Soulless, Commodore 64 Review

Getting turned into a monster has long been a problem some videogame heroes have had to endure. Think of Aarbron (and no-one ever does!) from Shadow of the Beast, or even more recently Skyrim, were you can prance around as a werewolf if the fancy takes you. The whole point of Altered Beast was to get turned into different monsters so you could defeat the various bosses, but I’m guessing being a monster was preferable to being dead in that instance. Not that being dead is any hindrance, as usually all you have to do is make a deal with some demon and you’ll be allowed to hack and slash your way back to mortality (or will you?). But what if you’re not dead?  What if your soul has been taken and you’ve been locked up for a thousand years? That is what has happened to Rizek in Soulless, a new game for the Commodore 64. Where, in over 70 screens of action, you have to piece together the fragments of your soul and reclaim your rights as King.



Cart and C64 hooked up to my TV



Soulless running on a real C64

Yes, you read right, a new game for the good old C64. It’s brought to you by Georg Rottensteiner and Trevor Storey, and it’s released by Psytronik Software and RGCD. You can buy it from Binary Zone retro store, or in cartridge form at the RGCD website. There really is a myriad of versions of this game you could buy. Get it on tape, disk, premium disk, cart, or download; you can even download it for free from the Commodore Scene Database if you so wish. Okay maybe not a myriad of ways, but you get what I mean. Plus if you buy the deluxe cartridge version you get a host of extras on top of the snazzy new light-up cart that you can plug straight into the back of your Commodore. These include a 7 track soundtrack cd that also has some amazing artwork and making-of bonus materials on the disc. You also get a double-sided poster, one side with a handy map, some stickers, a comic book/instruction manual, and some sheets to keep track of the 12 soul pieces that you will have to input to finish the game. Now I know what people are thinking, they’ve been around long enough to know that all these extras does not a good game make, and the Commodore era was rife with games that gave away free stuff in order to mask the shoddy game underneath. But thankfully this is not the case, and you will be treated to a great game that will give you many hours of entertainment.






As has been mentioned, it contains over 70 screens to navigate through as you search for keys to unlock new areas, as well as find those twelve spirit stones that you have to place in the correct order in the Spirit Chamber at the end of the game. Each screen will have some enemies to avoid and items to search. In a very Impossible Mission way, it takes a few seconds for Rizek to search each item he comes across, hoping that he will find a spirit stone or perhaps a potion that kills the enemies on the screen which will make his life a whole lot easier. With all the stones collected, (and you have been noting where each one goes yes?) you can finally regain your human form and finish the game. That all sounds well and good, but it isn’t all easy going, you can only take a couple of hits before you die and with precious few lives, you will need to plot your way around the castle very carefully. Also when you start a new game, all the spirit stones will have randomly moved, so you will have to start jotting down their placement all over again. It’s not an easy game by any means, but it is never unfair. The controls are responsive and if you take a hit, you only have your own timing to blame. The majority of the enemies move in a designated path and speed, so timing really is the key. In the long run it pays to try different approaches to each room, but still know when to turn and run back to the nearest health regenerating spot before tackling rooms afresh. Often there is more than one way to enter an area, plus it is never so big that you end up getting lost. Only on two or three occasions did I find myself wondering where to go, or caught in a frustrating loop of insta-death (of my own making!).
 

Packaging and extras are top quality

The graphics are another high point, different areas have different colour schemes, the main character is nice and big, and the opening and ending cinematic are both well done. The music in game is nice and long before it loops back around, and it never grates after prolonged periods of play. Its gameplay reminds me of a cross between the castle parts of Shadow of the Beast (though it may be the theme playing tricks in my head!) and those of Sceptre of Bagdad (another Psytronik game). It could hold its head up with games released in any of the last 30 years of Commodore gaming. I have no hesitation in recommending that you procure yourself a copy of this game if you are in anyway interested in gaming on your C64. Plus with all the extras it’s still value for money, I remember paying over forty quid for cartridge games back in the early nineties, and some of them were god awful.

 You can buy Soulless here, Psytronik and here, RGCD So what are you waiting for?

Auschwitz

Uwe Boll is best known for game to movie adaptations of BloodRayne, In The Name of The King, Alone in the Dark, etc. But he also makes the odd ‘auteur’ or documentary film when he gets the time. Such time appeared when shooting Blubberella and BloodRayne 3, and reusing the sets from those productions, the director decided to shoot a movie about the horrors of Auschwitz.

