A cure for mutation is about, and mutants either seek this cure or feel insulted by it being a problem that they should get rid of. Magneto and his brotherhood are set to destroy the source – a small boy with the ability to stop other mutant’s powers from working. This is what half of the story is based on, the other half is based yet again on Wolverine’s quest to do what is right. Therefore, the movie can seem a little bit predictable, especially with many of the characters mentioning their intentions.

The movie itself does have some good action aswell as amazing special effects, but the action scenes are a bit too quick to make any kind of sense of what just happened. Mutants seem to use their powers in convenient times throughout the movie and make no mistakes when it comes to attacking the enemy. It looks too well executed and makes it harder to make out what is going on when the enemy could clearly use common sense – but as a typical enemy in a movie, they lack it because they’re not as planned as the heroes are. There are just parts in the movie which I think are a bit too unrealistic, and kept me questioning “How have they done that?”. They’ve even made Wolverine calm rather than ruthless.

The movie itself is watchable, and rather enjoyable, despite how confusing it can be. However, as it’s from a new director, he’s obviously going to direct it differently to how Singer would have done it, so you can’t expect the same as the previous two films. However, for what little action there is, is made up in the storyline. Alot of it doesn’t make sense until it comes towards the end where everything ties in together perfectly, with a few scenes of vital past events which are required to make the story flow without adding confusion. I found it enjoyable to watch – so it isn’t really a bad film to have on when you’ve got the time spare.

The X-Men are in trouble and rely on the help of Magneto and Mystique; who still have their intentions of wiping out the human race to free mutants. Meanwhile, we see the story of Wolverine unfold as he meets his maker. You are instantly pulled to your seat with how well the movie is set-out, as it continues from the first film, pulling out answers to questions you weren’t even thinking. We basically learn more about the characters to get more of an idea of their personality.

In all aspects of this film, there is great improvement, and is a movie you could watch at any time with anyone.  The movie is confusing at the start, but it gradually becomes less confusing and you begin to learn why things are happening throughout the film. You will find however that for most of the film, it revolves around Wolverine, as he has a much complex past which viewers would enjoy learning about. So this film is great for Hugh Jackman fans.

I wouldn’t put this film as a movie great, but it does deserve some recognition when it comes down to how the whole movie comes together. There is more reason to things happening rather than just throwing things together as the movie moves ahead. This is a great movie to watch, and I recommend it to anyone, fan of Marvel or not.

Red Riding Hood has been brought to us by Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke, now lets get some pretty boys and girls, make them look a little off, add a love story and here we go again, this film just oozes with the Twilight feel, but with a big dog.

Valerie (Amanda Seyfried) lives in a medieval village one that everyone knows each others business, Valerie plays the role of a lose Little Red Riding hood but she’s torn between two men, one whom she has been set up to marry by her family Henry (Max Irons) and another of which she is in love with much to her families displeasure, Peter (Shiloh Fernandez) . But she arranges to run away with him – surrounding their village is a wolf which lurks in the night, the wolf claims it’s next victim this time Valerie s sister, the villages have for years had an uneasy truce with the beast offering food each month but this time it’s a human life.

The villages want to now break this truce with the wolf and want it dead so they call on Father Solomon (Gary Oldman) a famed werewolf hunter, as the death toll rises he advises the villages the wolf is one of them and they change back into human form in the day, this in turn makes everyone a wolf in the villages eyes.

The wolf however has many an opportunity to kill Valerie, but doesn’t – is the wolf one of her lovers?

The film plays out numerous directions but as an audience you know the ending before it happens, aside from a small twist towards the end, the effects used in bringing the wolf to life are really good and stands out from the rest of the drab film, Oldman doesnt do the film any favours by been simply wierd and it’s not the best role ive seen in him, the other cast actors aint special either there just there for eye candy to the teenagers that will love this film simply because of the love story, other than that it’s shit.

The film has a feel of Van Helsing with the ‘Hunter’ been drafted into a weird village, and the story is somewhat similar to 2004′s Joaquin Phoenix film, The Village – If you have seen either of those films you don’t need to watch this is vaguely touches on the story of Little Red Riding hood with the only references being the wolf, and a red cape.

Now, it’s 2011 and here we go again. Rupert Wyatt has taken the helm, little known with probably his biggest credit to the film industry been with The Escapist from 2008, where he was the writer / director. Rise of the Planet of the Apes sets a new origin for the franchise based on the original 1963 novel Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle.

