BYTE: New November

I'm Paul ... and this is Paul & The Popcorn - welcome to New November - one step closer to Christmas, but we have bonfire night first and, of course, BLACK FRIDAY!!

Firstly I need to apologise for my scant October updates - so much has been going on that I've forgotten to upload my reviews on the blog, though I do regularly keep tweeting. I've had a busy October including a visit to Pinewood Studios for a recording of British institution, Birds Of A Feather, a One Direction concert (yes, really), a visit to Birmingham and numerous cinema visits. I realised I haven't uploaded my reviews and thought I did - so I'll be uploading a block of them this week!

It was back to the Future day on 21st October 2015 and this would have been when Marty McFly and Doc travelled to the future to see what life was like in 2015. We found that generally some of it was complete codswallop, but some of it was quite prophetic. Did you watch the trilogy on the day like I did? They are still brilliant movies and the first one is one of my all time favourites. When I got to sit in the Delorean earlier this year at Sheffield Film & Comic Con, it pretty much put the icing on the cake.

Let's look to the cinema - the latest James Bond offering SPECTRE is doing really well at the box office and is supposed to be brilliant. Featuring the new Bond them by Sam Smith, The Writing's On The Wall, Bond discovers that there's a sinister organisation at work that has been following him about causing trouble. Featuring star turns from Daniel Craig, the awesome Monica Belluci (who is the oldest Bond girl yet) and backed up by the talents of Ralph Feinnes and Ben Whishaw, I think this promises to be a great Bond movie. Also starring Christoph Waltz, Lea Seydoux and Drax himself, Dave Bautista, this movie is one to see.

In November, Mockingjay Part II hits the silver screen which will conclude the Hunger games Trilogy (erm, I mean series, or whatever). Word on the street is that they are looking to capitolize (see what I did there?) on the success and want to make more even though they are no books to follow on just yet. Will Suzanne Collins write exclusively for another movie? Will she write more books? And where does this leave Katniss? We will find out one day but not yet.

Let's get to the computers - biggest release going forward looks like the old Call of Duty franchise will be reanimated (as there's probably zombies in this one) with the muchly anticipated Call Of Duty: Black Ops III. And batten up the hatches because in December we will not doubt be having the legendary Steam Christmas sale so better get saving up. New Skylanders game Super Charger looks interesting too - just when you thought we'd ran out of ideas they stick cars into the mix.

Looking at the latest stuff as well:

>   Xbox Live:  Games with Gold this month includes the full games of DiRT 3 and Dungeon Siege III on XBOX 360 and for the posh 'uns who have XBOX ONE you are treated to Pneuma: Breath of Life and Knight Squad to download free if you are a subscriber. Microsoft have started releasing these games over 2 week periods so the first games listed are available for the first two weeks in November and then the others in the last two weeks in November so you'll have to get a wriggle on for the first. Some of them are on for the whole month (or in the case of Pool FX - for about 8 years lol)

>  PSN: PS Plus this month is as follows:

PS4 has:
the Walking Dead: Season 2
Magicka 2
Dragon Fin Soup

PS3 gets:

Mass Effect 2
Beyond Good and Evil

Dragon Fin Soup

Vita receives:
Invizimals

Dragon Fin Soup

After last months rather lacklustre list, this list really got my appetite whetted! I can't believe Mass Effect 2 is in this list, wow! Well done Sony, well done!

Of course usual rules apply in that if you stop your subscription those games'll stop workin'.

As always we have Loot Crate and Nerd Block unboxings to look forward to...

...AND Marvel Collector Corps in December.

It's time to go now but - have a new November and I'll see you soon.

Keep being awesome!

Until next time

Paul

REVIEW: The Visit (15)

M. Night Shyamalan's latest movie is The Visit,  a weird cross pollen genre of horror-black comedy with an over egging of found footage.  Having a peek at some lovely factoids about this movie, apparently M. Night made two versions of this movie - a comedy version and true horror one and the finished one is kind of a mix up of both.

