Category: Film

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A whole new world: Disney is latest firm to announce metaverse plans

Entertainment company plans to ‘connect the physical and digital worlds … allowing for storytelling without boundaries’

Heigh-ho it’s off to the metaverse we go – if Walt Disney gets its way. The home of Mickey Mouse and Princess Elsa has revealed it is planning to join the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft in the metaverse.

The new tech concept, a blending of the physical and digital worlds where people can interact virtually, is becoming a multibillion-dollar fixation for Silicon Valley executives, including the Facebook founder who is staking his company’s future on its success.

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‘You are the dog in space’: inside Asif Kapadia’s new VR short, Laika

With his new animation, the Oscar-winning documentary maker – and former VR cynic – is exploring how the technology might revolutionise the way we experience cinema

“We would have to build a car, that’s the only way it would work,” says Asif Kapadia, brainstorming how to recreate the unforgettable opening passage of his movie Diego Maradona, in virtual reality. “You know what an LED lightbox is? It’s the new version of green screen, a wall of tiny little lights, thousands of them. So you create whatever you want, you put it on that wall, and it projects. We’d have to take every location of Naples in the 80s, put that on a light box, build a car, then put us in the car driving so that when you look out of the window you see Naples. I mean, it would be great. But you’d have to build every environment and that …” he whispers, “is why it’s so expensive.”

Over the course of the pandemic, Kapadia has been keeping busy. He directed a miniseries on the subject of mental health starring Oprah and Prince Harry, and a history of music in the year 1971 inspired by David Hepworth’s hit book. He produced an Indian drama series for Amazon about a shaman on the run who joins forces with a local cop. He’s building up to his next “big doc thing”, a story he says is to do with space travel, confronts “all the mad shit going on right now” and means he’s “going fully dystopian”. He has also made a film showing at the London film festival (LFF) right now; a VR short about Laika, the first earthling to orbit Earth.

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Demonic review – Neill Blomkamp’s sci-fi horror is pure pulp

The director’s latest film – in which a daughter enters the virtual mind of her serial killer mother – is so-so compared to his earlier efforts

After the mega-budget blowouts of 2013’s Elysium (which had some tried-and-tested ideas rattling around inside it) and 2015’s Chappie (which had Die Antwoord), this so-so shocker finds mooted multiplex saviour Neill Blomkamp recalibrating his disc space and career prospects. Operating with TV-movie production values and nary a single familiar face among its 10-strong cast, it’s a small, manageable, patchily inspired genre piece that unpicks the fraught relationship between a daughter, her convict mother, and a medical tech firm instigating an altogether unhappy reunion.

Much of Demonic suggests a sometime “visionary director” who has turned to streaming-bound work-for-hire to make ends meet; it’s cautiously compiled, competent work-for-hire, but the wild swings and grand designs of this film-maker’s earlier output are sorely missed. It’s at its most Blomkampian early on, with the integration of effects into the plot: our heroine Carly (Carly Pope) submits to “volumetric capture” (essentially mo-cap 2.0) so she can enter a virtual-world simulation that will allow her to interact with her comatose mum. Inevitably, this passage into a digital wonderland is preceded with dire warnings as to what might happen if memories slip out of sync, and inevitably, the simulation doesn’t run as smoothly as hoped. Partly this is due to the vast reserves of anger Carly ports into this virtual realm, partly due to the proximity of a giant skeletal hellbeast. These scenes have a distinctive, hyperreal look (and presumably blew the budget), rotoscoping over the uncanny-valley glitches that have blighted countless blockbusters. This time, the glitches are deliberate: the aim is to unsettle.

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Posted on

Demonic review – Neill Blomkamp’s sci-fi horror is pure pulp

The director’s latest film – in which a daughter enters the virtual mind of her serial killer mother – is so-so compared to his earlier efforts

After the mega-budget blowouts of 2013’s Elysium (which had some tried-and-tested ideas rattling around inside it) and 2015’s Chappie (which had Die Antwoord), this so-so shocker finds mooted multiplex saviour Neill Blomkamp recalibrating his disc space and career prospects. Operating with TV-movie production values and nary a single familiar face among its 10-strong cast, it’s a small, manageable, patchily inspired genre piece that unpicks the fraught relationship between a daughter, her convict mother, and a medical tech firm instigating an altogether unhappy reunion.

