SILENT HILL

Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II

The Heisei series started with such promise. The first two installments were an entertaining and credible platform to launch a brand new kind of Godzilla. The Return of Godzilla and Godzilla vs Biollante promised an ongoing narrative focused on topical science fact and speculative science fiction. Unfortunately once Biollante tanked this idea evaporated. With the franchise thrashing about in search of a consistent sense of identity, Toho decided to grasp for reductive nostalgia. Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II starts off well with the in-universe equivalent of the United Nations raising the sunken remains of Mecha King Ghidorah in order to plunder its futuristic robo-tech. When Godzilla next attacks, they will have a mechanical facsimile ready to fight back. Mankind is finally going on the offensive.

The stage is set for a military minded Godzilla sequel focused on first-response combatants and evolving anti-kaiju technology. This excitement quickly dissipates. Unfortunately, our guide into this world is a lanky moron that sleeps through Godzilla defence class, abandons his post, and is obsessed with Pteranodons. Why are we focusing on this guy over psychic mainstay Miki Saegusa? Her sympathetic relationship with the King of Monsters could have been an interesting way into an all-out Godzilla war. Instead we get a bumbling oaf blackmailing his way to the top. Having desperately leafed through a book of Showa tropes to find something, anything, that has worked before, the producers of Mechagodzilla II have arrived at the lobotomised nonsense of Jun Fukuda.

If ace pilot dipshit wasn't bad enough, Godzilla is also given another cute son. Although not quite as repulsive as Minilla, Baby Godzilla is so awfully conceived that his scenes suck the life out of the film. First of all he looks dreadful - a dinosaur suit with baggy ankles, topped off with a gap-toothed head. He isn't even lit sympathetically. To better illuminate the human characters he spends the majority of his screen time around, withering, caustic light is poured onto the creature, exposing the rubbery impossibility of his hide. Born from a prehistoric egg, Baby Godzilla instantly imprints on a spunky lab assistant then acts like no animal that has ever lived. He isn't excitable, or even curious. Seconds after his birth he stands silently in a line-up of straight-faced scientists, listening patiently to an exposition dump. Baby Godzilla is simply farcical. By the time the film has churned through this material, limping towards a kaleidoscopic beam conflict, it's difficult to even care.

Godzilla vs Mothra

After the success of Godzilla vs King Ghidorah, Toho rummaged through their back catalogue for another Showa foe to stand against the King of Monsters. It's a shame Godzilla vs Biollante wasn't more successful. As fun as it is to see the older monsters given 90s makeovers, I'd much rather see Godzilla tearing brand new designs limb from limb. Godzilla vs Mothra goes some way to satisfying that desire by introducing a violent male opposite for Mothra. Like his sister, Battra is able to evolve from a larval form into a flying adult. Unlike Mothra, who is specifically designed to be beautiful and tragic, Battra is a leathery, demonic beast. He has the wingspan of a dragon, decorated with amped-up rage colours arranged like jungle camouflage.

Godzilla vs Mothra is unusual in that the monster story is essentially just the broad beats of the human drama scaled up for cataclysm. The lion's share of the film revolves around a divorced couple's attempts at reconciliation. Masako is a stoic, emotionally mature woman while her ex-husband is brash and childish. His efforts towards accordance are bafflingly ill-considered, forcing Masako to rise above his immaturity for the sake of their family. The females in Godzilla vs Mothra are the peacemakers, able to use their beauty and diplomatic skills to coerce something useful from their boneheaded male counterparts. As for Godzilla himself, he's basically a bystander in his own movie. Mostly absent and bereft of agenda, he occasionally wanders into the frame to job for the lepidoptera tag team.

DEBRIS FIELD

Further proof that the PS4 is shaping up to be the destination of choice for side-scroll shoot fans arrives in the form of Galak-Z: The Dimensional. This closer look at 17-BIT's game reveals a caffeine shot shooter that looks like Asteroids controls in a Salamander setting. There's also a fair bit of Treasure's Bangai-O in the way your craft uses a drifty jet propulsion whilst toggling between lock-on missiles and curvy lasers.

