate. Themes of war time tension, nuclear weapons and death are sprinkled throughout the movie. These darker commentries separates The Iron Giant to more than just an animated feature for the kiddies.
The Iron Giant is directed by Brad Bird, the writer behind Ratatouille (2007) and Up (2009) and was released in 1999. Most recently, Brad Bird is known for his work on the animated Incredibles 2. The movie features the voices of Eli Marienthal as the young Hogarth Hughes, Jennifer Aniston voicing Annie Hughes and Vin Diesel as the titular Iron Giant. Continue reading
Scrooged review “More than just a mediocre Christmas film”
Christmas films have a notoriety for being sickeningly happy. Everything is sugar and spice and everything nice from the off, sprinkling the holiday season with unattainable aims and memories that are ridiculously lacking in arguments.
Charles Dickens took Christmas and made a story that stood the test of time: one that started off dark, brooding and full of greed and ended on a, moderately sweet, high note. In 1988, a reworking of this tale, ‘A Christmas Carol‘, was released, starring Bill Murray and a whole lot of jokes. Continue reading
