sci-fi
Kieron Tyler
Fantastic is the only word for The Changes. Fantastic as in fantasy, and fantastic because it's a television drama that's brilliantly conceived and impeccably executed – and also because it tackles issues of social cohesion and fragmentation head-on without using a sledgehammer. Broadcast by the BBC in 1975, The Changes was a ten-part series adapting Peter Dickinson's trilogy of novels The Weathermonger, Heartsease and The Devil's Children.The series tells how a sudden, inexplicable change transforms British society. Made with serious intent, it was for children and broadcast in a tea- Read more ...
ellin.stein
Director Ari Folman burst onto the scene with his brilliantly realised, quasi-autobiographical Waltz With Bashir, an animated feature that navigated between dreamscapes and reality to explore the personal trauma arising from witnessing the massacres at Lebanon’s Shabra and Shatila refugee camps as an Israeli soldier. His follow-up feature, The Congress, is highly original and fizzing with ideas. But without a similarly gripping central narrative to keep it anchored, it remains somewhat emotionally uninvolving, instead provoking the head-scratching conceptual interest of Inception or The Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
Humankind's desperate struggle for survival is exquisitely rendered in this post-apocalyptic set sequel to 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Matt Reeves, the director of another end of the world type scenario in found footage film Cloverfield, takes the reins of this smart and attractive franchise and runs confidently with visceral wanton destruction and a blunt message about gun control.Living a peaceful existence in the wilderness of a San Francisco forest, the apes have carved out a life without humans who they presume have long died out due to the simian flu virus (seen taking hold Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
An anonymous voice screams “Please stop” over the opening credits of Noel Clarke’s sci-fi thriller and after about fifteen minutes of watching it those words are sure to haunt your thoughts, as this dull slog runs out of ideas far too quickly for it to sustain any semblance of tension or real worth. This is Clarke’s third endeavour in the director’s chair - after Adulthood and 4.3.2.1 - and it’s a disappointing and confused effort that relies on the outdated Hollywood action formula to pull its narrative along.To its credit the core idea is an intriguing one. Ryan (played by none other than Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Tom Cruise has smugly saved the day in dozens of films. In Edge of Tomorrow, he utterly fails to save the same day dozens of times, dying and trying again, in a loop caused by being plastered in the time-warping blood of one of the aliens currently occupying Western Europe.Director Doug Liman has great fun with this just-go-with-it conceit, from the moment cowardly Army PR Major Cage (Cruise) reports for duty at United Defence Force’s London HQ. General Brigham (Brendan Gleeson, either silently seething or chuckling at the giant UDF sign behind him) finds Cage so insufferable he has him Read more ...
Simon Munk
Heralded as the first true "next-generation" videogame, Watch Dogs has either been hugely overhyped or the imaginative leap required for a true new generation of videogaming is entirely absent from mainstream games. Because this cyberpunk-inflected hacking action-adventure offers virtually nothing new.The original Deus Ex in 2000 remains the template for combining dystopian science fiction themes, multi-angled approaches to missions and cyberpunk human augmentation and hacking. This simply attempts to mix that formula with the huge open world and freeroaming chaos of Grand Theft Auto V and Read more ...
Simon Munk
Videogames aesthetics are often misleading. There are many examples of beautiful games that have no artistic merit, emotional heft or ludological interest. There are also many examples of ugly games that grip utterly. Of course, the ideal is both simultaneously – and Transistor almost does that.On visuals, its beautiful Steampunk setting is wonderfully realised. This, combined with exemplary character and narrative design, delicately draws you into a floating city and the story of Red and her sword/partner Transistor. She, silent fury and constant movement; he a disembodied voice revealing Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
Frankly, the idea of a female superhero flying solo at the front of a modern movie is becoming a bit of a joke. Despite there being a Wonder Woman film in the pipeline, that this relies on the success of "Batman vs. Superman" (both of whom have had their fair share of reboots) is disheartening. But going into an X-Men film there’s always the hope of both sexes having gripping storylines - a trend we’ve also seen play out in Captain America: The Winter Soldier - so step forward Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique. In a film that’s all about righting past wrongs you can't do much better than casting Read more ...
Simon Munk
It's time to talk about time travel. The fourth dimension, as time is sometimes called, represents fertile ground for videogames designers. After all, the shift from side-scrolling two-dimensions (move left, right, jump up, fall down) to three was a huge leap.Three dimensional playing fields enabled first-person perspectives, freeroaming adventure and more. Adding a fourth dimension, letting you transform the game around your actions, can be an exciting way to turn gaming on its head. The independent hit Braid proved that. Unfortunately now every game that dabbles with time travel has to walk Read more ...
Simon Munk
The core of a great videogame can sometimes be very simple indeed. The Trials series is based around the idea of leaning back and forward while accelerating and braking on a motorbike. Such simple controls, in this series, are turned into the ability to jump, push, roll and otherwise manoeuvre your lump of engined metal over a series of seemingly impossible obstacles – very much like "trials" riders do in real life.The series hit its stride with Trials HD for the Xbox 360 in 2009, and since then has retained that sense of knife-edge balance and dexterity needed to get up, over and under the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
A quick scan of the credits gives grounds for optimism about Transcendence, with Johnny Depp leading a copper-bottomed supporting cast which includes Rebecca Hall, Morgan Freeman, Paul Bettany and Cillian Murphy. Director Wally Pfister may be a first-timer, but since he's been Christopher Nolan's cinematographer since 1999's Memento and won an Oscar for his work on Inception, you might give him the benefit of the doubt.Hence Transcendence frequently looks superb, and for a good chunk of its running time tweaks your attention with ideas about the (over) appliance of science and mankind's Read more ...
Jasper Rees
“I don’t do the costumes,” says an intense bloke called Adrian. “That’s for people without a life. I’ve no interest in that.” Further down the corridor, or the Upper Deck as they’re calling it for one weekend only, there’s Kevin, who presumably has no life. Kevin is wearing a maroon zip-up blouson with black shoulders, retailing at £35. “Last year I wore normal clothes and I felt out of place,” he says. “I’ve been a fan for years but I’ve never had the courage to actually come to one. We’re stigmatised. We’re geeks, aren’t we?”You’ve heard the stories. You’ve laughed at the jokes. You may Read more ...