Will Rodman (James Franco) is a successful genetics scientist working for a company called GEN-SYS, based in San Fransisco. His team are working on a cure for Alzheimer’s via using a virus there implanting into chimpanzees. At first, the virus is a success, not only doing it’s purpose but it also works via repairing damaged cells in the brain while in turn also making the host more intelligent.

The main test subject ‘Bright Eyes’, the name derived from a green pigmentation in the chimps eyes – is to be presented to the board as the first successful host, but due to an incident she is evenually killed and the whole project scrapped, leading to Rodmans team being disbanded and given the order to put all the other test subjects down, little do they then find out a baby chimpanzee (Ceaser) has now been left motherless due to the death of it’s mother, not been able to carry out the orders of the board Rodman is forced to bring up the chimp in his own house realizing it’s got his mothers passed down genes from the virus, and so begins the foundation for the film.

Now, the film is pretty powerful in the way it shows you the progression of Ceaser (Andy Serkis) and it pretty much keeps you interested throughout, unlike all the other ‘Apes’ films whereas the apes are actually motioned via actors, Rise of uses production studio Weta Digital who have done a fantastic job in bringing to life the chimps on the big screen, the acting throughout the film cant really be faulted either with strong performances from Franco,  John Lithgow as Charles Rodman, the scientist’s father. Theres is also the addition of Tom Felton as Dodge Landon who looks after the chimps at the holding center, allthough not brilliant he does have an impact on the story and development of Ceaser – i’ll still remember him though as the little bastard from the Harry Potter films.

Anyway, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a welcome addition to the franchise, it’s an origin film introducing you to hopefully whats more films in the pipleine, it’s a bit like Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship in ways of an introduction to that trilogy. Rise of keeps you interested throughout but due to it’s short runtime of only 105 mins not much really happens towards the end apart from the inevitable ‘Freedom’ scenes, lets hope they can build onto the film with a sequel.

The idea of X-Men is that the world is full of mutants – children with a special gift – which the rest of the world are scared of. As with most superhero comics/movies, there is always a villian; played by Ian McKellen, Magneto is a mutant controlling metal and electromagnetic fields; who shares different thoughts with Professor X (Patrick Stewart) on their mutant-human relationships. Some would say it’s similar of the Malcolm X and Martin Luther King campaigns.

Anyway, the action scenes within the movie are a little under-performed, where the heroes are knocked down, and are in states of trouble, but somehow recover and annihilate the villians; which is expected for die-hard X-Men comic book fans; but the movie as a whole is still a family friendly movie with some fairly well known faces.

 The story itself focuses on that of Wolverine most specifically, and how he is set to save the day against Magneto. The story also features him having feelings for other mutants – more or less to show that he isn’t a monster, and to prove Professor X’s theory right that all mutants aren’t bad; and that some are there to save the human race despite the fact that normal humans want the mutants brought to justice.

X-men is great to watch through the acceptable 104 minutes, and is even better to watch in series with the X-Men Quadrilogy. A great watch for super-hero fanatics.

After eventually arriving at Bright Falls via boat, You pick up the keys to the cabin where you will be staying for your break, it’s only then at night the power goes and you start to hear your wife screaming, and she’s dragged to the bottom of a lake, you dive in after her – Lose Consciousness, And then you wake up in a car crash, Your wife is still missing and you don’t know where you are – In the distance you see a light, and you head towards it.

Welcome to Alan Wake.

Yes, Sounds really weird but the game is full of plot twists and keeps you entertained, it’s one scary fucker too – I wouldn’t play it alone. Alan wake is a third person action / psychological / mind fuck / thriller, The setting for Alan wake in Bright Falls is fitting, Tons of Trees and landscape for you to explore / Drive / and run, you will be doing alot of this, The graphics are really nice too, nothing special but they do the game justice.

You’ll soon find out that Alan is playing out a Book he WAS going to write, he kind of knows whats happening but strange things start to happen, the cabin where he was staying apparently hasn’t been there for around 30 years and with the confusion, where is his wife?.

The game sort of plays in a sandbox mode where your left to simply explore, you will be given basic guidance such as ‘Reach the Gas Station’ as a marker, but how you get there is upto you. While your playing, every so often the world begins to change before you, the surroundings start to turn dark, trees start to sway and things get a little hectic, then you see the ‘Darkness’ coming at you from all angles, your weapon is a Flashlight and guns you find around Bright Falls.

Darkness are basically townsfolk who have some strange energy around them, they are ‘Zombie’ like so to speak but they run at you, the only thing there scared of is the light and the aim of the game to get through these events is to shine your light at them, weaken them then blow there fucking heads off, if you cant and become outnumbered you have to run for your life to the nearest light, this is normally in the form of a lamppost nearby and these act as checkpoints, some of the ‘Checkpoints’ are powered by generators and you have to get it working for the power to come on while things are chasing you, this is fucking terrifying.

