Downton Abbey: S6 Blu Ray Review

Downton Abbey: S6 Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Universal Home Ent

The last full final season of Downton Abbey is upon us and with it the expectation that the series will be closed off with both the style and finality that is needed.

As the world begins to change around them, there are signs that the Downton reign is coming to an end, and in many ways, this is reflected in the scripts which start to feel a little tired and going through the motions rather than providing the boost that's needed for the end.

But quite frankly, fans of the show won't care about the plot's machinations and weaker edges at times, as it heads towards the conclusion. Cost cutting, arguments over hospitals and a scene at a dinner table that's like something from Alien all figure in the mix and are all solidly executed.

Annoyingly this release doesn't include the final ever episode, the Christmas special (released as it was pre- screening) and so the sense of completion is much like the finale itself - anti climactic.

The Intern: Blu Ray Review

The Intern: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Roadshow Home Ent

Director Nancy Meyers (It's Complicated, Something's Gotta Give) is back in familiar territory in The Intern.

70-year old widower Ben (played by Robert De Niro) has lived in Brooklyn all his life, and worked there all his life. So without a wife, and in retirement, he's found it all a bit of a shock. On a whim he decides to apply for a senior internship at Anne Hathaway's Jules Ostin's online fashion business. Accepted into the programme, and allocated to Jules, Ben tries to settle back into the groove - but the hyper-controlling Jules isn't willing to accept him without a fight - and matters get more complicated when Ben's made Jules' intern...

Generation gap comedy The Intern is a veritable fluffy jumper of a movie, a flick that revels in its cosiness as it espouses tritely veiled bon mots about experience being more vital in this day and age but oft overlooked.

Following a meta-thread that seems to hint at the once ferocious De Niro's place in the acting world and throws to the notion the man must take a succession of comedic roles that call on him to produce a series of gurning moments, its vanilla sensibilities threaten to over-season this gentle dish, best served to an audience seeking easy and predictably recognisable laughs.

Going from The Devil Wears Prada's put-upon assistant to now top dog, Hathaway's self-aggrandisement begins to falter as the script calls upon her to crumble, destroying the earlier set out notion that career women can have it all in this modern day world. Clearly according to Meyer's film, that's not actually the case when push comes to shove.

And yet with a degree of affability on the parts of both leads, this soufflé of a film begins to rise in parts above its conceit and belief that hey an older person in the workplace can have its benefits. But only once they master turning on a computer or the vagueries of joining the Facebook. Be still, my compromised and patronised sides.

In fact, the lightly once over script may just win over some people - even with a moment shoehorned in that sees Ben and the other interns forced to break into Jules' mom's house to retrieve a wrongly sent email. Meyers knows when to mix the farce into the frothy niceness on show and does so with reasonable aplomb, even if the element of the story feels bolted on and at odds with Ben's insistence on guiding Jules through life.

Ultimately, The Intern is no place for cynicism, no place for thinly veiled  sarcasm - it's one of those films which is pleasantly made, wholly predictable and utterly the sum of its parts. It does exactly what it says on the tin, celebrates the nice guy mentality of Ben and perfectly services an audience not wanting to be challenged on a night out.

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Sherlock: The Abominable Bride: Blu Ray Review

Sherlock: The Abominable Bride: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by BBC and Roadshow Home Ent

The big Christmas special for Sherlock was highly anticipated to say the least.

After the teaser image of Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes in Victorian garb went viral, there was plenty of speculation about what was going on and how the show was going to cater to the rabid fans keen to see how it plays out.

Well, to spoil it is to rob Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss' plan for Sherlock, so that'll be skated around, but needless to say The tale of The Abominable Bride is a Victorian thriller soaked in modern day Sherlock's DNA.

With twists, turns and nods to the post-modern take, there will be some who feel it's all a bit shallow and others who will delight in the deviousness. Needless to say, both Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch deliver top notch turns to keep you entertained as the twists play out.