The trouble with making a movie that centres around the Holocaust is that you are bound to split opinion; for all the people who liked the Oscar winning Schindler’s List, there was an equally vocal reaction that said it was a huge misrepresentation of the past. Even straight up documentaries such as Night and Fog are not immune from criticism, whether it is about the tone of the narration they use or some of the sources they elected to leave out. What sets Uwe Bolls film apart is that it wants to tell the story of the camp on a typical day, from arriving on a train to being burned in an oven. This leaves it open to being accused of simply being too gruesome. But to paraphrase Stanley Kubrick, if you were to make a proper film about the Holocaust, it would have to be unfilmable.

Around the scenes that are shot on set, we see young German teenagers interviewed about what they know about the Second World War, National Socialism, and about the concentration camps. Unfortunately these sections are a bit erratic as the interviews tend to jump from one topic to another, while popping back to the same faces before introducing some new ones. Was everyone asked the same questions? What was cut? It was just lacking a general flow. But these aren’t the scenes that caused certain critics to be up in arms. At the centre of the film is the trip to Auschwitz and what is shown there; herds of people being gassed, babies being shot in the head, corpses being brought to the furnaces and placed inside.

But to say these scenes are too gruesome I think is wrong. Unsettling of course yes; and there is always grounds to say that any movie, not just this one, only serves to rehumiliate the victims of the Holocaust by putting their suffering on screen. It is a fine line a director has to tread. If you can watch the trailer, you won’t be too off put by what appears in the movie. There aren’t buckets of blood or brains splattered all over walls or anything. Maybe it would be easier for people to take, if there was an axe wielding, cackling maniac doing the killing rather than the everyman soldiers that are shown. But make no mistake, this is not a Nazi apologist movie, it does not delve into the reasons for the extermination camps, the inner workings of the SS, the reasons why such and such company won the contract to make ZyklonB, or anything like that. It just purports to show a day in the camp; the utter lack of humanity shown is the real horror here.

There are a few problems that let the movie down. Most of it is shot in first person at eye level, but there is a scene from inside the gas chamber from high up to give a view of the whole room, a view that no one would have seen the Holocaust from. Also in this shot, there are only about 20 people inside, whereas guards talk of truckloads of 400 or 500 Jews being transported. More extras should have been used for these scenes; it wouldn’t have been very efficient if most of the room was empty space. Sonderkommandos who survived confirmed that some people simply died standing up as there was barely any room to fall over. Soldiers in the film talk of the advance of the Russians, so I presumed it is set later in the war when the gas chambers were built to house nearly a thousand people at a time.

The scenes where toddlers are taken from their mothers arms and shot was another problem. Too many cuts back and forth are made, robbing the soldier of any moral thought (if there could be any) around his actions. The camera should have been placed further back and no slow motion used I felt. The way it was done only served to create a distinction between the killing of the young and the old.

This is not a sit down with some popcorn movie; there are no heroes, no love story, no fancy special effects or soundtrack. The people are faceless, and I think that is what some critics have a problem with. If you want stories than I suggest you watch Claude Lanzmanns nine hour documentary Shoah, and that includes accounts that are far more horrifying that anything in Bolls film. Auschwitz is an important film in the canon of Holocaust movies because it is so matter of fact about the whole thing. Other films hint at what goes on in a gas chamber, Boll shows it, is his film any worse for doing this?

Of course showing one day, ignores the other years of extermination that was carried out. You can’t watch this film expecting answers or even reasons for the atrocity. I recommend you read books by Raul Hilberg, or if you prefer, from someone who was really there, Primo Levi. A visit to the vast collection of accounts on Yad Vashem is also recommended. http://www.yadvashem.org It was a shocking period in the history of our times, and something that still resonates today. Genocide has affected places all over the globe in the twentieth and twenty first centuries. The holocaust was responsible for over six million deaths, this film only shows a glimpse of that horror while asking have we learned anything, and that’s the really shocking part. It is a film you really should see. Auschwitz is available now on DVD.

