Mad Max: Blu Ray Review

Mad Max: Blu Ray Review

Rating: R16
Released by Roadshow Home Ent

"All this for a family squabble"

It's a phrase tossed off the lips of one lunatic in Mad Max which says so much about George Miller's return 30 years later to the post-apocalyptic world he made so iconic with Mel Gibson around 36 years ago.

Mad Max Fury Road is nothing short of a visually nihilistic spectacle; it's a world where hope as a commodity is as rare as oil and the rain in the blisteringly violent deserts that blow all around.

Tom Hardy stars as Max Rockatansky, a man haunted by the fact he couldn't save his wife and daughter and by visions of his child (a nod back to the originals). As the film starts, Max is captured by the heavily radiated white-skinned War Boys and hooked up to the sick as a human blood bag (this film is about as pro-blood transfusions as any health commercial could be).

But Max finds himself front and centre of an epic chase when Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron, the buzz-cutted, bionic armed heart and soul of the movie) deviates from a supply run and trade deal, angering the bloated leader of the post-apocalyptic cult of deviants, Immortan Joe (played by Toecutter from the first film, Hugh Keays-Byrne).

So Joe and his gang of misfits set out on a major chase and to unleash Carmageddon on the unbelievers as well as to try and reclaim Furiosa's secret cargo.

Mad Max Fury Road is light on plot, but high on visual insanity.

In fact, it's the lack of plot and near lack of dialogue at the start that convinces you this extreme road movie and video-game style plotting will challenge some who are not on board with the cine-visual meltdown mania of a barking mad director cum visionary Miller.

And for key character (Nicholas Hoult's religious zealot Nux who's desperate for entry to Valhalla in among the vehicular madness) the absence of development means one plot point jars quite badly midway through the piece, a mis-step from Miller who clearly had his eye on the action, rather than those swirling around the unfolding visual carnage.

It is the unrelenting destruction that stands out first and foremost in Mad Max Fury Road - the blistering soundtrack leaves your ears bleeding after the initial first 40 minutes of adrenaline-fuelled highly visceral and carefully orchestrated chaos is unleashed.

Thankfully, the movie slows giving you a chance to adjust and your ears a chance to recover, but it's a brief respite before the action ramps up once again. In those brief moments, Hardy's near-mute Max remains the calm in the storm, handing the emotion and heart to Theron to handle, which she does with a great degree of aplomb.

Looking like Slipknot meshed with Priscilla Queen of the Desert and crossed with Duran Duran's Wild Boys video, the visuals of Mad Max Fury Road are everything and stand tribute to Miller's clear and dedicated vision. Cars with spikes that look like motorised porcupines, bikers with inhabitants that look like they've cosplayed bedouins and Tusken raiders, a truck stacked with amps and a deranged guitarist all create the aesthetics of a world gone mad where chaos rules supreme.

The stunt work and brutal fights raise the bar for blockbuster expectations as this extended car chase plays out, and it's great to see a New Zealand stunt team had a hand in ensuring the vision comes to life. It certainly benefits from being stripped of CGI with live-action favoured in a way that would shame the Fast and The Furious series.

A madcap cinematic orgy of balls-out action, Mad Max: Fury Road stands alone as something visually incredible and completely epic; while the story and characters for the most part, don't hold up to repeated scrutiny, you can't help but salute Miller for what he's achieved.

With furious sound and visual bluster, Mad Max Fury Road is an atmospheric road well worth travelling - even though there are a few bumps along the way.

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The Witcher: Wild Hunt - Hearts of Stone unveiled

The Witcher: Wild Hunt - Hearts of Stone unveiled

Hearts of Stone expansion release date announced

CD PROJEKT RED, creators of The Witcher series of games, announce the release date of Hearts of Stone, the first expansion to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Step again into the shoes of Geralt of Rivia, a professional monster slayer, this time hired to defeat a ruthless bandit captain, Olgierd von Everec, a man who possesses the power of immortality. The expansion lets you choose your own way through an adventure that includes recruiting a crew of break-in artists, spending a night partying with a ghost and outsmarting the most bizarre creatures Geralt has ever faced.

Launching October 13th, 2015, Hearts of Stone packs over 10 hours of new adventures and introduces new characters, powerful monsters, unique romance, and a brand new storyline shaped by gamer choices. The expansion also introduces a brand new system of Runewords that significantly affects gameplay. Each Runeword will impact a different aspect of in-game mechanics and will allow the players to experiment with various strategies and tactics.

Along with the digital release, gamers will also be able to purchase a special, limited boxed edition of Hearts of Stone available at selected retailers worldwide. The box contains a digital download code for the expansion, two masterfully crafted physical decks of Gwent, the card game set in the world of The Witcher, and a detailed manual explaining the rules. With two unique sets of cards, Monsters and Scoia’tael ready to go, you and your friends can now engage in tactical combat on a grand scale outside of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt!

Tearaway Unfolded: PS4 Review

Tearaway Unfolded: PS4 Review

Platform: PS4
Released by Media Molecule

When Tearaway released back in 2013, it was nothing short of a victory for the format on which it was launched - the PS Vita.

