Review

Mountain tension… “Everest is another beast,” we are told early on in Baltasar Kormákur’s true-life tale, the first of many warning shots fired. Majestic yet unforgiving, the world’s highest mountain really does seem like a wild animal that can never be tamed. Still, tell that to those who’ve ever conquered …

Poor old Max. Seems like he can’t start the day without having the sense kicked out of his skull and being left for dead in the desert. It’s like an alarm clock for him. Only with no snooze and more boots. Warner’s tie-in, while oddly divorced from the recent movie, …

I spy, Superman and the Lone Ranger… “Things could get kind of messy, end of the world, you know,” warns spy Napoleon Solo early on in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. They’re apt words for a film that busily jets around the globe while chucking in car chases, femme fatales, Nazi …

Pixar again heads the class… Fittingly for a movie set inside someone’s head, Pixar’s 15th feature is a fireworks display of fizzing ideas and bursts of imagination. By some distance the animation giant’s finest since Toy Story 3 kicked the stuffing from us all in 2010, it shows just why …

Little wonder… “I saw the punch coming a mile away but I just figured it’d be all pathetic and weak,” sneers Corey Stoll’s Darren Cross, nursing a sore jaw. “Then you figured wrong,” comes his lightning-fisted opponent’s riposte. Hold that thought, because Marvel’s Phase 2 closer might be the sucker-punch …

Road strip… Making good on its XXL, the Magic Mike sequel delivers what you’d want in a follow-up about male strippers: more flesh, more abs, more dances, the phworr factor cranked up to eleven. If this is your thang, then best watch it in an air-conditioned cinema, because the temperature …

Rogue Legacy is a blend of influences that could have gone wrong. On one side is the Metroidvania genre, 2D platformers with large explorable environments and a steady sense of progression. On the other is the rogue genre, punishing randomly-generated worlds where each death means a complete fresh start. Rogue …

Cross purposes… Proudly and openly gay director François Ozon (Potiche, 8 Women) has always loved tales of sexual fluidity and ambiguity, his characters rarely occupying a fixed, stereotypical place on the spectrum of gender relationships. His latest film, adapted from a short story by Ruth Rendell, delights in exploring the …

Trees bend and sway, storms blow across the landscape, buzzards circle overhead. The Witcher 3 (opens in new tab)’s world moves in a way that game worlds haven’t before. It’s one of the busiest ever made, and while it’s not the biggest in terms of raw square footage, it teems …

While it’s often lost in arguments about framerate, resolution and other such nonsense, one of the most positive cultural shifts in this console generation is the rise of self-publishing on consoles. Xbox One’s ID@Xbox might not exactly be Steam, but it allows games like Storm In a Teacup’s narratively ambitious …