Borderlands (2024)

A sci-fi action movie based on a videogame I haven't played from a director who usually does his best work in the horror genre, and starring Kevin Hart in a role that would seem to be ideal for almost anyone other than Kevin Hart? I couldn't work up any enthusiasm to see Borderlands when it landed in cinemas, after a very long delay, and the disappointing box office performance and many negative reviews made me believe that I had been right to keep it low on my list of priorities. I knew I would get to it eventually though. And today was the fateful day. Maybe I should have delayed it by another few weeks or years though.

Cate Blanchett plays Lilith, a bounty hunter who ends up joining a group of people who all end up on a quest to locate and open a secret vault on the planet of Pandora. There's Roland (Hart, trying to be the leader of the gang), Krieg (the strong and silent type, played by Florian Munteanu), a small robot named Claptrap (voice by Jack Black), and the destruction-loving Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt). They will eventually be joined, at least temporarily, by Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), and someone named Atlas (Edgar Ramírez) who may be hiding his true motivation for wanting to stay close to the crew.

There may be lots of little details here for fans of the videogames, (I don't know) and there may be some production design and character arcs that have been directly translated, (again . . . I don't know), but what there IS here is some horrible plotting, a complete lack of any excitement, and a couple of action set-pieces that do nothing to justify the time spent enduring the rest of the film. Because it is an endurance test. Few of the cast feel well-suited to their roles, and the film itself is exactly in line with a trailer that gave many people the idea of making a meme joke in the format that ends with the line "we have Guardians Of The Galaxy at home" and then shows the poster for this as the aforementioned lesser substitute option.

None of the characters here have anything really going on below the surface, but Blanchett manages to make her own involvement rewarding to those who can enjoy her simply swaggering around onscreen with a fantasticaly-sculpted bright red hairdo atop her head. Hart is never convincing, Greenblatt has a higher energy level that keeps her out of sync with the rest of the group, and makes her slightly annoying for most of her screentime, and Jack Black's vocal performance is the equivalent of being stuck beside the most annoying "office joker" for the entirety of the big annual night out. Munteanu is decent, helped by the fact that he doesn't really have much to say, Curtis has some fun in her thankless role, and there's a fun cameo from Gina Gershon. As for Ramírez, he's one of the weakest movie villains in recent years. Not allowed to make a strong enough impression, his character fails to cast the required shadow over the movie, leaving the actor struggling to be remembered as soon as the end credits roll.

Movies based on videogames nowadays should no longer be dismissed as quickly as they used to be, but this seems determined to take up a place alongside the worst of the game-to-screen adaptations we have seen over the years. I cannot say if there is still enough here to please fans of the game series, but I can definitely say that there's nothing here to please fans of Eli Roth. In fact, there's no real indicator of his involvement, unless you count the fact that he apparently cannot direct decent action set-pieces to save his life (seriously . . . how do you mess up the chance to choreograph a big fight sequence to the Motorhead song "Ace Of Spades"?). Having also written the screenplay with Joe Abercrombie, it's obvious who is most to blame here, but it's also obvious that he might be able to shake himself off and move on quickly enough, having his own credit overshadowed by the brand name that he was given the responsibility of turning into a hit movie.

I would advise those who love the game of Borderlands to keep playing it, rather than giving this movie their time. On the plus side, maybe some confusion will lead people to a very different movie named Borderlands (renamed as Final Prayer in some territories). I give this some bonus points for how much I enjoyed Blanchett here, but others wouldn't be half as kind.

4/10

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Netflix And Chill: Resident Evil (2022)

I have liked almost every incarnation of Resident Evil. If something has been released with the Umbrella logo on it then I am always optimistic. And just writing that sentence has reminded me that I have somehow not yet got around to watching Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness, an animated show released last year. Regardless of my own tardiness, whether it is the games themselves, the film series starring Milla Jovovich in the lead role, the animated movies, Welcome To Raccoon City, or some episodic TV, I am always happy to consume the wide variety of branded media made available. The animated movies, despite how well they can recreate the game characters and drop them into a variety of scenarios, have arguably been my least favourite RE releases, but even they have moments and details to enjoy.

