Tango Neutralised: Attack The Block review

FILM REVIEW

Review Scoring Chart - 10: Masterpiece; 9: Outstanding; 8: Very Good; 7: Good; 6: Above Average; 5: Average; 4: Below Average; 3: Bad; 2: Awful; 1: Reprehensible; 0: Non- Functional.

ATTACK THE BLOCK

Dir: Joe Cornish

Stars: John Boyaga, Jodie Whittaker, Nick Frost, Luke Treadaway, Terry Notary

Running Time: 88mins

[This review is being republished to coincide with the movie's US release and first appeared on Flixist]

Bloodthirsty aliens land in a South London council block for a smackdown with the locals, which proves to be a monumentally bad idea. Director Joe Cornish takes this perfect premise and turns in what will certainly be one of the best movies of the year.

Despite Edgar Wright producing, this is a very different beast to Shaun of the Dead. You can pick out bits and pieces of the material which influenced Cornish, but Block never pays direct homage or settles into easy referencing. Though often very funny, it's no comedy either, but a proper alien invasion thriller with a voice all of its own and startlingly confident for a first-time director. The mid-range budget works in the movie's favour, lending a roughness to the visuals that suits the surroundings and keeps the alien design simple, yet more effectively threatening than any of JJ Abrams overdesigned gargoyles.

Any American fears about the accents being difficult to understand can be quashed right now. While hardly the Queen's English, the dialogue is fast-spoken but clear and the slang, though dense, consists of words repeated frequently enough that its meaning is quickly devined through context. It's The Wire meets Gremlins, via Attack On Precinct 13.

Word of the week #13

Choosing this week's word was looking easy, until I remembered at the last minute that Triskaidekaphobia - aka the fear of the number thirteen - was one of the words in Week #7. Almost every word I use in this feature, apart from those which randomly crop up during a relevant week, is selected from a list I have been compiling for a long time of words I find fascinating or amusing. My near-miss this week made me realise that I'd have to start marking all those which have already been used, for fear of committing the cardinal sin of repetition.

By a crazy coincidence, that leads me quite neatly to this week's real word. I wouldn't say it describes me all of the time, although as mentioned, I certainly have my moments when not paying attention. Your Word of the Week is...

 

Future Shock: Deus Ex Human Revolution (Preview Part II)

In the first entry of my two-part Deus Ex: Human Revolution preview, I gave a broad outline of how the game plays, based on its opening ten hours, and how effectively it captured the spirit of the licence, which went missing with the first sequel Invisible War.

This second entry will be written as a more exact detailing of the areas present in the demo and the individual strengths and weaknesses thrown up in each. There will also be outlines of some of the choices you can make, how the experience differs depending on the path you choose, and why a boss fight near the end represents a major misstep for an otherwise very exciting game. Needless to say, SPOILERS abound.

Explosive Finale: Archer review

TELEVISION REVIEW

ARCHER: 'Double Trouble'

After two slightly disappointing episodes, Archer ends its second season on an almighty high, bringing together many of the best things about the series. If last week's 'White Nights' felt like one big set-up, 'Double Trouble' is the punchline it needed to justify itself. Archer returns from his renegade excursion to Moscow in love with the defecting Russian agent who saved his life. Naturally, Malory and Lana aren't too happy about this - for very different reasons - and set about trying to prove to Archer that his new fiancée is playing him. Meanwhile, having been dropped off a roof (again), the Russians are rebuilding ODIN agent Barry to bring back their lost agent.

Archer's relationship with the James Bond movies is clear in the conception of its lead character, who offers a pretty good impression of what a smug cock a man like Bond would be in something approaching a real life context, but rarely acknowledged directly. Last night's season finale tipped its hat several times to Bond though, notably in a story which combined the plots of From Russia With Love and On Her Majesty's Secret Service, then threw in Krieger's van, aka the 'SS Date Rape', and Barry as The Six Million Dollar Man for good measure.

 

How Communist China is keeping Hollywood at Bay

[A version of this article was originally published on Flixist]

It has been a good summer for the Hollywood money-men. Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides has passed the billion dollar mark at the box-office; Transformers: Dark Of The Moon seems well on the way and has provided a much-needed boost for controversial 3D screenings, while Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part II is already breaking all sorts of records despite having been out barely over a week. Easily overcoming dire critical notices for the vast majority of its blockbuster output, Hollywood will be celebrating another summer of global success.