Maybe a little too clever for its own good and dangerously close to becoming too meta and up its own backside, Sherlock: The Abominable Bride delivers a lot of anticipation for the next batch of specials.

The game is indeed afoot.

The Lady In The Van: Film Review

The Lady In The Van: Film Review

Cast: Maggie Smith, Alex Jennings, Jim Broadbent, Roger Allam
Director: Nicholas Hytner

Based on renowned English writer Alan Bennett's play and reuniting the star with the director of the Olivier Award original play, it is, as the title card suggests, a mostly true story.

The one woman acting tornado that is Maggie Smith returns to the role she made famous in London's West End as Miss Mary Shepherd, a homeless woman who lived in a van in Camden around the 1970s when Bennett inhabited the region.

With all the neighbourhood turning their back on Mary and seeing her as an eyesore and a beggar, Bennett (an uncanny impression and nuanced performance by Alex Jennings) allows her to park her van in his driveway. However, rather than this sojourn being a brief one, and much to Bennett's endless chagrin, Mary ends up staying some 15 years - and despite all of Alan's desires, becomes a part of her life.

Simply put, those who don't know Alan Bennett and won't be able to appreciate Jennings' spot-on enunciation and diction of the playwright whose Talking Heads made him famous, Maggie Smith will be the star attraction.

With her sheer force of presence and quirkiness that's a softer Downton approach, this Dowager of the driveway is pretty much going to strike a chord with anyone who's got a soft spot for cheeky irascibility. She's not loved by the inhabitants of the road and doesn't fit in with their middle class aspirations and judgements (the neighbours are wonderfully headed up by the ever solid presence of Roger Allam and Frances De La Tour), but there's a parallel with Bennett's mother and his terribly English guilt at leaving her alone up north.

Hytner employs a steady hand with the direction and the gentle story, which is as parked as the van in the driveway. Splitting Jennings in two to show the conflict and the consciences is a nifty touch and Jennings brings an edge and an empathy to both sides of Bennett the conflicted do-gooder and Bennett the writer looking for inspiration.

But it's Smith whom the film favours, as the layers of reason for her condition gently peel back. And while the emotion of these reveals never quite hits a crescendo or catharsis worthy of the journey, there is plenty of humour on the whimsical way. (No wonder given she's reprising a role she's already made famous on the stage).

Nobody emerges as a fully formed character and there is an odd touch with the real life Bennett being inserted into the narrative towards the end, but you can't deny The Lady In The Van has an amiability and an affability that makes it a gently easy watch, guaranteed to do well with an older audience.

Rating:

Newstalk ZB Review - Ride Along 2, The Lady in the Van and Black Mass

Newstalk ZB Review - Ride Along 2, The Lady in the Van and Black Mass

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/saturday-mornings-with-jack-tame/audio/darren-bevan-ride-along-2-the-lady-in-the-van-black-mass/

The Martian: Blu Ray Review

The Martian: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by 20th Century Fox Home Ent

Ridley Scott's latest film, The Martian, is a heartfelt paean to the time when NASA missions and the space race held the world in its thrall.

Based on Andy Weir's novel, Matt Damon stars as NASA astronaut Mark Watney, who's part of an ARES mission on Mars. When a storm hits the base, the crew's forced to flee the planet - but just before they leave, Watney's struck and believed dead. With a split-second decision to make, the commander of the team (Chastain) decides they must leave....

When Watney comes around on the red planet, he realises that he's on a foreign alien world, abandoned, with limited rations and with no way to contact NASA....

The Martian is, for the most part, really the Matt Damon show.

Channeling once again his affable everyman appeal to great dramatic effect, Damon manages to do much with little to interact with. Thanks to a narrative trick of having to record logs for back on Earth, Damon finds his Wilson and we, the audience, find some kind of semblance and route into what he's actually thinking, why he's doing it and how he's doing it as well (it's not hard to think of this film as Ridley Scott's audition for a NASA recruitment video).

