Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises

The man who taught me everything I know about making films told me there are two types of tension in any scene. First, we have two men sat at a table, and we know there's a bomb beneath it. We follow their conversation, just when we've just about forgotten about the bomb, it goes off. In the second type of tension, we have the same two men sat at the same table, only this time, we don't see the bomb... We just follow their conversation, and then the bomb goes off. If there was one thing I could choose to dislike about The Dark Knight Rises, it is the absolute lack of tension. We know there's a damn bomb from an hour into this three hour film, and at no point will we honestly be afraid that the fucker is going to go off anywhere near Gotham.
Lets backtrack. The Dark Knight Rises isn't a bad movie, not at all. It's gorgeously shot, epic in scale, cast of hundreds, beautifully scored... it isn't bad. But for the many expecting it to be the film of the year, it will be a disappointment.

The story continues eight years after Batman's fated battle with Two-Face, the result of which left him a shattered figure, hated by the public, and fallen into seclusion.  He hobbles about with a walking stick on his awfully injured leg that he can barely stand on, and generally acts like your standard neckbeard shut in, until the intrusion of Catwoman stealing his stuff prompts him to leave his home to track her down. Now Catwoman is handled well at first, I will say that. Hathaway wasn't a popular choice with many fans, but she's better than Halle Berry. The comparison is barely a grade above an insult of course. Hathaway tackles the character (At least for the first act) with a charm we haven't seen in the character before, acting the part of the screaming victim or the inquisitive but dull maid right up until the very second her target realizes they've been had, when suddenly she transforms into the confidant, sexy Selina Kyle we would expect... It's nice, it's fun, but it soon goes away. All too soon does the character degrade into the obvious love interest, and pulls a huge personality 180 in the third act to fall for our hero for no real reason. Catwoman is the shining example of the strong, self-confidant, self-sufficient female character, probably the only true example in all of DC comics in fact, to quote the observation of Miss Claw. Taking her and using her as little more than a character hook for Batman, as well as taking away her power as a strong female by her falling for him apparently because of his heroism, takes these wonderful aspects of the character and tosses them in the shitter. She deserved better. I'm a man to whom character is most important, and the Batman movies have always seemed to fail in this respect. We sit through long tedious speeches, every damn character having something to say, which they will at length, but in the end all that matters is the villainous plot, and characters will drop so much out of their our personalities they'd be unrecognizable if it weren't for the silly outfit.

The flirtatious back and forth between Bruce and Catwoman is adorable as expected, before the meat of the story comes into play, the big bad of the story, Bane. Now Bane is presented very differently than his comic book counterpart here, by the pretty massive Tom Hardy. He's one of the most entertaining characters in the whole film, visually threatening, interestingly designed, but from the very beginning I could not get over one thing about him...What the hell were they trying to do with Bane's voice? He sounds like someone in a gas mask doing an impression of your granddad. It's awkward and makes you giggle and removes a huge amount of the threat from otherwise brilliantly evil dialogue. A decision I will truly never understand. Bane on the whole was good, but I never got the feeling we really saw the character. He's restrained, he's mellow, he's controlled. Only for one scene do we see the character really let loose in his terrible rage, only one scene is he really Bane, and it's all over incredibly soon. Also, I can't help but see the humour in the mighty Bane's only true weakness being getting punched in the face.
Bane rolls onto the scene in a big way at about the hour and a half mark, when all shit goes to hell in Gotham. Batman is back on the case in moments, which was a little disappointing to me. He's been hobbling around on a shattered limb for eight years. This would have been a tremendously interesting development for Batman, a hero with a major physical weakness he must find out how to overcome and hide from his enemies. Yet in one quick scene, he has a brace fixed up that allows him to walk as well as ever and KICK THROUGH BRICK WALLS. The crippled leg is never mentioned again, even after the brace is removed... After a one on one fist fight with our man Bane, which was a damn good punch up in my opinion, Batman is put out of commission in the way comic fans will be familiar with, being quite rudely bent over Bane's knee and sent to an unidentified middle eastern country to rot in a nightmare prison. This was when the plot started to take off, but also started to come apart at the seams. Gotham is isolated into a military state under Bane's control with a massive controlled coup against the police force, and months pass by in a few short scenes. What's happening with the average guy on the street during this time? We have no real idea, as every scene is divided between Bane's militia army and the shattered remnants of Gotham's police force. The single night that The Joker took control of Gotham in 'The Dark Knight Returns' was more tense and exciting than the months that pass under Bane's rule, as we really don't see any of it here. Furthermore, almost a solid hour passes without much Batman at all. He's lying a prison cell with a broken spine of course (And apparently that's nothing a little peptalk with a creepy old guy in a third world prison hell won't fix just fine!), but so much time passes without Batman that we could forget about him. More time is spent following the antics of Gotham's newest supercop, Blake, played well by Joseph Gordon Levitt. Now he's played well, no complaints there, the character is just so damn hard to like. He's unrealistically perfect. He's a genius, he cares about nothing more than protecting 'the kids' and saving Gotham one man at a time. He figures out Batman's identity in moments, that no one else ever seems to, and he's a brilliant detective and fearless crimefighter to boot. A good hero is built by his flaws! This perfect cop is just too damn brilliant and nice to possibly be real. As I said, Levitt played it convincingly, he just got given a shitty character.

I will stress that the film isn't without its standout performances however, dodgy characters aside, you'll get the brilliance you expect to get from both Gary Oldman and Michael Caine. They're both on form for the characters we've come to know, they're passionate, and Michael Caine in particular acts Cristian Bale off the screen. He's a joy to watch. I also enjoyed the (all too brief!) cameo of Cillain Murphy as Scarecrow. He's a favourite of mine, and his short sequence is a great call back to his madness.
It falls to the end of the story to wrap things up in a rush, and it does so. Sure it's exciting, there's car chases and bike chases and tank battles and Batman's new helicopter/hoverjet doofer shooting missiles everywhere, but it's all action and no heart. The villains are set on the sidelines in favor of dealing with the bomb, and our main adversaries, Bane and the surprise villain that secretly masterminds him, (don't get too excited comic fans, it's not a character you'll be thrilled to see) are dispatched so quickly and off-hand that you expect they'll be coming back for that last good fight the film should've built its climax on. Sure, it all looks gorgeous, it's shot beautifully and clearly and Bane's men fight police officers in the streets of Gotham by the hundreds, but never once did I sit back and think 'wow' at what was unfolding before me. I hope plenty of people saw 'Sherlock Holmes: Game of shadows' last year, as there is a scene in that film that truly stunned me in its incredible visual action. I was in awe of it. You know the one I'm talking about. This is the sort of action scene that makes a movie stand out, shock and stun us with its brilliance. The only scene here that really is a great memorable moment is the implosion of the football stadium, but we saw it in the trailer a long time ago. I wanted more from the biggest movie of the summer...

A big disappointment for me personally, was the aspect of Bane's 'illness'. He wears a respirator/facemask, that appears to be somewhat uncomfortable and alters his breathing. He holds his chest in a certain way as if he has trouble breathing, and we know that the thing getting damaged causes him immense pain. What is it? What is his mystery affliction? Your guess is as good as mine, because we never find out. There's a brief mumbled excuse about an 'illness' in the prison sequence, but it's not detailed or at all interesting. For me this was the most intriguing part of the character, not to mention his standout physical characteristic, and for it never to be addressed felt like a cheat.   
The film ends with a mix of melancholy, and arguably bails out on itself a bit. Would it have been good to end the series with a define full stop? Probably not, he's Batman after all. It's a sound ending if it really is the end. Of course it's open enough to redo the whole damn thing if they choose too, but I honestly don't think we need another Batman movie after this one. The best part of a story should be its end, a grand finale to remember, not a mixed messaged grab bag of half unraveled storylines that may or may not have a future.

Game Review: The Witcher 2, Assassins of Kings.

The fantasy genre is taken for granted in almost every medium these days, far too often we know the story long before it's even begun being told. It takes spice and a touch of something wild and different to really make a world stand out anymore. The World of The Witchers is not your average fantasy setting. It is a world of intrigue, sex, brutality, and a good dose of gritty humour. Later; The peasants would whisper that the Witcher arrived on the Xbox 360, and raised the bar of the fantasy action RPG by the length of his silver sword. The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is a journey you will be glad you embarked on. If you have the mettle for it, of course.

    From the moment we take on the role of Geralt of Rivia: a hardened warrior galvanized by mutations and training into an elite rank of monster hunter, the gritty realism of the world we have found ourselves in is thrust upon us. There is no time for introductions, locked in a cell for a political assassination he didn't commit, Geralt must break free and clear his name. Along the way encountering the darker side of his wild, monstrous world. Dwarves, Elves and Sorceresses all have their place in this world; but they are not the dainty silk draped Elves of the woods or gruff mining Dwarves we've come to expect. These Elves are a brutal separatist army bent on regaining their place in the world by guerrilla warfare. These Dwarves, a broken people troubled by war and oppression, longing for freedom in any place they can find it. Political and personal wars help make The Witcher the first truly mature experience you will likely encounter in a game. The dialogue is coarse and colourful, the problems are real, the villains are truly wicked, and when one of the Witcher's many lovely ladies undresses for sex, they aren't shy about showing their charms. At no point does the graphic nature of violence or sex feel explicit or unnecessary however, but fits in stride as part of the brutal world we find ourselves in. This is not a game for the faint of heart, and it's both refreshing and important to video games as a whole for the player to be treated like an adult for once.
   The first thing I noticed about the Witcher is the level of detail placed on characterization. Immediately anyone will notice the visuals of the game, some of the best seen on the system so far, from the gloriously detailed environments to the clawed, savage monsters, but the people within the world are where it shines brightest. These characters have personality, and it shows. Every different character is so distinct in both speech and physical quirks, it makes it easy to find a favourite amongst the varied cast. Within a minute of meeting the dashing Vernon Roche, we get the measure of a military commando who'll do whatever it takes to solve the mystery of regicide, with his commanding voice and his impatient hand gestures. We can guess the cocky personality of his lieutenant Ves from her swagger and cocked hips before we've even heard her utter a single word. Even minor characters found by the roadside have distinct physical aspects or voices that stand out, making so many little parts of this world memorable and full of life, coupled with a heavy dose of irreverent humour throughout. The voice acting is charming and for the most part excellent, you can't help but love Zoltan's gruff brogue. With this many characters to love and hate, Talking about your favorites begins to feel like discussing a dark, violent soap opera. If we like a character, we also might be able to steer to story towards interaction with them. The story is wonderfully mutable, a friend might request the assistance of Commander Roche in his journey, like an off the rails federal agent, while you might instead decide to ally with the cunning, ruthless Elf Iorveth and watch the goings on from the side of a dangerous underdog. Fans of complex RPGs will not be disappointed with our protagonist either. Geralt himself has choices to make along his path. There are no simple black or white choices in the Witcher. Morality is not an issue, no good/evil slider to guide your hand. Simply tough choices that fall into your hands, with long standing results that change the shape of the story to come. Not just the main story is open to a personal touch, of course, as along the way Geralt will encounter a multitude of side quests to indulge in. The game shines again in this aspect, going for a smaller variety of very charming, memorable side quests full of personality rather than a large number of repetitive fetch quests. Enter the town fight club for fun and profit, Ghost hunt along the rocky shore, Track down the gorgeous Succubus picking off men in the frontier town. (Or seduce her yourself?) Every quest adds to the atmosphere and makes Geralt a little more of a character that is very easy to love. He is very human in his faults, his desires, and makes for thrilling playing.

   Where the RPG blends with the action is often cause for concern, but the Witcher again pulls off a system that is complex but very easy to use. Geralt is a swordsman, using an interchangeable duo of swords to deal with different enemy types. The sturdy steel blade for the human enemies in his path, the shining silver sword for the many supernatural beasts you may encounter in the shadows. Geralt has a wealth of other abilities at his fingertips however, and soon you'll find yourself using them fast and effectively. Placing flaming traps in your opponents path, tossing poison bombs and knives into the fray, and making clever use of Geralt's five different magical abilities will all lead you to victory over your opponents. A different approach is possible to each battle, and it's immense fun to experiment to see what works best for your play style. For example, wading into combat is possible when you coat your blade in fiery oils to enhance its effectiveness, coupled with a spell to shield yourself from enemy strikes. Yet for the same battle you could also lure your enemies to you, hitting the first in line with a snare spell trapping him in place, then take psychic control of the next in line and turn him back on his fellows....The options are many and varied, and easy to do seemingly complex arrangements of abilities thanks to the simple switching up of spells and weapons with an intuitive selector wheel. A slightly more unique aspect of combat in the Witcher is Geralt's use of potions and alchemical compounds to enhance his abilities before even entering combat. A variety of mixtures and potions exist to be purchased, looted and stolen throughout the game, each with a unique effect on our hero. Have a bad feeling about what's up ahead? Drink a potion to enhance your magical abilities or give yourself a regenerative edge for that long pitched battle. Be too liberal with your potions of course, and the toxic effects will start to kick in, forcing clever selection and planning.

   When you begin to find your stride in combat, you will also find that the character customization extends to each realm of Geralt's expertise. A melee expert can venture down the swordsmanship path, become proficient in attacking multiple opponents and brutal instant kills. The mage in you can select the Magic tree, and enhance the abilities of Geralt's spells, taking control of more than one opponent at once or creating a shield that reflects damage upon nearby opponents. The third option is the most unique to the Witcher world, the alchemy tree. Advancing into it makes Geralt's creations far more effective, be they bombs, oils for his blade, or potions for the battle ahead, All the way up to a chemically induced berserker rage to tear through your opponents. Of course any combination of the three trees is possible, and all compliment each other consistently and seamlessly.
   The game will last a solid 20 hours to the average gamer, with a lot more exploring to do as one wishes, and on the harder difficulty levels will be a challenge to even the most skilled player. Best of all, I had that feeling the moment I finished my first playthrough, of 'Well, what if I'd chosen this...' and wanted to start anew almost immediately. The Witcher 2 will draw you back in for another run, you just have to know what will happen on the other side of the stories many flipped coins. The world of the Witcher is one vibrant with life and fun and conflict and love, and one that I fully hope I can revisit again soon.

Game Review: Game of Thrones

   Before anything else today, I'm going to go on record as a Song of Ice and Fire fan. A fucking big one. No fantasy world created by an American author has ever been as complex, interesting, and utterly absorbing as George R R Martin's world of Westeros.

