Super Bomberman R: PS4 Review

Super Bomberman R: PS4 Review

Released by
Platform: PS4

It's a simple concept - place bombs around a maze, and take out your enemies, giving you the chance to progress to the next phase of your campaign.

But Super Bomberman R's simplicity is also what ensures its playability.

It's not a difficult concept to grasp, it's an easy one to execute, but it's also an easy one to mess up. However, the 3D edges, combined with the chunky graphics give Super Bomberman R the universality the series has always embraced.

While the campaign level is easy enough to play through, some of the maze's 3D edges take a bit of time to get used to as you try and work out where you can and cannot go.

With Battle modes allowing for 8 players to take part, and single player Story mode, the game has enough to keep people engaged, even if after a while, it starts to feel a tad repetitive.

It may be fun for all ages, and nicely executed, but Super Bomberman R's repeat playability is occasionally in question - from time to time, it does feel like the game's disposability is also its downfall.

NZIFF 2018 Preview

NZIFF 2018 Preview

Cheers to 50 years.

That's easily the cry to festival director Bill Gosden and the rest of his team at the New Zealand International Film Festival gears up for its fifth decade of bringing the world of film to our screens.

The event kicks off again this next Thursday in Auckland's mighty Civic Theatre before heading around the country, and yes, the veritable cinematic smorgasbord is ready to be troughed upon, with local delights mingling among viewers' tastebuds along with tasty international morsels to sink your teeth into.

As well as the Cannes' big hitters, and the local premieres, and the films we've been waiting for but no local distributors will take a chance on, there's much to indulge on, but equally much to choose over, and to schedule.

Pick Of the Litter

This year's Kedi, though perhaps a little less effective but none the less fluffy, is the puppy overload that is Pick Of The Litter. This sweet-natured doco goes skin-deep on the world of the training of five potential pooches to take on the mantle of would-be guide dogs. Five are plucked from the kennels, and your time is invested in the group - will they make the cut? It's amiable fare, that shies away from some of the details (costs etc) but shows the ruthlessness in which they thrive. It's certainly also one to give animal lovers the fluffy vicarious fuzzies they may seek.

Dog's Best Friend

At the other end of the spectrum, Dog's Best Friend follows Aussie hardknock dogs rehab centre and its tattooed boss, Jacob Leezak, as he tries to rehabilitate some of the pooches who've been labelled menaces. With a no-nonsense approach to what the dogs need and the mantra it's the owners who make them what they are, director Eryn Wilson's determination to turn these perceptions around is laudable. Never confronting but always insightful, Dog's Best Friend makes a valid case for all animals, even if the fuller details of the humans involved isn't quite as fulsome as it could be.

I Used to be normal - A Boyband Fangirl Story

Equally confusing to outsiders, I Used to be normal - A Boyband Fangirl Story's affectionate look at what fuels fandom sees director director Jessica Leski's affectionate douse its subjects in such a universal appeal that it makes their obsessions seem normal - and whisper it, almost relatable.

Centring on four different fans - 16 year-old Elif, who's a One Directioner, Dara, 33, who's a proclaimed Take That fan, 25 year old Sadia, a US Backstreet Boys fan and 64-year-old Susan who was there at the start of the trend with her Beatles love - Leski's piece becomes more of a rounded piece as it goes on, and makes the case that it's as much a coming-of-age ritual as it is a shared obsession. Packed with energy and soundtracks, as well as some social commentary, the boyband obsession has never been so openly approachable and watchable.

Aga

Opening with potentially one of the most visually arresting images of the festival, genial and benign in its intentions, Aga is an intriguing, minimalist slice of slow cinema the festival specializes in.

Set in a location unknown, it's the story of an old couple, Nanook and Sedna. This duo, old and wizened, but clearly blessed with a love for each other that's endured more than just the harsh winters on show, spend their time in their yurt, living the traditions of their ancestors.

From ice-fishing to lying back in a snow angel on the frozen wastes as a plane and its chem-trails head over, life is simple. But it's becoming more of a struggle - and with life encroaching on them, things are about to cataclysmically change. 

If the scope of Aga's white snowy vistas and visuals is vast, the intent of the drama is intimate. Patience is rewarded with a window into a world seldom glimpsed on our screens - and showing the NZIFF is still intent on opening minds.

More loopy, than Looper, Thames-shot crime caper Mega Time Squad is a blast.

Mega Time Squad

A ludicrously-fuelled tale of crime and lack of ambition in middle New Zealand, director Tim Van Dammen's follow up to NZIFF hit Romeo and Juliet: A Love Story is nonetheless stylish.
Centring on Anton Tennet's John, a low-level hoodlum who's in the thrall of Johnny Brugh's crime boss, Mega Time Squad follows the story as John gets ambitions for more - a move to Paeroa for love.

Aided by a mysterious Chinese trinket, the film's heart is in its love story - but not at the expense of anything else that matters as it brilliantly unspools.