The story begins as single mom decides to send her children - 13 year old Tyler (who pretty much steals the show with his charisma - if a little overbearing at times) and his older sister Becca, who is much more matter-of-fact and has an interesting vocabulary considering she's supposed to be about 15. In a vain attempt to get her mom to make peace with her estranged parents, Becca decides to make a documentary about their week long visit to see "Nana" and "Pop Pop". Although her mom isn't too forthcoming about why she abruptly left the house she grew up in and turned her back on her parents - Becca is desperate to find out the truth. When the kids go away, mom goes on a holiday with her latino lover, Miguel and the kids meet their grandparents for the first time. However, when the rule is not to leave the bedroom after 9.30pm, the modern teenagers flaunt this rule (mainly to sneak downstairs for some midnight snacks) and their grandparents are not all what they seem.

M Night has had a difficult time of late from the heyday of when he was awesome and could do no wrong - hit after movie hit came - Signs, Sixth Sense, Unbreakable - and it seemed he was. Then came the dross that was The Last Airbender and After Earth and his credibility was practically non-existent. Still he is churning out the movies, when maybe he should have stopped. However, this movie isn't bad, but he still has a long way to go to reach the former awesomeness that was his original set of movies. Shyamalan takes the now clichéd route of found footage and takes a stab at this genre - and those expecting a jumpy horror will be disappointed. Tyler (played excellently by Ed Oxenbould) is both endearing and wholesomely annoying, but is a welcome comic relief in the movie. His matter of fact sister - Becca (Olivia DeJonge) is also great as the sensible one, but she doesn't have enough time to develop as a character rather than a person to help the narrative along. The grandparents are suitably strange and Deanna Dunagan plays Nana with the endearing dodderiness of an old lady one minute and the slight of madness in the next. Pop Pop is also a strange character who is as grumpy and withdrawn as the children's mom is outgoing and loud.

The movie is definitely not one of M Night Shymalan's best, but it's certainly a step in the right direction for redemption after the recent disappointments he has helped fill the bargain buckets with in supermarkets. I have high hopes that he will be back as the go-to director for tense thrillers and people will again say - how awesome is that movie. This movie is above average, but I think that he is getting his form back and I hope that as he continues we'll be seeing a lot more awesome movies from this director who gave us such memorable movies in the past.

The Visit is out now at all good cinemas.

POPSCORE: 6/10

What am I talking about? The Visit - the movie
Where can I find out more? http://www.thevisit.com.au
If you liked this try: Paranormal Activity, Insidious, Sinister and any of the multitude of sequels. I would even suggest The Gallows or to a lesser extent the Blair Witch Project.

REVIEW: Avengers: Age of Ultron (12A)

Oh my goodness! It's finally here after three years of waiting and one of the most hyped up, advertised and eagerly anticipated movies that I have ever experienced in my life. Avengers: Age of Ultron is here, in the UK, now.

 

Let's start with a quick catch up - after phase one and the absolutely astoundingly marvellous amazing Avengers Assemble in 2012, we moved into phase two. But let's not forget the constant battling and grumbling between all the heroes. Then everyone's mind was blown as they all worked together, we saw the Hulk in action and everyone went home happy and felt the need to binge eat shwarma's. I wonder if there is any link to the fact that once this movie hit the cinemas, a load of shwarma shops appeared in my local town?

 

We started with the not-bad-but-not-brilliant Iron Man 3 with Tony Stark facing repercussions from his Battle of New York experiences and the Chitauri invasion masterminded by Loki. Fast forward and we had Guardians of the Galaxy which was a risk but a hit, and then the critically acclaimed Captain America: Winter Soldier. Now we have this - but how did it do?

 

I've read a load on the internet about this movie - Loki is in it, an Avenger dies, there's no post credit sequence, there's no teaser sting after the first bit of the credits, this, that, the other. I can tell you some of those are true and some are just rubbish. The bit where they say Stan Lee's cameo is awesome is true though - especially if you are clued into the Marvel universe.

 

The movie centres around Tony Stark and his worry over the events of New York and, in an attempt to protect the world,  he decides to try and create a defence mechanism to protect from potential invaders as he feels the Avengers, for want of a better term are "hopelessly outgunned."  His response to this is to create a robot defence using ideas from J.A.R.V.I.S and the power from Loki's staff (which was nabbed from him back in Avengers Assemble) with the help of fellow Science Bro, Bruce Banner.  But, while the Avengers are partying downstairs, the experiment he left to boil goes a bit awry and creates Ultron. Ultron is a sentient robot taking Tony's idea of saving the world to the nth degree by concluding that, to save the world, is to cause extinction of the human race. When Ultron crashes the party and the other Avengers find out Tony has been tinkering without their knowledge, this leads to a bit of a conflict between the team and also gives Ultron time to leave and start his world domination plans. The rest of the movie is all about stopping him.

