Slow West: DVD Review

Slow West: DVD Review

Rating: M
Released by Transmission Home Ent

Fresh from Sundance success, the blackly wry Western Slow West gives the genre something a little different and proves a welcome tonic to the usual genre fare.

Smit-McPhee stars as Jay Cavendish, a kid whose determination to reunite with his love Rose has seen him head across the plains of the Wild west of Colorado. But Jay is an effete, naive dreamer, whose first moments see him cross paths with Silas (a cigar-chewing Fassbender, who's terrific as the drifter who hides a secret). Realising that Jay's out of his depth, he offers to pay Silas to get him to his destination.

Which is probably a good thing - as there are all manner of hidden dangers in the Wild West, including Payne (a brilliantly quiet and menacing Mendelsohn) who's following them...

Packed with gallows humour and a heart as black as can be, Slow West is a terrific piece, shot in MacKenzie country, that packs a touch of the buddy road movie along with some unexpectedly humorous sight gags to great effect.

With diametrically opposed ideals, Silas and Jay make queasy road buddies, each with different reasons for doing what they need to do to survive (though Jay is completely out of his depth, his emotional touch gives us the cornerstone we need to connect).

Packing in philosophy with musings on how the west was (an anthropologist remarks at one point that soon all of this will be a long time ago) with some dark humour that shows the horror of the west (Jay tries on a suit at a trading post, only to discover it has a bloody bullet hole), Maclean's managed to create something that simultaneously embraces the Western tropes while adding something new. In among the uneasiness and violence on the road to resolution, there are laughs to be had, pratfalls to observe and some terrific musings on the nature of life and love. (As well as one particularly cruel but immensely funny take on the salt in the wound comment)

Smit-McPhee adds an ethereal almost sickly touch to his pasty Jay, a dreamer whose recollections of his time with Rose hint toward trouble ahead; equally, Fassbender's drifter has a touch of the classic western man with no name ethos around him (though his change of heart seems to come from leftfield) but he embodies the gruff Marlboro men of the time as the mournful score progresses.

With its off-kilter sensibilities and its 4:3 aspect ratio, Slow West is something different; a take on a tale of the Frontier previously unwitnessed but yet reverent to its roots. It's an exciting fusion of daring; a shaking up of the genre that embraces, then subverts the romance of the Wild West and gives the audience a breath of cinematic fresh air.

Rating:

GTA Hallowe'en is here

GTA Hallowe'en is here

Grand Theft Auto Online: Halloween Surprise

Hi all,

From now through November 16th in GTA Online, special Halloween treats will be available to the residents of Los Santos and Blaine County on PS4, Xbox One and PC. And no tricks here – once acquired these special items will remain in players’ inventory, even after November 16th.

2 NEW VEHICLES: LURCHER HEARSE AND FRANKEN STANGE

Navigating the freeways of Los Santos just got more terrifying with the addition of these two ghastly new vehicles. Players can show their dark side while getting around in the Lurcher Hearse and the Franken Stange – both available for a limited time only, along with 20 ghoulish new Bobbleheads that can be added to the dashboard of any customizable Lowrider.

NEW MASKS & FACE PAINTS

Strike fear into opponents by donning one of the horrific new masks now available in the Monsters section of Vespucci Movie Masks. Crews tackling a Heist between now and November 16 will see a new Halloween mask category as the default option on all Heists. 30 Spooky new styles of Face Paint are also available to help players get into the spirit of the season.

SLASHER ADVERSARY MODE

Enjoy thrills and suspense with the lights out in this tense new Adversary Mode for up to 8 players. Run, hide, and fight to survive in the darkness as the player designated as the Slasher stalks his prey with a Shotgun. Players can use the new Flashlight to navigate if they dare, but risk revealing their position and quickly becoming prey. Survive for 3 minutes and get the chance to return the favor with a Shotgun of your own.

SPECIAL HALLOWEEN WEEKEND EVENT & LIVESTREAM

Stay tuned for details on this weekend's special Halloween activity, including a livestream this Friday October 30th at 5pm ET featuring the Rockstar Broadcast team and special guests to be announced.

The Dressmaker: Film Review

The Dressmaker: Film Review

Cast: Kate Winslet, Liam Hemsworth, Hugo Weaving, Judy Davis, Sarah Snook, Rebecca Gibney

Director: Jocelyn Moorhouse

Set in an Aussie small town where everyone is an oddball, The Dressmaker's quirkiness begins to grate pretty quickly.

The deranged and nutty tone sets the scene for a story that's as steeped in tragedy as it is over-the-top garishness. 