Much of Demonic suggests a sometime “visionary director” who has turned to streaming-bound work-for-hire to make ends meet; it’s cautiously compiled, competent work-for-hire, but the wild swings and grand designs of this film-maker’s earlier output are sorely missed. It’s at its most Blomkampian early on, with the integration of effects into the plot: our heroine Carly (Carly Pope) submits to “volumetric capture” (essentially mo-cap 2.0) so she can enter a virtual-world simulation that will allow her to interact with her comatose mum. Inevitably, this passage into a digital wonderland is preceded with dire warnings as to what might happen if memories slip out of sync, and inevitably, the simulation doesn’t run as smoothly as hoped. Partly this is due to the vast reserves of anger Carly ports into this virtual realm, partly due to the proximity of a giant skeletal hellbeast. These scenes have a distinctive, hyperreal look (and presumably blew the budget), rotoscoping over the uncanny-valley glitches that have blighted countless blockbusters. This time, the glitches are deliberate: the aim is to unsettle.

Continue reading...
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Free Guy review – Ryan Reynolds bounces through fun videogame existential crisis

A non-player character evolves into a sentient AI in a cheerfully silly riff on The Truman Show, with Taika Waititi and Jodie Comer

The great big handsome-goofy face of Ryan Reynolds looms out of the screen in this fantasy comedy from screenwriter Matt Lieberman and director Shawn Levy (of the Night at the Museum franchise). It’s an undemanding and cheerfully silly riff on the themes of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, and what the heck we’re all doing in this big old universe of ours: as if someone took The Truman Show or Inception – or even The Lego Movie – and stripped out every serious satirical ambition, replacing it with M&M-coloured spectacle. The result is not something that’s in any way challenging, but Reynolds is so puppyishly eager to please.

Reynolds plays a normal, boring guy whose name is Guy (amusingly, it is never clear if this is his actual given name, as in Guy Crouchback, or the more generic “guy”). He smiles incessantly, wears a bland, short-sleeved blue shirt and goes to work every day as a bank teller in a serenely marvellous-looking modern city, resembling Vancouver. There, he hangs out with his best friend, Buddy – again: generic or given name? – played by Lil Rel Howery, but his bank is always being hit by heists, which he greets with the same imperturbable smileyness. Gradually, Guy realises that he is an NPC, or non-player character, in a video game: a quirk or flaw in the algorithm means that he has hyperevolved into an AI state of free will and agency, able to question what is going on. This astonishes the game’s evil corporate owner Antoine (Taika Waititi), and also the designers Millie (Jodie Comer) and Keys (Joe Keery) whose concept Antoine ripped off. And Millie realises that she will have to enter the game as a player, befriend Guy and enlist his help in getting back their intellectual property – before, of course, falling in love with this clueless pixelated lunk.

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Free Guy review – Ryan Reynolds bounces through fun videogame existential crisis

A non-player character evolves into a sentient AI in a cheerfully silly riff on The Truman Show, with Taika Waititi and Jodie Comer

The great big handsome-goofy face of Ryan Reynolds looms out of the screen in this fantasy comedy from screenwriter Matt Lieberman and director Shawn Levy (of the Night at the Museum franchise). It’s an undemanding and cheerfully silly riff on the themes of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, and what the heck we’re all doing in this big old universe of ours: as if someone took The Truman Show or Inception – or even The Lego Movie – and stripped out every serious satirical ambition, replacing it with M&M-coloured spectacle. The result is not something that’s in any way challenging, but Reynolds is so puppyishly eager to please.

Reynolds plays a normal, boring guy whose name is Guy (amusingly, it is never clear if this is his actual given name, as in Guy Crouchback, or the more generic “guy”). He smiles incessantly, wears a bland, short-sleeved blue shirt and goes to work every day as a bank teller in a serenely marvellous-looking modern city, resembling Vancouver. There, he hangs out with his best friend, Buddy – again: generic or given name? – played by Lil Rel Howery, but his bank is always being hit by heists, which he greets with the same imperturbable smileyness. Gradually, Guy realises that he is an NPC, or non-player character, in a video game: a quirk or flaw in the algorithm means that he has hyperevolved into an AI state of free will and agency, able to question what is going on. This astonishes the game’s evil corporate owner Antwan (Taika Waititi), and also the designers Millie (Jodie Comer) and Keys (Joe Keery) whose concept Antwan ripped off. And Millie realises that she will have to enter the game as a player, befriend Guy and enlist his help in getting back their intellectual property – before, of course, falling in love with this clueless pixelated lunk.

