Indie Game: The Movie

James Swirsky and Lisanne Pajot's insight into the independent video gaming market is an astonishing documentary for reasons which transcend the industry which it highlights. Following the trials and tribulations in the development cycle of two of the highest profile independently released games on the market of the last couple of years; Fez and Super Meat Boy - both exclusive to the XBox360, meaning a PS3 devotee like yours truly unfortunately hasn't had the chance to fully appreciate what's on offer. Nevertheless it doesn't dampen the almost life-affirming appreciation for the developers of the games and the core values they represent.

The film largely follows two reasonably different creative processes which in essence represent the same self doubts and mini victories all artists go through when crafting something entirely from scratch. If you're a traditional artist, writer, musician or film-maker there is countless qualities about the journeys which Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes of Super Meat Boy and Phil Fish and Renaud Bedard of Fez go through towards the completion of their respective games you'll find incredibly relatable. It also gives cynics of the industry confirmation, which many devotees already know, that computer games can be a hugely expressive art-form in itself. Not something to be looked down upon nor scoffed at.

The moments involving McMillen and particularly Refenes were the most emotional; a true mixture of profound joy, frustration and even at times soul destroying sadness. While they were both burdened with a playful anticipation from the gaming community on the internet, Phil Fish was faced with something far more intimidating. After wowing audiences in 2007 with a simple tech demo, the level of expectation placed upon Fish's shoulders transcended into this seemingly never-ending and unbelievably ambitious quest met with delays and frustration to the point where Fish was verbally abused across the net.

Similar to watching the brilliant Banksy documentary Exit Through The Gift Shop based around the street art movement, the mentality of these men and their like-minded peers was almost a form of creative rebellion. A huge middle finger to the mass gaming market constantly obsessed with this summer blockbuster arrogance of bigger is better, sacrificing innovation and compelling story telling for a points based first person shooter online gaming culture ala Modern Warfare.

As well as being hugely enlightening the film-making itself is of the highest quality. The crisp presentation, the in-game highlights, the absolutely gorgeous camera work makes the film one of the true stand outs of the year. More so the dark, moody, beautifully ambient soundtrack by Jim Guthrie is probably worth seeking out on its own.

Final Thoughts
Provocative, inspirational and profoundly emotional. Indie Game: The Movie is more than a simple documentary on the gaming industry, it highlights the emotions all independent creatives suffer through for their art. If you write, draw, compose music, create comics there is a quality about this film which will speak to you on numerous levels. And may also leave you believing in what you're doing.

4.5/5

Indie Game The Movie is available to buy from here :: http://buy.indiegamethemovie.com/

The Amazing Spider-Man

Ever since I was a child I've pretty much idolised two superheroes in my life. Sure I'm a self-confessed comic book geek, read the medium as much as I would a simple paperback and very much versed in the worlds of both Marvel and DC. But of the countless array of characters both have given the world over the past 70+ years, two have stood out above all. One is Batman and the other is Spider-Man.

Unlike The Avengers which has taken the world and box offices by storm since it came out back in April, and The Dark Knight Rises which fans have been waiting for since they left the cinema seeing its predecessor in 2008, expectation around The Amazing Spider-Man has been somewhat modest at best. Rebooting a phenomenally successful film saga just five years after the third instalment came out seems a bit drastic to the most cynical of eyes, but then if you were unfortunate enough to catch Spider-Man 3 in the cinema you wouldn't exactly blame them. For the few who haven't; it wasn't exactly Batman & Robin bad, but in hindsight it perhaps wasn't far off.

So out goes Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire and in comes the younger, hipper Marc Webb (director of 500 Days of Summer) and Andrew Garfield in the title role. Like the original Raimi film, The Amazing Spider-Man concentrates on the famous web-slinger's origin story, although in a slightly darker and less colourful setting than the original. Peter Parker the socially awkward science nerd is replaced with Peter Parker the geek chic, photographer kid from next door. However the chips on his shoulder very much remain.

