There are two ways to see Tomb Raider: as a much-needed reinvention of an ageing franchise, or as dumbing down and actioning up of a much-loved series in a sop to the latest fads in a fickle gaming market. It’s a game that is extremely good at what it does
Author: Lance Harris
If there’s one lesson to take from The Last Stand – Arnold Schwarzenegger’s big comeback movie – it is that you don’t want to be a bad guy in small town Arizona where the grannies tote shotguns and the village idiot sits on a stockpile of hand cannons and World War 2 machine guns. Few
The utterly joyless and thoroughly vapid Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters easily is the worst in the recent string of modernised olde worlde tales. It handily beats claptrap such as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Snow White and the Huntsman for this dubious honour in a subgenre where
Director Kathryn Bigelow did it with The Hurt Locker and she has done it again with Zero Dark Thirty: crafted an awards season-favourite film about the war on terror that has enraged both the American right and the left almost equally. In partisan times, studied neutrality is the most revolutionary
Signs of the traditional gaming industry’s decline are everywhere. They’re in the financial results of the giants of games publishing such as Electronic Arts, which saw revenues drop nearly 8% year-on-year in its latest quarter, and of THQ, which was this forced into bankruptcy early this year. They’re in the
Can a genre film make a serious point? Quentin Tarantino thinks so and he doesn’t care if anyone disagrees. His latest film, Django Unchained, is a taboo-smashing exercise in excess that entertains for nearly every minute of its running time, besides those where it shocks and appals. It is a film designed
Mob flick Gangster Squad proudly claims to be inspired by a true story, but its definition of the terms “true” and “story” seems to be particularly loose. There’s not much truth here, and little in the way of story. No matter. This pulpy, derivative treatment of the battle between the Los Angeles
The gaming industry is getting 2013 off to an explosive start, with a range of highly anticipated games hitting the shelves in the first quarter of the year. Here’s a small sampling of what to expect in the next three months, building up to 31 days of March madness that could leave you flat broke
With a number of blockbusters originally tipped for release in 2012 slipping into 2013, this was one of the slowest years for the gaming industry in ages. But no-shows like The Last of Us, Bioshock Infinite and Grand Theft Auto V cleared the way for a few sleepers to shine. There was no shortage of great games
From Sam Mendes’ stunning reinvention of James Bond in Skyfall to Wes Anderson’s quirky look at young love in Moonrise Kingdom, 2012 has been a great year at the cinema. Here’s a rundown of some of the best films of the year