The Last of Us Part II State of Play reveals extended gameplay

The Last of Us Part II State of Play reveals extended gameplay

Naughty Dog has just revealed an extended gameplay sequence for their upcoming The Last Of Us Part II game, due out on June 19.

It came as part of the State of Play broadcasts, and offered a more indepth look at what lies ahead for Ellie and Joel in the sequel to The Last Of Us.

Watch the extended Last of Us Part II gameplay below.

Neon NZ: Movie Review - Angel Has Fallen

Neon NZ: Movie Review - Angel Has Fallen

It was inevitable, really.

Given he'd saved the President, saved London and had a happyish ending, it should be no surprise that Presidential lucky charm Mike Banning (Butler) would be in the firing line.

And given three years has passed in each of the release cycles of Olympus Has Fallen (2013) and London Has Fallen (2016), it's time for Angel Has Fallen.

Bruised, battered and addicted to pills after the rollercoasters of the job of the Secret Service in the previous two outings, Banning is starting to feel mortal. Tempted by the possibility of the top job at the Secret Service, his world's turned upside down when the entire Presidential secret service team is wiped out - leaving him as the sole survivor.

Framed for the attempted murder of the US President, Banning goes on the run, determined to prove his innocence...

Reviving cold war politics, throwing in some "timely" barbs about Russian collusion, and dumping some machismo on the idea of private contractors benefiting from war, Angel Has Fallen does little to build on its surprise success of the first film.

Choosing instead to go for elements of The Fugitive and a bad episode of 24, Butler deals with lots of pained close ups to show his ailing state, and deals out plenty of killshots as sense and sensibilities go out the window.

Beginning with what seems like a gun porn secret service recruitment Call of Duty style video and ending with an extremely passable and well-executed finale, Angel Has Fallen has glimpses of something beyond the C-grade action banal genre it's clearly pitching for.

Butler's Banning looks shabby, like he may not make it (though really, there's never any true doubt) but yet in his interactions with Danny Huston's quietly calm mate-turned-bad-guy, there's a feeling of two veterans lost in a world that no longer needs them in the way they were needed first time around.

The action sequences are, in truth, executed in a fairly workmanlike way; there's nothing special or spectacular in the explosion porn that's on display - complete with slowmo. And yet, in its finale, Angel Has Fallen delivers a sequence that may be familiar in many ways, but is nonetheless compelling to enjoy.

And then there's Nick Nolte.

As Banning's dad, and at his shaggiest, this doomsday prepper off-the-grid paranoic is one of Nolte's most grizzled and begotten roles. But it's worth it alone for some of the lines he dishes out, which have to be seen to be heard.

Ultimately, Angel Has Fallen isn't smart enough to be taken seriously, and never really rises against its rote execution. It's flabby too, with its 120 minutes run time being the longest of the trilogy and also the most needlessly long.

Angel Has Fallen may wrap up the surprise trilogy, but in truth, this series was done with the first one - it may try to be contemporary here, but you've seen it all before. It's time this Angel had its wings clipped.  

Arctic Justice: DVD Review

Arctic Justice: DVD Review

Voice cast: Jeremy Renner, Heidi Klum, John Cleese, Alec Baldwin, Anjelica Houston
Director: Aaron Woodley

Sometimes, animated family fare is simply a story and some animation, no deeper message, and nothing more profound to espouse.

So it is with Arctic Justice (known globally as Arctic Dogs), a climate change awareness piece with lashings of self-belief served up for an audience.

Arctic fox Swifty (Renner) is a wannabe delivery dog in the small Arctic township of Taigasville.

Yearning to be "put to the test, so he can deliver his best", Swifty has gone most of his life unnoticed, other than by his polar bear friend PB (Baldwin, solid and gruffly warming) and by his potential love interest and town engineer, Jade (Klum, relatively one note).

When the dogs of the ABDS delivery service go AWOL, Swifty gets his chance to step up - but uncovers a wider conspiracy, masterminded by walrus OVW (Cleese, in raspy maniacal mood).

Arctic Justice feels very familiar, with its animation recalling many other elements of prior films.

A despot in the form of OVW with Puffin helpers? Very Minions and Despicable Me.

