Argo
is a drama based on the true events of a secret CIA mission to extract
six Americans from Iran in 1980. Iran at this time is going through a
revolution and has put a new Islamic government in place. They want to
charge the old leader for crimes against
the people but he has been granted exile in the US. The people of Iran
are deeply angry with this and eventually they end up storming the US
embassy, whilst taking all the people they can find as hostages. Little
do they know that six Americans have escaped, but the clock is ticking
and it’s only a matter of time before the Iranians realise.
The
film starts with a brief history of Iran and tells the story of how the
region became what it was in 1979-80 in less than two minutes. In this
time they dedicate a whole sentence stating that the US and Britain
actually helped to overthrow a democratic government and then replaced
it with an evil dictator. After skimming over the history of Iran and
how the west has screwed over its people on more than one occasion, the
film cuts to Iranians appearing to be irrationally angry towards the
west.
The
story itself though, as already mentioned, is set around a CIA mission
that aims to get a group of Americans out of an obviously dangerous
place and it is actually told really well. Ben Affleck plays the lead
role as CIA agent Tony Mendez and he is also the director of the film.
He manages to give a connection with the characters and the audience,
even if you don’t really want one. Affleck plays his acting part really
well too, but to be honest there isn’t much to his character so he
doesn’t have to try too hard. He makes a much better director, telling
the story really well and dragging you to the edge of your seat by the
end - no matter how you feel about this period of history.
The
other characters are also played well, but considering the film is
meant to be about them there isn’t much in the way of character
development. Affleck still keeps you feeling for them though, by showing
that they are very vulnerable and extremely dependent on those around
them. There were other characters though that didn’t need that much
development because the actor was good enough to play the role
perfectly. I’m thinking of John Goodman here, who plays the role of
Hollywood makeup artist.
This
brings me to another small issue that I had with this film. Argo makes
out that Hollywood was the real Hero in this story. Now I don’t mind
that so much and it could well be true, I’ve been far too lazy to find
out in all honesty. But what I don’t like about it is that as a result
of this Hollywood have dramatically overrated this film. Don’t get me
wrong it’s a good film; it’s just not as good as the vain people of
Hollywood believe.
The Verdict Argo
is a good film and it tells the story of a Hollywood/CIA rescue
operation set in the mists of the 1980 Iranian revolution, although
fails to put much emphasis on how Iran got to that place to start with.
Affleck does a good job in the lead role and a better one at directing.
The support actors are really good and no matter what you think to the
situation in Iran, you’ll be hoping that the US civilians get out alive.
Have you ever tried
sleeping on a night train? It’s brilliant in theory and at first it’s really
exciting. But in practice you’re thrown from side to side, there’s the constant
noise of the track, and the other five people snoring in your carriage. You spend
the entire journey praying for it to end. That’s exactly what this campaign is
like. You’ll enjoy the first thirty minutes to an hour and then you’ll suddenly
think to yourself “what the hell have they done to this game and why won’t it
end?!”
THE CAMPAIGN
Aliens:
Colonial Marines is set seventeen weeks after the film Aliens and is on the
same planet. USS Sephora gets a
distress call from the planet and goes to have a look around. To everyone’s
surprise there just happens to be an infestation of Xenomorph on the planet.
Your character and those around you have no idea what is going on and are
constantly asking questions that anyone who has ever heard of the Alien films
would have been able to give the answer to. This right here is the start of a
long trend whereby the game tries to build some sort of suspense but it just
doesn’t work at all.
The game starts off
quite well though and they chuck you straight into the deep end. You find
yourself battling Xenomorph from the word go and it does seem quite fun. But
then something happens. For some unknown reason you find yourself shooting at
other humans that have pretty much come out of nowhere. Turns out they’re
Weyland-Yutani men and they’re mad. You actually fight these guys for so long
that you forget that this is a game about aliens until they remind you about
two hours later. Luckily for you though their A.I isn’t very well programmed so
you’ll find that they’ll just stand in the middle of rooms for you to kill
them. Saying that the alien’s A.I is the same but occasionally they’ll walk on
walls as well. Don’t expect too much support from your fellow NPC marine chums
either because they’re A.I is just as good.
Anyway the story
continues to try and build suspense as it goes and fails miserably. It turns
out that one of your fellow marines has an alien inside of her and you have to
go on a little jolly to try and save her. I call it a jolly because the aliens
really aren’t scary when you out number them and they run towards you in
straight lines. After that you have to find a way of leaving the planet. Turns
out whoever wrote this storyline had no imagination and just decided to steal a
load of stuff from the films, rewrite some of it as if it was fan fiction,
throw it all together, and call it a game.
But the writers and A.I
programmers aren’t completely to blame for how bad this game really is, because
whoever designed the graphics did such a bad job that I spend thirty minutes
thinking that my TV was broken! How can you make graphics that bad in 2013 and
at the end of a computer generation? At least make the doors and elevators look
descent if you’re going to force players to stand in front of them for twelve
minutes whilst the game loads up the next section.
