GAMES
MEGA MAN X LEGACY COLLECTION
PC, PS4, SWITCH, XBOX ONE
Packing four incredible action games from the mid-'90s into one nostalgic package, and then following it up with a mixed bag of four from the early 2000s, this is a slightly confusing compilation but a worthy one nonetheless. Mega Man X is a 1994 game that evolved the precise jumping and shooting of the original Mega Man into something a lot faster and more dramatic. X can dash and climb walls, and running through the dynamic sci-fi stages to get to the elaborate bosses while hunting for secret upgrades is awesome. Sequels X2 and X3 continue in a similar fashion. X4, meanwhile, expands things for better and worse, looking and playing fantastically but marred by awful PS1-era English voice acting. These four games are included in part one of the Collection, a great deal at $20. Part two includes X5–X8 for an additional $20, which is a tougher ask. The expanded, convoluted story and deep sprawling levels of X5 and X6 will appeal only to those already committed to the series, while the 3D graphics of X7 and (to a lesser extent) X8 kill the fun. TB
The Innocents is a new British supernatural series.
FREE-TO-AIR
LOCH NESS, AUGUST 30, ABC, 8.50PM
This British series has many of the small-town murder mystery tropes beloved of noir-ish thrillers, but its setting in a pretty tourist village on the banks of Loch Ness, with its attendant atmospheric rolling mists and folklore, adds an extra layer of eeriness. Lochanfoy is as scenic as it is mysterious. Local piano teacher Niall Swift is found dead at the bottom of a cliff. Part of his brain has been removed – via his nasal cavity. Meanwhile a prank by a local trio of teens – one of them, Evie (Shona McHugh), is the daughter of local police detective Annie Redford (Laura Fraser) – using abattoir offcuts to assemble a fake Loch Ness monster carcass, reveals a human heart. Even before the next body turns up, it's obvious there is a serial killer, and gradually the many secrets of the townsfolk come to light. Locals cash in on the story of the Loch Ness monster, but it seems the real dangers lurking beneath the surface are on land. Created by Fortitude screenwriter Stephen Brady, Loch Ness is as unsettling and bleak as its Scottish Highland setting. KN
Guy Pearce in Netflix’s The Innocents
DVD
THE SQUARE (MADMAN) MA
This sophisticated satire from Sweden's Ruben Ostlund, which won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival last year, confirms him as an artistic cousin to Austria's Michael Haneke – funnier and more self-aware, but with a similar bent for pulling the rug from under the viewer. The subject is the banality of modern art, specifically the arena where art intersects with advertising: the anti-hero (Claes Bang) is a suave yet bumbling curator at a big museum in Stockholm, who enlists a couple of hot-shot marketing types to create a "transgressive" promotional video which backfires in spectacular fashion. Meanwhile, he has to deal with the fallout of a couple of transgressions of his own, via confrontations with a young immigrant boy (Elijandro Edouard) and a former lover (Elizabeth Moss). The joke is that what passes for provocation has become a conventional symbol of status – and this applies, too, to the very film we are watching. Ostlund juggles these paradoxes with aplomb, even if the characters are ultimately too thin to let us feel, finally, that anything substantial is at stake. JW
STREAMING
THE INNOCENTS, NETFLIX, AVAILABLE AUGUST 24
Netflix's new British supernatural series is a teen coming-of-age story, but its writing, its cast and cinematic production (it's moodily shot in the UK and Norway) has broad appeal. The story focuses on two teenagers, Harry (Percelle Ascott) and June (Sorcha Groundsell), who are running away from their rural village and their repressive families. Harry is stuck as a carer for his seriously ill dad, while June lives with her controlling stepfather after her mother mysteriously deserted the family three years earlier. But their plan to start a life together is derailed by the startling discovery that June has the ability to shape-shift; a car on the road flags them down, and when a mysterious man who claims to know June's mother confronts her, their ensuing struggle sees June shift into the man's body. The shift – cleverly executed – only lasts a few hours, but June has no control over it, and this development obviously derails their plans. Meanwhile June's mother, Elena (Laura Birn), is living in a cult-like refuge run by a mysterious professor (Guy Pearce, creepier than ever) who "teaches" shapeshifters how to control their abilities, although his reasons for doing so may not be all they seem. It's a supernatural teen romance, but the shapeshifting angle throws up some interesting questions, particularly when June inhabits different bodies, among them older men and, at one point, a pregnant woman, all of whom enter a vegetative state when this happens. KN
British series Loch Ness is as unsettling and bleak as its Scottish Highland setting.
CULT
PREDATOR (FOX) M
This 1987 science-fiction action extravaganza from director John McTiernan (Die Hard) resembles a lot of his work in being both streamlined and wildly over-the-top. The premise is pure 1980s "high concept": we follow the adventures of an American paramilitary unit in the Central American jungle, where they Are pitted against a mysterious extra-terrestrial killer equipped with sophisticated weapons and camouflage technology (as so often in action movies of the day, there are explicit echoes of the Vietnam War – although it is the Americans, if anyone, who stand in for the Vietnamese). Heading up the team of macho men with massive guns is Arnold Schwarzenegger in his outlandish 1980s prime, muscles bulging beneath his combat vest, a comic-book icon come to life, especially when he delivers the film's most memorable one-liner: "If it bleeds, we can kill it." It's obvious that in some respects McTiernan has his tongue in his cheek, but the movie, for all its excess, maintains its focus and narrative discipline, pacing itself carefully and keeping us guessing for as long as possible about the nature of the alien foe. JW
Terry Notary in The Square.
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