Now then, let's get on with this one. You've read some shitty reviews of this one already, I'm sure, and it's fair enough. It's a licensed game, not even based on a film but a television property, and we all know they tend to be about as entertaining and satisfying as poking a dead dog with a stick. Cyanide games had a shitload to live up to with this property, and as far as Gameplay goes, average would be fairly flattering a description. Game of Thrones fans are an obsessed lot, and I'm not going to tell you the game is brilliant. But, surprisingly, It grew on me. There are aspects of the game that I enjoyed, it kept me coming back to it to finish it.
In Game of Thrones, we take the role of two characters, the tales of which intersect and eventually coincide. Mors Westford of the Nights watch, a grizzled old war veteran who also happens to be a skinchanger, And Alester Sarwyck....a grizzled war veteran who also happens to be a Red priest of R'hllor. Okay, there isn't a huge difference in the characters. They could have been wildly different, instead we get too loosely samey old bastards, scarred and bitter and hateful, but that's what this world is all about after all. 
In general, I think fans of the books will enjoy the world as it is presented. The development team are all fans themselves, they took an interest and they stuck with it. That was important to me, it felt put together with at least a fair bit of love for the property. On your journey through the game you will head to an assortment of areas throughout Westeros, from King's Landing to The Wall, and they are one and all faithfully recreated with equal inspiration from the show and the books. Its visuals are nicely put together, if gritty and rendered in quite mediocre graphics. Cyanide studios did not have the budget or the manpower that a bigger, more notorious developer could have put into this property, which is of course a shame as we could have seen something great. As it is, we have a low budget production, and it does show. The graphics are not horrible, but certainly nothing to be wowed by at any time. Visuals are often forgettable, but the important things do come across. You'll instantly recognize Lannister banners and the likeness of King Robert Baratheon in paintings within the Red Keep, for example. A few stars from the TV show were drafted in to lend their voices, and it's particularly good to hear Lord Varys's velvet tones so much, as great as you'd expect, but these celebrity additions painfully outline how awful the rest of the acting in the game is. Our two protagonists are standared Solid-Snake sounding growlers, but most of the rest of the incidental cast are clearly Americans doing bad regional European accents. Surely they could have done better?
All this is rolled up into a storyline that does fit well into the universe, and could easily have been a side story in the first book. Family treachery, back stabbing, child murder and illegitimate heirs form the whole basis of the plot, which are of course all staples of the series. It fits, It just isn't mind blowing. Another nice addition is that our heroes really do barely fit the stereotype by any means. They are Ice and fire heroes, meaning they barely qualify as good men half the time. They are self-serving, hateful men lost in the past, and most of the games four endings are unpleasant, unhappy resolutions tainted by the machinations of more powerful personalities. Just like the books. They didn't bottle out with happy endings or baiting for a sequel, it all ends satisfyingly well.

Of course, you can't review a game without getting into exactly how it plays. If you've come for a taste of the Game of Thrones world, I'd say you'll enjoy yourself enough to warrant the purchase. If you're a gamer looking for a good time, you'll want your money back. In essence, the whole game works like a simplified, clunky imitation of 'Dragon Age: Origins'. It shares a near identical ability wheel, where you select a short order of attacks and abilities that your character will slowly develop as they advance level by level. Mors has his trusty dog with him at all times, that can be ordered to attack and knock down your enemies, whilst Alester has an assortment of flame based abilities including some healing spells. However, if you're anything like me, you just won't find yourself using much of any of these many abilities. A short way into the game you'll have found something that works for you with each of your heroes, and you'll likely never stray from using them again. I for one found an ability that allowed Mors to knock his opponent to the ground then stab him repeatedly, finishing off any foe in a matter of seconds, and I never really needed to use anything else. The game never throws in anything to switch up the combat, it's just swordsman after swordsman, with the occasional bowman to polish off on the sidelines. The vast majority of all combat scenes in the game consists of room after room of these same enemies. It gets predictable fast. There is some good enmity in some detestable villainous gits to fight, but again, they fit the same battle drill as all other enemies.
There is a great variety of weapons and armour to find and use throughout the game, but again, you'll likely end up finding something early on that you like, and never end up using anything else, ever. At no point did I ever feel the urge to pick up a bow in the whole course of the game. Neither did I ever find a use for the game's many different armour types, as 'heavy' is always stronger, more resilient, and doesn't seem to have any real drawback. All the game's most powerful items are nice nods to canon characters we know, but as badass as it felt to be strolling around in Ilyn Payne's executioners cloak, Barristan Selmy's jousting helm and wielding a Valyrian steel sword, it never really gives you the feeling that any piece of equipment is that much better than anything you've had before.

You'll be hacking through an assortment of side-quests and mumbling through character interaction as the game progresses, and although most are simple fetch quests, a few are more interesting and unique. Like using Mors's skinchanger abilities to take the consciousness of your pit bull, catch scents hidden around Castle Black to hunt down conspirators against the Old Bear. Anyone into Game of Thrones will know what that means and be at least a little interested, everyone else will be lost entirely. 
That's the heart of the matter, really. Ones entire opinion on the game will simply be based around how much they enjoyed living for a little in Westeros, however clunky and restricted such a journey is. I personally enjoyed myself while it lasted. It could have been a lot more open, it could have been a better glimpse into such a complex, well defined world, but for now, it's all us fans have to explore. If you're a fan, give it a chance, you might like it, and for the ultimate in bad in-jokes, do keep a look out for Maester Martin along the way...

