Assassin's Creed (2016)

Assassin's Creed (2016)

Dir. Justin Kurzel

Besides the goal of making lorryloads of cash for its producers, game developer Ubisoft was probably hoping that the live action Ass Creed film would entice lorryloads more people to check out their long-running game series, which in turn would increase profits there, too. Anything is possible, I suppose, even when the movie they hoped would sway people is a 125 million dollar turd.

Given that it might be someone's introduction to the world, I'll mention how it presents itself, rather than how it translates its source to the screen. But in that respect, it's dire.

It begins in Spain, 1492. We meet Aguilar de Nerha (Michael Fassbender), a member of the Assassins Brotherhood, a secretive group who are collectively at war with the Templars. The Assassins fight for individual freedoms and expression, whereas the Templars seek to control society through imposed order.

Lone Wolf and Cub: Omnibus Editions (2013-16)

LW+C: Omnibus Editions (2013-16)

Author: Kazuo Koike | Illustrator: Goseki Kojima | Page Count: LOTS! [1]

"Good fortune and ill, twisted together like a rope..."

Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki (2016)

Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki (2016)

Dir. Kaku Arakawa

A TV documentary about Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki. It begins with an announcement of retirement from a man not suited to retirement, and then shows what he does afterwards, which is go back to work.

Among other things, it explores the making of his short film Boro the Caterpillar (2018), including his openness and frustrations of using CGI during the creative process. The handheld camerawork feels amateurish, resembling something shot on a phone, intended for YouTube more than TV,  but over time (and probably more by accident than design) it captures something close and personal, thanks mostly to being present during moments of insight from its subject: an artisan with a lifetime of true experience.

I feel that what we get is merely a lucky glimpse of a larger, unseen whole, but it's still worthwhile viewing for anyone interested in how an animation studio of Ghibli's calibre does things.

Class (2016)

Class (2016)

Dirs: various | 1 Season (cancelled) | 8 episodes, approx 44 mins each.

A Doctor Who offshoot targeted at the Y/A demographic. Previously, we'd had a series for children and one for 'mature' viewers, which is The Sarah Jane Adventures (2008-12) and Torchwood (2006-11), respectively, so it probably made sense to then aim for that valuable middle gap.

I'm not of that age group, so may not be able to connect directly with contemporary concerns of folks that are, but it doesn't matter to me if a story is conceptually for children, teens, or adults - if the work is well-written and/or the characters are engaging, then I can watch and enjoy it.

Class tries hard, with both its relationships and its themes, but I don't feel it's strong enough to appeal to many people outside of the 16-18 y/o audience.

But maybe it was never meant to. Maybe its goals were modest, and it was simply meant to reflect the times in which it was made, without challenging expectations too much. I don't know.

Ju-On: Films (2000-15)

Ju-On: Films (2000-15)

Dirs. Various

Ju-On's debut on screen was in 1998 as two short films created, written, and directed by Takashi Shimizu. Together they made up one half of a TV Movie named Gakkō no kaidan G (1998), but I'll be skipping those and going direct to the feature-length movies that followed. (The shorts are titled Katasumi and 4444444444, if you wish to research further.)

It might seem like the wrong approach to take, but it's not necessary to have seen them to enjoy what came after. Furthermore, the order below isn't even the one that I experienced them on first viewing, thanks to how they were released in the UK at the time. [1]

01. Ju-On: The Curse (2000 / Dir. Takashi Shimizu) was the first feature-length entry in the series. A straight-to-video (V-Cinema) release that came out two years before the more successful cinema-released film (#3 below). In general, the setting is a haunted house that makes 112 Ocean Avenue (Amityville) seem about as scary as a Wendy house. [2]

Sadako vs. Kayako (2016)

Sadako vs. Kayako (2016)

Dir. Kōji Shiraishi

A crossover of the Japanese Ring and Ju-On franchises that was teased as an April Fool's joke the year before it was released. I'm sure that I'm not alone in thinking it should've stayed a joke - although, while I'm on the subject of such things, does anyone actually like April Fools on the internet? It's fake news. Why is that a good thing?

SvK, however, turned out not to be fake, which is the most praise I can give it, having now seen it. It's getting its own post only because it doesn't fit canonically in any of the other Ring or Ju-On posts that I've made. It's its own thing with its own rules, so can be completely ignored if you choose to, even if you're a fan of the two things that it brings together. You can safely put FoMO to bed.