Continue reading...
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Auggie review – watchable hi-tech satire doesn’t quite know what to say

Richard Kind is compelling as the retiree seduced by a VR ‘companion’, but the film fails to do much with its rather familiar premise

The face of American character actor Richard Kind – melancholy, hangdog, a little dyspeptic – is exactly right for this high-concept midlife satire from director and co-writer Matt Kane. It’s a variation on a familiar theme the time is the near future and Kind plays Felix, an architect in his 60s who has been pushed out of the firm he helped build and is now at home grumpily adjusting to unwanted retirement. His busy wife and grownup daughter have no great need of him these days so poor, emasculated Felix takes comfort in his hi-tech retirement gift: a pair of “Auggie” glasses, through which the wearer can see an “augmented reality companion”, a virtual-reality hologram of exactly the kind of submissively understanding person your subconscious wants to see – in Felix’s case, an extremely attractive young woman (played by newcomer Christen Harper).

Felix understands that this is just a projection, a geisha hallucination programmed to respond with the right answers and expressions. But inevitably he begins to fall in love with her, and toys with the “extra” that Auggie owners are invited to purchase: a pair of hi-tech underpants that will allow him to feel his Auggie companion intimately, while his wife is out all day at her prestigious job.

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Auggie review – watchable hi-tech satire doesn’t quite know what to say

Richard Kind is compelling as the retiree seduced by a VR ‘companion’, but the film fails to do much with its rather familiar premise

The face of American character actor Richard Kind – melancholy, hangdog, a little dyspeptic – is exactly right for this high-concept midlife satire from director and co-writer Matt Kane. It’s a variation on a familiar theme the time is the near future and Kind plays Felix, an architect in his 60s who has been pushed out of the firm he helped build and is now at home grumpily adjusting to unwanted retirement. His busy wife and grownup daughter have no great need of him these days so poor, emasculated Felix takes comfort in his hi-tech retirement gift: a pair of “Auggie” glasses, through which the wearer can see an “augmented reality companion”, a virtual-reality hologram of exactly the kind of submissively understanding person your subconscious wants to see – in Felix’s case, an extremely attractive young woman (played by newcomer Christen Harper).

Felix understands that this is just a projection, a geisha hallucination programmed to respond with the right answers and expressions. But inevitably he begins to fall in love with her, and toys with the “extra” that Auggie owners are invited to purchase: a pair of hi-tech underpants that will allow him to feel his Auggie companion intimately, while his wife is out all day at her prestigious job.

Continue reading...
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The Intergalactic Adventures of Max Cloud review – video game send-up is virtually pointless

This affectionate spoof of early 90s gaming scores high in nostalgia, but lags without comedic heavy-hitters

Here is a throwaway space spoof, an affectionate send-up of the naffness of early 90s video games, that lovingly recreates the vintage details with its production design and fight choreography, but is troublingly low on scripted gags. It plays out in two dimensions: virtual and real life. Inside a computer game, explorer Max Cloud is an intergalactic hero, a preposterous macho knucklehead in latex, sturdily performed by actor and martial arts expert Scott Adkins, who has appeared in a few of the Marvels. I did wonder if an actor with the comic chops for some megaton silliness might have done some heavier lifting here.

Meanwhile, in actual Brooklyn, teenage gamer Sarah (Isabelle Allen) is hooked on the Max Cloud video game. After a fight with her dad she is mysteriously teleported into the game – and into the body of a minor character, chef Jake (Elliot James Langridge). You might consider this a waste of a female lead – putting her into the body of a male actor – but there she stays for most of the movie. For any chance of making it back to her real life she must complete the game with the help of her friend playing in her bedroom (Franz Drameh). John Hannah is painfully unfunny as ultra baddie Revengor, who wants to destroy planet Earth over a past snub.

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Posted on

The Intergalactic Adventures of Max Cloud review – video game send-up is virtually pointless

This affectionate spoof of early 90s gaming scores high in nostalgia, but lags without comedic heavy-hitters

Here is a throwaway space spoof, an affectionate send-up of the naffness of early 90s video games, that lovingly recreates the vintage details with its production design and fight choreography, but is troublingly low on scripted gags. It plays out in two dimensions: virtual and real life. Inside a computer game, explorer Max Cloud is an intergalactic hero, a preposterous macho knucklehead in latex, sturdily performed by actor and martial arts expert Scott Adkins, who has appeared in a few of the Marvels. I did wonder if an actor with the comic chops for some megaton silliness might have done some heavier lifting here.

Meanwhile, in actual Brooklyn, teenage gamer Sarah (Isabelle Allen) is hooked on the Max Cloud video game. After a fight with her dad she is mysteriously teleported into the game – and into the body of a minor character, chef Jake (Elliot James Langridge). You might consider this a waste of a female lead – putting her into the body of a male actor – but there she stays for most of the movie. For any chance of making it back to her real life she must complete the game with the help of her friend playing in her bedroom (Franz Drameh). John Hannah is painfully unfunny as ultra baddie Revengor, who wants to destroy planet Earth over a past snub.

Continue reading...