Skyfall

50 years, 23 films, six 007s, along with countless women, cars, martinis and women, and we once again return to the world of James Bond. Unless you’ve been living in a beach bar on some random island somewhere, you can’t have failed to notice the advertising onslaught that accompanies the latest film in the franchise, Skyfall. Soft drinks, beer, watches, laptops, you name it. Everything worth peddling has gotten a stamp of approval from Bond. But is the film itself worth watching?

In the build-up to its release it seemed everyone was saying that this Bond was one of the best of all. Not just one of the best Bond movies, but of any movie. Daniel Craig has never been better, Javier Bardem one of the best villains ever, Sam Mendes behind the camera has fashioned –insert superlative here- blah blah blah… unfortunately they lied. It’s not that good; it’s not even one of the better Bonds. I mean it’s better than Quantum of Solace (remember that?) but it’s not a patch on Daniel Craig’s first foray as 007 in Casino Royale.

Now when I say that it’s not that good, I still think it’s worth going to the cinema to watch it. It is a cut above the usual stuff that makes it to your local Cineplex every weekend. But for one of the biggest franchises in history, it could, no it should be so much better. Maybe Casino Royale set the bar too high for any movie to follow, or maybe that film came at just the right time after a couple of ridiculous outings for Pierce Brosnan as Bond. Either way I was expecting something better from this latest offering and was sorely disappointed with what was eventually served up.

Bourne does the 39 Steps…

 

It begins with the now obligatory ‘chase along rooftops’ scene. The villain escapes though thanks to the help of Bonds inept assistant, along with some coaxing from M. The next thing we see is James falling into the gushing rapids of a river and hurtling off a waterfall; cue the Adele sung intro. A very well done collage of confusion and death for Bond follows, in what is surely one of the better done Bond intros.

So James is dead. What do MI6 do in the event of an agent’s death? Why sell all his stuff of course, we are in a recession after all! But he’s not dead; it would make you wonder about the abilities of the secret service when one of their own guys can disappear off the map so easily. Turns out he was looking for the meaning of his life at the bottom of a bottle. And a strategically held Heineken bottle at that. I don’t know of anyone who when lying in bed with a beautiful woman drinks beer bottles held between their thumb and forefinger, but he’s in a very dark place I guess. Just to hammer home the fact that he is now an alcoholic mess, we see him downing shots in a beach bar filled with screaming locals. Boy can that man drink! But one morning while drinking alone in the same beach bar, he looks up from his stupor and sees the latest news on CNN. Why do beach bars have news channels on the TV? Is it any wonder there isn’t anyone there but Bond? According to the news, it seems the headquarters of MI6 has been attacked. It’s time for 007 to get back to work.

But first he has to prove his fitness for action. Apparently sneaking into M’s house in the middle of the night, just after someone blew up her office was not proof enough. Did I mention MI6 were now holed up in some disused underground world war two bomb shelters? Well they are! They should be safe from terrorism there, if not exactly safe from parliamentary sub-committees.

This new diabolical terrorist is releasing the names of British undercover agents, and no sooner are they released, then YouTube clips of them being killed are uploaded to the internet. Damn you technology!! Bond will have to put a stop to this by tracking down the guy who escaped from his clutches in the opening scene. How do they track him down? By pulling bullet fragments from Bond’s battered body, doing some CSI, determining that he is one of only three assassins in the world that use this new high-tech (useless?) weaponry, then through tapping mobile phones or something, they find out he is heading halfway around the globe to kill someone. Only thing for it, James sets off in pursuit.

Now Bond doesn’t get there in time to stop the overly elaborate assassination, but does get there in time to throw the guy off a skyscraper and catch the eye of the local moll. This leads him then to a dangerous gambling den, where he finds out about the island our main baddie is living on. He’s warned not to go there of course, but that’s like a red rag to a bull at this stage. To get there, and it must be miles away as it takes all night, he’ll have to get on the only boat going there. So he waits until it’s just about to leave... sneaks aboard… then takes off all his clothes and ‘surprises’ the bad guys girl as she is taking a shower? Now this is not rape or anything, ‘cos well, you know, she was forced into prostitution from a young age etc. He could have at least fed her a line or two beforehand. Plus she’ll be dead in about ten minutes anyway!