 

The movie is fantastic and I can't take that away from it. From the beginning strains of the orchestral Avengers theme introduced to us in the first movie, to the fighting and CGI effects, this film is a visceral beauty. There are some unbelievably amazing shots and sequences which really stretch the imagination and the first 15 minutes or so is the Avengers kicking butt like they did in the New York battle of AA in 2012. Even some of the sustained shots of all the Avengers fighting individually are carried through with gusto and this is where the film really shines. But if you think that battle was immense - and it was - then there's a canny few others to ogle at. The Hulkbuster vs Hulk battle was amazing, and the finale was too. However, every single time there is a battle where there is people there is a massive emphasis on protecting the people and elaborate evacuation procedures. There's a few scenes were innocent bystanders are caught in the battle and an Avenger saves them at the last minute.

 

We also find out a lot more about the characters though some of it was probably unnecessary. Hawkeye gets a meatier role, and we find out a lot more about him and there is a hilarious sequence where all of the Avengers have been caught under mind control except him and he says something along the lines of "not this time, been there, done that!". There's a lot of comedy in this film, and there was a lot of laughing out loud in the cinema over it, but as the action moved on quickly your laugh when kind of haha -ooo as something exciting happened. I'm not entirely sure of Chris Hemsworth's comic timing, but Thor has a lot of comical lines too which makes the film quite enjoyable. Hulk gets lots of screen time too - and this is a good thing. There is also a similar joke like Loki's "ta-da" in Dark World, and the punching of Thor by the Hulk in AA in this movie too. And speaking of Thor there is an on-going joke over his hammer which I found amusing.

 

The soundtrack, story and special effects in this movie are second to none. The actors reprise their roles fiercely and the new additions to the team - namely Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and The Vision fit in rather nicely with the rest of the cast. Having such a large set of main characters is difficult but they even managed cameos from Agent Carter, Heimdall and a little bit of support from War Machine and Falcon. It seems that this movie has got everyone together for a bit of a party and it's nice to see some of the old faces appear.

 

So what do I think? Well, I've been hyped to the max with this movie and I have been waiting 3 years for this and admittedly Avengers Assemble set the bar very high. I really liked the movie and think it is great but something about it was missing and I don't know what. Maybe it was that for all that James Spader was awesome as Ultron, he wasn't as fun as Loki. Or was it that we've seen all the surprises that we can and now it's about telling the story? The first movie teased and teased the Hulk and we didn't see him do his stuff until the very end. We didn't see the Avengers come together until the very end and when they did it was mind blowing. This movie they are already together and are fighting right from the off.

 

In summary I really liked this movie, but I think it just fell short of my stupidly high expectation, but then again, who cares as it's a worthy addition to the Marvel universe. I need to see this again and I'm sure I will get to see more of what I missed as this movie has so much in it that is practically a treasure trove of Marvel stuff. Go see it yourself and make your own mind up - regardless it is action packed to the rafters and is a fantastic ending to phase two. Jeez, I can't wait for phase three.

 

Avengers: Age of Ultron is out now in the UK and comes out May 1 at all good cinemas in the US.

 

POPSCORE: 8.5/10

What am I talking about? Avengers: Age of Ultron
Where can I find out more? http://marvel.com/movies/movie/193/avengers_age_of_ultron

If you like this try: Avengers Assemble (2012), any other marvel Movie really

Anything else?
This is actually not the end of "Phase 2" of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or MCU - Ant-Man is.
This movie features Andy Serkis as Ulysses Klaue who has links to Wakanda (a clue to a movie in Phase Three perhaps?)
This film references Disney's Pinocchio
Kevin Fiege stated that there is a homage to Star Wars' the chopping off of hands in every Phase Two movie and this one is no exception.
There IS a sequence a few minutes into the credit sequence so don't leave as soon as the credit roll. Honestly, it's worth it.  

COMMENT: Avengers

Does anyone else think there is a slight resemblance of Uma Thurman's Emma Peel from the dire 1998 movie The Avengers and Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow from 2012's Avengers Assemble?
Or is it just me?
Just for the record though - I love both outfits :-)



Emma Peel does her best Black Widow impression...

... or is it Black Widow does her
 best Emma Peel impression?