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Genre:Action

Rating:T (Teen)

Devloper/Publisher:Warner Bros, DC, Rocksteady, Eidos

Released:Aug, 25 2009

Review Published:March 11, 2010 / 8:11 am

Platform:Featured, PC, PS 3, Xbox 360

VIOLENCE: The violence in this game is bloodless and not gory for the most part. A drug transforms inmates into a ugly beast, and this change can be kind of gross, but no blood or gore is shown. In normal combat Batman knocks his enemies unconscious (he never kills them), but occasionally he will break their arm or their leg as an ‘instant KO’.

LANGUAGE: The language is this game was your usual Teen rated fare. ‘Oh my God’ is used multiple times, as well as b–ch, d–m, hell, and a–.

SEXUAL CONTENT: Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy both wear revealing outfits, and Joker cracks lewd jokes from time to time.

SPOILERS
DARK ENVIRONMENT: The game features a very, very dark and oppressive environment. The Joker leaves dead bodies strewn across the Asylum, and sometimes in horrifying ways. When Batman is exposed to Scarecrow’s gas, the Asylum gets even creepier: Batman imagines himself talking to his dead parents (gruesome white ghouls in body bags), and in one instance Batman sees himself eating a rat.

END SPOILERS

Popping this game into my Xbox 360 console, you’d expect a dark, sinister game that would try to equal the darkness in the movie peer, The Dark Knight. Surprisingly, the game draws absolutely nothing from the movie: The characters are like they were in the old TV shows and comicsâ?¦ the classic â??Batmanâ?? crew is back. But, the game is still quite dark, but is greatly enjoyable.

The game begins with Batman driving to the Arkham Asylum with Joker tied up in the passenger seat. Things go downhill once Joker and Batman get inside the Asylum thoughâ?¦ Joker had been planning going to the Asylum for a very long time, and Gotham is soon at risk once again.

GAMEPLAY: The gameplay in this game was astonishing. The game never got old, and kept me hooked from beginning to end. Itâ??s a game that uses aspects of multiple different genres, and pushes those genres to near perfection.

There are multiple difficulties which cater from the most casual player to the most hardcore. The controls are not clumsy at all, and they are very easy to learn. The soundtrack of the game is epic to say the least, and the sound effects were top notch.

This is one of the few games where finding all the hidden things and figuring out the secrets was incredibly fun. Most games I donâ??t even worry about the side stuff, but this game had me hooked. The Riddler makes his appearance and gives you hordes of riddles to solve as a side quest. You can choose not to solve them all, but it proves to be as fun as completing that main storyline if you do.

That being said, letâ??s get to the nitty-gritty of what is keeping this game from being the perfect Batman game.

VIOLENCE: The violence in this game is hard to write about. In some cases, it is extremely violent, yet at the same time the violence is minimal. The violence is completely bloodless, yet it can be disturbing at times.

In normal combat Batman knocks  his enemies unconscious (he never kills them), but occasionally he will break their arm or their leg as an â??instant KOâ??. When he breaks a limb we hear the snap and the cry of pain from the inmate, which can be kind of disturbing. Batman can also hit enemies with his Batarangs, which just knocks the enemy/enemies to the floor.

Batmanâ??s rivals, however, are not so kind. Joker leaves dead bodies strewn all across Arkham, and is some cases he does this in a very disturbing way. Joker strangles a guard with his handcuffs in the beginning. We see the body of a turncoat guard strapped to a gully with a green smile scrawled on his face. A few other less disturbing instances occur as well, but the ones mentioned are the worst.

Also worth mentioning, some inmates are injected with a drug that transforms them into Hulk-like monsters. This transformation is quite disgusting in some cases.

LANGUAGE: The language is this game was your usual Teen rated fare. â??Oh my Godâ?? is used multiple times, as well as bâ??ch, dâ??m, hell, and aâ??.

SEXUAL CONTENT: Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy wear cleavage bearing outfits, but Poison Ivyâ??s outfit goes even further than that. For her lower section she wears a tight green thong that leaves very little to the imagination. Also the Joker cracks lewd jokes from time to time.

DARK ENVIRONMENT: Letâ??s face it. There are a lot of games out these days that feature very dark and disturbing environments. Gears of War and Left 4 Dead are the main two that come to mind, and sadly, Batman: Arkham Asylum ranks right up there with those two dark and creepy titles.

As I said in the Violence section, Joker leaves corpseâ??s strewn all across Arkham. Lots of times he scrawls smiley faces on them, or does some other sinister deed to the dead bodies before he moves on to his next victim. It can be very disturbing.

At one point in the game, the more â??insaneâ?? inmates are let loose, and their actions can sometimes be disturbing as well. One such inmate is seen laughing and giggling while prodding a dead guardâ??s body. Other inmates are seen eating rats.

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SPOILERS

Probably the most disturbing part of the game, however, is the Scarecrow. When Batman is exposed to the Scarecrowâ??s gas, the world turns into a terrible, fearful place. Bugs that donâ??t exist crawl all over everything. Batman sees himself batting at things that arenâ??t there, and in one instance Batman sees himself eating a rat when he is under the influence of Scarecrowâ??s gas. Batman imagines himself talking to his dead parents, who are ghastly white-eyed ghouls in body bags, and in a few instances he has to fight skeletons.

END SPOILERS

CONCLUSION: This game is one of the few games that I will call â??amazingâ??. The gameplay is great, itâ??s a fun, innovative game with a great storyline and plot, but there are the issues with the games content. If you are easily disturbed, or just plain donâ??t like anything dark or oppressive then this game is not for you. If you can handle the content, I highly recommend this game and I can almost guarantee you will not be disappointed.

Release Date: February 19, 2010
Rating: R (for disturbing violent content, language and some nudity)
Genre: Suspense, Thriller, Adaptation
Run Time: 138 min.
Director: Martin Scorcese
Actors: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer, Max von Sydow, Patricia Clarkson

Prepare to be put through the wringer with Shutter Island.

Dreamlike and full of haunting imagery and music, the film is based on a novel by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone) and directed by Martin Scorcese (Goodfellas, The Departed, The Last Temptation of Christ). The movie is a spectacular downer with several moments of great emotional anguish. It ends on such a grim note that it’s hard to imagine anyone enjoying the film.

Is that a deal-breaker? By no means.

Sure, Shutter Island is depressing, but it’s also potent, with directorial nods to Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrickâ??most notably to Vertigo and The Shining. Like those films, it will disturb and unsettle viewers hoping for more upbeat fare, but it will reward others who can absorb the story’s horrors.

Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Teddy Daniels, a U.S. marshal who arrives at Shutter Island, site of the Ashcliffe Psychiatric Correctional Facility for the mentally unbalanced. He’s there with his new partner, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), to investigate the disappearance of a patient, Rachel (Emily Mortimer), from the facility.

The institution is tightly controlled by security staff and Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), who, in 1954â??the year the movie is setâ??is fighting battles within the medical community. He’s pushing for newer therapies to treat the mentally disturbed patients at Shutter Island, and for an end to the barbaric treatments of earlier decades.

Daniels, it’s slowly revealed, could use Cawley’s help. All business on the surface, he’s plagued by visions he can’t shake of his wife and children, who died in a fire. As he digs further into the disappearance of Rachel, he becomes ever more deeply haunted by his pastâ??not only his family tragedy, but his wartime experience and images of the death camp he helped to liberate.

The workers and inmates at Shutter Island speak to Daniels in a manner that sometimes comes across as rehearsed. Is there more to Daniels’ pursuit than even he realizes? Is Daniels pursuing Rachel or running from his own past?

The film’s conclusion is drawn out, and its horrors are so disturbing that audience members will justifiably ask if Daniels’ torment needs to be depicted at such length. But Shutter  Island‘s most disturbing images are its most memorableâ??just as Kubrick’s images of murdered children and gushing blood are among the most memorable in (and essential to) The Shining, and Hitchcock’s shots of the grief-stricken Jimmy Stewart are what linger most from Vertigo.

DiCaprio gives Daniels a fragile bravado that slowly disintegrates (his turn in Revolutionary Road, set within a year of Shutter Island, suggests that he excels at playing characters from 1950s), while Ruffalo plays it appropriately cool as his partner. Kingsley stands out as Cawley and the great Max von Sydow adds acting heft as another doctor on the island. Yet it’s several smaller supporting performances from Emily Mortimer, Jackie Earle Haley and Elias Koteas that up the creepy quotient and add significantly to the film’s spooky atmosphere.

Even better is the look of the film with production design from Dante Ferretti (Sweeney Todd, The Black Dahlia) and brilliant image-making from cinematographer Robert Richardson, who shot Scorcese’s The Aviator and Bringing Out the Dead.

This is not a film for those looking for a fun time. It’s a serious, somber tale of death and disorder, and it is not easily forgotten. Don’t be surprised if you shudder more than once, and are still shivering later, at the thought of Shutter Island‘s story.

CAUTIONS:

• Language/Profanity: Lord’s name taken in vain; multiple obscenities, including several uses of the “f” word; an inmate discusses his violent sexual encounters; racial epithet.
• Smoking/Drinking/Drugs: Liquor and cigars are offered and consumed; more smoking at several points throughout the film; wife asks Teddy if he’s ever sober; drug treatments are contrasted favorably to earlier methods of treating the mentally disturbed; an alleged conspiracy involving drug shipments; pipe smoking.
• Sex/Nudity: Naked woman in a painting; men shower and wrap towels around themselves, but nothing below the waist is shown; later, male frontal and rear nudity is briefly seen; a man urinates in public, but is photographed from behind, so nothing is visible; kissing.
• Violence/Crime: Images of bleeding, disfigured soldier; bodies piled in death camp; in an imagined scene, blood runs through Teddy’s laced fingers; an inmate tells of cutting a woman and making her scream; a woman is covered in blood, with dead children at her feet; extended shots of drowned children.
• Religion: A discussion about whether Teddy believes in God; a man says he thought God gave us moral order; a man says God gave us violence to wage war in His honor.

Release Date: March 12, 2010

Rating: R (for violence and language)
Genre: Drama, Thriller, War
Run Time: 115 min.
Director: Paul Greengrass
Actors: Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Amy Ryan, Yigol Naor, Said Faraj, Khalid Abdalla, Raad Rawi

The 1980s Rambo franchise brought Sylvester Stallone more fame for his portrayal of a Vietnam vet who fights mistreatment at home and rescues POWs in Asia. Film critics criticized the movies, particularly Rambo: First Blood Part II, suggesting that the films represented a fantasy in which America had a chance to refightâ??and this time, winâ??the Vietnam War.

Much of the audience who showed up en masse to see the Rambo movies were too young to remember the truth about America’s involvement in Vietnam. Critics feared that core group may have been susceptible to the alternate history presented by Stallone’s movies. One main criticism was that the films were too war-happy, too conservative in their vision.

Green Zone, an Iraq War drama that reteams director Paul Greengrass with star Matt Damon, falls into the same trap as Rambo did, but this time from the political left. In the film, a U.S. Army officer tasked with uncovering weapons of mass destruction in Iraq learns that his efforts will never bear fruit because of shady dealings by U.S. officials who falsified intelligence. Angry at this betrayal, he confronts his adversary, rats out the official to a journalist who discovers she’s been spun by the same official, and exposes the government’s actions before the war escalates.

Set in 2003, the film stars Damon as Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller, on the ground in Iraq to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that, frustratingly, aren’t turning up. He quickly concludes that the intelligence on WMD is bad and is not reassured by the insistence from haughty Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear) about the accuracy of the intel.

When Wall Street Journal reporter Lawrie Dane (Amy Ryan) befriends Miller, they work together to unearth the identity of a key source on WMD intelligence. CIA agent Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson), a grizzled skeptic on U.S. Middle East policy, assists Miller in his efforts to counter Poundstone, while Freddy (Khalid Abdalla), an Iraqi, leads Miller to a group of Saddam Hussein loyalists who could form the core of an insurgency within the country.

The film, employing Greengrass’ trademark “shaky-cam” visual approach, throws viewers into the street-level dangers Miller and his men encounter as they search for WMD. However, the action is chaotic and not as coherent as some of Greengrass’ earlier films with Damon. Moreover, the timing of the film’s release is awkward, as it opens the weekend after Iraqi citizens went to the polls to participate in democratic elections that were broadly hailed as a  model for the region. Yet the movie leaves room only for scoffing whenever a character suggests that a democratic Iraq might come from U.S. efforts in the country.

More problematic is the entirely predictable storyline. Anyone who followed the debate over intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq War, and in the aftermath of the American occupation, knows the story of Green Zone before it unfolds. It doesn’t help that none of the principal characters has more than one dimension. Miller, after a brief early stretch where he clings to the idea that he might turn up WMD, spends the bulk of the film barely containing his righteous fury. Kinnear exudes smarmy arrogance and nothing else. Ryan is a bit better as she slowly discovers that she’s been used, but her character isn’t in many scenes.  Best of all is Abdalla, although his character, like Ryan’s, drops out of the film for long stretches, particularly toward the film’s finale, when his presence is sorely missed.

Greengrass and Damon teamed for two of the Jason Bourne films (The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum), to much better effect. Although the third Bourne film revolved around issues that parallel some of the concerns in Green Zone, its main concern was a characterâ??Jason Bourneâ??and not a particular international conflict. Green Zone is about an issueâ??the Iraq Warâ??rather than about its characters, who are less individuals than stand-ins for viewpoints on the war. The good guys and bad guys are never in doubt.

The Iraq War hasn’t been a big winner at the box office, but this big-budget star vehicle will put that to the test. Shot by Barry Ackroydâ??who also was the director of photography on Kathyrn Bigelow‘s The Hurt Lockerâ??the film often looks great, even though the film’s rapid editing doesn’t allow viewers to linger long on any one shot.

Given that The Hurt Locker, fresh off its Best Picture Oscar victory, is being re-released the same week that Green Zone debuts, audiences have a clear choice: They can see Greengrass’ obvious, highly political film that screams, “Bush lied! People died!” or they can watch Bigelow’s apolitical depiction of soldiers in the battlefield and the complex toll such a lifestyle can take on a soldier’s psyche.

