STAYING IN REVIEWS Movies and boxsets to enjoy from the comfort of your sofa STAYING IN
BOXSET BLACK SAILS (Anchor Bay) ●●●●●
Black Sails is a prequel of sorts to Treasure Island, following the lives of Captain Flint (Toby Stephens) and John Silver (Luke Arnold) 20 years before Robert Louis Stevenson’s pirate adventure. But this is no salty sea yarn for the kiddies; there’s far too much blood, boobs and blue language for the pre-teen market. The main fault with Black
Sails is that it’s almost impossible to find anyone to relate to among the stock characters. The leads are uninspired stereotypes: Flint is too flawed and contrary while Silver is just cheesy. The villains are far more entertaining, such as the fast-talking Jack Rackham (Toby Schmitz) and his partner Anne Bonny (Clara Paget) while Captain Vane (Zach McGowan) has transformed into a ripped, grizzled antihero by the series end. Interestingly, all three are pulled from the pages of history rather than fiction.
Black Sails falls into an unsatisfying and flat middle ground where it fails to deliver on adventure or drama. Far too much time is spent on shore in Port Nassau bickering about taxation and governorship. Considering Michael Bay is listed among the producers, it feels bizarre to be complaining about a lack of action. There are a few exhilarating moments on the high seas and the series defiantly improves as it progresses, upping the swashbuckling quotient in the last few episodes, but Black Sails just comes across as a po-faced Pirates of the Caribbean knock-off. (Henry Northmore)
DVD THE HYPNOTIST (StudioCanal) ●●●●● BLU-RAY BOXSET THE SOPRANOS (Warner) ●●●●●
the more your quest will send you to new and exciting places. As the story unfolds, so does the world of the game.’ Featuring voice actors of the calibre of Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones), Nathan Fillion (Firel y) and Peter Stormare (Fargo), and with a theme song composed by none other than Sir Paul McCartney, Bungie have paid attention to every aspect of Destiny.
Bungie opened up the game to the public for beta testing and 4,638,937 players took the opportunity to get an early look at 2014’s most anticipated videogame release, with Bungie taking feedback from the gamer community to iron out any i nal niggles.
Graphically, Destiny is simply stunning, especially when running on next-gen machines, the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One. ‘Between beats of action, there will be moments when you can sit and watch the waves crash on to the shores of the shattered coasts of Venus or watch a crimson sunrise over the buried cities of Mars.’
Destiny (Bungie/Activision) is released on PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One on Tue 9 Sep.
After a series of sentimental films for the British and American market (What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen), Swedish director Lasse Hallström takes a sideways step into Nordic noir. Based on a book by Lars Kepler, The Hypnotist is an intimate thriller which opens with a frenzied knife attack on a PE teacher. Teenage witness Josef (Jonatan Bökman) is left struggling for life. Drawing a blank, the police turn to a psychologist (Mikael Persbrandt) to uncover the repressed secrets locked within Josef’s semi-comatose brain. If you miss The Killing and are craving more
Scandi-crime drama, The Hypnotist will just about scratch that itch. It conforms to the genre’s heavy shadows and blue colour palette; the unusual murders; the moody police detective (Tobias Zilliacus), and several red herrings. However, the police are narrow- minded and don’t even consider several lines of enquiry that are achingly obvious to the viewer. Dark and brooding, there’s an intriguing mystery buried among the clichés and plot holes. (Henry Northmore).
Any prospect of more Sopranos episodes or the much-discussed movie died tragically with James Gandolfini last summer. What we are left with is a mere 86 episodes of majestically written, acted and produced television, which only went and reshaped the small-screen form. It’s very unlikely that anyone involved in the show, which ended in 2007, will ever appear in anything as good again, but what an almighty legacy they’ve left behind. And this Blu-ray release is the perfect excuse to revisit them. In a nutshell, Tony Soprano is a wounded man. With troubles at work (he’s manager of the mafia’s New Jersey office) and at home (his mother, wife and kids drive him to distraction), his panic attacks lead him to visit a therapist, something of a no-no in the gangster world. Across seven seasons, we begin to care
about a murderer, cheat and bully who appears to hold ducks and horses in higher regard than human beings. By the end, with the strains of ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’ suggesting all manner of theories about the ambiguous final scene, you will care with every fibre. (Brian Donaldson)
21 Aug–18 Sep 2014 THE LIST 33