LA Noire: PS4 Review

LA Noire: PS4 Review

Developer: Team Bondi
Published by Rockstar Games
Platform: PS4

In 2011, the publishers of Grand Theft Auto released a crime game that very much shook the boundaries of what to expect for the police procedural.

With its take on Hollywoodland and its combination of open world maps and GTA similarities, the game was understandably an easy hit, giving the platforms something cinematic at a gaming level.

Meshing film noir in both plot and aesthetics, it's the tale of a copper on the beat and later a police detective in 1947 LA. With various crimes and progressions through differing departments, from Vice to Homicide, the game tracks the life cycle of Cole Phelps and sees you assessed from all angles.

With the usual tropes of the genre covered from femme fatales to corruption, LA Noire could be accused of taking the lazy route, but what it actually does is create a game and atmosphere that's second to none and an evocative atmospheric take on the usual films you'd see in the cinema.

From elements of LA Confidential to hints of the Black Dahlia, everything's covered in Rockstar's game and it's all the better for it.

With characters that rise and situations that feel authentic, the engagement with the game and its mechanics is evident from the start.

Unfortunately, the graphics haven't quite been rendered upto the spec of the machines it runs on - and while others like Crash Bandicoot and to some degree Ratchet and Clank may have got a spit and polish, this year's LA Noire seems to have lost out in some of the technical finesse you'd have expected from a remaster.

It still looks good, but in parts, frankly, it does look like a last generation console  game and that's a shame.

One of the tweaks Rockstar's made is in its interrogation scenes with the blurred lines in testimony and confessions being a little more tied up with what plays out on screen and a bit more in sync with the keeping of the game.

Ultimately, what the remaster of LA Noire may lack on a technical level, it gains from the gameplay - involving and evocative and with a depth that's engaging, it's more than enough to keep you at the scene of the crime throughout.

Your Name: Blu Ray Review

Your Name: Blu Ray Review

Released by Madman Home Entertainment

Mixing J-Pop, time travel,body swapping and Japan's pre-occupation with natural disasters, Your Name is quite the genre bending anime.

Already raising more at the Japanese box office than Princess Mononoke, the film's continued success atop the charts (taking around 98 million US) is leading many to claim Shinkai is the natural successor to the potentially retired Miyazaki.

It's the story of two high school kids, Taki and Mitsuha, (Kamiki and Kamishiraishi) who live in very different parts of the world. Mitsuha lives in a small village where there are no facilities (but bizarrely two pubs) and who dreams that she would like to wake up one day in Tokyo as a boy. Taki is a boy in Tokyo, whose high school life is as normal, and who dreams that he becomes a girl in a small village...

Connecting these two's lives is a comet strafing through the skyline, whose appearance only once every 122 years seems to signify something unusual...

Your Name's lushly created visuals and comic light touch make its 2 hour run time worth it.

Shinkai's world is based in the now, rather than Miyazaki's which has always lingered in the past, a touch which makes the Tokyo skyline stand out while Mitsuha's small village feels bucolic and contemporary too.

While the music interludes that hit in parts feel like a bizarre music video - they personally grated and jarred the experience, there's a degree of the body swap story landing as well as it should and feeling relatively fresh despite a tired old trope. With no real rhyme or reason given early on for the swaps, the Freaky Friday elements work well - and while there's comedy of Taki living in a girl's body (and obsessing over the parts any teen world), there's also a poignancy of Mitsuha living a life in another world.

As the two lives tangle closer together, Shinkai brings a reflective nature to the story-telling, abandoning the frivolity and levity for something all the more philosophical and elegant. While there's definitely an argument that the film could drop some of its run time, the beauty of the anime and the contrast between Tokyo and the mountain village are gorgeous to revel in.

Your Name ends up being more thoughtful than its body swap premise promises - and ultimately, it's a sign that anime continues to surprise and thrill. 

DOOM VFR Now Available for PlayStation VR and HTC VIVE in Australia and New Zealand

DOOM VFR Now Available for PlayStation VR and HTC VIVE in Australia and New Zealand

We're pleased to announce that DOOM VFR is now available in Australia and New Zealand for PlayStation VR and HTC VIVE. 

Developed by id Software, the studio that pioneered the first-person shooter genre and modern VR, DOOM VFR brings the fast-paced, brutal gameplay of DOOM to an all new experience in virtual reality.

 

Players will immerse themselves in the DOOM universe like never before, while seamlessly traversing across the UAC facility on Mars and the depths of Hell, as skills are put to the test through intense combat and challenging puzzle-solving.

 

DOOM VFR is a new game experience within the universe of DOOM, set shortly after the demonic invasion on the UAC’s Martian research facility.