Except that there's one corner of the globe which continues to evade Hollywood's reach. The most populous nation on Earth, where almost 20% of the planet's population reside, is both the most enticing and frustrating market for the American film industry. The People's Republic of China has opened its borders in recent years to foreign money, resulting in an increasingly affluent urban population with a growing interest in movie-going - it is said that two new cinemas open every day in the territory. Why is it then that Hollywood is continuing to find so many obstacles in its path to establishing the same dominance over the Chinese market that it holds over the rest of the world?

Ton Of Bricks: Breaking Bad review

TELEVISION REVIEW

BREAKING BAD: 'Thirty-Eight Snub'

In my review of Breaking Bad's fourth season premiere last week, I speculated that the pieces were being put in place for a major power-shift between the footsoldiers and the generals. As Walt and Gus were busy trying to beat each other down in order to secure their own positions, Jesse seemed the calmest of everyone who had witnessed Victor's death. Hank, slowly but surely, was getting stronger. Skyler was becoming increasingly confident in her ability to break bad. Mike The Cleaner saw what his boss was truly capable of.

That may not yet come to pass, but one thing which is definitely true this week is that everything that went down in the meth lab last week has thrown the programme's characters and relationships into turmoil. If last week's theme was one of powerful men losing their grip on the worlds they ruled over, this week concerned itself with the aftermath of what those men do when threatened, and what makes one man run and another fight back. Gus went into hiding. Walt bought a gun that wasn't strictly for defence. Where previous seasons have Breaking Bad have predominantly dealt with Walt alone trying to manage the demands of his unstable kingdom, the two episodes of this fourth season are hinting at a four-way game of chess where one player's bad choice can destabilise the entire board.

  

Word of the week #12

Much of this week's news in the UK has been dominated by the ongoing scandal revolving around Rupert Murdoch's News International, whose British newspapers are accused of, amongst other things, hacking into the mobile phones of tragedy victims in search of stories to run. This has in turn raised the question of how close many prominent politicians, including the last three Prime Ministers (Blair, Brown and Cameron), are to the company and how much illegal behaviour has been overlooked as to not jeopardise a relationship that was seen as politically advantageous for whomever was in the favours of Murdoch and his lieutenants.

This week's word is related to just such a circumstance, where politicians are guided by a desire for power and personal advancement rather than moral principles. It's also one of those words that is enormously entertaining to say out loud, meaning that it'll be both hilarious and fairly easy to slip into conversation. Your word of the week is...

 

Blueprints For Brilliance: Why Transformers 3 fails as a dumb action movie

 

['Blueprints For Brilliance' will be a non-regular feature focusing on how best to adapt challenging or interesting properties to a certain medium. It's a bit like Flixist's How To Do It, but with added alliteration.]

Transformers: Dark of the Moon opened about two weeks ago to critical revilement, before going on to take a hefty $645m (and climbing) at the global box office. Predictably, this led to the usual round of accusations that critics were out of touch and that their snooty attitudes had no place being applied to the summer genre commonly called the 'dumb action movie'.

Flixist's review tended towards the positive end of the critical spectrum, though my own thoughts were significantly less generous - were it not for the depressingly lazy Pirates 4, Dark of the Moon would comfortably be my worst movie of the year so far. Just as plenty of people were ready to stand up and defend Pirates against its critical pillaging, so too would a significant percentage of viewers dismiss my opinion (and those who agree with me) on the basis that since I write reviews, I must be a snob and automatically averse to the spectacle-over-sense mantra that Transformers and director Michael Bay have come to symbolise.

 

Profoundly Self-Centred: Archer review

TELEVISION REVIEW

ARCHER: 'White Nights'

Maybe it was inevitable that after a near-perfect season, Archer had to take a dip at some point. It's a shame that it should happen two episodes before the finale, with both 'White Nights' and last week's 'Jeu Monegasque' proving disappointments by the programme's otherwise exemplary standards. Having watched ahead, at least that run of form doesn't continue into the finale, which is an appropriately dark and hysterical way to wrap up a terrific season.

