TheRetroCritic

Here's the video version of my Flight Of The Navigator review.

Back when E.T. was all the rage and a few copycat movies quickly followed from *batteries not included to Mac And Me , Flight Of The Navigator came out and it was obviously seen as not much more than yet another E.T. rip-off. Luckily, the film was also all kinds of great and arguably even better than Spielberg's movie in some ways. The film opens with a montage showing dogs catching, or rather attempting to catch, frisbees in what is both a completely irrelevant and completely wonderful opening title sequence. Initially set in the 70's, the plot sees a kid, David (Joey Cramer), wander into the woods at night only to slip and fall before waking up 8 years later in the same spot. Meanwhile, NASA come face to face with a silver, very light walnut-shaped UFO and try to keep the discovery under wraps. That is, until David's mysterious disappearance turns out to be related to that UFO somehow by which point NASA promptly "invites" the boy over for a couple of d

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