The weapons appear to
be very cool though. Well for about an hour anyway. They’ve kept the weapons
from the film which is great and they do give you quite a few weapons to choose
from. As well as this, as you rank up you unlock upgrades for your weapons. Unfortunately
there doesn’t seem to be much difference in the weapon choices and they all
pretty much have the same specs as each other. What also seems brilliant at
first but will leave you wanting to listen to traffic go by just for some
variety, is the sound of the weapons. They sound just like they do in the film.
This is awesome and I’m sure there would have been outrage if they’d changed
it. But when you have five guns that all sound the same going off constantly
for six hours.... well let’s just say this could be adopted as a new torture
technique.
Most people will
struggle to finish this campaign and will probably only do so because they feel
that they need to get their money’s worth. But there is no chance that anyone
will replay this campaign. The only reason anyone will put themselves through a
second play through of this is because they’ve got a friend that hasn’t played
it yet and they want to see them suffer.
MULTIPLAYER
The multiplayer is
where it was expected that this game would redeem itself. After all, there are
a lot of games that have awful campaigns but really good multiplayer segments. Well
it can be said that the multiplayer aspect of this game is better than its
campaign aspect, but that doesn’t really tell anyone anything.
There are four different
modes for multiplayer. Team Deathmatch is one of them and by far the worst
aspect of multiplayer. It’s a standard run around and shoot aliens game. Unless
you’re the aliens then you’ve got to attack the marines. What makes it worse is
that you still have the same weapons from the campaign, so you may as well all
have the same gun. But if you’re an alien then you’re in luck because you get
to choose out of three different primary attacks. The developers really messed
up what they could do with both aliens and marines right here.
The next mode, which is
slightly better than Team Deathmatch, is Extermination. Your class choices are
the same as before and are the same throughout all the multiplayer modes. But the
small difference is that the marines in this mode have to set bombs to destroy
nests of alien eggs, whilst the aliens have to stop this from happening. The idea
is pretty good but it’s ruined mainly by the fact that there is some sort of
overlord voice telling you what is going on ever five seconds and repeating
itself three or four times. It’s extremely irritating.
Then there’s Survivor mode
and you have to... well survive. All this mode consists of is four marines
hiding in a corner whilst four aliens run towards them. It is really boring. The
only upside to this mode is that when playing as the aliens you have a bit more
access to different classes. But you have to find them around the map and they’re
still not a great improvement.
The final mode is
called Escape. This mode is actually quite fun. It’s like Survivor but this
time the marines have to make their way from one end of the map to the other. It’s
quite enjoyable but at the same time you’ll find yourself thinking something
along the lines of “Left 4 Dead does this so much better” and saying to your
friends stuff like “Someone remind me, Why are we playing this instead of Left
4 Dead?”.
At least I can say the
controls were good though. I’d be lying of course, but I can still say it. To
be fair they’re not terrible, but they’re not good either. Controlling the
marines is ok if not a little erratic at times, but controlling the aliens isn’t
good at all. Actually it’s when you first take control of an alien that you
realise how regimented their motions really are.
THE
VERDICT
Aliens: Colonial
Marines is one of the worst things to come out of this franchise, and that’s
saying a lot. The story seems to be a load of ideas that have been stolen from
the films. Then they’ve been thrown together, mixed around, and edited to make
even less sense. If the story wasn’t so boring I think people would actually be
angry. The graphics do an ok job, but then have some real bad parts that are
just unforgivable. Then there’s the A.I. It does the job but it should do a lot
better. If you like you ‘A’ to have some ‘I’ then expect to be disappointed. The
weapons and sound effects are fun to start with but they soon lose their novelty,
and there is no way anyone is going to replay the campaign. The multiplayer redeems
itself a little, but not by much. It has some game mode variety, but they’re
all quite boring and have been done a lot better by other games a few years
ago. It’s a shame that the developers have ruined this great opportunity that
they were given.
LHSRAting
for Aliens: Colonial Marines 4.3/10 (Xbox 360)
Les Misérables is quite possibly the
best novel based, turned musical play, turned film, ever. Alright, that might
be a bit of a small category area, but it’s still pretty damn good. It has
something for everyone and even the most masculine of people won’t be able to
help but enjoy this well told story.
Les Mis is a musical drama set in France
during the 19th century, which itself is a brilliant historical
place and time. The story follows a man named Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), an
ex-convict who breaks bail and is constantly on the run from a police officer called
Javert (Russell Crowe). During the film Valjean comes into contact with a range
of different people, spanning from prostitutes and convicts, to revolutionaries
and priests. Each one of them has a unique tale to tell about their lives, and
each one is gripping in its own way.
As you would expect with a musical
there is quite a lot of singing in this film. In fact, unlike most other
musical films, this story is almost 100% sung to us. At first it seems a little
strange, but after the first five minutes you kind of forget that it’s a
musical and you just find yourself engrossed in the character’s lives. Most of
the music, like most of the film, is really quite depressing. But you kind of
have to expect that in a film that is about the people at the bottom of society
in a time and place that was well and truly hard.
