TheRetroCritic

There were some great spoofs back in the day: Airplane! , Top Secret! , The Naked Gun . Hot Shots: Part Deux , I recall being pretty good also. But as for the original Hot Shots! nothing rang a bell expect that it was a Top Gun piss-take and that Charlie Sheen was once again the lead. One re-watch later and, although Hot Shots! does have its amusing moments, I wouldn't list it on the same level as the aforementioned bunch. Maybe I've just grown-up or maybe a lot of the humour hasn't dated terribly well, I don't know. Watching it now, it was more miss than hit I felt. One of the jokes sees an old Native American dude listening to a walkman and asking Sheen to bring back some AA batteries. I guess back then that was like the equivalent of an iPod reference or something (for the kids?). Thing is: random "modern" technology references in spoofs are rarely funny, they're just... there. Remember those ads the Scary Movie gang parodied in their franchise?

The film that started it all... kind of. Jon Favreau's Iron Man was really the moment where Marvel revealed to the world their mad intentions of putting together crossover mega-movie  The Avengers . As we all know, they pulled it off remarkably but it could have all gone pear-shaped super early. I mean, with the likes of Captain America and Thor it wasn't going to be a walk in the park to make each character and their far-fetched stories plausible, let alone cram everybody into one movie. But Iron Man showed early on that you can make a silly superhero flick without screwing it up, creating a movie that, even to this day, is simply a lot of fun. Robert Downey Jr is genius billionaire douchebag Tony Stark, who is made to face the reality of his misguided work directly and henceforth grow a conscience. The entire movie is one big build-up to the creation of that badass armored suit with some cool action scenes and a last-minute villain thrown in for good measure. Because

When thinking about alien movies in the 80's, what comes to mind? Besides Alien . Spielberg, right? E.T. , Close Encounters Of The Third Kind etc. For me, though, a close second is Mr John Carpenter, who quietly brought us two of the best alien movies to date around about the same time: one was The Thing , the other was Starman . Thinking about it now, the idea of Jeff Bridges as a child-like alien is pretty hilarious. And, indeed, there are silly/cheesy things about Starman, no doubt about it. And yet, it works better as a sci-fi film than either E.T. or Close Encounters...weird, huh? It is a shame that John Carpenter's sci-fi romance is often overlooked, I remember as a kid everything was all about E.T.: I didn't even like E.T.! That whole bit where he turns white and starts dying for half an hour: freaked the hell out of me! Gave me nightmares! Starman however I would just sit and watch no problem: it was funny, sweet, sad, entertaining...I just loved it. Still do!

It was somewhat inevitable that the Coen Brothers would end up making a straight-up western, especially after modern-day effort No Country For Old Men . This time we get True Grit, a remake of a John Wayne classic but with an alcoholic Dude and a pipe-smokin’ Matt Damon. Borrowing not much more than the core story from the original, the Coens introduce us to a familiar setting and a very simple plot but add their own spin on it, whether it is through touches of black comedy or dark undertones which few John Wayne films would have been comfortable with. Newcomer Hailee Steinfeld is the little girl who drags Jeff Bridges' "meanest" US Marshall and Damon's unsure Texas Ranger across the desert to find her father's killer. Steinfeld is great and really steals the show: she is strong-willed, tough, determined, courageous and doesn't take no for an answer. Bridges is always a safe bet and he does well here but his thick accent, grungy voice and constant mumbl

Never a big fan of the original Tron myself, I can't say the prospect of a sequel to Disney's 80's creation got me jumping up and down with anticipation. Then I heard Daft Punk were doing the soundtrack. Then I saw the trailers...So I thought I'd give it a go. Unfortunately what annoyed me about the first Tron remains but what worked in the original thankfully still works here, in a different way. Visually, Legacy looks amazing and, with a good script, could have potentially surpassed both Matrix sequels at least. This neon-lit world is definitely worth letting yourself be immersed into for a couple of hours. And needless to say Daft Punk's fantastic score adds a welcome 80's feel to the whole thing and pumps up the action scenes perfectly. Bridges does well, even with the dodgier lines ("Bio-Digital jazz, man!"), Olivia Wilde is stunning and Michael Sheen effortlessly steals the show as a dodgy and delightfully camp club owner. Then there's G