A perfectly cast Winslet plays Myrtle, a woman scorned from the small fictional Aussie backwater Dungatar with the belief she caused the death of a boy. Returning to her mother, Mad Molly (a wonderful Judy Davis who imbues her bitter mother with as much heart as she does black humour) after a spell working in high fashion, Tilly sets feathers flying with her seamstress skills and her vampish figure, reminiscent of a Hollywood siren.

But she also captures the heart of Liam Hemsworth’s rugger boy and neighbour Teddy (who gets shirtless on numerous occasions) and begins to melt back to the charms of Dungatar while trying to exact her revenge for years of ostracism.

The Dressmaker is a curio, which is verging on high campery too as Winslet's Myrtle arrives back in town with revenge on her mind and snarling out a "I'm back ,you bastards" from under an icy veneer as the film starts, channelling a wild western showdown soundtrack and signalling something is in the water.

But under the high 1950s fashion is a simple story of reputations unfairly gained and rumours viciously spread among the ghouls of a small town, a trope that many who have tried to flee their past only to run home will recognise. The film heads more for farce and a parody of grotesques in its execution, rather than giving the supporting players a touch more humanity.

For this is a small town where the police are more interested in high fashion than high crime, where one man drugs his wife to rape her in her sleep and where a secret truth has festered for years rotting the community from within – it’s not exactly the most pleasant place to dwell, and Moorhouse works reasonably well from the Aussie ocker source material the Gothic book written by Rosalie Ham.

Of the leads, Davis seriously impresses, giving Molly the emotional arc she needs as the prodigal daughter returns home; elsewhere Winslet’s thawing of the stark and severe Myrtle seems as inevitable as the wonderful dresses she wears but her turn gives the predictable story a kind of watchability that’s welcome among all the frocks and barbs. It’s the mother and daughter relationship that is the real thrust of this film and proves to be the reason to plough on through the nuttiness and extreme stereotypes.

Weaving’s cop also deserves mention; a policeman who is more interested in the fripperies that Myrtle brings from Paris and whose cross-dressing is indulged but never revelled in. Granted, it’s like watching another variation of Weaving’s turn from Priscilla, Queen of the desert but he’s a small oasis in a backwater of confused tone, overlong pacing and dusty yesteryear drama.

Ultimately, The Dressmaker is a celebration of the absurd, a gallery of grotesque and unfortunately, a grating film that will surprise many who are expecting something else than what the poster appears to promise.

Rating:

Rock the Kasbah: Film Review

Rock the Kasbah: Film Review

Cast: Bill Murray, Zooey Deschanel, Bruce Willis, Kate Hudson, Scott Caan, Danny McBride
Director: Barry Levinson

If you ever wanted to see a film with Bill Murray trussed to a bed, bedecked in a blonde wig and wearing a diaper, then Barry Levinson's latest is for you.

Murray plays washed up verging-on-con-man music manager Richie Lanz who spends his days listening to awful karaoke singers and promising them the world in return for cash. But his world turns around when he takes his last remaining client (Zooey Deschanel) on a USO tour of Afghanistan, believing fame and fortune lie around the corner.

However, having been ripped off and left without any means of escape from Afghanistan, Richie has to try and turn his fortunes around to make it out alive - and things get more complicated when, for the first time in his life, he discovers a genuine talent. Could his shot at redemption also be his undoing as he travels to Kabul to get his female singer on Afghan Star?

If you're expecting a hoot-a-moment film from the man who cocked a snook at the armed forces with the Adrian Cronauer story in Good Morning, Vietnam, then Rock The Kasbah is not the film for you.

It lurches wildly between tones as it negotiates a lunatic sensibility with a social commentary - and not always entirely successfully. Murray brings his usual deadpan laconic stylings to the table and there's just something about this rapscallion and his louche outlook that gets you on side. Certainly, in parts, Murray looks like he's having a blast.

The rest of the supporting cast don't fare as well - Hudson gets some extra time in the final furlong as the Armed forces tart-with-a-heart (even if one scene looks quite obviously like it was re-shot and re-scripted); Caan and McBride make the most of their extended cameos as black-market dealers - and even Willis shows up to whisper some lines before slinking off into the sand dunes of both the desert and the movie, only to reappear when dramatic fortune requires him to do so.

Equally, the film's sensibilities border on abrasive too, with the sentiment that Lanz can do whatever he wants with his client simply because he's American. Want to ride roughshod over years of cultural issues and oppression of women without any consequence? Sure, then Lanz is your man - and the script crassly precipitates this with Lanz getting his way for Afghan Star. Granted, it's morally questionable and perhaps a tighter script or a neater plotting of the arc could have helped, but this last third push within the film rankles and feels grossly awkward despite Murray's innate charm propelling it along.

That's the main problem with Rock The Kasbah; its tonal inconsistencies end up providing a patchy affair that's scrappy and amusing in equal measures. As the Clash remarked, the Shareef don't like it - and for large parts of this film thanks to its cultural awkwardness, if you'll forgive the pithiness, neither did I.