'White Nights' seems to mainly exist to set that episode up, sending Archer into Russia (with a huge chunk of exposition explaining everything right at the start) in order to determine once and for all whether Nikolai Jakov is his biological father. It's a plot thread picked up from way back and while callbacks usually represent one of the many high-points of Archer's humour, it feels here like grabbing at loose threads to set up a story that is flimsy at best. There are many funny moments, especially Archer's continuing ability to lead ODIN Agent Barry into suffering horrible amounts of pain instead of him, but at a stage in the season when the series should be gathering momentum ahead of a big finish, it seems stuck in second gear - despite much of the episode comprising an extended chase sequence. 

 

Future Shock: Deus Ex Human Revolution (Preview Part I)

Three weeks ago, I wrote a Retrospective article on Warren Spector's Deus Ex, the highly influential cyberpunk shooter which defined the wildly ambitious, slightly unruly nature of turn-of-the-century gaming. Next month sees the release of the game's second sequel, subtitled Human Revolution, which aims to recapture the spirit of the first game - so badly missed in the woeful first sequel, Invisible War - whilst tweaking some of the more outdated aspects of its design to fit into today's very different gaming scene. 

Because the first draft of this preview was getting monstrously long, it will instead be divided into two parts. Today's will outline the broad strokes of the game, explaining the play mechanics, how comfortably they fit together and a general assessment of what the game feels like to play. The second part, which will appear next week, will look more closely at the precise details of the missions in the ten-hour demo I played through, including the kinds of choices you are offered, the environments your character navigates and some details on the story.

  

Back To Work: Breaking Bad review

TELEVISION REVIEW

BREAKING BAD: 'Box Cutter'

Last week, I concluded my retrospective look at Breaking Bad's first season. There, watching as his psychotic new business partner drove away with a battered corpse left in his wake, Walter White realised that his transformation into the ice-cold meth pusher Heisenberg wasn't going to be as simple as first appeared. Just over two seasons later, on my hundredth post no less, that's a lesson Walter still hasn't learnt. At the end of last season, he took full measures to protect himself, even at the cost of a good man's life and the soul of the partner and friend he had earlier risked everything to save.

Yet where Heisenberg is prepared to commit the gravest atrocities to keep himself alive, Walter White remains the same short-term thinker he has been from the start, ignorant to the greater cost of his actions. At the end of the first season finale, he realised that the meth dealing which had started out as a break from the prison of his everyday struggles had trapped him just as much as his old life. Last season saw him lose control of the drugs empire he was starting to build and turned into a glorified worker bee. In the first episode of Breaking Bad's fourth season, Walter's prison is fully rebuilt, stronger than ever, and the worker is being turned into a slave.

  

A Kind Of Magic: Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part II review

FILM REVIEW

Review Scoring Chart - 10: Masterpiece; 9: Outstanding; 8: Very Good; 7: Good; 6: Above Average; 5: Average; 4: Below Average; 3: Bad; 2: Awful; 1: Reprehensible; 0: Non- Functional.

HARRY POTTER & THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART II

Dir: David Yates

Stars: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Ralph Fiennes, Alan Rickman

Running Time: 130 mins

[A version of this review was first published on Flixist]

It's actually not hyperbolic to say that the final entry in the Harry Potter series is one of the most important movies ever made. Not in terms of creativity or technical achievement, but for the many fans who have discovered the wonder of the cinematic form on their decade-long adventure with Harry, Ron and Hermione. The question of where they will go next will send some back to the books, others to the first movie so they can start again, while others will move on and forget. 

There will be some, though, who go in search of something new to excite their imaginations, whether that be in movie, literary or another form. Some of them will in turn be inspired to create something new of their own, so that others can share in the joy they felt at reading those first words or hearing that iconic theme tune for the first time. Today, a new generation of geeks will look to the future in the same way as the previous one did in 1983 with Return of the Jedi. The dreams of those who persevered with their passion back then have since changed the face of modern popular culture. In twenty-eight years' time, who can say what Potter will have inspired to continue that cycle?