 Players assume the role of the last known human survivor who, under a top-secret UAC operational contingency protocol, have had their consciousness transferred to an artificial brain matrix. 

They will have to restore operational stability to the facility and use any means necessary to stop the onslaught of demons. 

Raw: DVD Review

Raw: DVD Review

Already the enfant terrible of the festival scene after viewers at Cannes apparently fainted and vomited during screenings, French director Julia Ducournau's stylistically nourishing body horror may have already put some off.

However, this tale is more one of coming-of-age, self-acceptance, sibling rivalry and the usual outsider trying to fit in story that cinema so often delivers.

The waif-like Garrance Mareillier (who carries more than a passing visual reference to Zoey Deutch via way of Isabelle Adjani) is Justine, who, as the film begins, is heading to enrol in the veterinary college frequented by generations of her family.

At a roadside cafe, there's uproar when her mother discovers the slop mashed potatoes Justine's been served come with a sausage within. Surely, no cause for concern - however, Justine and all her family shun the carnivorous ways and are staunch vegetarians.

Dropped at the college, Justine is thrown into a brutal hazeing ceremony that afflicts all newcomers - forced on all fours, and herded like cattle to an abattoir, the first year students are dropped deep into a world of work, partying, hedonistic almost Bacchanial excess and plenty of flesh on show.Justine reunites with her sister, Alexia (Rumpf) who's also there and has been for a few years. Initially reticent, the duo reform and repair some of the brittle bridges that scatter siblings - before an unlikely bond is discovered and a hunger awoken in Justine...

Raw may have at its core a tale of cannibalism, and there's certainly enough pleasures of the flesh put upon the screen, but the hybrid of horror and occasional shocks is more riddled with an atmosphere of unease and suspense than an outright desire to induce nausea in its audience.

It's perhaps pertinent if you are of a queasy disposition to take degrees of caution, but certainly the gore on the screen is a lot less effective or bloody than Raw's reputation would suggest.

More startling is director Julia Ducournau's commitment to this fearless debut; it pulls together elements of every coming of age film you've seen. From elements of Ginger Snaps to the hedonism of Trainspotting, via way of startling and striking imagery (some of it ripped from Carrie), the film crackles with visual flair throughout.

It helps that Mareiller's aloofness sells the other-worldly edges of what plays out, and as the rapacious hunger within is awoken, she manages to sell the almost feral transformation incredibly well and sympathetically as the principles tangle and conflict with the primal urges within.

From hints of her being seduced into the almost cult-like world of the pledges to looking at meat on a counter, Mareiller does more with little than you'd expect to see and the restraint adds much to her character who's simultaneously coming of age and trying to find her place in the world. It helps that these themes are not new, and have been explored before - but rarely with the pertinence and female point of view leading the way.

The script hints a lot at what's going on, and there are delicious double entendres that come to life as the film ends - indeed Justine's told that "an animal that's tasted flesh isn't exactly safe", but there's a studious once over with Raw that almost veers into parody in the final cinematic furlong.

It's not that the gore hits a crescendo, more that the score hits a one louder approach that threatens to topple the audaciousness of what's already played out. Certainly, Ducournau would have benefited from being a little more hands-off as the film veers towards its darkly twisted denouement.

With escalating sibling rivalry at its core, Raw's feral and visceral in parts, drowning its coming of age observations and cannibalism in its female point of view.

Coupled with a fevered lead whose occasionally dead eyes hint at the conflict and the primal hunger within, Raw's certainly a film not for all tastes. But for those willing to surrender themselves to its deft stylish touches, and its hints of horrors as well as its outright taste for shocks, it's one hell of an experience, and one hell of a fiery debut.

An Incovenient Sequel: Truth To Power: DVD Review

An Incovenient Sequel: Truth To Power: DVD Review 

Cast: Al Gore, the world, Icebergs, Paris Climate Change Agreement
Director: Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk

It's perhaps no surprise to see the climate change issue rear its head again with this sequel to the Oscar nominated An Inconvenient Truth for nearly a decade ago.

But in truth, unlike the previous film which packed a kind of urgency and a power, the latest from Al Gore's omnipresent crusade to quell climate change is, and it's no joy to report this, a self-aggrandising bore of a documentary.

Following Gore around as he jets about, takes cars and only once uses public transport (due to clogged roads), the documentary pursues Gore as he pushes once again to get those who disbelieve to believe.

In some kind of version of a Billy Graham puritannical push, the anti-climate change zealot tries desperately to convert India away from its desire to produce more coal-burning plants ahead of the Paris climate change meeting.