The story, at its core, delves into Peter's struggles for a father figure ever since his parents (extremely brief but welcomed appearance of Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz) left him as a child and realising the hard way the responsibility of becoming a real hero. Unlike the Raimi films, Webb uses this opportunity to stretch out Peter's high school life which were skimmed over in the first 20 minutes of the original film. Here we see him meet his real high school sweetheart Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone), come to blows with her over protective, police officer father, George Stacey (Denis Leary) and develop a working relationship with his father's former lab partner Dr Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans) who eventually turns into the villain of the piece known as The Lizard.

Instead of using the noticeably comic book like vibrancy of the world Sam Raimi created in the original trilogy, Marc Webb opts to take some of his cues from the Christopher Nolan school of rebooting superheroes. You're bound to know the routine by now; slightly gritty with a lot of 'real world' grounding (roll your eyes accordingly if you've heard this one before...). And the story largely falls in line with this, The Amazing Spider-Man doesn't necessarily come out all guns blazing with spectacle, but more than makes up for it with the care and attention given to Parker's journey into the hero with great power and great responsibility.

Garfield was terrific in the title role, he attained Parker's sympathetic qualities and angst while still enabling himself to turn on the charm, wit and sarcasm while donning the red and blue spandex of Spider-Man. He also does a great job of reminding the audience every so often something we tend to forget when we think of Spider-Man, he is essentially still a kid at the beginning of his journey.  He's brash, he's fearless, he's occasionally a bit selfish and petulant and this rings true in the moments when he first becomes Spider-Man and in a couple of run ins with resident school bully Flash Thompson (Chris Zylka) - both before and after he gains his powers.

It's hard to not love Emma Stone in whatever role she plays these days, and her portrayal as the charming, graceful, bubbly Gwen Stacey is no different. The scenes she shares with Garfield are some of the films true highlight's, and clearly where Webb - having found success in this formula with the brilliant anti-romantic comedy 500 Days of Summer - felt most at ease.

Webb's handling of The Lizard must be commended despite a lot of clumsy CGI renderings which disjointed the feature at various points. Next to The Dark Knight, Spider-Man probably has the most memorable and impressive rouge gallery in comic books. Opting to use The Lizard echoed Nolan's use of The Scarecrow in Batman Begins in many ways, it was a frightful antagonist to inject a bit of fantastical flair into the film, while also the villain's Jekyll and Hyde duality and circumstance was a way of bringing the hero into the larger world of his own universe and the potentially bigger sequel to come. Where The Scarecrow brought Batman into the world of Arkham Asylum and all the psychotic inmates with it, The Lizard brought Spider-Man in line with potentially the next film's major villain Norman Osborn/Oscorp; whom turns into arguably Spider-Man's main nemesis, The Green Goblin.

While there's no J Jonah Jameson in The Amazing Spider-Man to steal the spotlight this time round (John Slattery for this series, Marc? Yeah?), the supporting cast of Leary as Captain Stacey, Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben and the ever elegant Sally Field as Aunt May were terrific.

No matter how many times you see it, no matter how many different camera angles in how many different movies, the imagery of Spider-Man swinging around the skyline of New York will still give fans of the films goosebumps, more so when put next to the majestic soundtrack scored by James Horner. Whereas some of The Lizard's CGI was disappointing, Spider-Man's felt much more authentic. During production Webb decided to shoot as many practical scenes of Spidey web-slinging as possible and in the final cut the difference is striking. It's simply a shame he didn't use some practical prosthetics for Ifans' Lizard too.

Like Webb's previous film, the use of music played a huge part, more so than perhaps any comic book film I've seen in quite some time. It was littered with emotional, grungey, singer songwriter montages. Some core audiences might find this distracting but I think, for the world Webb is creating, it lends itself wonderfully to the imagery.