  

Word of the week #11

Today is a big day for Harry Potter fans. Is this the last we'll be seeing of the character who has grown up alongside a generation and changed the face of both literature and film? I'll be seeing Deathly Hallows Part II and posting a review later today, both her and on Flixist, but however it turns out, no-one can deny the impact that the series has had on popular culture and the enormous achievements both of JK Rowling and the crew of the Potter movies for making it happen.

In honour of the age of Potter apparently coming to a close - that world may continue, but I'd be surprised if Rowling returned to the character in any meaningful way, no matter how many times she hints otherwise - today's word has a certain gothic aura about it. Make up your own joke about it being a difficult word to 'spell'. Pun! Your word of the week is...

 

Fight To The Finish: Do we really want difficult games?

 

I went back to playing Football Manager recently (Worldwide Soccer Manager in the US) and using my favourite team Chelsea, comfortably won the league with five games to spare before bagging the domestic and European cups as well. Chelsea in real life are one of the top teams in football - read football as soccer if you're not British - and usually strong contenders for any cup they participate in. In my FM game, I regularly win at least two or three competitions a year, the Premier League very rarely not amongst them. If the real Chelsea replicated this haul, they would probably be considered the best team in the world, with few challengers to that claim. This sounds like bragging, but as much as I'd like to now apply for the real Chelsea job on the basis of my in-game success (which someone did, albeit at Middlesbrough), these achievements are not exactly rare in the FM world. 

It's not just with big clubs like Chelsea either: players on the FM forums regularly boast about hauling teams up from the swamplands of the lower leagues to European success in under ten gaming years. Despite its developers' claims to the contrary, Football Manager can sometimes feel less like a simulacrum of life in the dugout and more like a success simulator. Every day, any one of the millions of FM users achieves feats in-game that would at best occur once every ten or more years in the real footballing world. But I don't think that makes it a bad game and nor do most of its other players, judging by its consistently gargantuan sales figures. What it does do is raise the question as to whether we play games for the challenge, where the likelihood of success is tiny but through perseverance our small successes make us prouder, or for the experience, where progress is all but guaranteed for even the most 'talent-deficient' player so that everyone can experience some part of the thrill of success and the different scenarios thrown up by the game are what we expect to make it memorable, rather than the challenge of overcoming them.  

  

Not Without My Turtleneck: Archer review

TELEVISION REVIEW

ARCHER: 'Jeu Monegasque'

I think almost any episode coming off the back of last week's 'El Secuestro' would come up short by comparison, and predictably 'Jeu Monegasque' feels like a comedown. Given how much there is to enjoy about the episode, I'm wondering how much my reaction is purely down to the comedic masterpiece it had to follow, but having watched it a second time, I'm not altogether convinced that it's quite up to the ridiculously high standards set by most of this season's other episodes. It's hanging around a 'Swiss Miss', 'Double Deuce' and 'Tragical History' level of quality: good, maybe even great by the standards of a lesser programme, but nothing special for Archer.

It's a 'mission' episode where the ISIS office staff are mostly left behind, which goes some way to explaining why there's not as much zip to it as the times when those characters are more prominent. Don't get me wrong, Archer, Lana, Malory and Ray are an inspired set, all more than capable of holding up entire episodes on their own, but Pam and Cheryl in particular have turned into the programme's best double act, bringing the kind of insane unpredictability that no other character can, possibly apart from Krieger (also office-bound). Episodes where they are pushed to the sidelines tend to feel more pedestrian without that unstable element, as is the case here.

 

Suspicious Characters: Super review

 

FILM REVIEW

Review Scoring Chart - 10: Masterpiece; 9: Outstanding; 8: Very Good; 7: Good; 6: Above Average; 5: Average; 4: Below Average; 3: Bad; 2: Awful; 1: Reprehensible; 0: Non- Functional.

SUPER

Dir: James Gunn

Stars: Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Kevin Bacon, Liv Tyler, Nathan Fillion

Running Time: 91mins

Super would have benefited from being released in closer proximity to Kick-Ass. It comes across like a riposte to Matthew Vaughan's movie, similar in plot details but very different in tone and the conclusions it reaches. Had the two been released perhaps only a few months apart, rather than just over a year, Super most likely would have seemed more relevant. Instead, it feels like a comeback to an argument that ended so long ago that no-one remembers or cares what it was about. The implications of superheroism moved into real-life? The theme struck a chord at the time, but since Super wasn't around to offer its counter-argument when it mattered, watching the movie now and having those old questions raised again just comes across as repetition, rather than achieving the striking effect it might have a year earlier.