There can be no denial of the weather conditions and an increase in extreme weather events over the past few years, and while the science of these is glossed over in favour of footage speaking for itself (the flooding of the World Trade Centre memorial being Gore's crowning glory to naysayers who denied him in the first film)

An Inconvenient Sequel feels more like a bizarre extended 60 Minutes with Al Gore special.

With Gore given time to intone his desire to change the world and space to vocalise his "I feel I have failed" mentality throughout, the emphasis is on anything but the apparent urgent matter on hand - the climate itself.

It's more squarely focussed on scenes of Gore becoming emotionally and earnestly enraged at the futility of denials of others.

In one scene, where he's being prepped for an interview for MSNBC, the anchor promises they will cover climate after Gore's repeated reminders. It's the cinematic equivalent of the old man shouting futilely in a corner to himself.

It's not that Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk could have done much more with An Incovenient Sequel: Truth To Power.

The nadir comes when Gore's proposed 24 hour live broadcast from the Paris Agreement is interrupted by the Bataclan terror attacks, promping Gore to offer a heartfelt speech on the perils of terror.

There's a little too much of the spotlight being on Gore, and while occasionally the powerpoint presentations shock with their facts, there's little to justify a sequel.

Gore (while verging on being Al Bore at times) spends much time talking of how the first film created an uprising, and we get to see early footage of him taking some bootcamps to inspire others from his altruism.

It would have been far better for An Incovenient Sequel: Truth To Power to focus on one of these; a groundswell common approach to the problem and the crisis; it would have granted the film a more personal touch, rather than being an almost out-of-touch film that serves only really to promote Gore himself, overplay his hand in the Paris Climate Change agreements and to push one of the wettest ever recruitment videos over the closing credits.

Sadly, despite there being elements of the climate change argument that are compelling in this film, it is predominantly just a lot of hot air that fails to inspire as it should.

The Dark Tower: Blu Ray Review

The Dark Tower: Blu Ray Review

Stuck in the Hollywood machine since 2007, Stephen King's The Dark Tower seems destined to be grounded as a series based on this cinematic adaptation.

Following Jake (Tom Taylor), a kid troubled by visions of a gunslinger and a man in black following him, and plagued by apocalyptic turns of a tower being destroyed by a beam of light, The Dark Tower sees Jake thrust into the age old fight of good vs evil.

Managing to stumble his way through a portal, Jake teams up with the gunslinger (played with melancholy and rumbling voice by Idris Elba) as the Man in Black, Walter O'Dim (an almost pantomime like Matthew McConaughey) edges ever closer to tracking him down.
Believing Jake to be the mystical element to help break down the Tower and destroy the world, thanks to the purity of his Shine (a nod to previous telepathy), Walter begins an almost Terminator-like quest to track him down.

After a truly epic and visually startling opening that wrongfoots any audience watching, The Dark Tower settles for a CGI-heavy fantasy movie that lacks any kind of emotional heft or feel of consequence as it carries on its adventure.

Leaving the CGI to muddle the waters, and yet somehow still managing to fudge any kind of emotional links between any of the characters, the clearly-written-for-the-page dialogue becomes almost laughable in its portentous po-faced nature.

With voiceover and dour execution, The Dark Tower is nothing short of generic, yet somehow muddled.

McConaughey, with spiky hair, goes for slick and menacing, but somehow manages to come across as formulaic bad guy and director Arcel (best known for Alicia Vikander's A Royal Affair) can't really add much to the fantasy genre in his execution.

Elba's passable as the gunslinger, but the lack of any time to develop any kind of relationship with Jake means the film distinctly lacks the feeling of any real stakes.

It wraps up far too neatly too, giving the feeling the whole film is very much a chopped and ripped from the pages kind of affair.

The Dark Tower may be the first of a eight book series, but based on this rote execution, and despite the efforts of Taylor and Elba to make them some kind of world-hopping mismatched buddy duo, it's unlikely to spawn any more.

For which we should all be grateful. 

Win a double pass to see Jumanji at the cinema

Win a double pass to see Jumanji at the cinema

Jumanji is back!

And to celebrate its Boxing Day release, you can win a double pass to see the new version of the classic in the cinema.

About Jumanji

Jumanji hits cinemas Boxing Day

Four teenagers discover an old video game console and are literally drawn into the game's jungle setting becoming the adult avatars they chose

Stars Dwayne Johnson, Jeff Black, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan.

Jumanji releases December 26th at the cinema.

 To win a pass, all you have to do is email your details to this address: darrensworldofentertainment@gmail.com! Include your name and address and title your email JUMANJI! Competition closes December 16th