From Paris With Love - movie review

When James Reese (Jonathon Rhys Meyers) a personal aide to the U.S. ambassador in France is assigned a new task that will hopefully bump him up the ranks he never counted on the actions of the partner he would be working with. By completing this task he will become a certified special agent of the CIA but he has to survive working with the over the top antics of Charlie Wax (John Travolta). I’d known nothing about the film beforehand except that it was from the same director as Taken & the same Producer of The Transporter so above anything else I expected action & it delivers. If anything its fun for the sake of being fun, there is plenty of explosions & bullet dodgings that you will either love or hate. My favourite thing about the film was Travolta’s crazy character, he was fast acting & tough talking but with a nice little comedy element thrown in while Meyers was essentially along for the ride. The comedy for me was so unexpected that when it did happen it took me completely by surprise, and what was even more surprising was that the comedy works.

Travolta’s loose cannon action & Meyers intellectual attributes make nearly every scene a winner, for the diehard action fans there are plenty of bullets flying but the comedy element really makes it accessible to pretty much anyone. Its early enough in the year but if every month or two has a nice little gem like this then there should be plenty of cinema seats filling up. I’m giving it a 9 out of 10, the acting was top notch, the story was good, the action & the cinematography were both fresh & exciting.

Dante's Inferno - game review (PS3 & 360)

Well first off it’s a little different than the original poem by Dante Alighieri & I’d like to get those little differences out of the way before I go into too much detail. In the game you play Dante himself & you are on a quest to rescue your beloved Beatrice from the clutches of Satan himself. Of course there are a lot of little differences & a few big ones but it’s a video game so these changes are there for a reason. Virgil for example is in the game but he appears at the gates of hell instead of the forest, this was a little surprising to even me but it didn’t take away from the game in any way. A lot of the quotes from the poem are there & pop up regularly along with the characters mentioned in the poem, some of these include Charon & king Mino’s. so its clear the story has been changed around a little but is the game itself any good?


Actually yes it is, its already one of my favourite games so far this year. The game starts off in the holy land where after fierce battling with the enemy you are eventually slain, death himself promptly arrives to take your soul to the underworld but Dante refuses to give up to the grim reaper without a fight. After slaying death you return home to find your beloved has been murdered & your betrayal while you were away has damned her soul to the underworld. Dante then goes on an epic quest through the nine circles of hell in the hope to save Beatrice’s soul. The game does a great job of portraying the many stages of hell through fantastic visuals, often disturbingly brilliant but then it is hell after all. As you would imagine the first few circles such as limbo/lust & gluttony are easy enough but the following ones are a different story.

The environments themselves are populated with a healthy amount of demons & monsters that will have you hacking & slashing your way forward. The enemies that do pop up range from your stereotypical demon with horns on its head to the bladed un-baptized evil babies. Along the way you will encounter far stronger enemies like Cleopatra, king Mino’s & many others, depending on what difficulty you play the game on these should pose a sufficient challenge to gamers. To help you fight the forces of darkness Dante is equipped with a whole host of weapons, these include the holy cross which lets you absolve or punish souls with a quick blast, then there is deaths scythe which is great from performing devastating blows on even the fiercest of monsters.

Included in Dante’s bag of tricks is the ability to use magic, normally I don’t like magic in games but for this one I make the exception. In order to upgrade your magic you must use skill points which come from absolving of punishing souls, punishing a soul provides more skill for your darker magic while absolving a soul of its sins gives you skill points to use on your good magic, it sounds simple enough & that’s because it is in fact the system works so well you will quickly be unlocking all kinds of powers. There are also quite a few puzzles scattered around the game & secret passages, in addition to this special objects such as relics car also be collected but there are not always so easy to find.

Whether your beliefs or not impact on your want to play the game I say give it a try, it can be very brutal at times but then there is a reason for it getting such an adult rating & even though it didn’t stick entirely to the original poem it was extremely entertaining well worth the wait. I’m giving Dante’s Inferno a much deserved 9 out of 10, I’m taking a point off because the game could have been a little longer in places - the developers have recently announced that there are already 2 downloadable packs soon to be released. These include Dark Forest & Trials of St. Lucia, Dark Forest will be a prologue level while St. Lucia will not only add a new playable character but also cooperative multiplayer game play & a game-editor while will allow players to create their own maps. Trials of St. Lucia is due to be released on the 29th of April.

The Collector - movie review

Its been my understanding that the past year or two for original horror has been quite poor, there has of course been the odd exception like the clever & cool Laid to Rest, but like I said horror has been pretty much on repeat. While remakes of Friday the 13th & the soon to be released remake of Nightmare on Elm Street still rank high in the box office it’s the more original lower budget flicks that really appeal to me. The film itself felt very much like a SAW movie to me but that’s because the same writer was involved in various SAW projects, regardless if you like the SAW franchise try not to be biased when it comes to The Collector because it’s a whole other box of tricks completely.

The first half hour or so is a little slow but it serves to perfectly set up the story & provide an insight into the main character before the horror begins. When a contractor completes a job on a mansion in the country he gets less money than he expected. He needs the money to pay off the dangerous loan sharks that are hounding him & his family. From working on the house he knows that the family is away on vacation & where their valuables such as a jewellery are located, and so he breaks in to steal whatever he can use to keep the loan sharks at bay. The catch is that he has to get the job done by midnight or else the loan sharks will come looking for him. As he starts working on the families safe he starts to hear strange noises coming from below, he soon learns that the house is not as unoccupied as he was led to believe. What follows is a horrifically brilliant.


The plot is more or less centred around the main characters escape from the house but its not as easy as it sounds. The house is full of all kinds of traps that are both terrifying & ingenious, so its no surprise that there were talks of turning it into a SAW prequel . With a decent mixture of fantastically freaky visual effects & classic things going bump in the night The Collector succeeded in scaring me absolutely witless. Not only did it use the visual effects effectively it managed to blend in some amazing sound effects that really added to the sense or fear & urgency felt by the main character. There were all sorts of traps utilizing knives/razor blades even fishing hooks, all of these of course made me jump & occasionally wince. When the movie really does get going its tense & since the idea is to make you jump as you wonder what’s in the dark its no surprise that the house itself is almost completely shot in the dark. The darkness really adds to the horror & claustrophobic feeling of the main set-piece indeed it works so well that the house itself should be classed as a main character with a leading role in the film. don’t let the fact that its so closely connected to the SAW franchise put you off watching The Collector, if you are looking for a truly scary movie with a few good lashings of visual terror/gore then look no further as this movie delivers all of the above in bucket loads.