Destiny: April update

Destiny: April update

Destiny Update 2.2.0 launches tomorrow bringing players new challenges, rewards, and updates for their Guardian.

In celebration of the April Update, Bungie’s Live team released the Official Destiny: The Taken King April Update Preview trailer.

The Assassin: Blu Ray Review

The Assassin: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Vendetta Films

An exercise in patience, albeit a not entirely successful one, The Assassin, from director Hou Hsiao-hsien, is likely to polarise audiences.

Set in 7th Century China at the decline of the Tang dynasty, it's the story of Yinniang (Shu Qi) a general's daughter who was taken away by a nun when young and who returns to carry out an assassination mission that could have far-reaching consequences for the political future of the Weibo region.

The fact that it takes 1 hour 20 minutes before the lead actually speaks gives you an insight into the slow, ponderous pace of The Assassin. It's a film that favours visual aesthetics over any kind of semblance of plot and long-sweeping character development. In fact, one story line involving a pregnancy of a character and her faking to avoid detection is thrown in with such weight that it's clearly important to the film's arc but is introduced so randomly and executed so poorly that it fails to provide any narrative heft whatsoever.

An impassive, emotionless lead of Yinniang doesn't help matters either; if you're expecting a film chock full of fight sequences that are long and extended, you'll also be disappointed in what transpires. Short bursts of fight scenes happen but with little or no consequence; in fact, director Hou Hsiao-hsien has left it for you to do the work, to engage with the film and provide the emotional heft that's needed - and unfortunately, that's not always a trade-off that works to his advantage I'm afraid to say, as not once did I care about anyone involved in this.

The Assassin though succeeds in its visuals; perhaps, a little too much so. Conversations are snatched from a distance and shot with veils floating in front of the camera, as if we are spying in on them like Yinniang; a couple of sequences flit by until you realise that she is lurking in the background as well. It's masterful, if not involving, stuff.

But ultimately The Assassin feels muddled; its slow languid, almost stultifying pace is crippling and its narrative and back-story is lacking; whether it's the subtitles that didn't convey everything they needed to or the script was muddled at an earlier stage, this Assassin is a killer of a film - but for all the wrong reasons. 

Phoenix: Film Review

Phoenix: Film Review

Cast: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Nina Kunzendorf
Director: Christian Petzold

From the director of the critically acclaimed Barbara, Phoenix is a tale that aims for powerful and gets there - for the most part.

Hoss plays Nelly, a survivor of the concentration camps, who's badly disfigured and needs reconstruction surgery after the war to start to rebuild her life. Choosing to ignore surgeons' advice and seeking her own face be restored, Nelly's determined to find her husband Johnny, who was arrested the same time she was and the thought of whom kept her going in the camps. However, Johnny didn't sustain that hope and believed she was dead, killed at the hands of the Nazis.

But when Nelly discovers Johnny's working in a local cabaret club as a busboy, and despite the advice from long term friend Lene, she ingratiates her way back into his life as he concocts a scheme to get her inheritance, believing Nelly to be the spitting image of his wife...

With its weighty subject matter and universal concerns, Phoenix could so easily gone for overblown sentiment and mawkishness,

But what Petzold does is strive for subtlety and for a more intimate drama that really becomes more about Johnny and Nelly than it does its global implications, which is where the suspension and suspense start to diverge.

By scattering elements through the story of a post World War II life and of Jews trying to deal with their PTSD and of a nation trying to rebuild, but by concentrating on the struggle between the duo, Petzold creates a film that's as much Hitchcock as it is post-Holocaust tale.

Evocatively lit and carefully choreographed, this is a film that relies on its cinematography for its atmosphere and one which demonstrates a proliferation of victims by concentrating on a singular one. But it's also a story which requires a leap of faith that Johnny wouldn't become suspicious of Nelly and the incredible coincidence that the tale pivots on.

Granted, it's the stuff of film noir, but Phoenix doesn't quite convince on that front and the eventual denouement of the piece lacks the real shock factor that it should have. And nowhere is this more evident than in Lene's ultimate fate, coming as it does like a shot out of the blue and with no resonance.

If anything, Phoenix is more of a film of survivors, of trying to find one's way again and of a nation trying to find a new face, as well as an individual. It's here that the power of Phoenix lies and it's here that the story is perhaps more desperate to be told.

As it is, Phoenix is beautifully and masterfully executed, but one can't help but feel its vision should have been better placed.

Quantum Break - Interviewing star Shawn Ashmore

Quantum Break - Interviewing star Shawn Ashmore

Quantum Break is out now on XBox One and I was fortunate enough to spend some time with the game's star (and of course XMen's Iceman and The Following's Mike Weston) Shawn Ashmore.

Take a listen to the interview below to hear Shawn talk about his first time with mo cap, his admiration for one of NZ's top directors, the fun of playing yourself playing a game - and to discover what type of film he's always wanted to make.



Don't forget, I also had a chat to Remedy Entertainment's Thomas Puha about the game - listen to that interview below too.

Quantum Break is out now on XBox One.

Quantum Break - XBox One event with Shawn Ashmore

Quantum Break - XBox One event with Shawn Ashmore

Quantum Break's launched on the XBox One and to celebrate, the awesome team at Microsoft threw an event to celebrate.