Final Thoughts
The Amazing Spider-Man largely lives up to its own billing. Andrew Garfield gives a compelling account of the personal woes - and there's a lot of them - inflicted upon Peter Parker in his journey to becoming the iconic web-slinger. While the set pieces don't live in the memory as much as some featured in the original trilogy, this film's general enjoyment, playful humour, romantic chemistry, darker themes and larger plan for its inevitable sequels will leave die hard fans begging for more.

4/5

The Amazing Spider-Man is in cinemas everywhere now.

Superman Vs The Elite

As you look back on the archives of the blog you'll see a pantheon of movies from the DC Universe straight-to-DVD catalogue. Some good, some watchable, some just painfully average. The problem with the latest addition, Superman Vs The Elite, is that it roughly drops into all three of these categories. One thing's for sure whoever adapted the screenplay from the now classic turn-of-the-century Superman tale, What's So Funny About Truth, Justice and the American Way wasn't British (but more on that in a bit).

The story is more or less an examination of how relevant Superman's boy scout ideals and beliefs relate in the 21st Century. His public standing is tested when a new batch of anti-heroes known as The Elite rise up and take the world by storm with their no nonsense approach to dealing with the evils of earth with kill now, ask questions later approach. The film sparks up all kinds of questions about Superman that have been asked time and time again by the comic book fanboys of the world while also giving a reasonably compelling story and some terrific voice acting from George Newbern (he's to Superman what Kevin Conroy is to Batman in the animated world).

Where the film falls in comparison to most of its counterparts was in the sub-standard animation. Looking back on the films past such as Batman: Under the Red Hood, Superman/Batman, Justice League The New Frontier, Wonder Woman, All-Star Superman etc is that the animation is absolutely stunning in places. With Superman Vs The Elite it's surprisingly shoddy. Even in comparison to the stunning Bruce Timm cartoons of the 90s - Batman: TAS and Justice League Unlimited - it looks very mediocre in places. Perhaps all the money was being shifted toward the much anticipated adaptation of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, out later this year.

My biggest criticism in DC/Warner Bros' exercise in adapting these classic comic book stories is whether it is entirely necessary. Cynically they've always felt like cashing in on the original stories standing amongst its target audience but due to this the film seems to lack accessibility to new fans. Superman Vs The Elite just about gets away with it as a contained story but the majority of them are pure fanboy indulgences.

The biggest fail of the film, in a purely comical way, was some of the dialogue was a tiny bit inappropriate. I'm not sure about American audiences but I can't imagine some parents in Britain being okay letting their child watch this film knowing the word 'Wa*ker' gets dropped on a regular basis by the film's antagonists. Even once by The Man of Steel himself. Someone is going to have fun editing that to bits before we see it in stores over here.

Final Thoughts
A solid, entertaining story (with some questionable dialogue and British accents) with a deeper theme dissecting the relevance of the classic superheroes from a by-gone era. Full of explosions, peril and the usual set pieces seen in Superman stories again and again, however the whole experience is ultimately let down by some painfully average animation. Cool opening credits mind...

3/5

Superman Vs The Elite is out on DVD/Blu-ray (R1) now. 

Prometheus

Prometheus was always doomed to underwhelm to some degree. There was no possible way after a couple of stunning trailers, some cleverly constructed viral videos, the fact it was Ridley Scott's first sci-fi film since Blade Runner and it being tied to his genre classic Alien it was ever really going live up to all that hype in the eyes of fanboys, geeks and cinephiles around the globe. But I'd disagree.

If you go into this film looking for essentially a remake of Alien you will be disappointed. My argument is, why on earth would you want to sit down to an inferior prequel of Alien in the same manner Episodes I-III of the Star Wars trilogy are - does anybody really want that? Didn't think so. Thankfully Scott realised this also and offered the audience something vastly different with the help of an extremely provocative script by Lost's Damon Lindelof and Joe Spaihts. He often stated in the process of making this it wasn't strictly a prequel to Alien and upon seeing the film I can finally see what he meant.