A mate who even looks like a whiter version of Sulley from Monsters Inc, lead foxes who look like they could come from Zootopia, there's a distinct feeling of deja vu in this animation.

There are some zanier touches from James Franco's Lemmy, an albatross who's a few fish short of a picnic, but they're few and far between and really needed more of them to be inserted throughout.

While the climate change message is present, it's hardly pushed down people's throats, but it becomes ever more clear toward the end as Swifty and his pals face an extinction event for their town.

Worthy messages of being more than "just" a somebody work nicely too, and while some adults will identify with the slight at the monotony of jobs, Arctic Justice does enough for the younger kids to keep them happy throughout - but potentially not the adults.

Neon NZ movie review - Late Night

Neon NZ movie review - Late Night

Aiming to smash the glass ceiling, but ending up more just politely tapping on it, Mindy Kaling's comedy Late Night will feel familiar to fans of the vitriolic Larry Sanders Show from the 1990s.

In Late Night, Kaling plays Molly Patel, a plant worker who ends up being a diversity hire on Emma Thompson's Katherine Newbury's late night show. Newbury is a legend, and has been on the circuit for years, but the show's on the wane, with viral clips and interviews with YouTube stars punishing them in the ratings.

So when the head of the network (Amy Ryan) decides to move Newbury along in favour of a newer foul-mouthed host (Barinholtz), Molly is caught up in the last great offensive to keep ratings high.

Essentially a romantic comedy with a side of showbiz and a dash of social commentary, Late Night treads the boards of familiarity with such geniality it's hard to fully hate it.

But the film lacks a punch that would translate to some interesting barbs and commentary on women in the workplace and women on TV. It feels like Kaling's written sadly from reality, but is a little too frightened to make the commentary needed to help it land in ways which would give it its power.

There's an underdeveloped romance sideplot, which swipes at MeToo, and a sweet relationship between Thompson and Lithgow that brims with reality and depth.

Yet it's not enough to make Late Night feel anything other than undercooked at times.

Thankfully, Thompson makes great fist of her barbed and occasionally bitter Newbury. You can see where it's coming from a mile off, but the joy of seeing an older woman in a lead in this is clearly what Kaling wanted for the film, and the fact the reality of late night TV in the US is scarcely inhabited by women speaks volumes.

Kaling plays on her innate likeability repeatedly, and the result is a fair film that offers some laughs - it's just with a sharper eye for the targets and a few wittier barbs, it could have been unstoppable.  

Disclaimer: Neon NZ provided a review code for access to this film

Neon NZ movie review - Annabelle Comes Home

Neon NZ movie review - Annabelle Comes Home

The Conjuring Universe continues to proffer more cinematic goods, as the appetite for horror shows no sign of lapsing.

The latest sees the Warrens transporting Annabelle home and confining the malevolent mannequin in their artifacts room, blessing the casing and putting up lots of Keep Out signs to stop people trespassing.

But when Ed and Lorraine head away from the weekend, leaving ten-year-old daughter Judy (a quietly nuanced McKenna Grace) in the hands of her babysitter, Annabelle gets out, awakening all kinds of chaos in the demonic room.

There's no denying that Annabelle Comes Home is effective at stretching out its conveyor belt of scares, and orchestrating the kind of spooky atmospherics the series has become known for.

There are some nice moments as the curse of Lorraine's visions appear to have been passed on to the daughter, and there's a familiar theme of being ostracised for their beliefs after their experiences, but Annabelle Comes Home is less interested in nuances, more in pulling back the curtain and giving you a jump scare a couple of moments after you've expected it.

Dauberman shoots it all well, there's the requisite number of spooky scenes and sequences, and there are plenty of close ups of the glass-eyed doll as you expect it to jump at you.

But in truth, after a while you feel like the contents of the demonic room are being rolled out as potential spin-offs. There's the Hellhound case from the past, the haunted Shinobi, the wedding dress that melds with its wearer, the haunted boardgame - they all feel like they're jostling to see which could work for future audiences and extend the universes further after this seventh entrant.

Haunted house cliches collide with a degree of claustrophobia, and an element of a small cast gives Annabelle Comes Home the tautness it requires.

However, this really is the cinematic equivalent of the ghost ride rolling into town every year as part of the carnival.