It’s not all doom and gloom though. Thénardier
(Sacha Baron Cohen) and his wife (Helena Bonham Carter) bring a comical element
to the film and just as you’re about to cry they will make you laugh. I
honestly think this is the best role Cohen has ever played. It’s like it was
written just for him.
That been said, every single actor played
their role perfectly and the acting really could not have been improved. It’s
even more impressive when you think that most of the main actors aren’t professional
singers. One actor that stood out for me though has to be the young Daniel
Huttlestone who plays Gavroche, a child soldier who is more than aware of his position
in society and is more than happy to do his part for the French revolution.
The only real complaint I have to make
about this film is that it did go on a little too long. Even for a brilliant
musical, 158 minutes is quite a long time. So even though there is something
for everyone in this film, it goes on for a while so you might be waiting
sometime between the parts that you enjoy. That been said though, I personally
enjoyed the entire thing, just some parts more than others. It’s still worth
sitting through and it is really only the ending that seems to drag a little.
THE
VERDICT
Les Misérables might turn out to be the
best musical you’ll have seen in recent memory. It is set in a period of French
history that was a really hard time to live in, and tells the story of one man
and those that he comes into contact with throughout his life. The music and
songs sang tell the story brilliantly and the acting is next to flawless. Even though
the film goes on for quite a long time, it is still one that could make you
shed a tear or two and will definitely make you laugh on occasion.
This isn’t Spielberg’s best film. But when you’ve directed
almost 50 movies, and amongst them are some of the greats such as Schindler’s
List, then a film not being your best doesn’t really mean much... And to be
fair it’s still up there.
Lincoln starts off by showing a brutally bloody battle one
year before the end of the American civil war and the opening scene really
sucks you in from the offset. That’s pretty much as far as the film goes with
showing us the horrors of the American civil war however. So if you want to
watch a film that has loads of battle scenes in it, then this film is not for
you.
Instead Lincoln moves forward to the very final months of
the civil war and is mainly focused around the political struggles that Abraham
Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) faces in trying to pass the thirteenth amendment to
end slavery, whilst at the same time trying to end the war... at the right
time. Lincoln is a film that is fully focused on US history and politics. It
shows the struggles that the Union faced internally in trying to eradicate
slavery, the different views that particular groups of politicians had on
giving slaves their freedom, and even touched on Lincoln’s own views regarding
equality between white and black people (although unless you know what Lincolns
views really where then you probably won’t realise).
Daniel Day-Lewis does a superb job at playing the role of
Lincoln; a mainly calm, storytelling, convincing man that was loved by most. He shows
how Lincoln had a knack for changing the minds of men without them realising
what he was doing until it was already done.
But I don’t think Daniel Day-Lewis was the best actor in
this film and I don’t think that Abraham Lincoln was the best Character either,
even though it’s a film about him. The guy who stole the show for me and made
me really connect with this film was Representative Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee
Jones). Stevens would probably be classed as an extreme left winger in today’s
US politics, so you can imagine what the thought of him in the 19th
century. He not only advocated that black people should be free from slavery,
but that they should be treated as white people’s equal (something that Lincoln
never did). Anyway, I digress into a
History lesson, although that is what this film is. Stevens in this film is portrayed
brilliantly and he has an extremely dry, insulting wit that he uses in the
House constantly in quick response to any attack that is sent his way. In
short, Stevens will make you laugh in this film because he’s brilliantly provocative.
Unfortunately this film is a little too long for my liking
and could probably have told the same story in two hours. The end also seems quite
messy. It seems that Lincoln’s death is rushed through as a way of trying to
avoid telling that par of history. And then there’s a bit of a flashback to one of Lincoln’s speeches.
It’s a shame really because this film could have ended a lot better in a number
of different ways.
THE VERDICT
Lincoln is a brilliant film for portraying US history (although
too gently at times) and the political system that surrounded the Union towards
the end of the civil war. This film will teach you about a very important era
in US history whilst giving you a glimpse into who the people at the time
really were. The acting in it is brilliant and the characters are played exceptionally
well.Lincoln, although a very serious film,
will not fail to make you laugh on occasions. This goes double if you enjoy politics
as well. But if you’re not into politics or history and you need lots of battle
scenes, then this film isn’t for you and you may find that its 150 minute
length may drag. Otherwise, this film is worth a watch.
Argo
is a drama based on the true events of a secret CIA mission to extract
six Americans from Iran in 1980. Iran at this time is going through a
revolution and has put a new Islamic government in place. They want to
charge the old leader for crimes against
the people but he has been granted exile in the US. The people of Iran
are deeply angry with this and eventually they end up storming the US
embassy, whilst taking all the people they can find as hostages. Little
do they know that six Americans have escaped, but the clock is ticking
and it’s only a matter of time before the Iranians realise.
