HITMAN – The Sarajevo Six – The Enforcer Trailer

HITMAN – The Sarajevo Six – The Enforcer Trailer

HITMAN – The Sarajevo Six – The Enforcer Trailer

6 BONUS CONTRACTS – The Sarajevo Six – only on PlayStation®4

The second target from The Sarajevo Six is available with the launch of Episode Two.

Gary Lunn, also known as “The Enforcer”, has been located in Sapienza where he is currently working at the Ether corporate bio lab, supervising high level security efforts. Lunn is a highly trained professional and can most likely be found moving around Villa Caruso or the bio lab.

PS4 players get exclusive access to The Sarajevo Six. These are six bonus contracts that tell a self-contained side-story revolving around former members of a paramilitary unit called CICADA. Agent 47 will travel the world in pursuit of his targets, with one bonus contract available in each location from the game.

Visit hitman.com for more information on HITMAN and the Sarajevo Six.

25 April: Film Review

25 April: Film Review 

Director: Leanne Pooley

Released in the 101st year of the ANZAC Commemorations and to all intents and purposes feeling like a learning tool rather than a cinematic experience, 25 April is a World War One curio.

Using the style of animation reserved for the pages of graphic novels or Telltale Games' style of console gaming, 25 April is a documentary aimed at bringing the story of the NZ experiences at Gallipoli vividly to life.

There's no disputing these six people's real-life tales are vividly realised and transposed to the big screen. From a soldier to a nurse, these are stories we've heard time and time before but which lose none of the power as the true horror of war is unveiled.

The problem with 25 April though is that it sticks so rigidly to the point of view of the ANZACs that it makes the rest of the campaign look like no-one else was involved. With a once over lightly approach to proceedings, and the ANZAC experience, it was very much a day in the life of and gives the ultimate result that the over-arching campaign itself was rather extraneous to proceedings. 

There is an argument that because it was being done from the diaries of those involved, the over-arching aim wouldn't have been there for them to see, but the narrow focus actually causes the scope to feel very much from a tunnel vision.

Thankfully the animation is nothing short of astounding.

Vivid reds swamp the screen as the theatre of war is expunged.

And one sequence where the reds turn into poppies is heart-breakingly well done and stirring. Equally, a scene where a soldier is shot and the wound appears on him, turning into a poppy as it bleeds out is tremendously haunting and equally inventive.

With some excellent voice-work and some richly tragic and evocative source material to work from, 25 April certainly has its moments where it hits home. 

As a piece of a wider puzzle and a deeper conflict, these stories are neither new and are extremely commonplace, leaving the nagging feel the reason for 25 April may be a little too late - it would have been well served in the 100th commemorations and would have reached a level that would have transcended need.

One can't help but shake the feeling this is not a film that actually needs to exist in a cinema; it's a tale to be told, granted, but it's more suited to a centre piece of a wider discussion, best housed in a museum  and ANZAC context.

New Italian film festival on way

New Italian film festival on way

News reaches me this morning of a new Italian Film Festival starting May 4th.

Being run by Orphans and Kingdoms director Paolo Rotondo, Madman, Rialto and Palace Films, the Cinema Italiano festival is taking some tentative steps into the market recently vacated by another Italian Film Festival.

Running in the following dates - the festival will play Auckland 4 May – 15 May Tauranga 19 May – 26 May Wellington 2 June – 12 June Christchurch 15 June – 25 June

Paolo, along with his wife, have curated a selection of films from 2014 and 2015 - the full list of films on show are:

Latin Lover / Those Happy Years / The Wonders / Quiet Bliss / Mia Madre / The Conformist / Zoran My Newphew, The Idiot / The Mafia Only Kills in the Summer / Greenery Will Bloom Again / Incompresa / Black Souls / Wonderous Boccaccio / Blame It On Freud / Crossing Rachmaninoff / Bella Vita / The Dinner / Orphans & Kingdoms / Those Happy Years / The Fifth Wheel / The Devil's Soup / Sacro Gra

You can get more details of the festival at cinemaitalianonz.com and you can get the festival programme directly here.

Battleborn: PS4 Beta Preview

Battleborn: PS4 Beta Preview

Platform: PS4
Released by Gearbox and 2K Games

There's something inherently meshed about Battleborn.

The new shooter from the stable that brought you Borderlands has a distinctive feel of that game about it as well as an old scrolling shooter from the long gone arcade days.

With over 2 million taking part in this open beta, 2K Games's first person shooter is already popular, and based on the strength of its BETA, it will be as popular when the game drops.

Meshing Borderlands' cartoony ethic with Gauntlet's co-operative play, the shooter is manic, fun and requires a degree of sensibility as you try to achieve your aims. Mixing guns, swords and magic proves to be a fertile mix for the game and an ease of play helps immensely too.

Essentially, the story is all about a band of heroes trying to stop the last star from being overcome by bad guys - and it's up to you and a team of 3 others to try and save the day. Sounds familiar in many ways, but swathed in the Gearbox Software aesthetic, the game's colourful cartoony vibe is evident from the get go - and is all the more welcoming because of it.

The majority of my time was spent in the multiplayer, story-driven PvE elements - and there lies the most fun and equally the most challenging. Choosing to either play offline or with a team online, the game's a blast from beginning to end. Collecting throughout the game gives you the chance to upgrade as you go, but given the action is so frenetic, allocating powers during skirmishes was not the easiest to achieve and while ultimately, it helps pay the price for the player, it can also bring death as nothing really pauses around you as it kicks in.

In a way, it's perhaps a shame that it's a FPS, because the graphic work done on the rest of the characters is just beautifully rendered. From the slender Marquis to the mushroom Japanese stylings of Miko, these are characters which cry out for screen time.