Take a general peek at reactions from fans, however, and you'd be forgiven for thinking that every attempt to make a live-action Resident Evil film or show has been a planned assault on the delicate sensibilities on every zombie-blasting videogamer. Nobody is happy, often because they think that any live-action story set in the world of Resident Evil tends to diverge too far away from what they love about the games.

The same thing has happened here, judging by the overwhelmingly negative reaction I have seen to this show. And a lot of people quantify their views by ensuring that you know they have been playing the Resident Evil games for over two decades. I've also been playing the Resident Evil games for over two decades . . . and I liked this latest instalment in the ever-expanding franchise.

The main storyline is split between two time periods. There's the current year (yes, 2022), in which two sisters, Billie (Siena Agudong) and Jade (Tamara Smart) struggle to acclimatise to their new life in New Raccoon City. They're helped by the fact that their father is Albert Wesker (Lance Reddick), an indispensable part of the Umbrella Corporation, meaning he usually has the clout to make any big problem disappear. He cannot magically fix two daughters who have spent too long left to their own devices though, which bites him on the ass when the siblings decide to break into an Umbrella facility after realising that they use animals in some of their test procedures. The other year depicted onscreen is 2036. The world has gone a bit dangerous, to put it mildly, and the adult Jade (Ella Balinska) is trying to avoid being eaten by zombies, known as "Zeroes", while also evading capture by Umbrella.

Look, I'm not going to sit here and try to tell people that this is the best thing to ever have the Resident Evil name attached to it. I can understand why parts of it could annoy people who wanted much more zombie action. Many scenes play out like a standard teen drama when we're being show the sisters experiencing the calm before the storm in 2022, the cast aren't all at the top of the talent tree (special mention to Turlough Convery for almost being so awful that I considered giving up on the whole thing), and the zombies are much livelier than their videogame counterparts.

BUT, and it IS a big but, you get Lance Reddick killing it in the role of Wesker, you get a memorably vicious dog, the zombie action is pretty well-presented, there's a massive killer with a chainsaw at one point, and it has at least three genuinely brilliant moments dotted throughout the entire series. There's a good variety of diversity behind and in front of the camera, I'm not going to namecheck every director and writer though (sorry), and the structure of the storyline allows the creators to deliver something that isn't a complete rehash of the games, but also allows them to tuck in some appreciated callback. Oh, and there are some great soundtrack choices made.

Other highlights include Paola Núńez in the role of Evelyn Marcus, someone who appears to be one of the highest bosses in the Umbrella Corporation, and a couple of impressively-rendered gigantic beasties that serve as a reminder that the viruses created by Umbrella don't really care what species you are, they will mess with anything.

I would happily watch this again, if I had the time in my busy viewing schedule. I will happily watch a second season (I hope there IS going to be a second season). And I will happily keep being bemused by the overly negative reaction from fans of the brand.  It's definitely not perfect, and I have already mentioned that I can see why viewers are more annoyed by some parts of the storyline, but it's another very enjoyable addition to the Umbrella family.

7/10

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Uncharted (2022)

I am not a massive gamer. I am too old and I was never that good at videogaming when I was a kid. But improved technology has delivered better and better videogame experiences over the years, including games that I have found absolutely hit the sweet spot for me. The Resident Evil series has always been an all-time favourite. I really like the more recent Tomb Raider games. Pinball, both real and in videogame form, has long been my jam (despite my enthusiasm being unmatched by my skill level). And the Uncharted games. With gameplay that mixes in some great puzzles, extended and intense action sequences, and often a hint of the supernatural, I can play and replay these games as long as the company keeps making them.

Other fans of the game may understand why I was hesitant to see the movie after the trailer dropped. Tom Holland, as much as I like him, seems very young for the role of our hero, Nathan Drake. The same goes for a Mark Wahlberg, playing mentor/friend/untrustworthy Sully. But I knew I had to give it a go sometime. So here we are.

The plot is fairly simple. Drake is hired by Sully to help him recover a legendary treasure. It can be found with the help of two ornate crosses. Unfortunately, the other cross is in the hands of Chloe Frazer (Sophia Ali). And they are being pursued by Braddock (Tati Gabrielle), as well as a number of other people on the payroll of the determined Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas). What follows is an adventure full of brainteasers, booby-traps, and some impressive parkour. And a very cool set-piece lifted from one of the main games that has our hero struggling to get back to an airplane he has been rudely ejected from.