Yes the film ties with Alien in some manners which will make you smile or despair in horror at reliving those moments again for the first time - as well as addressing one fleeting scene from the original film. However unlike Alien where the crew of the Nostromo are simply trying to survive, the crew of the beautifully constructed ship Prometheus are attempting to answer some of the biggest questions about life itself and by the film's end asking new ones in the process. It cleverly takes the story in a brand new direction for a sequel I'd very much like to see, without disrupting or shoehorning into Ripley's saga in the Alien films.

The performances were terrific all round. Noomi Rapace was a compelling lead as archaeologist Elizabeth Shaw, attempting to sacrifice everything to achieve the answers she seeks. Comparisons will undoubtedly arise between her and Sigourney Weaver, especially in the latter stages of the story but she's a more whimsy and ponderous soul - on a more spiritual quest - and this lends itself to the film much better. Michael Fassbender as always stole the show being the token android known as David, who is never quite as it seems as his intentions are covered in ambiguity which reveal a brilliant plot twist I won't spoil here.

Charlize Theron is quickly developing a knack for playing cold hearted b*tch characters as demonstrated in my previous review of Snow White and the Huntsman and February's Young Adult. With Prometheus it was much of the same as she was the representative of the Weyland Corporation to oversee the whole project and make sure it was done right. I quite enjoyed Idris Elba's nobel, laid back captain. Wasn't much to him, he was just there, like the audience, along for the ride. Logan Marshall-Green played Shaw's husband (?) and fellow archaeologist and good folly to Shaw's own beliefs, despite looking for the same thing. Another notable contribution was Guy Pearce's two minute appearance as an elderly Peter Weyland, I'd go into more detail but that would spoil the surprise.

Where the film perhaps lost a couple of marks was in its pacing. For much of the first and second act it was this slow, drawn out, ponderous journey - which to its credit looked pretty stunning in 3D - without much true sense of dread. Then when the horror and monsters descended suddenly it reverted to the survival horror format we've experienced many times before, and in my mind it cheapened the experience slightly, as if Scott felt he had done his different thing for two thirds of the film and decided to remind people at the end; oh yeah there's aliens in this too. I can't deny though the film's final scene left me smiling and put a new perspective on the next time you watch Alien and Aliens...and Alien 3 and Resurrection if you feel you must.

The visual effects were unsurprisingly stunning and the set designs inspired by H.R. Giger's vision on the original Alien films lent itself well to the aesthetics of the mysterious world Prometheus found itself in. Marc Streitenfeld's score was a curious creation though and in many ways refreshing for a film like this. It would've been easy to drown the film in Zimmer-like drones ala Inception, but instead he opted for something more hopeful his main theme. Don't sigh when I say it wouldn't sound totally out of place placed in a Star Trek film, this feeling of 'boldy going where no man has gone before.' If you haven't seen the film yet YouTube the main theme of the score and you'll see what I mean.

Final Thoughts
After all is said and done Prometheus' hype probably transcended the film itself. Strip the hype away and in the long term I feel Scott accomplished what he originally set out to do. He wanted to create a new mythology set in the same universe he created, not rehash the same thing all over again. Prometheus is a sci-fi film drenched in philosophical ambiguity (rather than caustic survival horror) that the Alien films would never have dared to tackle, and will leave you trying to dissect everything about it for long after. For better or worse that isn't for me to decide.

4/5

Prometheus is in cinemas across the UK now.

Snow White and the Huntsman

Darker, more adventurous takes on famous fairy tales from The Brothers Grimm to Lewis Carroll have been slowly but surely the trend in our multiplexes in recent years, with more of the same threatening to come. Unsurprisingly it's been something of a mixed bag, sometimes losing the magical quality which made us fall in love with these stories when we were children. Or simply, they're not a patch on the Disney equivalent. Snow White and the Huntsman is the début feature from British director Rupert Sanders, already risking ridicule for being the second film based on the famous fairytale to grace our cinemas in so many months, after Tarsem Singh's Mirror Mirror gave a luke-warm showing at best.