Fresh, enticing and flipping funny, Mega Time Squad is easily the 2018 New Zealand International Film Festival's best time at the movies.

With over 150 choices to be made at the festival, Q&As to be attended and premieres to be seen, this year's NZIFF feels wider in scope, more enticing in its offerings and proffers more guarantees of good times in the cinema. There's no sign of it going away, and although they say life begins at 40, it's clear hitting 50 for this festival is showing no signs of slowing down.

Stay tuned for more previews, director Q&As and reviews as the Auckland leg of the festival gears up for kick off!

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection: XBox One Review

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection: XBox One Review

Platform: XBox One

Released by Capcom

It's back.

The smackdown to end all smackdowns is back, and with a package that comprises 12 Street Fighter arcade ports, it's a trip down memory lane which will KO you with its nostalgia.

From the likes of Street Fighter, via Street Fighter II: Champion Edition to Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact, there are more than enough games to keep you and your mates amused in front of the console.

The games are fairly simple ports, which don't mess with the formula, but Capcom's thrown in a few new features and options.

From a stronger Training Mode to the chance to explore early game design documents, the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection aims to be completist, and while the play is as frustrating as button mashers ever were, there's also the feeling that this is a great fun experience that proved to be so popular in the arcades for obvious reasons.

Sure, there's a few of them which are missing, but the preservation work and the 2D fighting game nature means that the chance to sit down and wallow in the past is high and welcome.

It's also interesting to see how the games evolved in their playability as developers explored the full potential of what the machines could do - and there's certainly a feeling of leaps and bounds from Street Fighter I to Street Fighter III.

All in all, Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection is worth owning; its lower cost and the fact that it's 12 games deep, mean value for money - sure, there's some repetition in the beat them up formula, but as a gaming document to preserve the past, it's sort of second to none.

Win A Quiet Place on Blu-Ray

Win A Quiet Place on Blu-Ray

To celebrate the release of A Quiet Place on July 11th, I've got copies to give away thanks to Universal!

About A QUIET PLACE

In the modern horror thriller A Quiet Place, a family of four must navigate their lives in silence after mysterious creatures that hunt by sound threaten their survival. If they hear you, they hunt you.

DVD Special Features
• Creating the Quiet – Director John Krasinski gives you a behind the scenes look at A Quiet Place

Blu-rayTM Special Features
• Creating the Quiet – Director John Krasinski gives you a behind the scenes look at A Quiet
Place
• The Sound of Darkness – Creating the sound of a silent world
• A Reason for Silence – The art of unforgettable visual effects

To win a copy, all you have to do is email  your details to this address: darrensworldofentertainment@gmail.com or CLICK HERE NOW!

Please label your entry QUIET

Competition closes August 1st

A Quiet Place: Blu Ray Review

A Quiet Place: Blu Ray Review

Channeling elements of It Comes At Night, Signs, 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Last Of Us and elements of Invaders From Mars to name but a few others, A Quiet Place's sensibilities lie within their intimacies.

Real life husband and wife Krasinski and Blunt play a married couple, living in a world blighted by an invasion, the details of which are scattered briefly like narrative breadcrumbs here and there.

Joining the film at Day 89 of this invasion, we're thrust into their world - a father and mother trying to protect their children from creatures which pick off their victims when they make sound.

Starting off in a deserted supermarket, with visual elements of The Last Of Us on display, this is a deserted world, one where insularity helps ensure safety.

However, after a shocking incident, the family finds it has to pull together in the wake of devastation and a seeming never end to what has been unleashed.

It's unfair to review A Quiet Place by spoiling it for others, depriving of the shocks and spills so rarely experienced at the movies these days.

Loosely speaking, the film works best in its own bubble of innocence; it's a story about family, about the sacrifices and lengths family have to go to protect each other. In a wider, broader sense, some could see it as an allegory into the world today, and politics in general.

But what's orchestrated by Krasinski throughout is, largely, terrifically taut, true to the genre and yet willing to shape it as its own.

A few quibbles of logic hit parts of the set pieces, yet above all, A Quiet Place manages to grip and terrify in the right measure.

It helps that a good starting portion of the film is silent, leading to sign language and subtitles becoming common place - something which Edgar Wright's Baby Driver managed to mainstream to great narrative effect.

However, what the subtitles do here convey an atmosphere of rebellion, of frustration and of familial love - in among the terror that any second something could strike.

Wisely, Krasinski and his writers decide early on to reveal the creatures terrorising the world, rather than play coy, abuse lighting and employ cheap cutaways to lessen the peril.

The result is that it's actually engaging and in parts unsettling.
More compellingly, it feels fresh throughout - even though some of the logical leaps and lapses stand out a little more because of this.

Certainly, a sequence involving a bathtub, Blunt, a creature and an impending baby leads to some real edge of the seat stuff that is amongst some of the best orchestrated of the year so far.

Long sweeping shots within frames, an at-times heart-thumping soundtrack and a desire to keep things on a smaller more personal scale make A Quiet Place such a rollercoaster ride of thrills.