Directed by the fairly dependable Ruben Fleischer, who seems to have a knack for turning something very silly into something that is at least solidly entertaining, Uncharted is a bit better than I expected it to be. It still suffers from the casting, which is perhaps more down to my attachment to those videogame characters than anything else, but it moves nicely from one sequence to the next, building up the scale of the action until you get a finale that is as entertaining as it is ridiculous.

It’s unsurprising to see a number of different names credited with writing the screenplay, but Rafe Judkins, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway are the main ones I will mention, with the latter two having worked together, for better or worse, on a number of blockbusters released over the past decade or so.

Once you adjust to the fact that this is a younger, slightly inexperienced, Nathan Drake then it becomes easier to enjoy Tom Holland’s performance. He is a likeable presence, and has always managed to impress with his physical work onscreen. Wahlberg is Wahlberg in most of his movies, but he is also easier to enjoy as the film plays out, helped by some fun dialogue and a constant sense of weariness as things conspire to keep him from the treasure he knows is so close. Gabrielle is a badass, and an excellent one, and Ali is good as a someone who may be vital to finding the treasure, but may also be looking around constantly for a way to escape with a bigger reward. Banderas is as smooth and charming as ever, and Steven Waddington creates a few laughs as a villain with a Scottish accent that our hero finds impossible to understand.

All in all, this is good fun. The special effects are nicely done, with some big sequences being visually impressive without feeling overly busy, the score feels like a nice balance between movie music and something in line with the games, and there is one of the best fan-service cameos I have seen in a while. I could happily rewatch this, and I hope we get the sequel that is so obviously set up in the post-credits sequence.

7/10

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Monster Hunter (2020)

It's almost as if the way in which some people are easily pleased, and the way in which some people will tolerate any crap that is accessible enough, has created a monster in modern movie-making. And that monster is Paul W. S. Anderson. I'm exaggerating, of course, but not by much. Because Anderson has tended to make films that have allowed him to keep making films, and that has allowed him to assume that he's been doing something right. Which ensures that he has never attempted to correct any of his bad habits, with the two worst being his over-reliance on CGI and his inability to hold a shot for more than five seconds. I can overlook these things easier when I can still find enough to enjoy in his films, as is the case with the Resident Evil movies. It's a lot tougher in a movie like this.

Thankfully, or perhaps not (depending on your view), he keeps casting his wife, Milla Jovovich, in his movies, and that guarantees I will watch them. I like Jovovich. She's not the best actress ever, but she often does very well at being a strong and sexy heroine. Here she plays Artemis, a strong and sexy heroine. So the movie has that going for it.

Artemis is with a group of fellow soldiers when the group is transported to another world, one in which giant monsters can pop up out of the earth and pick off humans like scampering ants. There's also a character named Hunter (Tony Jaa) in this world, and it's not long until Artemis and Hunter start to work together in order to survive against the dangerous creatures around them.

That's really all there is to Monster Hunter, a film so light on plot that I am amazed it has a runtime of just over an hour and forty minutes. Although I am unfamiliar with the videogame source material, and others can judge for themselves if this is a good adaptation or not, Monster Hunter seems to have nothing else really going for it, cinematically. As usual, Anderson wants to provide some slo-mo action overstuffed with CGI (to be fair, the actual creature design here is very good) and wants to allow Jovovich to kick ass. He does that. He just does nothing else, and that includes creating a world that feels as if it expands beyond the perimeters of any screen edges.

Jovovich is sadly disappointing in the lead role, less convincing than usual and hindered by a weak script. Jaa fares slightly better, developing nicely as he and Jovovich learn from one another. There are some other people onscreen, but the only one of note is Ron Perlman, who is wasted in his small role.

A real waste of time, for both viewers and the people involved, this is infuriatingly horrible for almost every minute. Characters are thinner than rice paper, the plotting is lazy and careless (one of those scripts that you can easily imagine was written by an impatient child), and it fails to do what Anderson has sometimes managed with his other movies, which is to provide mindless and enjoyable entertainment that is best accompanied by popcorn and fizzy drinks. 

