REVIEW OF RETALLACK: THE MOVIE

”You called me crazy uncle, I call you lazy aunties.  Buck up crew.  Tomorrow it’s time, to pull up your panties.”  Those words, so gracefully read by Karl the Gnarl, speaks volumes when joining Tanner Hall for his newest major ski film “Retallack: The Movie.”  Tanner had good reasons to invited seasoned new guys like Phil Casabon, Henrick Harlaut, and Ben Moxham who destroy it in park and urban.  Ironically, there happens to be no park OR urban in this movie, at all, but that doesn’t matter because those guys still throw down and flash their famous park steeze off some sizeable backcountry drops and booters.  With the likes of John Spriggs, Ian and Neil Provo and a few others, Retallack puts together a great mix of backcountry/big mountain skills and park/urban stompness sans the park/urban.  

In Retallack, you can primarily expect to see lots of pillows, trees, big drops in trees, big pillows in trees, pillows in trees with big drops.  Nice big marshmellowy pillows.  Yum yum.  A few tasty doubles are hucked off impressive jumps even though they were nowhere near a man-made terrain park.  Just mother nature’s own park features, along with a little assistance at times in the form of hand-shaped backcountry kickers.  Some really sweet powder shots.  And definitely some big mountain lines.

Retallack is a good preview of the amazing helmet cam/GoPro/Contour POV booming craze that will likely be shown off a lot in most of this year’s new ski films. (#trending)  In Retallack, there are quite a few great POVs taken from both skiers and snowboarders.  This film has some unique follow shots with a skier behind a snowboarder ripping it in deep pow, blinding face shots, pretty intense big mountain lines and freefall pillow drops all captured in super-coolness perspectives for our viewing pleasure.

Tanner’s segment starts as you would expect it to start, from a helicopter…but in a different way.  Def a sweet banger opening followed by a slew of high speed big mountain lines with some techiness and a little rotation thrown in for good measure.  Very much worth the closing segment.  

Retallack is good ski flick if you’ve got a half hour to kill because it’s under thirty minutes in length.  OR, you could watch it twice in one hour!  The soundtrack is not as Reggae-saturated as you might think however there are a few small parts that get slowed down because of the music. (Maybe just not my style.)  The one thing that actually hurts this movie is the fact you never know who is skiing/snowboarding because no names are displayed while watching.  Tanner’s seg is pretty obvious being it is the last segment before the credits.  Yeah…the credits show all the names, but I like to make that connection of insaneness-to-skier as the movie is playing.

Regardless, there was no shortage of insaneness in this movie and Tanner Hall can claim yet another awesome Life segment captured on film called; Retallack: The Movie.