The Legend of Zelda Manga: Legendary Ed. Vol. 01 (2016)

Ocarina of Time: Parts 1 and 2 (2000)

Author and Illustrator: Akira Himekawa | Page Count: 378

"You're certainly popular with the ladies."

The first TLoZ manga from Akira Himekawa* was a two-part work based on the excellent Nintendo 64 game of the same name. The Legendary Edition reprint collects both manga into one larger format HB book, with better paper and some additional colouring.

It essentially tells the same story as the game but there are some differences in how characters are introduced, none of which I found to be in any way disrespectful to its source. In fact, I feel the opposite was true - the narrative makes new connections between existing characters, enabling some very successful emotional moments to surface as a result.

The drama is never underplayed but nor does it take itself too seriously; it has an occasional playful laugh at its own expense (e.g. see the quote above).

The artwork is excellent; even the rough sketches that are included are fantastic! Child Link world has a different feel than Adult Link world and the danger level in each reflects that.

Godzilla: Reiwa Era Films (2016—)

29. Shin Godzilla (2016)

Dirs. Hideaki Anno + Shinji Higuchi

NOTE: numbering continues sequentially from the Millennium Era. For simplicity I've used English titles, but it's always the Japanese language versions of the films that I refer to.

Another hard reset of the franchise, with a new creature design and new origin story behind it.

The majority of the film involves politicians, bureaucrats, military leaders, etc, talking about how to deal with the irradiated daikaijū threat.

It utilises fast cuts to give the impression that things being discussed hurriedly is some kind of compensation for things being uninteresting - but it's really not. The first hour in particular is dense with such dry, ponderous dialogue.

Godzilla, referred to as male more than once in the English subs, is mostly CGI, mo-capped so that it moves kind of like a man in a suit. It gets points for good intentions, but ultimately it's just another CGI creature with zero personality. If I wanted that I'd watch the American films.

Upstart Crow (2016–)

Upstart Crow (2016–)

18 episodes, approx 29 mins each + 3 Christmas Specials, approx 49 mins each.

In the simplest terms, if you like Shakespeare and enjoyed the format of the Blackadder TV series, then Upstart Crow is probably for you.

Written by comedian Ben Elton, it portrays the bard as a playwright struggling for inspiration and unappreciated by his family and friends.

David Mitchell is wonderful in the title role, as is Liza Tarbuck as his wife Anne Hathaway, the only one of his group that truly understands him.

To get the most from the series you'll need some pretty sizeable knowledge of Shakespeare's written works and of events in his personal life, including that of his contemporaries (e.g. Kit Marlowe and Robert Greene) and be aware of the various theories regarding authorship.

That's an unusually high level of prerequisite for a sitcom to ask of its audience, but if you have it, then you're going to have a lot more fun.

Jonathan Creek: Daemons' Roost (2016)

Jonathan Creek: Daemons' Roost (2016)

Dir. Sandy Johnson | 1 episode, approx 89 minutes.

The overly dramatic opening of Daemons' Roost is a loving nod to the classic British horror films made by Hammer Studios in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.

It seems odd in some ways, but also carries through into the main story; e.g. the taxi driver who's unwilling to drive up to the large house, like a movie coachman who's afraid to take travellers to the castle's gates.

When the "...tale of terror" ends the modem day mystery takes over, and for a time the story is significantly better than anything in series five.

Having not spoken to her stepfather (Ken Bones) in fifteen years, at his behest Alison (Georgie Lord) returns to the family home to finally discover what caused the deaths of her mother and sisters. But things go awry and Jonathan's talents are needed.

Playing With Power: Nintendo NES Classics (2016)

Playing With Power:

Nintendo NES Classics (2016)

Authors: Garitt Rocha / Nick von Esmarch | Page Count: 320

'If you imagine the Game Pak as a cook book, the CPU would be the cook who follows the instructions — for every dish in the book at the same time.'

The best thing about Playing With Power is its presentation, specifically the hardcover edition (214 x 291 mm) that fits snugly inside a sturdy embossed slipcase that is itself designed to look like an oversized classic NES Game Pak. It's clever and it's beautiful. The paperback is much less interesting.

The editorial content of both, on the other hand, is as flimsy as the cardboard box that an original NES Game Pak would've been housed in when bought.