3/10

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Sonic The Hedgehog (2020)

You have to hand it to them. The best thing to happen to the Sonic The Hedgehog movie was a trailer with main character design so bad that a lot of people seemed about to rush off and pluck out their own eyeballs. It was atrocious. It was unthinkable that someone passed that as a final product. It was . . . the beginning of something positive for a film that people had previously been simply shrugging their shoulders at (in my experience).

Now here we are. Sonic looks far cuter, and less likely to cause nightmares, and the whole movie is an easy bit of entertainment for people who like the little blue speedster and can enjoy over the top antics from Jim Carrey.

The story is pretty simple. Sonic has ended up here on Earth. His bag of golden rings are his most valuable possession, because one ring can take you wherever you want to go. They become a portal to wherever you have been thinking of. He's going to need them to make a getaway when a power surge alerts authorities to his presence. Befriending a small-town cop (Tom, played by James Marsden), Sonic tries to mark a few items off his bucket list before leaving Earth, all while being pursued by the very smart and very dangerous Dr. Robotnik (Carrey).

Written by Patrick Casey and Josh Miller, who have been working together for many years, Sonic The Hedgehog is pretty much what you expect it to be. Marsden once again works well alongside a CG effect making his life difficult, there are lots of moments that show off Sonic being so fast that everything else around him barely moves (a barfight is the best example of this, and the best set-piece in the whole movie), and Carrey gets to cut loose and have fun. Purists may be unhappy with him not portraying Dr. Robotnik as they would prefer to see him, but I think it's the right choice.

Director Jeff Fowler is making his feature debut (impressive, considering his VERY short CV - his only other directing credit is the average animated short, Gopher Broke) and does a perfectly fine job with the material. It has the energy that it needs, you get a few little touches to please fans of the SEGA games, and the general look of everything (Sonic, Robotnik, the gadgetry being used to hunt Sonic, the special effects) is good enough to make you forget all about that massive initial mis-step.

Carrey may steal a number of scenes, and he has one solo physical dance/comedy sequence that shows he hasn't lost his knack for such shenanigans, but Marsden is a good, stoic lead, Tika Sumpter does fine as his girlfriend, and Ben Schwartz is a surprisingly great fit as the voice of our spiky sprinter.

It's simple, predictable, and probably great to settle down and watch with younger viewers, who will undoubtedly enjoy the cute, colourful hedgehog and laugh at the obvious jokes. Not really one I'll rush to revisit, despite being kept mildly amused for most of the runtime, but I'll be much more optimistic about the planned sequel than I ever was about this.

6/10

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Mubi Monday: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (2010)

Note - this review originally appeared over on Flickfeast.co.uk.

Edgar Wright returned to the director’s chair with his first big American picture and produced another hugely entertaining modern classic that put him at three for three.

Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is a twenty-something slacker dating a high schooler (Knives Chau, played by Ellen Wong) and playing in a band, Sex Bob-Omb. When he falls in love with the beautiful and aloof Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) it certainly looks like things are on the up and up, especially with Sex Bob-Omb finally moving from playing in a living room to taking part in a local battle of the bands. Things get complicated, however, when it transpires that Ramona has seven evil exes and Scott has to fight each one of them if he wants to keep her in his life.

Although it’s based on a series of graphic novels, Edgar Wright has here shown how to make the very best videogame movie possible. The structure, at heart, is the standard “beat each successively harder end-of-level boss” and the movie is full of great videogame references and audio and visual gags. Basically, Wright does for videogames with this movie what he did for action flicks in Hot Fuzz and zombie movies in Shaun Of The Dead.

The script, based on the original work by Brian Lee O’Malley and co-written by Michael Bacall and Wright himself, is chock full of great lines and you’re never more than mere seconds away from a great gag.