I might also point out that during this, Bond was sent over the girl who shot him at the start of the movie to help him with his mission. But she only seemed to help him have a shave; remember; two days stubble and he’ll begin to look like an alcoholic madman again. Plus shaving is very manly. (Screenwriting101) Unfortunately there isn’t much chemistry there and she doesn’t look much like a secret agent. Guns look awkward in her hands, but each to their own. Probably why she is later…

Finally we met Javier Bardem’s villain Raoul Silva. And he is the best thing about this movie; he eats up every scene he is in. He really unnerves Bond and there is a menace to him you won’t quite be able to put your finger on. You won’t be able to comprehend the motives of the things he is doing either, but that’s neither here nor there. But two minutes after meeting him, Bond captures him and takes him back to London. Now there is a good hour or more left in the film, so I wonder what will happen next? Was it all part of his plan? Will he escape? Are we about to see an obvious plot twist? (Screenwriting101) Yes, yes we are. The villain who controls all the computers of the world, somehow even your laptop at home, has planned everything down to the finest detail. How diabolical!!

When he inevitably escapes and blows up half of London, we find out he is trying kill M. So Bond comes up with the great idea of only him and M getting into a car and driving up to Scotland. What car do they use? An impeccably clean Aston Martin, which he has been keeping in a garage somewhere, of course. He bloody loves this car! When Silva blows this car to smithereens later with a helicopter, Bond seems to take the loss of his car harder than the death of …

SkyFail?

So they head up to Scotland, to Skyfall to be exact. It’s the name of his parents’ estate. Yep! That whole, ‘Skyfall?’….’done!’ clip in the trailers? It was his house! So they head up there and wait for Silva to come and kill them, not one of his best ideas. Maybe the only reasoning for heading up there was that the place wouldn’t have any Wi-Fi, thus negating Silva’s power with computers? Whatever the plan, Bond couldn’t have known that the old groundskeeper that was around when he was a boy was still there! Hiding in a dark corner of one room, just itching to get the old shotgun out. Grizzly old men can only handle shotguns, poorly. Cue scene of shotgun cartridges dropping on the floor during reloading! (Screenwriting101) This character could have only worked if he was played by Sean Connery, but he isn’t and he doesn’t.

James and the two octogenarians proceed to board the house up as if the zombie apocalypse was happening. All the while Silva is surely on his way because Q has left a trail of breadcrumbs only a computer whizz could possibly decipher, which sould direct him towards them. And arrive he does, with a small army and an ominous smile. He proceeds, with the help of Bond, to blow the house to pieces. Good job James wasn’t too attached to the place. While this is happening, luckily M and the groundskeeper had managed to scurry to the nearby church. But M has been wounded and Bond has crashed through the ice of a frozen lake. This plan isn’t going well at all.

Silva wants to kill M, as we know, but he also wants to kill himself! What a madman! But thankfully before he can shoot M in the head, 007 arrives and kills him! Then M dies anyway?!? So Silva kind of got what he wanted at the end in any event? Great plan James. It seems to me he hasn’t completed a mission successfully during the whole film.

So there you have it, if you haven’t seen the film, I’ve just ruined it, and if you have, I’ve just explained it. It is a good action movie, shot brilliantly. I was just expecting so much more from a Bond movie at this stage. The Bond girls were below par but this was because James just wasn’t his usual suave self, they did not have a lot to work with. Moments where I was expecting a James Bond type line were wasted more often than not, leaving you with the feeling that Daniel Craig was just going through the motions of a normal action movie.

And while people say it cleverly pays homage to previous bond films, it really doesn’t. References to ejector seats and exploding pens came across as poking fun rather than revering the films that came before. The CGI with the jumping on the komodo dragons just looked silly. Again should we expect more from Bond at this stage, or were we spoiled with Casino Royale, and are the makers finding it difficult to recapture that magic. It seems to have returned to the one film good, three films poor ratio that there has been in the series for so long now, but I hope I’m wrong.

To wrap up! M is dead, Ralph Fiennes is the new M. Q is pretty useless. Moneypenny has been taken off field work and put behind a desk. Plus Bond has been cleared for action again. All neat and tidy. (Screenwriting101) What about the list of agent’s names and the…? Shhhh! Quiet you. Go listen to the boring Adele theme tune and don’t dwell on such things. It really does seem like they rhymed a few lines with the word skyfall and just sung them over and over. It’s not a patch on some other Bond themes.