CYLINDRICAL

Living in a PAL territory? Fork out for PlayStation Plus when the PS4 is released and you'll have instant access to Resogun, Housemarque's follow-up to the Super Stardust games. Instead of a twin-stick debris shooter, Resogun is a horizontal side-scroller set in a world composed entirely of teeny tiny little cubes that are desperate to tumble apart in exciting ways. 

Call of Duty: Ghosts - SPACE IS THE PLACE

Weren't these games a lot more fun when you were fighting at least the Second World? Call of Duty: Ghosts looks to be continuing the border jump bigotry begun in last year's Black Ops II, with everyone south of the equator contextualised as a grasping invader. With that in mind, Ghosts can't help but evoke Republican paranoia fantasies like Red Dawn or, if we're talking video games, the film's interactive pseudo sequel Homefront. It's disappointing, if not wholly surprising, to see the Infinity Ward arm of the Call of Duty franchise shifting towards one-note nationalism. Even though they specifically used British and Soviet troops to make their points, the studio's previous even numbered entries revelled in murky moral greys. Still, Astronauts firing assault rifles at each other is pretty badass, so there's that.

RESIDENT EVIL 3

RESIDENT EVIL 2

You're Next

My favourite thing about You're Next is how different characters contextualise the danger they're in. The Davison family respond to having crossbow bolts fired at their heads as an ingrained collective, complete with interpersonal baggage. They're so self-obsessed that even in the face of annihilation they cannot conceive of a situation in which their own egos are not being managed and coddled. A life of privilege has prepared them for nothing other than success. They expect to win. They cannot think in any other direction. They approach the assault emotionally, responding to a filmic scenario in a filmic fashion. They discern narratives within their struggle and cater to them. They are fools. Erin, an Australian interloper masquerading as pliant arm candy, is completely different. At rest she demonstrates the kind of quiet self-assurance that needlers often mistake as passivity. Galvanised into action, she reacts quickly and logically, upending genre conventions by stamping them prone.

Zombie Zombie - The Wisdom of Stone (Do You Believe In...?)

Fuck Buttons - The Lisbon Maru

Kiss Me Deadly - Director's Cut

Ralph Meeker plays Mike Hammer as a brutal, bullying thug. His detective process is little more than finding someone who knows more than him, then beating the shit out of them until they part with the information. Robert Aldrich's adventure, adapted from the Mickey Spillane novel of the same name, begins when Hammer comes across a psychiatric patient wandering down a lonely road. The duo are subsequently attacked; Hammer framed for the women's torture and murder. This outrage prompts, not so much a quest for vengeance or a desire to clear his own name, but a perceived opportunity for Hammer to score some big money. The private detective's response is to mindlessly and aggressively hound anyone he can think of in pursuit of this imagined pot of gold. This greed leading Meeker's lout to a nightmarish, atomic age Pandora's Box. Sadistic and morally bleak, Kiss Me Deadly is a tonic - a mix of opportunistic amorality and a physical nastiness that feels legitimately shocking, especially given that the film was released deep in the Hays Code era.

Is it a Birdy?

 Zack Snyder talking about the anime series that informed Man of Steel.

"I've seen a few episodes of Dragon Ball. I know it's a major work of anime, and that it has suitably huge-scale battles depicted beautifully. (However) there's another anime I've forgotten the name of, where loads of city buildings gets destroyed. I know there are loads of such scenes in anime, but this one in particular is possibly like Man of Steel. I'm sure it's a TV series. In the US it's called Birdy the Mighty. The city battles scenes in it are so good, they have a huge impact. Also, because in Man of Steel the fighting is mostly one-on-one hand-to-hand stuff, rather than in, say, The Avengers where they're fighting a huge force, the movie's much more like the fantastic style of anime than other movies."

 Article extract and video via NeoGaf.