The direction, as fans such as myself would expect, is superb. With the design and look of the thing inspired both by the graphic novels and numerous videogames everything is eye-catching and every frame is full of little details for you to catch up with on repeat viewings (as was also the case with Wright’s previous two movies). The execution of the comedy is something completely unsurprising but what IS an eye-opener is the choreography and shooting style of each of the big fight sequences. Wright uses visual FX and editing to add energy and impact but he also takes time to showcase some great physical action, providing us with some of the best mainstream kick-ass fun since . . . . . . . . . . . well, I don’t know when. The Expendables, The A-Team, and The Losers were the more straightforward, and hugely enjoyable, action movies of 2010 but Scott Pilgrim, uber-geek that he is, fights his way up to earn a deserved spot right beside them.

As for the cast, there is nobody here who disappoints and it’s a testament to the quality from beginning to end that I can’t write this review without wanting to mention some highlight relating to every single main character onscreen. Michael Cera’s effortless geek persona fits perfectly with his character, Mary Elizabeth Winstead is cool and sexy and Ellen Wong is just as cute as a button. Kieran Culkin puts yet another great, fun role in his growing catalogue of great, fun roles and Anna Kendrick cements her reputation as someone to keep an eye on. The band members (Mark Webber, Alison Pill and Johnny Simmons) are a great bunch with Alison Pill providing the most entertainment as feisty girl drummer, Kim. And then we have the numerous evil exes – Satya Bhabha, Chris Evans, Brandon Routh, Mae Whitman, Keita Saitou and Shota Saito and last, but by no means least, Jason Schwartzman – each one with their own quirky style and each one necessitating a special, super duper finishing move. Chris Evans and Brandon Routh stand out as major highlights but that’s not really a fair statement because every major character and set-piece brings something memorable to the proceedings.

I feel like I’ve missed something out now, some great comment on the superb dialogue or some praise for one of the actors or even talk about the soundtrack (which I actually DID forget to mention despite how energetic and great it is), but that’s just because Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is so good that you want to praise every aspect of it. It just falls short of being perfect but it’s easily one of the very best, and most entertaining, films of 2010.

9/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy the movie here.

June-Claude Van Damme: Street Fighter (1994)

Movies based on videogames are hard to get right. Movies based on videogame beat 'em ups are, arguably, even harder to get right. Videogames don't REALLY have to worry about things like plotting and fully-formed characters, although fans may argue that the best ones do have enough of both, and when they're turned into movies it is often the case that fans are disappointed, either by the casting or by the way in which a plot has been forced to fit around elements that now feel too far removed from the essence of the game. Maybe it's because I was never a huge videogame player that I actually enjoy quite a few of these movies. Mortal Kombat remains my favourite, but I've also enjoyed DOA: Dead Or Alive, and I even quite liked Double Dragon (although it's been years since I saw it so don't take that as a current, informed, opinion). And I find myself revisiting and enjoying Street Fighter a lot more than I ever thought I would.

Raul Julia plays Bison, a maniac who has taken lots of people hostage and demanded an astronomical sum of money. He aims to use that money to build his own empire but there are a number of people out to stop him, including Colonel Guile (Jean-Claude Van Damme), a plucky reporter named Chun-Li (Ming-na Wen), and a pair of reluctant fighters named Ken (Damian Chapa) and Ryu (Byron Mann).

Written and directed by Steven E. de Souza (a man responsible for some of your favourite '80s action movies), Street Fighter is a film that gets a few things right and quite a number of things wrong. And I'm not sure which camp the casting of Van Damme as Guile belongs to.

There's no doubt that this movie is missing the dynamism of the game, as well as a lot of the special moves that came about after much skilled thumb-swirling and button-bashing, so it's almost inevitable that fans were disappointed by it (which is what I remember being the general consensus at the time). Some of the characters feel as they should, Andrew Bryniarski is particularly enjoyable as Zangief, but a lot of them are either near-unrecognisable or given short shrift in favour of time spent with Van Damme doing his star turn.

There's also no doubt (in my mind) that there's still plenty of fun to be had here. The fights may lack any oomph, to use the technical term, but everyone has fun in their roles, the tone is just close enough to goofy throughout, and you get a performance from Raul Julia that stands out as one for the ages. The man may "only" be portraying a videogame villain but, damn, he steals the entire movie, helped by a script that gives him some truly wonderful lines of dialogue to relish. You may one day have a list of a dozen movies based on videogames that you rank above this one, but none of them will have a moment to rival that in which Julia replies to someone who is reminding him of the time he raided their village.