And even better, they hosted the star of the game Shawn Ashmore, aka Jack Joyce who got up close and personal with fans.

Here are some shots from the event

Listen to an interview with Shawn Ashmore here

The Divergent Series: Allegiant: Film Review

The Divergent Series: Allegiant: Film Review

Cast: Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Jeff Daniels, Naomi Watts, Octavia Spencer, Miles Teller, Ansel Elgort
Director: Robert Schwentke

The latest young adult cum dystopian cum split finale in two a la Hunger Games / Harry Potter film has nary a hiss nor a roar as it beats onward to the end.

In Allegiant, Shailene Woodley's rather bland Tris Pryor sleepwalks her way through the story as she and pouty love interest Four (the always pursed lipped Theo James) make a break for freedom.

At the end of the lacklustre Insurgent, the gang found out that everything they had been told was a lie and there was life outside the ruins of Chicago. 

Setting out to scale the wall and break free into the beyond, Tris and her troupe encounter a group of geneticists and a shadowy cabal who reveal she is the key to the future... and that only Tris can save the world from factions and the fractures within. Can they be trusted?

Allegiant feels like a reboot of the series and once again packs some pretty impressive space age visuals and some great visualisations of a world just beyond our own. (A building that houses the geneticists is a DNA helix)  But this futuristic sheen comes at a price - and that cost is the caring about any of the characters or giving them enough to do.

While the action is ramped up in parts with Schwentke giving life to clear-cut sequences, the continual muddling and muddying of obtuse concepts like The Damaged, The Pure, The Fringe and eugenics themselves in po-faced dialogue spouted by the cast does little to breathe life into proceedings.

In fact, it does the opposite.

The dramatic cypher Tris seems devoid of any punch this time around, and Woodley works with what she has on offer, but it's scant pickings. She's not well served by symbolism either with her purity seeing her clothed in white while everyone else has varying degrees of washed out pastels.  While James gets to run around a little and bust out some gung-ho action sequences, these choreographed pieces are more a momentary indulgence, rather than a full narrative necessity.

Unfortunately, opening up the world has ironically robbed The Divergent Series of any real life - the conflicts between Octavia Spencer and Naomi Watts' warring factions is touched on only too briefly and any tension there feels manufactured and under-explored.

Daniels makes a reasonable fist of ambiguity with the presence of a benevolent leader, but there's little for him to really do as the film heads to a much underwhelming ending. Perhaps the desire to split the film has robbed it of any kind of urgency from the book and undercut the drama that was due to unfurl. 

When compared to the work done by The Hunger Games franchise, Woodley's Tris is a heroine that's found wanting and whose very definition is weaker. Considering both series explore similar themes, they couldn't really be much farther apart with their executions and central characters.

Ultimately, The Divergent Series will end with Ascendant - but whether it will garner a place in the pantheon of YA films is very much up for debate.

Rating:

Eye In the Sky: Film Review

Eye In the Sky: Film Review

Cast: Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul, Alan Rickman, Barkhad Abdi, Jeremy Northam, Iain Glen
Director: Gavin Hood

When a film about the politics of drone warfare chooses to open with a sequence with a young girl frolicking within a military compound, you can guarantee manipulation is on the cards.

So it is with Ender's Game director Gavin Hood's latest, a movie that manages to use the hot button topic of a drone strike and spin into something compelling, with a sickening predictability that manifests itself in its final act and in its manipulative coda.

With a British-led drone strike to capture a suspected terrorist in Nairobi underway, led by Colonel Powell (Mirren in a no nonsense role), events quickly change when intelligence from the location reveals a suspected suicide bomb attack is being planned.

As the debate rolls back and forth between multi-national locations, the situation becomes increasingly more tense and equally farcical as no-one wants to be seen to condone the operation becoming a strike.

And matters are further exacerbated when a small girl selling bread in front of the location for the strike could become a piece of collateral damage that would have major international implications.

Conflict, debate over law and borderline moments that feel like they're just awaiting a visit from The Thick of It spin doctor Malcolm Tucker somehow combine to make Eye in The Sky a frustratingly tense experience.

Granted, there's a degree of insouciance as the house of cards is continually stacked and over-dramatically placed as no-one in any war room wants to take the ultimate decision and shoulder any of the responsibility. As the exasperation tangentially mounts, every one of the ensemble cast scattered through the world makes a case of their place on screen.

From Mirren's determined Colonel, who's devoted years to ending this cell to Paul's drone pilot who's placed in an unthinkable situation; from Abdi's on-the-ground operative to Rickman's hamstrung by the rules of engagement Lieutenant General, the whole situation shifts tangentially with some gallows humour and a lot of debate.

Wisely, Hood's chosen to keep too many morals out of the piece as he weaves a narrative which will probably see you projecting your own ideals onto it as the red tape of bureaucracy winds ever tighter to a taut conclusion that's as thrilling as it is predictable.

Unwisely, though, a coda to the proceedings is a major mis-step and brings too much sentiment to the morality tale, over-egging the pudding with a sickliness that's directly opposed to all that's gone before.

Ultimately, though, Eye in the Sky is a slick drama that puts an overtly human face on the ongoing thorny issue of the apparently anonymous face of drone warfare.

Rating: