GAMES
F1 2015, PS4, XBox One
After several false starts (Project Cars, anyone?), we finally have a cracker of a car race game for the new-gen consoles, and it's as old-school as they come. One of the best titles for the original GameBoy was an F1 sim, with pixels as big as your nose yet, somehow, exquisitely sensitive physics that made it addictively tricky to play. This contemporary descendant of that distant ancestor has, as you would expect, near-realistic renderings of the current roster of tracks (Albert Park among them) and an insane level of detail that's up there with real F1 racing, with adjustable everything, realistically underwhelming engine sounds from the new turbo motors and - our favourite bit - on-board radio that blurts out of the controller. Hardcore, but loads of fun, too. AH
DVD
THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION Umbrella (PG)
Who is Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller), you ask? Why, he's a half-Japanese, half-American test pilot, brain surgeon, nuclear physicist and rock star who gets caught up in a war between extra-dimensional aliens in W.D. Richter's zany 1984 science-fiction adventure. It's a highly quotable cult favourite that tips its hat to the pulp novels of the 1930s as well as Thomas Pynchon and Orson Welles. Jeff Goldblum co-stars as "New Jersey", the latest recruit to Buckaroo's band, who inexplicably dresses like a singing cowboy; John Lithgow is a riot as mad scientist Dr Lizardo, an amalgam of Tesla and Mussolini who keeps deliberately electrocuting himself. Ahead of its time in many ways, the film parodies the tendency of pop culture heroes to get lost in their own grandiose mythologies; the critic Leonard Maltin complained the result felt like coming in at the second chapter of a Saturday matinee serial, and he wasn't wrong, the question being how far you're prepared to accept disorientation as a feature rather than a bug. For my money, Goldblum's air of perplexed amusement has never seemed more apt. JW
FREE-TO-AIR
HUMANS, AUGUST 3, ABC2, 8.40pm
Based on a Swedish program, this British sci-fi series has been a huge hit in the UK. Part sci-fi action thriller and part family drama, its premise is well worn, but well executed. It's set in a "parallel present" where artificial intelligence has advanced to where the latest gadget is not an iPod but a "synth" ("synthetic human"); used primarily as robotic servants. Synths have become the new underclass – cleaners, security guards, and sex workers; but a small group has become sentient. It's a familiar narrative, but what sets Humans apart is the pace: rather than a frenetic machine-versus-man technological singularity showdown, facts slowly unravel, and it seems the machines aren't after all-out power – and it's not immediately clear who is the villain. A co-production between Channel 4 and US network AMC, the cast is mostly British, although William Hurt stars as a retired engineer who helped create the synths, with an unnatural attachment to his synth. Other impressive names include Gemma Chan, Katherine Parkinson and Rebecca Front (The Thick of It). A nice break from British costume drama. KN
DVD
KIDNAPPING MR HEINEKEN, Becker Film Group (M)
Based on the 1983 kidnapping of Freddy Heineken, heir to his family's beer empire, this film was shot in Amsterdam and Belgium, working hard to keep an '80s feel about the streetscape. The backdrop adds depth to the scenario of five mates desperate for money in hard times cooking up a plan to kidnap the richest man they could think of. The kidnappers – played by Jim Sturgess, Sam Worthington, Ryan Kwanten, Mark van Eeuwen and Tom Cocquerel – succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, although their friendship dissipated as they waited for payday ($US50million). Anthony Hopkins is brilliant as Freddy Heineken; he never wavers in captivity, requesting all kinds of favours and promising money and freedom to his kidnappers if they let him go. Sturgess and Worthington are tragically entwined as leaders of the ragtag gang. In the roles of Cor Van Hout and Willem Holleeder they push one another into more daring than either could muster on their own. While the others are captured, these two flee to Paris, only to be captured when Van Hout spirals into cowardice. JK
DVD
THE CARDINAL, Warner Unrated
In his heyday, the producer-director Otto Preminger had the strange ability to transform socially conscious bestsellers into inward-looking films that avoid any direct statement. This 1963 drama about an ambitious Catholic priest typifies his perverse approach – an anti-epic with a calculated absence at its centre. Played with wooden unease by the barely remembered Tom Tryon, the protagonist Stephen is gifted, handsome, resolute, full of promise; yet he's never quite his own man, and his loyalty to church dogma leads to repeated failures on a human level. Preminger films this pilgrim's progress in his usual hands-off manner, the camera following the action from a discreet distance; as Stephen travels back and forth between the US and Europe, he seems to thread his way through a maze which is physical as well as moral, giving a literal meaning to the phrase "corridors of power". Rather than openly taking sides, Preminger purports to give all his characters a fair hearing – but this seeming objectivity masks a scepticism rare for Hollywood at any period, questioning not only Catholicism but any form of faith. JW