That's a shame, because Super is a more ambitious and dedicated project than Kick-Ass, which could never quite decide whether it was commenting on superhero movies or trying to be one. James Gunn's movie has similar problems finding the right tone, but commits itself to its premise without restraint. Despite what you may read in the listings, that premise is most definitely not comedic in nature. It has a handful of laughs, but they mostly serve to make a dramatic point about the levels of violence that people are willing to accept on-screen, on the page, and in real life.

  

Unfinished Business: Breaking Bad first season review (Ep. 7/7)

['Unfinished Business' is a feature where I take up an unplayed game or unwatched DVD that has been languishing on my shelf and chronicle my experiences with it.]

...And so my retrospective look at Breaking Bad's first season comes to an end. Whether or not these reviews continue next Monday, jumping ahead to the premiere of Season Four (which airs on Sunday night in the US) depends on how quickly I can get through the remaining episodes of the third season. Thankfully, I've been watching ahead of these reviews, which are based predominantly on notes taken earlier, and am currently four episodes in Season Three. All things being well, I'll be there to experience brand new Bad for the first time with my thoughts on 'Box Cutter' next Monday.

You can probably glean that I've enjoyed what I have seen of Breaking Bad so far. This review will sum up both my feelings on the Season One finale and the rest of the series - at least, up until 'Green Light' (S3 E4). It's fascinating and ominous thinking back to these older episodes, considering the man Walt used to be and all the tipping points and warnings he refused to heed on his diabolical path. The previous episode, 'A Crazy Handful of Nothin'' is a strong contender for my favourite of the series so far. So how does the finale stack up?

 

The Destruction Of Sennacherib: Archer review

TELEVISION REVIEW

ARCHER: 'El Secuestro'

If you're wondering, this article is named after the poem which Pam has tattooed on her back - and yes, I had to look it up - revealed in one of the biggest laughs of one of the funniest episodes of Archer to date. That's quite the compliment, as anyone who has been following the programme and my coverage of it will know. For English readers, I repeat - Tuesday nights, 10pm, 5 Star. God knows I'd usually prefer not be associated with anything Channel Five-related, but Archer really is worth it.

Even with the last two years proving among the all-time greats for American televised comedy thanks to this, Community and Parks & Recreation (both of whose new seasons were recently announced as starting in the US on September 22nd, by the way, so make sure you've got that evening free), I'm generally delighted with any half-hour that contains two or more huge laughs, supplemented by a steady stream of strong chuckles to fill in the gaps. 'El Secustro', however, had huge laughs pretty much from start to finish, with my only remotely credible criticism being that no matter how many times I rewatch it, there are probably a load of little background jokes that have gone unseen due to my laughing so hard. For my money, it only misses out on being one of the all-time great episodes of television comedy because its loose plot makes it feel a tad unfocused, but so many great jokes are born from that absence of structure that it's hard to particularly care.

 

Unfinished Business: Breaking Bad first season review (Ep. 6/7)

['Unfinished Business' is a feature where I take up an unplayed game or unwatched DVD that has been languishing on my shelf and chronicle my experiences with it.]

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, as far as I can understand it, says that it is impossible to measure both the present and future state of a subject at the same time with an equal amount of precision. In other words, the more exactly one state is observed will directly impact on the accuracy of observations of the second state. 

How elegantly damning is it, then, that Walter White chose to adopt the street name 'Heisenberg' under which to conduct his future in the meth black market? He is a man whose two identities seem to be in a constant state of flux, with the influence of each determining the direction of the other. The more we see of Walter White, downtrodden chemistry teacher, the more unpredictable it makes Heisenberg, the meth wizard and risk-taker. The more we see of Heisenberg, the less we can say about what will become of Walter White. They represent the same body in two different states, but the more we see and learn about either, the less we seem able to say about how or where they will end up. In a momentous episode, the man Heisenberg took control of the present, but might have cost Walter White his future.

