12 h. ago A Minecraft Movie review – Jack Black and Jason Momoa star in seriously cobbled

Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess’s adventure based on the world’s favourite video game feels like one big cash-inIt’s a curious choice of title. A Minecraft Movie implies that this cynical intellectual property-rinsing exercise is one of numerous film adaptations of the enduringly popular sandbox video game. Perhaps there’s an alternative out there, a sharper, smarter, funnier version of a Minecraft movie. One with actual jokes. Or, God forbid, there may even be a worse iteration, although that’s hard to imagine. What becomes clear is that one of the key elements in the game’s popularity – the latitude it affords gamers to create their own experience – is a big stumbling block for any film adaptation of Minecraft.In the absence of a single fixed storyline the screenplay can follow, A Minecraft Movie has a cobbled-together feel, borrowing a device from Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle – and, in Jack Black, a star – and superimposing an all-purpose quest-for-an-artefact structure o...

Politics

58 h. ago South of Midnight review: A fresh, emotional action game that shines on Xbox

Xbox Game Pass is getting a cracker of a new title here on day one as South of Midnight offers a brilliantly fresh console hit combining several classic gameplay tropes

Sport

8 d. ago Hollywood continues to gamble on eventually making a great live

Nintendo announced that the live-action adaptation of the popular game series will arrive two years from now

Politics

2 w. ago Assassin's Creed Shadows: release date, gameplay and everything we know so far

The new game sees the long-running stealth action series make its long-awaited trip to Japan

Politics

3 w. ago Stuart Bingham in worrying health update as snooker star takes drastic action to solve issue blighting his game

Ball-run made it to the final of the World Grand Prix in Hong Kong despite health issues, and even beat top seed Judd Trump along the way

Politics

4 w. ago Blades of Fire's wildly customisable weapons saves it from being just another action game

MercurySteam switches 2D sci-fi for third-person action set in a dark fantasy universe with Blades of Fire, an incredibly alluring rival to the likes of God of War.

Events

4 w. ago Chess returns to the screen on Monday with Chess Masters: The Endgame

The new programme on BBC Two will be very different from 42 years ago when the eighth and final series of The Master Game was never shown due to industrial actionFour decades ago, the eighth and last series of BBC Two’s much-admired chess programme The Master Game was never screened in the UK, because of industrial action by technicians. Tony Miles defeated Anatoly Karpov in the 1983 final, the Englishman’s second victory over the then world champion after his stunning 1 e4 a6 win at the 1980 European Teams.It was the end of an iconic programme, first launched in 1975 in the wake of the Fischer-Spassky boom. The Master Game’s innovative production made it appear that the players were speaking their thoughts on the game while it was in progress. Nigel Short, later a world title challenger, competed aged 11, in 1977, when his opponent Bill Hartston asked: “Has nobody told this boy never to accept pawns from strange men?” Short went on to win the event in 1981. An entire generation of ...

Politics