Utilising the touch screen, the back pad and your sense of imagination, it did everything right - it packed cute into accessible and paved the way for the truly hands on adventure it was.

So it was a sense of trepidation that brings Tearaway to the PS4 with Unfolded, a not exactly remaster but a reinvention for the next gen console.

And boy, is it interactively brilliant.

It's the still same game as before. In Tearaway, you play either a female or male messenger, made from paper, tasked with getting to the sun to deliver a message. Sort of...You see, the kicker with this one is that the sun is actually you captured via the PS's camera capabilities - you're like the Teletubbies sun only more realistic. But the You of the game is actually an integral part to what exactly is going on, working in tandem with the messenger, you can use the interactive elements of the game to help throughout.

This is where Tearaway soars - and why Media Molecule have made it so important on the PS4. By using the light bar, you can literally shine your light on your messenger and the world around you, which creates a bond between the You and the character. That bond is unbreakable and really invests you in the surroundings, the mission and the rather cute story telling.

But it's not just fingers that do the talking, as it were. Throughout the game, there are characters who need things - be it a squirrel who needs a crown or a plant that's drained of its colour. And this is where the crafting side of Tearaway comes into focus. Using pencil, paper and your imagination in the crafting area, you get to create parts of the world and sidebits which are used throughout - deftly done and crisply executed they are little bonuses, littering the game and which have a use later on. Items you create on the drawing board are scattered around ValleyFold for you to view.

The new touches include the use of the touch pad to create wind within the world, which deftly blows away your Scraps enemies, so hell-bent on removing the creativity around. They can also help you to propel yourself on a paper plane and soar through the air collecting confetti from high to reach places to help you trade and personalise your character. Also, the ability to throw things into your controller via your messenger (such as rocks, nuts) to then unleash onto the world around you is great too - yet another attempt at personalising the experience and growing the bond.

It's not all perfect though and sadly the camera angle can at times be nothing short of obtrusive as it sticks and leaves you unsure of how to centre your view or get an idea of where you are. It's occasionally frustrating too, as it can mean you're bowled for six by baddies that you can't see.

But that's a minor complaint for Tearaway Unfolded, as it's a game that has really embraced the technology - using the PS App and the PS Camera you can bring your own world into ValleyFold and personalise it even further. It's almost as if Media Molecule have taken every spec element of the game, and thought very seriously about how to bring it into the execution rather than shaping the execution around it.

I can't lie - I adore Tearaway Unfolded; its camera niggle aside, it's clever, bright, fun, inventive and easy to play. It's a massively entertaining distraction from day to day life and its simplicity of execution is its absolute joie de vivre. I defy you not to play Tearaway Unfolded and immerse yourself in this colourful world of paper where imagination has run riot and the gaming world is so much better for it.

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The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials: Film Review

The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials: Film Review

Cast: Dylan O'Brien, Aiden Gillen, Giancarlo Esposito, Kaya Scodelario, Rosa Salazar
Director: Wes Ball

Whereas the first Maze Runner film served up a potent cocktail of intrigue, mystery, Lord of The Flies, Survivor and Ender's Game, the second, The Scorch Trials favours a rather more action-led thrill-ride in a post-apocalyptic dystopia.

Picking up from where The Maze Runner ended, the second YA outing concentrates purely on Dylan O'Brien's Thomas and his ragtag group of survivors from the Glade. Whisked away to a compound at the end of the first film by a mysterious organisation known as WCKD, Thomas and his fellow Gladers find their mistrust of the bigwigs thrust squarely into focus when not everything appears to add up.

So, leading the charge, Thomas et al bust out of the WCKD complex and away from their shadowy leader Janson (a smarmy Gillen) to head to the Mountain Ranges of the devastated outside world aka the Scorch in the hope of getting some answers and surviving.

Whereas the first Maze Runner was all about the character and establishing the trust/  mistrust elements (specifically a youth mistrust of adult intentions), The Scorch Trials eschews all of that character element and explanation in favour of a series of reasonably taut and exciting action sequences that simply segue from moment to moment and are usually preceded by Thomas shouting variations of the word "Run!".

That's not to deny that large portions of said action sequences are anything but thrilling and it's great to see a YA finally revel in those trappings rather than simply wallow in yet more moping. But it comes in place of people forwarding the script, which is frustrating - particularly given the work done with some of the characters in the Glade, the majority of whom this time around are simply given piecemeal screen time.

By varying quite considerably from the book, The Scorch Trials is its own beast - even if it relies on some unevenly executed CGI style zombies to bring the menace and jump scares. But by opening up the world and introducing a raft of new characters, there are only a few newbies who stand the transition. If anything, this film is Dylan O'Brien's to shoulder and he doesn't quite have the charisma to fully pull it off this time around and Scodelario makes scant use of what time she has, even if her arc is sign-posted early on. It misses the character bonding and determined resolution of the group of the Glade that pulled us in and had us in these characters' corner as it all transpired.