Though one suspects there may be issues with some of the science (I'm not 100% sure that duct tape can fully seal a cracked spacesuit, or congealed blood), the fact that The Martian becomes a problem solving film is inherently one of its pluses, as it swings back and forth between Earth-bound efforts to save him and Watney's (occasionally convenient) efforts to survive on the surface of Mars.

It's back on earth that the ensemble cast really opens up to dramatic effect as the usual tropes of time and supplies threaten to run out and tough decisions have to be made. Daniels deserves mention for his relatively impassive head of NASA, the kind of guy you want to have make the tough decisions - and his stoic approach is counter-balanced by Bean's humane touch as the head of the crews of NASA. Equally, the politics of the situation are calmly thrown into the mix, rather than used as dramatic sounding posts.

It's fair to say The Martian lacks the urgency of the likes of Gravity, the hard science ofInterstellar and channels more of Apollo 13's collaborative approach to humans being human and tackling problems. Wisely shorn of the hysterics that ramped up Gravity's stress-levels and avoiding any kind of mention of whether Watney has family waiting for him  (a bold dramatic move), Scott's insistence on getting on with the job, celebrating humanity's approach to dealing with problems and general resilience when the chips are down serve the story well. By bringing in bouts of unexpectedly humour on Watney's behalf, Scott and Damon make him a character to easily identify with even if his plight will be alien to many.

Mixing in disco songs and a prepping montage to David Bowie's Starman bring a level of cheesiness to the ever-so slightly overlong proceedings too, but not once does it truly threaten to derail Ridley Scott's latest space opus. His opening sequence continues his ethos that space is all well and good but can go to hell in a handcart in but seconds; and there are little signs of Watney losing the plot after so much time alone and being forced to "science the shit" out of his predicament. (Though Damon's facials when faced with the tantalising prospect of rescue say more than any dialogue could)

However, ultimately, The Martian is a heartfelt ode to NASA, a salutation to its dreams and dreamers among the stars and a rising chorus of support for humanity's place in the universe, both literally and metaphorically; it's sci-fi at its most stripped down and simplistic, but it's a film that is as aspirational as it is entertaining.

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Resident Evil Zero: PS4 Review

Resident Evil Zero: PS4 Review

Platform: PS4
Released by Capcom

Initially released on the Gamecube way back in 2002, Resident Evil Zero wins the award for being the first remaster out of the 2016 box.

Uncovering the truth around Umbrella and the origins of the T Virus, this prequel to the series is the first to introduce dual protagonists to the game. Those leads are Rebecca Chambers and Billy Coen; Chambers is a medic and Coen is an escaped death row convict who broke out during the zombie outbreak.

Switching between the characters makes the game a bit more atmospheric and helps keep things fresh and it's fair to say the shocks keep coming in the game in a way that you'd expect with jumps and jolts. There's a few frustrations with camera angles and also with the save points in the game which are so few and far between that mar Resident Evil Zero from being a brilliant experience.

But to be fair, it has been adapted from a game way back in 2002 and therefore, the whole genre and expectation has evolved in the 14 years since then.

The switch between Billy and Rebecca is a little ahead of its time and set the trend for interchangeable protagonists; it's a shame that you can't co-op play with them given their skills ad abilities appear to work in tandem. You still get to order them about and even though those commands are limited, the game certainly feels like more of an experience than a companion to AI.

Exploration and puzzle-solving are the aims of the game really and the first section inside the train certainly brings those to the fore; even if it is occasionally too dark to really delve around. Even if that portion of the game is marred by extraordinarily long loading screens.

Fans of Resident Evil will love the game and the fact the final part of the puzzle's been brought into the current generation of consoles; but casual gamers may find the fact it's stuck to its 2002 ethos and MO a little jarring and prevent them from fully diving into the game that appears to have come back from the dead.