Terrifically entertaining, suspenseful, and above all fresh, A Quiet Place rallies a cry for intimate originality in film which has long been muted by bloated blockbusters and tiresome, unfulfilling sequels. 

Wellington Paranormal: TV Review

Wellington Paranormal: TV Review

It's the show that's been a fair few years in the making from Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement, and their New Zealand Documentary Board.

Spun off from What We Do in The Shadows, Wellington Paranormal's mix of mockumentary stylings of Cops and also NZ homebred hit Police Ten 7 gets off to a promising start, with the return of two police officers briefly glimpsed in the orignal film.

Mark Minogue and Karen O'Leary play hapless officers Minogue and O'Leary, who find the start of their shift is impacted by the discovery of a girl projectile vomiting in one of Wellington's most infamous streets.

This is less Hill Street Blues though, more a Hell Street Blues if you will, as they dig deeper in after being co-opted by Sergeant Maaka, played by the Modern Māori Quartet's Maaka Pohatu.

He's the boss of the top-secret Wellington Police Paranormal Unit and who's been looking at the odd for years - though has been dismissed. (To be fair, one of O'Leary's early musings is that Maaka's so-called UFO photo is actually a hubcap).

But things take a turn as the case develops.

Wellington Paranormal's first episode riffs on The Exorcist in terms of story, and also with a famous line coming from the most unexpected of sources (one of the episode's delights).

It's also got that mix of The X-Files creature of the week feel too - and the title sequence feels like a more upbeat rendition of Mark Snow's infamous theme.

And while deadpan and ad-libbing appear to be the show's MO, it's wisely not abandoned its horror elements as well, with some impressive jump scares and a commitment to the mythical elements nicely sown liberally in.

Its lead pair is laconic and laid back and director Jemaine Clement encouraged them to adlib during filming, and it shows - in a good way.

It's tricky to mix genuine scares and humour, but Wellington Paranormal's first ep does it well and there's a lot of buzz abroad about the show, so it does have potential. Clement's clearly got an eye for the humorous behind the camera, as well as the flow for the show, ensuring the drama is never second place to the obvious humour.

A minor nitpick for me is the two leads referencing Mulder and Scully, which is why it's sometimes hard not to believe they know what was going on, but it'll be interesting to see how this develops as the six episodes play out. And it'll be intriguing to see if the gag runs out - it works well for 30 minute slices, but extended exposure to this could count against it.

Nicely paced, with sight gags never being put aside for the supernatural, and with some riffs on Buffy's Hellmouth, Wellington Paranormal offers up a lot in terms of proffering some universal humour, as well as the ability to satiate the local audiences.

Smartly delivered, and kookily clever, Wellington Paranormal could soon be the cult comedy TV hit that New Zealand's been dying to deliver for years.

Edie: Film Review

Edie: Film Review

Cast: Sheila Hancock, Kevin Guthrie
Director: Simon Hunter

Less Reese Witherspoon's Wild, more a tame film that pulls no surprises, Sheila Hancock's Edie is a woman with a mission late in life.

Freed from the shackles of an abusive marriage that imploded into a stroke for her husband that imprisoned them both for 30 years and with a care home beckoning for her future, Edie decides on a whim to tackle a Scottish mountain climb.

With the cry of "Never too late for you, Edie" ringing in her ears, and with memories of a mountain promise made to her by her late father, Edie goes AWOL (with scant follow through from her daughter) to the Highlands.

After bumping into Guthrie's Johnny, Edie's conned into getting training from his so-called camping ways to tackle the journey...

Edie is predictable fare, that treads a familiar path to redemption without any flashiness or surprises.
It's in its subtlety that it works best, and with a twinkling performance from Hancock, and a genuinely empathetic grounded turn from Guthrie, the film's Odd Couple vibe of lost souls tends to work best early on.

Edie's determined to cast the shackles of the shadow of her past life off and climb both the literal and metaphorical mountain dragging her down. Equally, Johnny's uncertainty over being stuck in a small town, shackled to a partner's business plan, threatens to overwhelm his future and hold him back in much the same way as Edie's abusive husband did.

It's here that Edie stumbles really - its desire to repeatedly and unsubtly beat home parts of its message mean that - coupled with endless use of slow mo towards the end - the film becomes mired in sentiment and treats its audience with less respect. Along with the fact that logic and some key plot threads are just left dangling, this is never anything but Edie and Johnny's friendship, set to the backdrop of what appears to be shameless tourism video promotion for the rolling vistas of bonnie Scotland.

But in among the battle of unnecessary wills and heads being butted testing boundaries, Hancock and Guthrie quietly impress, imbuing the film with a resonance of a less-is-more execution.

It's unlikely that Edie will trouble either box offices or end of year lists, but it does offer an older audience a viewpoint seldom seen - of life after marriage, and in the twilight years. It's here that Hunter's film packs a quiet power - but had those in charge pulled back and removed some of the padding, the inter-generational friendship story could have flourished more than it comes close to hinting at.