The Who - A Quick One, While He's Away

Spring Breakers

A group of girls, currently too cash poor to escape their dreary university campus, turn to armed robbery to fund a holiday. Once at the beach their days become a Bacchanalian blow out; a bright, poppy, pocket life devoid of their usual humdrum responsibilities or even a less exciting downtime. Everything feeds into their nonstop party. One of the girls talks about this goof-off in terms of it being a religious experience. Squashed in next to dozens of boozed up kids is the closest she's ever felt to God. Her life is finally how she always imagined it should be: a never-ending MTV beach party. The girls repeat "spring break" over and over like a monastic chant, attempting to conjure up the privileged, commodity centered American dream they've been sold all their lives.

Eventually the situation sours when the group come into the orbit of Alien, a smoked-out Cribs criminal, obsessed with living out his own idea of success - in this case, an existence straight out of a gangster rap album track. Two of the girls recoil from this adjustment then flee, leaving their less squeamish friends to form a polyamorous relationship with Alien based on a mutual love of automatic weapons and Britney Spears pop ballads. Equality is maintained both by the girl's refusal to be submissive arm candy and their willingness to participate in the ridiculous dynastic struggle Alien has wished into being. Ultimately, Spring Breakers seems to be about the second acts middle-class white Americans are allowed to have. Regardless of the mistakes they make, they have the financial and psychological resources to instantly put their past behind them to slot back into mainstream society. For them, consequences are abstract and temporary. Everyone else gets to die poor.

Sláine by Mike McMahon

Alien by Simon Bisley

JUST GIMME MY FUCKING PHONECALL

The film Ken Russell said was the greatest example of science fiction since Metropolis has somehow been reconstituted as a 1990s Fox TV pilot. I wasn't particularly hopeful for José Padilha's RoboCop remake, but even I expected something more refined than Michael Keaton trumpeting like a toy executive. Why are notionally exciting action sequences set in undressed warehouses? Why does a CG augmented powerjump have such a weightless impact? That leap gag in particular looks prehistoric. The Stained Glass Knight in Young Sherlock Holmes is a better example of verisimilitude. I understand there's more than enough time to slap a few filters on this, but that last low-angle shot of Robo striding, with a puny explosion on his receding right, is like something out of fucking Dark Angel.

Transformers #94 by Geoff Senior

DINOBOTS

According to a Beijing News interview with producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Transformers: Age of Extinction will feature the Dinobots. Given that this is still a Michael Bay joint, no doubt Grimlock and pals will either be given massive swinging genitalia or racially insensitive voices. Maybe both. Personally, I'd position Grimlock as a one-man demolition unit, obsessed with his destructive potential. He'd start out with a rugged vehicle mode, probably a truck like Prime, and find it wanting. Not enough gun. Next he might try out life as a tank and be disappointed with his overall lack of rapid manoeuvrability. Earth modes would be a massive disappointment to him. He'd rack his brains searching for a transformation that meets his cataclysm criteria before eventually discovering Earth's long extinct terrible lizards. Tyrannosaurus Rex. Love at first sight.

The Terminator by Simon Bisley

Metal Gear Solid by Yoji Shinkawa

I Am Street Fighter - 25th Anniversary Documentary

To this day Street Fighter II is easily one of my favourite games. A 22 year old game kept relevant by finely balanced combatants and instant response controls. In the early 1990s its impact was total. Arcade cabinets rigged with official boards and seizure inducing knock-offs were everywhere a child might conceivably end up. I played Street Fighter II in a chippie, a video shop, the corner of a sports bar in Spain, and even in the lobby of a swimming pool in Garston. That particular cab had a version of 1992's Championship Edition crammed into a crumbling coin-op with about half the buttons necessary to actually play the thing. In the Summer before starting senior school I spent an afternoon relentlessly cramming 20p pieces into that punch only machine, trying to get an ending for Vega. I never made it but I did get to suplex my way through a line-up of gawkers, which to an 11 year old was pretty much like winning a Nobel Peace Prize.

The Terminator: Secondary Objectives #4 by Paul Gulacy

The Terminator: Secondary Objectives #3 by Paul Gulacy