This review of Game of Thrones was based on the Xbox 360 version of the game. 

Movie Review: The Amazing Spider-man.

First of all, I'll say I wasn't looking forward to this one. Did there need to be another Spider-man? The first and second films of the deceased Raimi trilogy were paragons of the genre, the third was absolute shite. Pulling a new continuity out of the ether a few short years after that train wreck would be a mistake in my opinion. But you can't keep a good character down for long, Norton and Ruffalo's Hulks proved that.
   The Amazing Spider-Man was actually a lot more enjoyable that I expected, I found myself thoroughly entertained start to finish. It wisely doesn't waste a huge amount of time with the origin story, as we all know he gets bitten by a radioactive spider already. What is introduced early on, and is of far more interest, is the strange relationship between our man Parker's absent father, and his business partner Curt Conners, who is the chief acting talent in the whole film in the form of delightful Welsh crackpot Rhys Ifans. He steals the show hands down, he's fun to watch, physical, crazy without being insane. Hands down the best performance of the film. I was quickly relieved to see that Rhys's performance isn't lost upon his transformation into the film's super villain either, as plot devices allow him to change back and forth from his human to his monstrous form. Trust me, that isn't as bad as it sounds. The Lizard's face is also modeled on Rhys' own, and indeed the monster talks, with Rhys' serpentine British whisper fitting oh so well.

To give credit where it is due however, our man Parker is also played with more depth and realism than we've ever seen before. Gone is Tobey Maguire's lackluster awkward college kid, replaced by the energetic Andrew Garfield's performance. He's conflicted, he's a jerk to his aunt and uncle, he's horny, he's a true to life teenager. Scenes from the film will resonate with almost any twenty something who survived high school in the last decade. Even Flash, the school bully, is played realistically here, he's not a bad kid, he's just an asshole sometimes. The scenes where Parker is first discovering his new strength were fun and played off better than we've seen before. There was a rhythm to his evolution into Spider-man that, although rushed as usual, was more organic to watch. It was satisfying to watch him better the school bully in a simple, sarcastic show off way. It's what we'd all have done in the same situation. Another thing I loved about this incarnation of the hero, is the obvious attention to making him act like a spider. He moves in ways we've never seen the character move before, crawling around his enemies binding them in web, even building himself a whole web to rest in at one point that felt a fantastic show of his new urges as his body changes. One of my personal favorite plot-lines from the old Spider-man cartoon was Parker's continued evolution, becoming less man and more Spider, and It was great to see his strange new compulsions on screen.

For a superhero plot-line, character development was first priority, and I will always appreciate that. That's where the third film in the previous series fell apart. No characterization, just forced plot and split second out-of-character actions with little to no motivation behind them. Here we have an excellent hero/villain dynamic from the start, there is no pissing about, Spider-Man and The Lizard know one another and the secrets of each identity from early on. This brings a sort of respected rivalry more than an opposition that is far more interesting than the usual fare. It was fun to watch the confrontations between them every time. Even the character of Uncle Ben was handled with a far better touch, we all know he's fated from the start, and it was good to see him played by an excellent actor, Martin Sheen, and for him to be a guy with a genuine personality as opposed to the practically flawless angel of a man he's usually depicted as. The emphasis on character doesn't slow the story however, and it moves along at a solid kinetic pace to it's conclusion. Nothing is hugely predictable in the storyline, with the exception of the classic macguffin finale plot device that could have been more subtle, "Oh this old thing? Just a device for spreading vaccinations on a city wide scale in one go...."

Superhero cliches aside, it's the best of the genre in a while. More heart than The Avengers, and perhaps a promising re-invigoration to the character beloved of so many. Sadly, one is never enough for these vultures. Lets hope they don't fuck it up again already.