Then all becomes normal again. Alan Wake’s story is set out like a TV Series, You play episodes, complete tasks in that episode then your treated to cut scenes, after you complete 5 or 6 episodes, the season is completed then plays out all of the cut-scenes and highlights of whats happened so you can begin to piece things together.

If Working things out, Shooting, Exploring, Something Different, is your thing – You really cant go wrong with Alan Wake.

When i was a kid, i used to love playing the role of god, fantastic sandbox games such as the Original Populous, Populous: The Beginnning and also the Sim City Series, those games were fantastic then all of a sudden games such as these dropped off the radar and are nearly non existent on the XBOX 360 onto which From Dust has landed.

From Dust is a game from the Acclaimed Eric Chahi (Another World, Heart of Darkness) who hasnt touched a game since 1998 back on the Playstation, with an interest in Volcanology and sights that he saw across the world, it was announced back in June 2010 at E3 he was working in partnership with Ubisoft to create this little marvel.

From Dust gives you the role of a god in the game, known by the village people as ‘Breath’, with Breath you have the power to alter the world to needs, or the villages needs. With Breath, you start each world with limited powers, by directing the villages to totems scattered throughout the current land you can increase the powers of breath, normally to do good. Each level is set out with obstacles to the totems, and also meeting stones for you to place even more villages, the concept is rather simple in the fact that once you have aquired all the totems and built up all the villages in the world you can, you are then able to progress onto the next world via a portal where you finally send a select amount of villages.

It all sounds simple, each of the totems etc have obstacles be it in the way of a gigantic volcanoe, a tsunami, a rushing river, fire, rain (Yes Rain).

Using the powers of Breath you are able to change the influence of these disasters, for example if there is a lava flow in the way of your goal, place water on top of it to cool it down so your villages can pass over it. Some of the latter levels in From Dust give you a set time to complete put in place things that will save your villages from demise, on one level i was given 3 minutes to save a village from an incoming Tsunami, by creating a wall of lava which then cooled i created a mountain range which stopped the incoming water, some of the sites you will see in from dust are mind blowing and by far it has some of the best water systems Ive seen in a game.

For 1200 MSP you get alot for your game, the main campaign will set you back 10 hours, most of the levels can be completed on the first play through, while you are completing the game you are also unlocking new levels to From Dusts’ challenge most, a set of tasks which in similar relation to the main game is all about saving the village again, but on worlds set out to be a nightmare, this mode is also timed in which you can then upload your score to the online leaderboards, theres quite a bit in the way of reply value with this addition even if you dont want to troll through the main campaign again.

Final thoughts on From Dust, it’s a charming little game with alot to offer, the graphics do the job perfectly and for an Arcade title with limited development funding, there impressive. With the possibility of additional downloadable content coming our way From Dust is a new franchise that has great potential.

Gyllenhaal is Colter Stevens, a US Helicopter pilot who awakes on a commuter train, sounds like the normal thing to do but in fact his last memory was actually on a mission in Afghanistan. He shortly discovers that he has somehow assumed the identity of someone else, within 8 minutes of discovering this the commuter train he is on, explodes.

After his sudden death, Colter Stevens awakes in what can only be desrbed as some sort of ‘POD’ with a small screen he is in direct contact with someone called Goodwin (Vera Farmiga), she relays little information to Stevens and keeps gets back into a normal order, he suddently finds himself back on the commuter train assuming the identity of a man he has never met, he only knows that the man is a friend of Christina Warren (Michelle Monaghan) and in exactly 8 minutes the train will blow up again, without knowing only this it’s up to Stevens to stop the bomb.

There isnt a full explanation of the sequences and events that happen i can give to be a part of this review, Source Code is the sort of film where if i mention ‘The Matrix’ you will get my drift, although it’s not as elaborate is still follows the trend. Source Code has a really strong performance from Gyllenhaal , great due to the fact a film before this in the name of ‘The Sands of Time’, was fucking terrible – Monaghan gives out a good performance too given the fact that 80% of the film is basically the same 8 minutes but with a slightly different ending.

Source code will keep you watching through the acceptable 93 minutes runtime and the whole ‘Outer Body’ episode that Stevens goes through is pretty interesting, with enough different approaches on stopping the train from blowing up and great action sequences, Source code is a rental you wont be disjointed with, it’s not really a retail purchase.