Deep down, you know what to expect, you enjoy the ride for its nostalgia or for the attempted tweaks the organisers have put in to keep it fresh - but buried underneath its smoke and mirrors tricks, this franchise needs to stop heading down the generic route, get back to genuine deep scares and psychological scars or it'll deserve to be confined to its grave.

Disclaimer: Neon NZ provided a review code for access to this film.

Neon NZ movie review - Good Boys

Neon NZ movie review - Good Boys

The sex comedy has gone about as far as it can do in modern gross out terms.

Yet, never once has it wandered into tweens' territory, something which producer Seth Rogen and his team acknowledge but dare to go there anyway.

In the latest comedy to burst out of the ranks, Good Boys follows a close knit trio of young sixth graders, the self-named Beanbag Boys, led by Jacob Tremblay's Max. Friends since their younger years, the trio find themselves invited to a kissing party where Max's crush will be.

But when their plan to learn about the opposite sex goes awry , they're sent on an adventure that pushes them out of their comfort zone.

It may send the idea of naivety to the edges, and a lot of the gags may centre around the sixth graders' misunderstanding of sexual posturing, but Good Boys offers some solid laughs in among the gross out behaviour.

Once you get past the whole "should tweens be talking / doing this," there's a vein of something in Good Boys which transgresses the cute and crass with some ease. There's also something to be said for the way the film mines the inevitable peer pressure of tweens these days to understand sex and their misplaced braggadacio of understanding between friends - certainly while the laughs come from here, they also come from a place of sweetness and an inherent understanding of the pressure constantly imposed on children's lives.

The trio are sweetly matched; from Tremblay's conflict over friends and girls, via loudmouth Thor's preoccupation with musical theatre to Lucas' compulsive need to tell the truth (breakout star Williams), this group feels real, and the push and pull of friendship is cleverly explored during the no-longer-than-it-needs-to-be 90 minute run time.

It will be easily dismissed as a Superbad: The Early Years, but Good Boys, while nothing superlative, deserves to stand on its own two feet, mixing drugs, sex and comedy with a nice touch of sweet observations, the film offers a solid night out with solid laughs at a universal experience. 


Disclaimer: Neon provided a promo code for access to this movie.

Neon NZ kids movie of the week - Abominable

Neon NZ kids movie of the week - Abominable

Dreamworks' latest dials up the cute, channels a bit of Kubo and the Two Strings, and showcases Chinese leads - so in theory, it should be a home run.

But the tale of Yi (SHIELD's Chloe Bennet) and her quest to return a furry Yeti back to Everest at times suffers from an over-familiarity of themes and ideas, rendering parts of it too much like deja vu.

However, it's in the subtleties and the beautiful evocation of some of the sum of its parts that Abominable justifies itself on the big screen.

It's the visuals which soar in Abominable, not the characters. Sure, there's comedy Peng, the basketball-yearning youngster who bonds with Everest in a kind of dude-bro relationship that brings some of the funnies the kids will love; and there's a silly snake that pops up from time to time to amuse, but much of Abominable's characters are sadly forgotten when the film's over.

The aforementioned evocations of landscapes, of giant Buddha or of the lunacy of a blueberry attack from the sky soar, lifting the King Kong chase scenes early on from a kind of mental checking out that may attack parts of the audience during the film.

But when the group surf a field of yellow daffodils towards the end, Abominable finds its visual groove, a symphony of magical mixing with the mystical proving to be the bright vibrant compelling colour touch the script desperately needed.

Izzard is serviceable as an English villain named Burnish (a sly nod to a mix of Carl from UP and Mr Burns from the Simpsons - hence Burnish perhaps?), and Bennet has earnestness aplenty as Yi the strong and yet vulnerable heroine throughout. Animation on the Yeti is stunning, mixing Toothless visuals with white furry edges and blurring the line between pet pooch and cutesy Yeti with aplomb.

(Though little with the Yeti is better than the opening POV escape which hints at the menace within.)

Ultimately, heading into safe territory does much to harm Abominable's chances of standing the test of time, but it's perfectly enjoyable-in-the-moment animated fare that's more interested in evocative visuals than deep meaningful storylines.

Disclaimer: Neon provided a promo code for access to this movie.