Skyfall is a cut above the rest of what’s out in the cinema at the moment, but as a Bond fan I was left disappointed. If you haven’t seen it, then do; and make up your own mind. ‘Skyfall?’…………………………………………………………………….. Done!

L.A. Noire

So the big game out at the minute is L.A. Noire, it’s out two weeks at this stage. I’m finished my exams, (that’s where I was!) and so I decide to purchase a game on the Friday to tide me over for a couple of weeks. I have a mountain of games to get through but a new game seemed like the just reward for the previous few months’ efforts. I was led to believe this game was the next big thing, hours of solid cop/detective work in a GTA style world within the setting of 1940s Los Angeles, what could go wrong?

You play as Cole Phelps as he rises through the ranks of the LAPD, from patrol, to traffic, to homicide, to vice and then the arson desk. That’s a demotion from vice due to your bad behaviour and the opportunism of your partner Roy Earle, but you get to play as Jack Kelso, a private investigator for the District Attorney for most of this desk, until the end of the game looking into the Suburban Redevelopment Fund. Cole is played by Aaron Staton, best known for his role in the series Mad Men. Quite a few of the characters are also in Mad Men, I’ll be honest I’ve never watched it. And a number of faces are familiar from movies and T.V. shows, the graphics really are impressive and the facial expressions are brilliantly done and are very life like. The voice acting is similarly top notch, aided by the good scripting of each case and the interlinking flashbacks and newspaper headlines; at least it shows that they took the storytelling element seriously. It borrows heavily from the films and crimes of the era, but what game doesn’t borrow elements from something else, RPGs have been peddling the same abandoned youth with patchy memory story for thirty years. People seem to prefer a twist on an old formula rather than anything new.
So why, after three evenings of playing and 91.4% game completion do I feel…, well, feel nothing?

I bought my copy in HMV, it’s a fiver cheaper and I reasoned any extra mission downloads would amount to an hour or twos play so why not get them all later in some sort of game of the year edition. Sneaky publishers! But as I flew through the cases and the discs, (the Xbox 360 version) I was wondering if I was missing something, would the cases be that different if I replayed them to try and get a five star ranking? I was collecting all the newspapers; I’d seen nearly all the landmarks from zipping up and down the map answering all the calls from dispatch. Only the golden film reels eluded me on the first play through. I never had to replay a scene more than twice, I didn’t realise you could skip scenes until I got held up while being chased by a bulldozer in a trench, but I got the hang of that one in the end. Where was this great game that was being lauded in the press?

I’ll explain what I got out of the game after I’d finished it in a little over twenty hours and sit currently with thirty hours on the clock, the last few hours spent running around looking for film reels and revisiting the odd case to stave off boredom, you know where the clues are to be found and can get your partner to do all the driving, leaving you with the interrogating to do and not much else really. I will be spoiling some of the plot, but if you have the game and haven’t finished it at this stage you’re probably staring at the ‘insert disc 2 now’ screen, and I’ll only be doing you a favour. And if you are yet to pick the game up? Well maybe it will all help you to decide.
The game consists of this: cut scene-crime scene-look for clues-ask questions-cut scene-driving-cut scene-look for more clues while someone sits on a chair-ask more questions-driving again- fighting/shoot a guy in the head-cut scene…… repeat. Sorry, I’ve just ruined the game for you there. The fighting isn’t Street Fighter IV, but it works. The shooting isn’t Gears of War, but it works. The driving isn’t Burnout, but it works. The questioning isn’t Phoenix Wright, but it wor…. No wait, it doesn’t. What’s the difference between Doubt and Lie in an accusation, really? And why does Cole say things that have nothing to do with the line of questioning you thought you were pursuing or just outright says things that you don’t want him to say and never expected him to say that break off conversations.

It can’t get away from its GTA roots either. The city is a good representation of the time, but you can’t do anything in it. You can drive 95 cars around, but they mostly look the same, unless I’m missing some gems, I’ve driven 68 of them so far. When I say driven, I mean hopped in and out of while in a car park. To find the golden film reels you will need to be on foot and searching all the little areas you can’t drive to, tables in parks, construction sites, shops in the bus depot etc. I’ve already criss-crossed the huge map in a vehicle looking for land marks, damned if I’m doing it again on foot just for film reels, seeing as you can’t do anything else on foot. You can’t talk to anyone, your partner will be lost somewhere on the map and you can’t answer a call unless in a car and select it from the map screen. But why would you bother, after solving the 40 street crimes, to replay them. They last five minutes and end with you shooting the criminal in the head (most of the time).