One film is preachy, one subtle. One tells, the other shows.

The better choice is obvious:  Go with the clear winner.

CAUTIONS:

• Language/Profanity: Lord’s name taken in vain; lots of foul language, including several uses of the “f” word.
• Smoking/Drinking/Drugs: Beer drinking.
• Sex/Nudity: None; poolside images of women in bikinis.
• Violence/Crime: Gunfire, explosions, bombs and other war violence; sniper fire; man hit with butt of a gun, then slapped; helicopter shot down; abuse of suspects detained on battlefield.

WOW Hits 2010 collects 30 of the years biggest contemporary gospel/Christian rock hits over the span of two discs, including “There Will Be a Day” (Jeremy Camp ), “Whatever You’re Doing (Something Heavenly)” (Sanctus Real), “Keys to the Kingdom” (Group 1 Crew), and “Yours [Radio Version with New Verse]” from CCM giant Steven Curtis Chapman.

I have always had a soft spot for Casting Crowns, even if I have a less than soft spot for the rest of the Pop Worship genre, and I was excited to be able to hear the New CD. After the first couple of songs I began to worry. The CD begins in a typical Casting Crowns Song, The Title song â??Until the Whole World Hearsâ? sounds like it belongs on their previous album â??The Altar and the Doorâ??. As I said I began to worry that this Cd  was going to be nothing more than a continuation of the previous album. This isnâ??t quite the negative that it could be. Casting Crowns has a very set and distinctive sound that I find carrying through all of their albums. When done properly it gives the Band a signature sound. When done Improperly it simply makes all the songs sound the same. â??Until the Whole World Hearsâ? walks the thin line of â??signature soundâ? while only crossing into the â??What album is this again?â? territory a couple of times.

The highest-charting Christian album on the Billboard charts since 2006, Awake could be tagged as Skillet’s mainstream breakthrough on that fact alone. Certainly, the band’s monster modern rock does sound like it could slip onto on active rock playlist — maybe not quite in 2009, but earlier in the decade, when metallic rockers heavy on the guitar downstrokes, and power ballads with chant-along vocals were relatively common. That’s not to say that Skillet sounds out-of-step with the times  there’s still a gleam to the Howard Benson production that sounds modern — and they do mange to imprint their own identity on this sometimes-generic brand of contemporary rock, thanks to their communal vocals, with male and female voices trading off, and skyscraper hooks. Skillet also don’t always focus solely on religion, as many of their songs are grounded in inspirational positivity, so that’s another reason why Awake finds the band poised to break into the mainstream.

Style: Pop country; compare to Lady Antebellum, Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood

Top tracks: “He Holds Everything,” “No Changin’ Us,” “Come to Jesus”

From Nashville’s Fan Fair to the Grand Ole Opry, Point of Grace employed the acoustic affections of 2007’s How You Live to test the waters of country music. And with plenty of mandolin pickin’, fiddle chops, and steel guitar chimes percolating their latest, the Grace girls officially take the plunge. While some may criticize the shift, faith-based candor still permeates hooky choruses of life and love, and their vocals sound more at ease than ever with a rootsy approach to their signature harmonies. Having weathered changes in membership and style over the past few years, No Changin’ Us is a homecoming and a fresh start for one of Christian music’s most popular assets.

If Christian rock were like actual rock, TobyMac would be Chris Daughtry. A former member of celebrated trio DC Talk and now a solo star in his own right, he’s one of the few Christian rock artists a secularist might have actually heard of.

“Tonight,” TobyMac’s awkward, endearing new disc, wants to be everything to everyone: It’s a jumble of Auto-Tuned faux alt-rock (“Tonight”), kiddie rap (“Loud N Clear,” which features an appearance from half-pint MC/TobyMac offspring TruDog ’10), choppy funk rock (“Changed Forever”) and even reggae (“Break Open the Sky”).

Christian rock used to be justifiably notorious for its insularity and cheesiness, but after the crossover success of bands like Evanescence and Switchfoot, audiences are savvier than they used to be. They probably realize by  now that TobyMac makes for the world’s least convincing hipster, and that tracks like the Black Eyed Peas-evoking “Funky Jesus Music,” with its basketball metaphors and baffling “Jesus blazer” references, just make things worse.

TobyMac is a gifted melodicist – there may be no contemporary Christian rocker better at writing hooks – but an inconsistent stylist. “Tonight” is less an album than a collection of clashing genres that adults think “the kids” are into. The less-adorned tracks (like the hook-a-minute “Get Back Up”) can be, well, heavenly; the gimmicky ones, like the funk-ish “ShowStopper,” on which TobyMac unconvincingly sing-raps (“You came to ride the highs of this junk / Baby, we came to guarantee the big krunk”) are wince-inducing.

Recommended tracks: “City on Our Knees,” “Get Back Up”