It's not a knockout, but I tend to like this more every time I watch it. Maybe other people will feel the same way, as unlikely as that may seem to some of you.

7/10

UK folks can buy the film here.
Americans can buy this edition.

Silent Hill: Revelation (2012)

I enjoyed the movie version of Silent Hill. I have fond memories of playing the game many years ago and the movie recreated a lot of imagery that I'll always remember with fondness (fondness = paralysing fear as I played the game at night with the lights out and then started to panic whenever I heard a siren signalling the approach of "the darkness"). So when I started to hear the negative reaction towards this sequel I still held onto hope. Some people had, after all, hated the first movie.

Alas, the majority were right on this occasion. Silent Hill: Revelation is rubbish. It's a lot of cool imagery from the games created thanks to some varying CGI with nothing substantial to call an actual plot. Of course, the plot of the first movie wasn't exactly anything to write home about, but it did enough to get by while the atmosphere was heaped on in thick, thick spoonfuls.

Adelaide Clemens plays a young woman who lives a transient, anonymous life. This is all done because her dad (Sean Bean) has warned her that Silent Hill wants to claim her. He's right. But changing address and keeping a low profile isn't enough to stop Silent Hill reaching out and trying to get what it wants. The darkness starts to fall, bringing strange visions with it.

Written and directed by Michael J. Bassett (who, of course, had the mythology of the games - adapted into a movie idea by Laurent Hadida - to work from), this film just doesn't work as a film. There are individual moments that manage to impress, such as a sequence involving the famous, creepy, nurse characters, but these are few and far between. Any twists and turns can be predicted well ahead of time, the CGI varies wildly between great and godawful and there are exactly zero characters that viewers will care about.

Clemens is okay in the lead role, she's just stuck with bad material, and Sean Bean and Radha Mitchell don't have much time onscreen as her parents, but everyone else is wasted, with Martin Donovan almost managing to be the exception. When a film with so much potential manages to squander the talents of Deborah Kara Unger, Carrie-Anne Moss AND Malcolm McDowell then it deserves any critical lashing that it receives (and this did receive a fair bit already). As for Kit Harington, his role is such a bag of cliches and signposted moments that he's not really required to give any kind of performance, he just has to hit his marks and spout horrible dialogue. Okay, okay, he has to give SOME kind of performance, of course, but it's impossible to judge thanks to the treatment of his character, which seems to have been written by a particularly low-level Auto-scripting program.

There's enough here, on the surface, to almost make the movie worth a watch. It's below average, but some of the visuals are enjoyable and I, for one, like getting to revisit parts of Silent Hill. Your best option, however, is to simply rewatch the first movie. Or, if you're a gamer, replay the videogames.

4/10

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Silent Hill (2006)

I'm not a big gamer. I've never been that talented when it came to playing videogames so I never threw myself into them as some of my friends did. In fact, playing FIFA was just like reliving a miserable childhood at high school in which I was always picked last for the football team, because of my innate inability to actually play all that well. But there were some games that managed to get me hooked. Games like Destruction Derby and Gran Turismo on the Playstation. Games like Resident Evil and Tomb Raider. And, yes, even Silent Hill, which was a nerve-jangling blend of images culled from the nightmares of the most fevered brain. A number of videogames from that generation have been made into movies, with varying degrees of success. I never thought that Silent Hill would lend itself particularly well to the medium of film, but I was happily proven wrong when I saw the final result.

The film begins with two parents (Sean Bean and Radha Mitchell) worried about their adopted young daughter (Jodelle Ferland). She's prone to sleepwalking and has been muttering about a place called Silent Hill. At her wit's end, the mother takes off with her daughter to visit Silent Hill and find out just where their little girl came from. As she approaches the town she is a suspicious police officer (Laurie Holden) attempts to stop her, which leads to a bit of a driving malfunction. Moments later, the mother is looking for her daughter in Silent Hill, the police officer is pursuing the mother and the father is setting off to find his family, having not been informed of the plan. It's not long until the sirens wail in Silent Hill and The Darkness descends.