It’s really the story that keeps you plugging away at the game. And yes the story is good enough to warrant you playing on, except for the part where your character, Cole, decides to leave his wife and kids for Elsa, the singer in The Blue Room nightclub. That came a bit out of the blue, surely a few scenes to explain this possibility earlier on would have helped, did I just miss them? I played over the earlier cases but it didn’t really shed any light on it. Then the ending, the ending… killing Cole was a bit of a cop out and showing that the cause of the big intertwining stolen morphine/redevelopment storyline was all Coles fault for being a dick in the army, it seemed like a clever twist just for the sake of having a clever twist, it wasn’t needed.

Phew, rant over. Traipsing around L.A. it seems like a missed opportunity within the game that certain places aren’t used. Then again Rockstar could just be waiting to release case after case to help get some longevity (and money) out of the game. I’ll hold off, the only thing I downloaded was a suit for Cole to wear. And that didn’t seem to make a blind bit of difference to how Cole played. If you want to get into a story driven game and have twenty odd hours to kill, L.A. Noire comes heartily recommended. If you’re looking for a sixty hour Fallout, Oblivion, GTA style game then this isn’t for you. I’ll still give it a solid 6 out of 10 though.

‘Shut up Bekowsky’!

Predators

Robert Rodriguez and Director Nimrod Antal attempt to give the Predator franchise back some cinematic credibility after the unpopular Predator 2 and the downright woeful Alien Vs. Predator movies. Twenty three years after Arnie nearly came a cropper in the wilds of Guatemala we find ourselves deep in the jungle again being hunted by predators even bigger than the one in the first movie. This time the jungle is on an alien planet where a race of predators has dropped off a random group of humans so that they can skin them for sport.
This film isn’t a reboot, the character Isabelle gives a full account of what happened in the first film and if you look closely you might spot the odd Alien skull lying around. It’s set in modern day but being on an inescapable alien planet means they could get away things that wouldn’t exactly mess with continuity. If the AvP world has some sort of continuity to maintain of course!
Okay it’s not a remake but does a pretty good job of trying to remake the first movie, gang of soldiers getting picked off one by one while looking for the thing that’s hunting them. Some scenes are very reminiscent of the first movie and very reminiscent of a lot of action movies in general. The plot does not have any huge twists and some things can be seen from a mile off. It’s a by the book action flick really. Raised to above average by the acting of some of its stars.

Adrien Brody as Royce is a lot better than I expected him to be, he does dip into his best deep ‘I am Batman’ voice at times but that aside he does a good job as de facto leader. Topher Grace is the understated, quite one. Yet you knew he was going to turn out to be the craziest killer of the lot. Alice Braga, last seen in I Am Legend, is the other of the longest surviving trio and does a solid turn as the only female in the cast. Rodriguez staple Danny Trejo makes an appearance but is dead after about ten minutes and I can’t remember if he said anything of note. Another character that kicks the bucket is Laurence Fishburnes Noland. He appears, says he has survived for ten seasons of the predator hunts then proceeds to lock himself out of his home and gets blown to bits by a predator, a very strange few minutes. They muddy the predator lineage with some predators using weaker predators as bait and Noland describing them as different as dogs and wolves. They hunt for sport where as in other movies it was hunting more as a rite of passage. Also there are not as many predators in this movie as the trailer would have you believe? While the scene with Royce caught in the predators sight is in the movie, it’s only one gun trained on him, not a dozen or so. Why are trailers doing that nowadays? All this being said I guess I was satisfied with Predators. It wasn’t as good as it could have been but it was better than it had any right to be. Action movie fans will get a kick out of it and Predator fans can feel they finally get a half decent movie they wouldn’t mind paying good money to see. But as Little Richards ‘Long Tall Sally’ plays over the end credits, it only serves to remind you that it isn’t as good as the original.

