TheRetroCritic

I try some Black Cherry Cream Soda in this latest episode of Tastin' . As well as a new grapefruit-flavoured drink.

As DC prepares his new live-action blockbusters, Batman returned in The LEGO Batman Movie , a spin-off from The LEGO Movie in which the Dark Knight (voiced by Will Arnett) takes centre stage in his very own adventure. Very much in the spirit of the first LEGO Movie, this spin-off is a fast-paced, tongue-in-cheek romp packed with silly jokes, familiar characters and colourful LEGO action. The genuinely cool, relentless opening sequence sees The Joker (voiced by Zach Galifianakis) join forces with other Batman villains, even the wacky ones, to execute his latest evil plan. Batman, of course, shows up to save the day and we get a more honest look at what happens with Bruce Wayne after a wild night taking care of the bad guys. Lonely, bored, microwaving lobster thermidors, watching Jerry Maguire on his own: it turns out that working solo has its disadvantages. The film captures the strengths and weaknesses of the Batman character brilliantly and although it's technically a spoof,

It's a fine line between a good thriller and a silly one but the first John Wick movie walked that line effortlessly delivering a tongue-in-cheek action flick with the perfect balance of cool and goofy. The film gave Keanu Reeves the comeback he deserved and a sequel soon followed. John Wick: Chapter 2 picks up roughly where the last film left off with John Wick facing the Russian mob in order to retrieve his beloved black Mustang. Of course, this leads to a big fight scene where John Wick goes around punching, kicking and shooting anything that moves in a parking garage before calling it even with Peter Stormare's mob boss. There's a short cameo from John Leguizamo, who played Wick's mechanic friend in the first movie, and the plot finally kicks in. This time, John Wick is forced to pay back his debt to an ex-assassin colleague when the latter blows up his entire house after Wick initially refuses to help. Pissed off but looking to quickly end this, Wick promptl

Another year, another Disney live-action adaptation of one of their most beloved animated classics. This time, it's Beauty And The Beast 's turn with Emma Watson taking on the role of Belle and Dan Stevens as the Beast. It's been a hit-and-miss road for Disney with even its best remakes being just about average and still very much inferior to the originals. The Jungle Book may have killed at the box-office but it failed to capture the charm of the old film so this new outing, with the tons of CGI the trailers promised, looked like more of the same. The film opens with a ball taking place in the Prince's castle when an Enchantress in disguise shows up and puts a spell on him and everyone there. The expanded yet well-handled sequence leads us to more familiar territory as Belle is introduced and a big musical number follows. These first few minutes set the tone for things to come: some parts of the story are stretched longer, other parts are pretty much shot-for-sho

With cinematic superhero crossover universes currently competing, so too it looks like monster universes are about to fight it out with The Mummy possibly being the first of a modern Universal Monsters reboot franchise and Godzilla facing Kong in an upcoming sequel. Kong: Skull Island introduces us to the mighty King Kong in a prequel of sorts where a group approved by the US government travels to the evasive Skull Island with a military escort in the 1970's. Don't expect Kong to get chained up and brought back to New York City where he climbs up the Empire State Building etc. in this one. There are some clever nods to these familiar events throughout the film but it's mercifully not just a straight-up retread and, stylistically, it is very different than Peter Jackson's King Kong from 2005. Kong: Skull Island owes a lot more to the likes of Apocalypse Now , Predators and the more over-the-top classic Kong sequels than the 1933 original or any remake. The ea

Written by Graham Greene, The Third Man was a 1949 film noir starring Joseph Cotten as a writer arriving in post-WWII Vienna only to find that his friend was killed in a car accident. After some inconsistencies with that story come to light, he starts to look deeper into the case. A British production, Carol Reed's film is not your typical film noir with its unusually upbeat yet genuinely inspired zither-led score and the rarely seen broken Vienna setting offering a particularly atmospheric backdrop for the mystery to unfold. Joseph Cotten's Holly Martin is a likeable makeshift detective who wants to know the truth about what happened to his friend Harry Lime yet the closer he gets to figuring it all out, the darker his path becomes. Italian actress Alida Valli is very good as Lime's actress girlfriend Anna Schmidt who assists Holly on his search and Orson Welles almost steals the show when he shows up randomly near the end of the second act. The Third Man has some cl

After two disappointing and critically panned Wolverine movies, Hugh Jackman returns to conclude his X-Men spin-off trilogy on a high note with Logan , the film that, he claimed, would be his last time ever playing the role. We meet Logan much later in the timeline: he is older, weaker, he's an alcoholic limo driver whose days are spent picking up meds to appease a sick Professor Xavier's (Patrick Stewart) deadly seizures. His eyesight is failing, he isn't healing as fast as he used to, even his claws get stuck when they come out so this is a post-Wolverine Logan at his absolute worst on his most physically draining mission yet. Because he is more vulnerable, you feel every punch, every stab and it's genuinely heartbreaking to see such a tough, once unbreakable superhero on auto-pilot, even considering suicide as an option. This is a dark, gritty and mercifully R-rated take on the character FOX studios were reluctant to jump into for so long and yet it's appa

Nearly 10 years after their last insect-themed movie Antz , Dreamworks released Bee Movie , an animated feature in which Jerry Seinfeld, of all people, voices a bee who discovers the ugly truth about how humans gather their honey and sell it without the bees' permission. There's something inherently wacky about this whole movie, from the look of the characters to the plot itself which is really over-the-top. In Antz, everything happened in the ant colony below Manhattan so you could easily suspend disbelief whereas Bee Movie goes all out and giddily breaks, if not a fourth wall, a third wall as the bees start interacting with the human characters directly and even sue humanity in a court of law over honey. As silly as this all sounds, Bee Movie knows exactly how goofy it is and it enjoys every minute of it. Co-written by Jerry Seinfeld himself, this film plays out both like a straight-up kids' movie but also a pastiche of animated films like Toy Story or other Disney

I talk about Gore Verbinski's latest horror thriller A Cure For Wellness .

Back in 2008, the Coen Brothers delivered Burn After Reading , an off-beat comedy about a group of idiotic nobodies who find themselves entangled in a ridiculous plot involving an ex-CIA operative and his leaked memoirs. On paper, this is very much the template for most Coen Brothers comedies with a clueless ensemble having to run around a nonsensical maze of misunderstandings. And yet, Burn After Reading is very different than the filmmakers' earlier works in the same genre like The Big Lebowski or even Raising Arizona . The main difference here is that there essentially isn't a plot in this film with characters all working towards their own individual goals without there being one overarching storyline to link it all together. If anything, the CIA is the only common element throughout but with the exception of John Malkovitch's character, who gets fired from the organisation early on, no-one else is directly linked to the CIA and the latter doesn't interfere wit