Whereas Singh opted for a more playful take, with painfully vivid visuals and self aware humour, Sanders' retelling is far more in keeping with the darkness associated with the Grimm Brothers' original fairy-tales even if he does take some extreme liberties with the plot. However much to my surprise, and regardless of my now infamous dislike for its star, the final product strangely works.

Snow White and the Huntsman's prelude pretty much mirrors the original story's own with a much more wicked and fantastical twist on the step-mother's rise to power. When Snow White (Kristen Stewart) escapes the clutches of the Queen (Charlize Theron) she's swept into a beautifully realised world of enchantment and terror featuring all manners of creatures and settings from haunted forests, to angry trolls, to fairies and pixies and yes, even dwarves - we'll get to them in a moment.

Lord knows I haven't been kind to the uncharismatic ball of anti-banter known as Kristen Stewart, since she showed up on our screens in the first Twilight film a few years back. And every interview since I've found her utterly charmless and lacking any kind of endearment. However maybe it was the decent British accent, maybe it was a more commanding, independent role, hell maybe it was just the fact she cracked a genuine smile for once but she was surprisingly likeable in the title role. It was the first time I've seen Stewart come across as quite innocent, selfless and at times even quite charming. This child-like aura she adopted just seemed to work for her. Having said that, through no fault of her own, the film didn't belong to her...

Charlize Theron's wicked Queen Ravenna gave a much more rounded and psychological deconstruction of the character's motives and inner-workings - because villains can't be villains just because they're evil these days. Sure, she's not very nice but there's an underlying sadness and conflict which Theron pulls off in a majestic manner even if there's an element of Christmas panto with the more shouty moments. One can only imagine Angelina Jolie watching and taking a few notes when she gives her Wicked-like telling of Sleeping Beauty's villain Maleficent next year.

Chris Hemsworth was slightly frustrating for me, he's a clearly capable actor but in this he just looked a bit lost, slowly descending into the realms of type casting as his Huntsman was much like his now iconic take of Marvel's Thor. Except with a Scottish accent. Nevertheless his chemistry with Stewart worked without being too cringe worthy and his moments of action were as good as they'd be with a red cape and a hammer fighting alongside Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. Just next time, stretch your talent a bit more mate like you did with Cabin in the Woods.

And then we come to the dwarves. Sanders defies tradition with an unprecedented eight dwarves as oppose to the conventional seven with know and love. Even more curious however was the decision to opt for larger than life and notably un-dwarf like actors to fill the roles. The casting choices however were tremendous and a real highlight of the film featuring Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone, Nick Frost, Eddie Marsan, Toby Jones, Ian McShane, Brian Gleeson and Johnny Harris respectively.

Visually it was delightful for fans of films like Lord of the Rings, Willow, Stardust and The Princess Bride. To some degree the plot wasn't a million miles removed from Tim Burton's re-telling of Alice in Wonderland. However with a much more focused script and slightly better, but not entirely perfect pacing. I also must commend Sanders for how he handled the love story element, not forcing it upon the two title characters together for the sake of it which personally speaking would have cheapened the solid foundations of which the story had already laid.

Final Thoughts
Snow White and The Huntsman was a surprise in a few ways. The dark imagery was striking, the shots had a grand vision and the more intimate moments were creepy enough to do the Grimm Brothers proud. It had dwarves played by guys who aren't really dwarves but bloody brilliant British actors. It even had Kristen Stewart in probably her most likeable leading role to date. All this and a captivating performance from Charlize Theron as the wicked queen. Suspend your cynicism and trepidation and you'll find a perfectly enjoyable fantasy adventure full of suspense, imagination and wonder. You're surprised by this review? How you think I feel?

4/5

Snow White and the Huntsman is in cinemas everywhere now.