Problems persist with parts of the internal logic, with WCKD chasing the group and then backing off without any reason, other than for it to serve the wider narrative. Thankfully, some of those concerns are waylaid by the majority of the action scenes, which are tautly executed and guarantee you in parts to be on the edge of your seat. Unlike the second part of the Divergent series, this is a film that ups the action ante, even if the explanations of what is going on are put on the back burner.

However, there are moments that feel misplaced and could have been jettisoned; in one sequence, both Thomas and an escapee end up at some kind of drunken Bacchanalian party - it's an odd excursion and one that really should have ended up on the cutting room floor (even if it serves up a great Alan Tudyk in guy-liner).

The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials is not a bad second serving, but it doesn't exactly build on the work on the first in quite the rounded way that you'd perhaps expect it to. It certainly in parts feels like an extended tease,dangling answers near you and plucking them away just because it can.

A weaker cliffhanger also doesn't serve to build as much anticipation into a conclusion as you'd hope, but Wes Ball has certainly made the dystopian as destructive as possible with a packed film of action - even if you do feel at times like you're being distracted from an ultimate resolution.

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Orange Is The New Black Season 1 and 2: DVD Review

Orange Is The New Black Season 1 and 2: DVD Review

Rating: R16
Released by Roadshow Home Ent

A veritable Netflix sensation, and with a third season just having aired, Orange Is The New Black's first two seasons remain a pop culture phenomenon that really kickstarted the whole idea of binge watching.

Based on the book of the same name, it's the story of Taylor Schilling's Piper Kerman, a reasonably well to do Brooklynite who finds her past back to haunt her and who ends up in a women's prison. The first season is about Piper surviving and getting used to being in jail, as well as acclimatising. The second sees a hardened Piper falling into the routines and the power plays of the prison as newer inmates arrive.

Cleverly written and smartly using flashbacks to flesh out the various inmates and their backstories, Orange is the New Black is an engaging series that works slightly better in its first season than its second, which suffers from a lack of source material.

Schilling is by turns awkward, unlikeable, vulnerable, smart and stupid and makes a good heroine for people to latch onto as the jail set story plays out. Unlike the best prison show ever made, Oz, this series plays a little more on the comedy but there's an equal amount of drama and heartbreak over the 26 episodes - and it's the characters within that make it such a rich tapestry to behold.

Extras: Commentaries, featurettes, gag reels

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Cake: DVD Review

Cake: DVD Review

Rating: M
Released by Roadshow Home Ent

Friends star Jennifer Aniston was unlucky to miss out on an award nomination for her turn as Claire, a woman dealing with chronic pain and who is fascinated by the suicide of a fellow member of her pain group.

Detailing relationships with others and interactions with the suicide victim's husband, it's a darkly acerbic piece that sees Aniston eschewing any kind of thrills and acting modestly and earnestly. Bleakly dark and occasionally somnambulent, this drama takes a bit of investment to get into and a time to get the rewards that it proffers.

But it's Aniston with adopts a no-thrills approach to Claire and a layered performance that gradually peels away to reveal the reasons for her condition and her outlook. IT's a bravura performance that's bolstered by a strong supporting cast, but a role that's not as showy (and perhaps indicates why she may have been overlooked).

Granted, this slice of Cake won't be to everyone's taste, but the inherent devotion to its conclusion will reward viewers in ways they perhaps could not have perceived.

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People, Places, Things: Film Review

People, Places, Things: Film Review  

Cast: Jemaine Clement, Stephanie Alleyne, Regina Hall, Jessica Williams
Director: James C Strouse

The gentle indie People, Places, Things is the latest film to showcase Jemaine Clement's softer side, while still revelling in the quirk.

He stars as Will Hall, a graphic novelist, newly single and trying to negotiate life with two young daughters, a lack of time to see them, while teaching a class on drawing. When he decides that he wants to see more of his girls, he finds himself out of his depth; and to further complicate matters, he ends up back in the relationship game...sort of.

With quirky dialogue, a touch of the melancholy and a very softly spoken Jemaine Clement, People, Places, Things is a lo-fi indie that has the charm, even if parts of its narrative feel like they have been thrown in for quirkiness' sake and to ensure the story goes on the right track for the audience's sake, rather than the characters.

But with a veracity and insight, there are moments to cherish such as the truth bombs dropped over the end of relationships - "She stopped talking and I enjoyed the silence too much" being one of the more candid moments that bristle with a stinging openness through the script.

Clement plays lost rather than man-child, and is never anything less than mopily plausible as the befuddled romantic lead who ambles from one moment to the next (even taking a moment to sass the American perception of New Zealand being solely about hobbits). Even if ironically, he ends up being the one with the most  direct method to cut through life despite his earlier flailings, he makes Will a savvy individual who knows what the right thing to say is when the right moment comes along.

If anything, this piece is more The Unbearable Cuteness of Being, with cartoons helping with the narrative and helping set the back-story in a gently winsome way.

However, People Places Things succeeds in cutting through the usual romantic gloop and delivering an experience that is pleasant, pertinent and knowing.

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