Iron Man 2

This month’s big release and currently raking it in at the box office is Iron Man 2. Robert Downey Jr. once again plays billionaire industrialist playboy Tony Stark. He is joined once again by Gwyneth Paltrow and John Favreau. In the sequel Don Cheadle takes over the role of Iron Mans friend War Machine from Terrence Howard. Howard apparently had a falling out with Marvel after the first movie. Both fine actors and Cheadle does a good job as Tonys friend caught between the government and their friendship.
The main baddie of the movie is Ivan Vanko, a jilted Russian scientist who is out to ruin Tony Stark at any cost. He is played by Mickey Rourke, as a man of few words and even fewer resources until he is helped out by Tonys rival industrialist billionaire, Justin Hammer. Hammer is played brilliantly by Sam Rockwell. Every time he is on screen it’s a joy to watch.
Smaller roles are given to Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury trying to convince Tony to join the Avengers, Scarlett Johansson pops up as Nick Furys spy Natasha Romanoff. Tony Stark does have a soft spot for beautiful women.

If you liked the first movie then chances are you are going to love this second one, in my opinion the sequel is the better of the two. You get a great turn from Robert Downey Jr., could you really see anyone else playing Tony Stark? Rockwell is excellent as Justin Hammer and I hope he returns if there is to be another movie made, which there will be I’m sure. The story fleshes out this whole Avengers Initiative that Marvel is working toward while showing us more of Starks life, his relationship with his father, his alcoholism etc. It’s a much more rounded movie.
Two things did disappoint me with the film though, I had looked forward to seeing Tony Stark racing his Formula 1 car around the streets of Monaco but as soon as he sat in to race; Whiplash was tearing up the track! That’s a minor gripe, I know. Also the BIG end battle against Whiplash and all those Hammer drones was painfully short for my liking. They all looked impressive but it was missing a bit of mecha action in my mind. Not big enough complaints to turn you away from the movie though.

It’s written by Justin Theroux who also did Tropic Thunder, so there are lots of funny lines in there. Garry Shandling as Senator Stern trying to get Stark to hand over his Iron Man suit to the government has some gems. Along with Tonys usual quips and putdowns which are very clever, or maybe Downey Jr. is just so good at playing the prick we let him get away with it. Either way this is a great movie, definitely worth seeing and leaves a lot of scope for a third movie which hopefully won’t turn out like recent third movie comic book outings, X-Men, Spidey I’m looking at you!

Clash of the Titans

This latest adaptation from the stories of Greek mythology is itself a remake of a 1981 film with the same name. It has a lot of notable faces of acting talent on the cast list also, but somehow, somewhere it just all goes wrong.
Sam Worthington finds himself playing our main hero Perseus, son of Zeus. After playing half man/half machine and half man/half big blue avatar, he gets to sink his teeth into the role of half man/half god! So surely he would have the half man part down. Sadly the script seems to have given poor Sam only half his lines. Through a rapid-fire intro we find Perseus a grown man who has watched his family die, then after some pretty random events he is thrust by the royalty of the doomed city of Argos into their man/god saviour, very few questions asked. Not that this is Sam or anyone else’s fault, some scenes cry out for one or two more lines of dialogue to clarify things or expand on a character, but nothing, silence, lots of missed opportunities.
Even though the story doesn’t stick rigidly to the myth it is based on, surely all can be forgiven when we get to the big budget action scenes? “Unleash the Kraken”, you find yourself hoping beyond hope that this battle will somehow justify your ticket price, but sadly it’s not to be, you spend ten minutes waiting for this creature to raise himself up from the sea and then he’s dead. That’s as good as it gets though, there is a skirmish with giant scorpions in the desert but these look like scenes that were cut from the first Transformers movie.

3D or not 3D? If you wish to pay extra and watch this film in 3D you might think that your 3D glasses must be broken. Things that you expect to jump out in 3D at you don’t. It’s very poor next to Avatar. The film was not shot in 3D but they went back and made it 3D afterwards, you wonder why they bothered really. Liam Neesons beard and shiny silver armour don’t look any better in 3D.
So in summing up I guess all that is left is to grade this movie. Now I know most people go for a straight forward 5 Star rating system, it’s easier on the DVD box makers. But I want to do something different, maybe involving a multi-snaked Medusa head showing how much you should not look at this movie. Screw it, (any ideas?) I’ll come up with something another time; just don’t go watch this movie.