Written by Roger Avary, with some creative input from director Christophe Gans and Nicolas Boukhrief, Silent Hill may not be the most densely plotted horror movie ever, but that's not a problem when the visuals and atmosphere are so impressive. Everything is in line with the game, or at least my memories of the game, and there are plenty of nice touches here and there for fans to spot and enjoy (the radio crackling static when danger is nearby being one of the most obvious).

The cast is solid for a film of this type. Radha Mitchell and Sean Bean are pretty bland in their roles, as is Laurie Holden, but Jodelle Ferland outshines her adult co-stars, and support from Deborah Kara Unger, Kim Coates and Alice Krige helps a lot. Krige, especially, revels in a role that feels as if it was written with her in mind. And then there are the many physical performers who managed to bring alive the stranger inhabitants of Silent Hill, the creatures and humanoids who can raise goosebumps just in the way they move around. Fans of cenobites will love the bizarre and horrifying menagerie of monsters on display here.

With a decent backstory teased out en route to a grand finale, Silent Hill manages to be more than just a bunch of impressive visuals (unlike the sequel, THAT review is coming soon). It's respectful to the games that it sprang from, and it's also respectful to horror fans in the way that it keeps creating the chills while also never skimping on some great, gory moments.

I understand people being hesitant to check out any movie based on a videogame - we've all been burned at least one time too many - but this is one well worth checking out.

7/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Silent-Hill-Blu-ray-Radha-Mitchell/dp/B001E8V6GE/ref=sr_1_3?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1382909454&sr=1-3&keywords=silent+hill

Tekken (2011)

There are Street Fighter fans, there are Mortal Kombat fans, there are probably still some Virtua Fighter fans and there are Tekken fans. When I was growing up I mastered Mortal Kombat. I loved it, there were some great characters, I'd enabled the D,U,L,L,A,R,D cheat to get the blood and gore switched on and I'd mastered all of the fatalities. The fancy button combinations required for the Street Fighter games had never been to my liking. Then, during those exciting Playstations years, I discovered Tekken 2. A perfect combination, it had all the fun of Mortal Kombat and a similiar, but slightly easier, button-combo system to Street Fighter.

With so many great characters and so many different fighting styles, a movie should have been easy to get right. Well, this is here to prove us all wrong.

Tekken isn't awful - it's slick and polished and at least keeps things lively enough throughout - but it's just lacking in almost every way. The characters aren't as memorable as they should be, the fights aren't very exciting (any featuring the main character tend to follow the same pattern - he gets a beating, remembers a lesson from his mother and then is able to turn the tables and win) and it's not even as pleasing as the movie versions of Mortal Kombat (hey, I liked it) or Street Fighter (which some fans enjoyed).

Jon Foo plays the main character, Jin, who enters a fighting competition as a way to embarrass the Tekken Corporation and strike a mighty blow for the common people. He has no personality, or charisma, but viewers are stuck with him. Thankfully, Kelly Overton plays Christie Monteiro and looks lovely doing so, even if the camera shows the crack of her backside too many times, while Candice Hillebrand and Marian Zapico play the gorgeous Nina and Anna Williams, respectively. Luke Goss turns up as Steve Fox, the man who opts to guide Jin through the tournament, and Gary Daniels looks the part as big bad Bryan Fury. The main villain of the piece is Kazuya Mishima (Ian Anthony Dale), son of Heihachi Mishima (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) and the man who becomes obsessed with destroying Jin at all costs.

Director Dwight H. Little, working from a screenplay by Alan B. McElroy, just fumbles what should have been an easy piece of lowbrow entertainment. Limited screen-time for the likes of Yoshimitsu and Eddy Gordo (Lateef Crowder) give a small taste of how good this could have been, with the RIGHT characters all given screen-time and one or two special moves given their due.

As it is, undemanding viewers will be able to stick this on and enjoy some fun with a couple of beers and some unhealthy snacks. It's that kind of movie, not that there's anything wrong with that (TM - Seinfeld). It just could have been that kind of movie while also being much more enjoyable. A missed opportunity.

4/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tekken-Blu-ray/dp/B002VD5RZW/ref=sr_1_3?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1357945141&sr=1-3