If anything, Battleborn does feel like an evolution of Borderlands with its patented stylings and its way of registering hits, and it's perhaps a shame that visually it doesn't strike out on its own path. But given its eminent playability and its sandbox scope for chaos, it's pretty much guaranteed that come May 3rd, this will be a big big hit.

Suffragette: DVD Review

Suffragette: DVD Review

Rating: M
Released by Universal Home Ent

There's no disputing the Suffragette's movement was a vital one.

But in the hands of Gavron and writer Abi Morgan (The Hour, The Iron Lady), the film version of the growth of the movement feels didactic and as washed out as the grey palettes employed in the visual execution.

In 1912 London, Mulligan plays Maud Watts, one of the early foot soldiers of the movement, but who's more a soldier of chance than of deliberate stance. Working at a local laundry and duly handing in wages to her husband (Whishaw), Maud one day finds herself in the middle of the growing civil unrest instigated by Emmeline Pankhurst.

With her interest inadvertently piqued initially in the movement, Watts is dismissive of what's going on and remains a passive viewer. But when tensions begin to escalate at home, she becomes more involved in the fight for equal rights.

Suffragette is a misfire in many ways.

It fails to really get to the core of what makes the movement so powerful and gives us a lead that would rather view what's going on while all around lecture her. Equally, it doesn't help that Gavron's characters outside of the trio of women are so caricature. All men are bad and therefore badly portrayed with such a broad brush that the message threatens to be lost in the cinematic execution.

Conflict at Watts' home is so obviously signposted that it's never a surprise when it shows and the only real surprise is how dire it gets; this is a film which is never anywhere but in the women's corner, firmly entrenched in their camp and their fight.

In among the shaky cam and Mulligan's Watts' passive viewing of events (her character spends most of the film as an impassive viewer, rather than willing participant), there's also cliched dialogue rolled out over the law not being respectable to women; but there are moments that shine. Chiefly Brendan Gleeson's investigating copper brings a compassionate tone to proceedings, casting doubt over treatments and offering some hope for men at large.

Streep's appearance amounts to little more than a cameo as Pankhurst addressing a rally and Bonham-Carter seems to have wandered off the set of Sweeney Todd with her turn.

While Suffragette clearly wants to pass on a powerful message, its execution is muddled and mired in its intentions. It is perhaps telling the only moment to garner any emotion in the screening was when New Zealand appeared top of a list of nations that granted women the vote in 1893 - and the real footage is rolled out from events of the movement.

Sometimes, a true story needs only the simplest of executions to soar; sadly Suffragette misses with every moment and fails to add to the legacy of the suffragette movement.

Rating:

The Good Dinosaur: DVD Review

The Good Dinosaur: DVD Review

Rating: PG
Released by Sony Home Ent

A Pixar film is usually a treat, a piece of animation that touches the heart with its story and characters as well as impresses the eye with its sumptuous work.

So, it's a surprise to say that The Good Dinosaur isn't quite up to scratch in the story department.

Positing the idea that the meteors that hit the earth and wiped out the dinosaurs never actually struck but zoomed past, The Good Dinosaur concentrates on a family of Apatosaurus dinos who work the land. Into this family is born fearful dino Arlo, the runt of the litter who struggles to find his place.

When tragedy hits the family and the father's killed (so far, so Lion King), Arlo ends up accidentally getting lost. With only an orphaned cave boy, Spot, whose sole behaviour is like a dog, Arlo begins the long and arduous journey home. (A la Incredible Journey and Homeward Bound)

The Good Dinosaur merely hisses where perhaps it could roar.

Mixing in the entirely unoriginal story of a lost character making their way home and having a few adventures while undergoing some life lessons on the way with a Wild West story is an odd mix that doesn't quite hang together as it should.

Which is a shame as technically, the movie is excellent.

Backgrounds, dirt and prehistoric mountain ranges sizzle - the environments look incredibly realistic and feel like they've been filmed and the dinos and other creatures super-imposed over the top. It's perhaps just as well the backgrounds are so immersive that you're not as distracted by the lack of what's going on in the foreground.

Because simply put, the main story is somewhat of a damp squib, an under-developed journey that goes from A to B, with little time for any major characters and interactions - unless it's to ram home the message of earning your mark on the world by doing something big for something bigger than yourself.

That's not to say the leads don't interact well and their relationship doesn't work well. Both Arlo and Spot are given a few funny and touching moments together throughout, but more often than not, these feel like perfunctory ends to moments and wouldn't feel out of place within a short film (in fact, at times The Good Dinosaur feels like a short film that's been over-extended and not fleshed out). It's a shame because the truth that resonates within Spot and Arlo's bond will keep kids engaged throughout - and there's not enough of that within. But the other problem is there's not enough of a connection between Arlo and his family; roughly sketched over at the start of the flick, the film fails to find the centre and stretches the connection too far.

The Good Dinosaur may revel in some of the darkness of life but the unoriginal journey and poorly padded out story makes it feel like Pixar's hit a rare bum note; it's a rare mis-step of a film that doesn't quite do enough to keep the kids as engaged as they should and doesn't do enough to keep the adults on side either.

Rating:

Newstalk ZB Review - Jungle Book, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot and The Force Awakens

Newstalk ZB Review - Jungle Book, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot and The Force Awakens

This week on the Newstalk ZB Review I took a look at Jungle Book, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot and The Force Awakens

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/saturday-mornings-with-jack-tame/audio/darren-bevan-the-jungle-book-whiskey-tango-foxtrot-the-force-awakens/