Grand Theft Auto V: PS4 Review

Grand Theft Auto V: PS4 Review

Released by Rockstar Games
Platform: PS4

There's no denying that Rockstar Games has pulled out all the stops for the spit'n'polish port over to the next gen consoles of its Grand Theft Auto V series.

With controversy ringing loudly in its ears thanks to The Warehouse using the game to spearhead a ban on R18 products in store, you'd be forgiven for thinking this latest incarnation of the series was the personification of the Devil in digital form.

Without wanting to wade into this debate, it has to be said Grand Theft Auto V's PS4 outing is nothing short of an ideal game. It's essentially the same game as was released last year around this time with you taking in the lives of three characters in and around Los Santos.

There's Michael, the con who got out of the game, Franklin the youngster who's about to start climbing the career rope on the streets and Trevor, the psycho who's spent too long in the wild and toked a little too hard on the pipe a little too often. Much like Pulp Fiction did, these three lives intersect in ways that are both surprising, amusing and as is the GTA way, violent.

If you've already played through the main game, you'll know what to expect of the story and the missions within. From stealing / repossessing cars to saving your son, there's plenty of story-line to explore and plenty of trouble to find yourself in if you're that way inclined.

And here's the rub with Grand Theft Auto V on the PS 4 - it's just so damned easy to lose yourself in full immersion in the world within.

From first person mode to third person mayhem, everything in Los Santos is brushed with an epic sheen that glistens the more time you spend within the world. Rockstar's done an epic job of bringing the world around them to life - it feels like you're part of a city that never sleeps. Cats roam the streets now and if you're content to just sit in a car, you can watch the whole world around you - both the good and the bad. Sure, there's controversy over the first person sex scenes (which you can see on YouTube if you want) and some of the violence within (a torture sequence is a little uncomfortable) but most of this has already come over from the original version, so it seems a touch unfair to get so wound up about it all. Grand Theft Auto will always push the envelope and I applaud it for doing so - at the end of the day, everything within the game is a choice. It's your choice to attack others or do what you will and there are ramifications and consequences of doing so.

The PS4 controller also comes to life in this with flashing colours at various moments and the speakers within making the phone calls and police chatter much closer to you than before.

Visually, the game soars - HD graphics and use of light really help it achieve something utterly incredible. Soaring over the city in the skies as part of some missions really does show how wonderfully evocative it can all be, giving each environment the visual edge it needed on the next gen console.

The thing is with GTA V, there's a whole world to lose yourself in - and with the tweaks for the next gen and online match-ups, Rockstar's done a great job of ensuring that this Grand Theft Auto is one you need to own and experience its open world once again. Thanks to the grunt of the PS4, the world around Los Santos is what shines; cars fill the streets, lives take place around you and a world goes by. It's incredible.

Forget the naysayers and just immerse yourself in Los Santos - the next generation's already provided some thrills and Grand Theft Auto V simply rises high into the sky.

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Into The Woods: Film Review

Into The Woods: Film Review

Cast: James Corden, Emily Blunt, Meryl Streep, Anna Kendrick, Johnny Depp, Chris Pine, Tracey Ullman, Daniel Huttlestone
Director: Rob Marshall

A veritable Venn diagram of fairy-tales collide on the big screen in this version of the Stephen Sondheim /  James Lapine Tony Award-winning musical, starring Meryl Streep as a blue-haired witch.

The Into The Woods review will be published on December 19th

Deliver Us From Evil: Blu Ray Review

Deliver Us From Evil: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Sony Home Ent

In the latest horror based on true events / inspired by true events to hit the cinema, Eric Bana stars as tough and wearied New York cop Ralph Sarchie.

Relentlessly working the night shift with his partner Butler (a quippy Joel McHale) on the perpetually rainy Bronx streets, Sarchie is called in to deal with a case that appears to have Satanic overtones after a series of incidents appear to have a demonic link.

Dismissive of any religious beliefs and scoffing at these claims, Sarchie finds himself pairing up with a priest Mendoza (Ramirez) as they dig deeper into the case of three former Iraqi veterans and a series of inscriptions that appear to be at every crime scene.

Soon though, Sarchie finds the case is closer to home than he would like.

Deliver Us From Evil is a lazy formulaic horror, which employs every available cliche to try and proffer up new scares.

Dark grimy streets? Check. Perpetual gloom and rain? Check. Children's toy looking shifty in the bedroom? Check. Dark basements where torches / any form of lights fail? Check. A protagonist with lapsed religion? Check. A priest who's fallen from grace? Check. Moments of creepiness and jump scares predictably sign posted from a mile off thanks to an overly bombastic OST? Check.

Every single trope and soundtrack trick is rolled out during the 2 hour run time and every po-faced moment falls flat on its face as this fight against evil begins to try to bite. The problem is there's no real pull - even the fate of a supporting character who's given a bit of life fails to hit any emotional mark as the horror starts to try and bite.

While Bana tries his best with the material handed to him, the film ends up being derivative of everything you've seen before and so wildly grounded in nothing at all that it has no unique selling points. That's despite culminating in a jail cell exorcism that could have had been so much more thanks to its relatively original premise.