Some of it is reprint from old issues of Nintendo Power magazine. I know a lot of video game fans in America have a great nostalgia for NP, but it's not a publication that I ever even saw as a kid living in the UK. Therefore, I don't have the rose-tinted glasses that would be needed to fully enjoy it. From an objective PoV, the writing isn’t very good, even when taking into consideration that it seems to be tailored primarily for a teenage audience.

Big Trouble in Little China: Volume 4 (2016)

I Hate the '80s! (2016)

Author: Fred Van Lente |  Illustrator: Joe Eisma |  Page Count: 112

"Stop me if you've heard this one before, but I wouldn't mind just getting my truck and getting out of here..."

I don't know how much input creator John Carpenter actually had to the comic book continuation of his film, but his name is absent from the credits of I Hate the '80s!, so perhaps his involvement ended with Volume 3? Time will tell. What's certain is that regulars Eric Powell (author) and Brian Churilla (illustrator) are both gone.

That means it's a new creative team at the helm for Volume 4. I was hopeful that they could rescue it from its Volume 3 slump, return it to the standard set by the first book, and, by Jove, they almost did! BTiLC is good again. Thank you, Mssrs Van Lente and Eisma.

The new setting is kind of crazy, but, in my view, it's a good kind of crazy and, more importantly, it once more recaptures the feeling of fun that the movie had.

Big Trouble in Little China: Volume 3 (2016)

Jack Burton in the Hell of No Return (2016)

Authors: John Carpenter / Eric Powell  |  Illustrator: Brian Churilla  |  Page Count: 112

"It's all trouble from here."

Volume 3 is functional and purposeful, but not what I'd class as memorable and a lot of the time it even felt like the BTiLC spark of fun was missing from it.

With regards what I mean by the functional side of things, it's constructed precisely so that it takes four issues, (i.e. the TPB page count) for Jack to advance to the next part of his adventure, like a successful step in an ongoing narrative ought to do. In that respect it's kind of like a self-contained short story, but it also feels like a stop gap for the series, slowing it down too much.

With regards the purposeful side, the most successful aspect is in how it subverts expectations for comedic effect. much like it does with the hero genre, having Jack be a hapless fool but remain unaware of it. The Chinese Hells are at times the direct opposite of what most readers will be accustomed to from other media.

Big Trouble in Little China: Volume 2 (2016)

The Return of Lo Pan and How Jack Burton Became King of the Lords of Death (2016)

Authors: John Carpenter / Eric Powell  |  Illustrator: Brian Churilla  |  Page Count: 112

"It's like I always say, you can never really go home! Especially when there's a restraining order involved!"

NOTE: the following text contains spoilers for the Big Trouble in Little China (1986) movie AND for Volume 1 of its comic book sequel. Proceed at your discretion.

If you've read Volume 1 of the series, then you'll know that Jack Burton's antics while travelling the Midnight Road weren't without consequence - he pissed off some powerful individuals, some of whom want payback.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the recently resurrected supernatural entity Lo Pan, butt-hurt and angry due to his marriage plans going tits-up and subsequently being sent by Jack to The Hell of Those Killed by Idiots, is itching for some mystical-style vengeance. Jack's best option is to go on the run with his friend Wang.

The Hood Trilogy (2006-16)

KiDULTHOOD (2006)

Dir. Menhaj Huda

A hard-hitting drama set in the suburbs of west London exploring what daily life is like for a small number of teenagers in mid-2000s era Britain, most of whom are approximately fifteen-years-old. Many folks, especially parents, will be offended or even outraged by the use of language, violence, drugs and sex in the film, but that doesn't mean it isn't an accurate reflection of what's actually happening on the streets outside their front door.

The activities and friends are spread out over a small area and a few short days, culminating in the kind of unsupervised teenage house-party that rarely goes off without a hitch.

For at least two of the youths it's a build-up and event that's nothing short of life-changing, in the most unforgettable ways.

Yakuza Kiwami (2016 / 2017)

Yakuza Kiwami (JP: 2016 / WW: 2017)

Genre: Action/Adventure | Players: 1 | Developer: Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio (SEGA)

Kiwami (meaning 'ultimate' or 'extreme') is an updated, overhauled and expanded PS4 remake of the very first Yakuza game, which was a PS2 exclusive title that received its western release in 2006, a year after its original Japanese release.

