GAMES
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BATTLEFIELD ONE
RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 21
Battlefield One, which was previewed at the recent E3 industry show, has copped a bit of criticism. The concern is its Great War premise, what with the trenches, the mud, the mustard gas, the invention of modern killing machines and the sheer number of lives wasted so negligently not being something you want to trivialise. Make of that what you will; from what we know, Battlefield One will mostly skip over the pointless war-of-inches part and cherry-pick the more dynamic bits, like driving a Zeppelin, dogfighting a biplane or piloting one of those bizarre early tanks, though trench fighting will play a role. It also promises support for 64 players simultaneously, vast maps and dynamic weather, which apparently will affect how you play. It's not known at this stage whether, come Christmas Day, the Tommies and the Hun set down their weapons, exchange gifts and play soccer in No-Man's Land. AH
CLASSIC
DESPERATE LIVING
NEW LINE, R
"I have never found the antics of deviants to be one bit amusing," declares freaked-out Baltimore housewife Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) – but if everybody felt that way, John Waters wouldn't have a career. This 1977 extravaganza lacks Waters' usual star Divine but shows his trangressive imagination at its wildest, suggesting a berserk Rainer Werner Fassbinder adaptation of The Wizard of Oz. On the lam after a semi-accidental killing, Peggy and her maid (Jean Hill) find a haven of sorts in the junkyard township of Mortville, populated largely by lesbians and their male underlings and ruled by Queen Carlotta (the inimitable Edith Massey), an infantile tyrant who guzzles marshmallows and schemes to infect her subjects with rabies. The plot incorporates sexual assault, cannibalism, and an especially grotesque sex-change operation, along with reams of unprintable dialogue delivered in the shrill manner peculiar to Waters' work. Yet the effect is oddly benign as well as wildly funny: Waters' only real goal is to make us laugh, and he never falls into the trap of measuring his "deviant" characters against any supposed standard of the normal. JW
DVD
LOOPER
ROADSHOW, MA
The writer-director Rian Johnson (Brick, The Brothers Bloom) has managed to infuse an unlikely amount of soul into some abstract-sounding genre projects, including this 2012 science-fiction thriller, founded on a classic stoned nerd premise. Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as a hitman who specialises in disposing of anonymous assassination targets sent from the future; when one of these targets is revealed as his older self (Bruce Willis), he's forced to take drastic steps to regain control over his destiny.The notion of a closed loop follows logically from Johnson's tendency to set stories in bespoke universes sealed off from the real world, giving maximum scope for invented slang, wacky nicknames and hard-boiled glamour; as ever, he directs in the manner of an eager film student, with a fondness for low angles and rapid dolly shots, and a distinctive staccato editing style. Just as characteristic, though, is the way that the assumptions underlying the adolescent fantasy gradually fall apart; Johnson is in line to make the next Star Wars film, and it will be fascinating to see if something similar winds up happening there as well. JW