Perhaps really, it should be a case of Deliver Us From Deliver Us From Evil in this formulaic horror; a lack of originality, a distinct feeling of no emotional connection and a story that's dragged as far as it can be on its fragile premise leaves you wishing you could be exorcised of everything that's just unfolded in front of you.

Rating:

Sex Tape: Blu Ray Review

Sex Tape: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Sony Home Ent

Predicated around the idea that two people could record a sex tape, upload it to the eponymous cloud and then find it distributed around, Sex Tape, with Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz has the potential to bring some risque humour to the fore.

Segel and Diaz are Jay and Annie, who spent their youth fornicating at every possible juncture; now, with 2 kids, demands of life and scant time, the spark has dimmed a little. Jay's working in the music industry and Annie's a blogger, trying to sell her writing wares to a wholesome Mom and Pop company headed up by Rob Lowe's Hank.

On the spur of the moment, the duo decide to record a sex tape to rekindle and reignite some of the long dormant spark. However, when they discover the video's gone wider than expected, they race to recover the various iPads that Jay's distributed which houses the mucky moments within - before the damage is too great.

Sex Tape really does have promise; with Jason Segel's escalating penchant for nudity in his movies, and Cameron Diaz appearing naked (from behind) and as a Boogie Nights style Roller Girl, it appears that raunch is clearly on the cards.

But the initial bout of frolicking gives way to a rather tame piece that's neither fish nor fowl.

With copious placements for iPad at every opportune moment (including one where Segel's character, having dropped it out of a window comments on how versatile and well-constructed it is), and some rather limp raunch that barely raises a titter, let alone an eyebrow, the resulting piece is something that's more suited to a formulaic farce rather than delivering on the promise of outright hilarity.

Diaz and Segel make for a recognisable duo with the overly talkative Segel delivering the majority of the straight lines while facing ludicrously silly moments; Diaz keeps up and proves game, but there's no real bite here for anybody to latch onto, despite relatively consistent comedic chemistry that's been mined before.

The highlight of the piece is swiftly dispatched early on when Jay and Annie head to Hank's place to recover their material and end up in an escalating farcical situation which sees Jay taking on a guard dog and noticing Hank's propensity for having himself painted into various Disney movie scenes around the home.

It's the only area that proffers up something of a series of laughs in this distinctly unsalacious comedy that's more of a safe proposition and at ill odds with its title. Inevitably portions of the tape are viewed towards the end of the movie, but by then, the promise of potential laughter is thwarted by a lack of any real passion for all that's gone on - that's even with a tenacious cameo toward the end.

Ultimately, this Sex Tape could have done with a large hit of comedic Viagra.

Rating:

ZB Movie Review - Talking Alexander, What We Did on Our Holiday and What We Do In The Shadows

ZB Movie Review - Talking Alexander, What We Did on Our Holiday and What We Do In The Shadows

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/saturday-mornings-with-jack-tame/audio/darren-bevan-december-6-2014/

You're Not You: Movie Review

You're Not You: Movie Review

Cast: Hilary Swank, Emmy Rossum, Josh Duhamel, Ali Larter
Director: George C Wolfe

Negotiating a movie with a disease is no easy task.

But given that director George C Wolfe was involved in Angels in America and won a Tony for his direction, this story about Hilary Swank's Kate and her battle with ALS would appear to be in safe hands.

Prim and proper, with her life fully in control and her marriage to Josh Duhamel's Evan perfectly happy, Swank's Kate finds everything upended when she's diagnosed with the incurable disease ALS, the first signs of which rear their head on her birthday.

18 months later, and the pair is forced to find a full-time caregiver to help - which is where the impulsive college student Bec (Shameless star Emmy Rossum) comes in. Initially seeming like a polar opposite to the order they need in their lives, Kate insists on hiring her - even though she's no experience and appears to be a train wreck herself.

Instinctively, the duo form a bond which moves sensitively and inevitably towards its conclusion.

You're Not You has moments of mawkishness and twinkling piano music, designed to elicit tears from the most cynical given the subject matter. There are also moments of manipulation as the predictable inevitability of the disease plays out.

But yet, among all of that, there's a powerhouse of a performance from Swank, whose measured control as Kate imbues this potentially telemovie story with a dignity and sensitivity that's hard to deny.

Sure, there are the bumps in the road that you can see coming a mile off (Rossum's rough and ready Bec clashes with all around her except Kate; Swank's perfect veneer masks the guilt of knowing peoples' lives will be affected by her illness; Duhamel's Evan falls spectacularly as expected but remains likeable) but the strength of the acting pulls the piece out of worn-out and over-used tropes, designed to see you delving into the Kleenex.

(Though that isn't to say that those moments occasionally rankle, thanks to over-used signposting and cliche)

At the end of the day, You're Not You does exactly what you'd expect - and while the sentimental gloop is poured on thickly about two thirds into the piece, George C Wolfe's restrained direction, combined with Swank and Rossum's effortlessly plausible bond, give the film the power it needs to just rise above some of the mawkishness that threatens to pull it down into telemovie territory.

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Terminator: Genisys Trailer - he is back

Terminator: Genisys Trailer - he is back

He is back.

Here's the first look at the first Terminator: Genisys trailer