With it being the first game done over it'd be natural to assume that it's a perfect jumping on point for new players, but that's not quite the case. It does an okay job at being such, but there's a small number of sub-stories that follow on from occurrences in the previous year's Yakuza 0 (2015), a prequel game set in 1988, seventeen years before Kiwami. So if you want to be clued-in with regards every minor plot thread, you'll need to have played Yakuza 0 first.

The downside to that approach is that Yakuza 0, though set earlier in time, is a more accomplished and varied game. The devs did a tremendous job updating most parts of Kiwami, but lessons learned from and since the original game and its sequels, particularly regarding mission structure but also in storytelling and event timing, mean that for some players Kiwami's ageing game engine may feel dated and clunky by comparison.

Clive Barker's Nightbreed: Complete Collection (2015-17)

Clive Barker's Nightbreed: Vol 01 (2015)

Authors: Clive Barker / Marc Andreyko | Illustrator: Piotr Kowalski | Page Count: 112

"Midian calls to all of her children."

Given the choice, I'd rather have had a sequel novel than a prequel comic book, but a comic version of Nightbreed that's canon is better than nothing at all, I guess.

It's a story set in the present, broken periodically with flashbacks to years before. To confuse matters, the 'present' is the year the film is set (so, yes, you'll need to have viewed the film prior to reading) and the flashbacks are from a number of different perspectives, each one telling the story of how a particular member of the collective lived prior to finding the safety of Midian.

I had a secret hope that the short series would do what the film itself failed to do: flesh out the inner-workings of Midian and deepen the concerns of the creatures, warts and all, beyond just 'we may be ugly on the outside, but humans are morally uglier on the inside'.

Fellside (2016)

Fellside (2016)

Author: M.R. Carey  |  Page Count: 496

'He saw her life as a three-act tragedy with opiates in the role of major antagonist. And her face mesmerised him. It had something better than beauty or symmetry. It had transparency.'

Jess Moulson wakes up in a hospital bed with no memory of who she is or how she got there. It's a clichéd, uninspired middle school plot device that I've encountered literally dozens of times before – I even used it myself when I was eleven! Things don't look good for Fellside, but sometimes the quality of the writing can make even that situation interesting again, right? Sadly, that's not the case herein.

A second device runs alongside the first, a situation in which Jess is characterised as much by the thoughts of the people that attend to her as by her own hazy recollections; in essence, we learn about the observer, the observed and the recollections of the latter at the same time as she does. It's all well and good in theory, but Jess is semi-conscious for a significant portion of the book's first quarter, which leads to a lot of similar observations time and again, very few of which are what I'd classify as enthralling.

Donnie Darko (2001) : Arrow Video Edition (2016)

Donnie Darko (2001)

Dir. Richard Kelly

I'm one of the people who consider Donnie Darko to be a modern classic. But did we really need another edition of it? The film had been previously released and re-released a number of times on disc, even distributed free to thousands of people in a UK daily newspaper years ago.

After having watched the new edition, my short answer is a sincere yes, we did need it. The picture quality on the previous discs was always less than perfect, and when played back on modern equipment it looked even worse.

The Arrow Films remaster was supervised and approved by Dir. Richard Kelly and DD's cinematographer, Steven Poster. It's sourced from the original camera negatives, scanned at 4K (encoded at 1080p to fit on the disc), and includes both the Theatrical Cut (113 mins) and the Director's Cut (133 mins) of the film. Visually it's a little darker overall than the US Blu put out by 20th Century Fox, but it's not as soft and the film grain is lovingly retained.

Bound (2016)

Bound (2016)

Genre: Platform / Art Game  |  Players: 1  |  Developer: Plastic

I avoid video game sales charts because they tend to paint a bleak picture of the hobby. Truly innovative games occasionally break though the COD and FIFA lines but they never stay around for long, and within a few weeks they're usually gone. It's not a situation unique to games - movies and music charts are the same. The companies that can afford to spend millions on advertising reap the biggest returns. The little guy gets stomped on. It's the old story, retold year after year.

But there's a flip side, a small number of people who dare to risk hard-earned cash on something new and different that carries a risk factor because they believe that fresh experiences are more precious than any value placed on currency. I count myself amongst their numbers, which brings me to Bound.