Rating:

Magic Mike XXL: Blu Ray Review

Magic Mike XXL: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Roadshow Home Ent

The fact that it takes five minutes for Channing Tatum's Mike to emerge from a pool, fully clothed and with a soaking shirt stuck to his near-perfect abs should tell you all you need to know about the sequel to 2012's misunderstood-stripper-with-a-dilemma Magic Mike.

This time around, three years after quitting the Kings of Tampa, Mike's running his furniture business when he gets a call out of the blue from Tarzan (Nash) to tell him that Dallas has died.

But that turns out to be a ruse, and given that Matthew McConaughey's troupe leader Dallas has fled abroad to start anew with the Kid, the guys are on one last road trip heading to the Stripper Convention at Myrtle Beach for one last blast - and they need Mike along as they're lacking an MC and a direction.

So heading to the last hurrah, the group get distracted, stopping off at a bordello run by Jada Pinkett-Smith's , who has a history with Mike and making a house-call in Savannah that leads to a contrivance that could only happen in the movies.

Ladies, there ain't nothing wrong with a bump and grind, and, heaven knows, there's plenty of that on show in Magic Mike XXL.

Whereas the Soderberg original three years ago (he's back on exec-producing duties this time around) was a more heady affair, blessed with character, with occasional scenes of stripping thrown in as the plot progressed, this is anything but.

Aside from just hanging out, this latest sees the Hollywood machine cater to the lowest common denominator (and serve the audiences the more intellectual flick only flirted with) with endless scenes of heavily choreographed routines, complete with so much gyrating, gold lame pouches and dry-humping that it would make anyone blush.

Except it doesn't - because that's really all this film has to offer, and even the fun is lacking at times.

In among the bickering and squabbling, hidden within the utterly atrociously banal dialogue and debate that these bros engage in ("Did you bang her?" being one of the more eloquent moments) there is nothing more than a shallow series of excuses, complete with distinct lack of plot, to let the man-candy let it all hang out on stage and with each other.

There's no edge to this film, no bite in the character and no tension nor sense of any arcs.

Mike's given the largest reason to get back into it all (cos stripping's just in his blood, yo after he has his solo dancing moment in the garage at home) - none of the rest of the crew give any valid reason as to why this stripper convention should be the end of the line for them; there's no call for the finality and no joie de vivre in the long drawn out finale that separates the gang and deprives them of the chemistry of the group.

Andie MacDowall's frustrated Southern belle is a highlight; Jada Pinkett-Smith plays the same character as Fish Mooney on Gotham; and Elizabeth Banks' energetic cameo towards the end provides a welcome burst of joie de vivre. Elsewhere, Mangianello's Big Dick's attempt to get a smile out of a gas attendant at least borders on the self-knowing and comical; and Tatum brings a bit of charm as Mike, but this sequel is relatively flat and stuffed simply with robotic dance routines - though it has to be commended for widening the audience appeal thanks to a scene in a drag club and the aforementioned Southern Belle stop-off, an acknowledgement of older ladies (and even the guys spend a lot of their stage show making sure the plus size ladies are gettin' the lovin' in a rare moment of equality)

Some awkward attempts at character arcs fall flat - Tarzan's getting too old for the game and contemplating life after alone, Big Dick's unable to perform in the bedroom as no lady is ever the one, Ken's facing life when his looks fade. These are all big issues to the guys, but are handled in such a shallow vein and the life lessons are barely learned as the stilted road trip progresses.

All in all, Magic Mike XXL is anything but abs-olutely fabulous; its lack of drive. magic, character and flaccid excuses to whip the ladies up into a frenzy may prove to be cinematic viagra for the girls' night out, but unlike the first film which benefited from being based on Tatum's dancing days, this XXL outing is all trouser, but definitely no mouth.

Rating:

F1 - Sergio Perez Hotlap

F1 - Sergio Perez Hotlap

F1^TM 2015: WATCH SERGIO PEREZ HOTLAP AHEAD OF THE FORMULA 1 GRAN PREMIO DE MÉXICO 2015

SYDNEY, 28^th October 2015 - Codemasters® and BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment today released a new Behind the Scenes video for F1 2015, the official videogame of the 2015 FIA FORMULA ONE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP™.

Absent from the FIA FORMULA ONE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP since 1992, the GRAN PREMIO DE MÉXICO makes its grand return this weekend. Take an exclusive insider look withSergio Perez (Sahara Force India F1 Team) on-track ahead of the upcoming race held at the famous AUTÓDROMO HERMANOS RODRÍGUEZ!

Paris Games Week trailers

Paris Games Week trailers

Here are just some of the PlayStation trailers from Paris Games Week