 

Word of the week #10

As you might have noticed, I like choosing words for this feature which are in some way related to the preceding week. Sometimes it can be a word taken from one of the television programs I had reviewed, one which sums up a movie I've just watched, or which was inspired by some random fact or event that happened to be relevant at the time. With my computer being totalled for much of this week, I went looking for a fun word to describe something non-functional, but didn't come across anything suitable.

What I did find, however, was a word which describes that difficulty fairly well. So, somewhat by accident, your word of the week is...

 

Broken laptop means I'll be out of action for a while (UPDATED)

UPDATE: Although still prone to lapses in general functioning, my laptop seems to be working well enough for now that I can start writing again. Since I'll need today to catch up on everything I've missed, the Archer and Breaking Bad reviews will be going up tomorrow. With full computer reliability still not guaranteed, there may yet be days when I'm unable to post, but from tomorrow I'll be aiming to resume normal service.

Unfortunately my laptop decided to short-circuit this afternoon, which means it's unlikely I'll be able to do any updates (here or at Flixist) until repairs are completed - and not being much of a techie, I have no idea how long that will be. It looks pretty likely to because of a loose power jack, if that provides any frame of reference.

Obviously it's a blow, especially this early in the blog's lifespan, but hopefully it'll be resolved sooner rather than later. In the meantime, I'd like to take the chance to thank everyone who has visited, commented and supported the blog so far. It has been bringing in numbers that are far above what I could have expected at this stage, which has forced me to stay on my toes, keep working hard and coming up with new ideas to hold onto your valuable 'net time. I've got a lot of ideas on how to improve the blog over the summer, so rest assured that it will only be coming back stronger after these setbacks. Please leave a comment here if you have any suggestions for improvements you'd like to see.

Many, many thanks for all your support, and hopefully I'll be seeing you again soon!

Shia Agony: Transformers 3 review

FILM REVIEW

Review Scoring Chart - 10: Masterpiece; 9: Outstanding; 8: Very Good; 7: Good; 6: Above Average; 5: Average; 4: Below Average; 3: Bad; 2: Awful; 1: Reprehensible; 0: Non- Functional.

TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON

Dir: Michael Bay

Stars: Shia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whitely, Patrick Dempseym, John Turturro.

Running Time: 155mins 

Transformers 3 manages to not just be a bad movie, but a bad movie with aftertaste. I dislike it considerably more now than when I left the cinema yesterday evening, when my brain was so numbed by the near-three hour onslaught that every latest blow was merely absorbed in the hope of survival. The more I think about it, the more I remember how much it took what was wrong with Transformers 2 and escalated those faults to a greater scale.

Yes, you read that correctly: I think this movie was worse than the egregrious Revenge of the Fallen, managing to even one-up it in the nonsensical subtitle stakes. One of the many reasons for my disliking 2 was that the original Transformers was pretty good: the humour was broad but mostly worked, Shia LaBeouf was under control and played a reasonably affable character, while the robot fights - though tough to distinguish between which combatant was which - made for impressive spectacle. Not a patch on even Bay's best, of course - which would be The Rock in my book, if you're asking - but a perfectly entertaining giant robo-smackdown extravaganza. Unfortunately, 3 is loathsome entirely on its own terms and saved only by Pirates of the Caribbean from being the lowest point of 2011's dismal summer of blockbusters.

 

Word of the week #9

I saw Transformers 3 yesterday, which will have a review arriving very soon. Not to say too much before then, but it's a very weirdly structured movie. I don't mean that in an analytical critic-y way, but purely on the assumption that it was aiming to be a big 'dumb fun' summer blockbuster, yet spent almost the first two hours of its insane running time (155 mins!) doing set-up work with virtually no action and relatively little of the robots everyone was paying to see. After what feels like forever, it suddenly decides to make good on its promises and delivers about forty-five minutes of relentless shooting, exploding, crashing, shouting and transforming.

As I said, you'll have to check back later to find out exactly what I thought of the movie, but the writers' decision to pack almost all the action into the final third reminded me of a rather operatic word that, in a roundabout way, describes just such a situation. Your word of the week is...