State of Play will return this Friday at 11am.
Tune in live this Friday at 11am for 60+ minutes of news, gameplay updates, and announcements from game studios across the globe. February’s State of Play will spotlight eye-catching third-party and indie games headed to PS5, along with the latest from teams at PlayStation Studios.
State of Play broadcasts live February 13 at 11am NZDT on YouTube and Twitch.
Cast: Thomasin MacKenzie, Damian Lewis, Hayley Mills, Katherine Waterstone, Tom Felton
Director: Jim O'Hanlon
When
it comes to spoofing the likes of Downton Abbey, in many ways, it’s a very easy
target.
The
clipped speeches, the upstairs-downstairs shenanigans and the posh socialites
of Julian Fellowes’ hit series is rife for parody, even if the films teetered on
the unexpected edge of self-parody.
Enter Fackham Hall, a film that plumbs the puerile and fires so many sight gags, you get the sense there’s a feeling of desperation from the writers that at least something will amuse and titillate.
Unfortunately,
unless you’re of an easily amused mind or partial to a few Dad jokes here and
there, this scattershot approach to its subject leaves you wishing for the
sophistication of the likes of Airplane, The Naked Gun or the gut-bustingly
funny Top Secret.
Set in the 1930s and on the country
estate of the Davenports, a stinkingly rich and frightfully oblivious family,
it follows the fallout from daughter Rose (McKenzie, showing she’s got a wicked
streak for delivery when it counts) as she pursues an illicit courtship with
the latest addition to the downstairs staff – who may himself hold a secret.
Let’s be clear, there are attempts
at clever humour in Fackham Hall. All of its players fully immerse themselves
into the world co-created by the five writers, including comedian Jimmy Carr,
who cameos as a “hilarious” vicar who puts the wrong emphasis on words from his
liturgies to varying degrees of success.
It’s unfair to dismiss Fackham Hall as a laugh-free zone, but many of the finest moments feel ripped from the pantheon of better entrants. An extended riff on an Inspector Poirot character’s name reminds you that Abbott and Costello did it better nearly 90 years ago with their “Who’s on First?” routine; various lines feel ripped from the Leslie Nielsen school of stupidity – there’s clearly love for the wordplay (and sight gags) of the genre, including a genuinely funny Siri joke, but it all feels a little too much like it’s trying too hard at certain points.
Much like Downton Abbey itself,
Fackham Hall all resolves in a highly neat way – and some will enjoy the gentle
journey through parody.
But sadly, it feels that with a bit
more control at the writing stage and a little more taut execution, rather than
the formulaic fodder that unfurls on the screen, Fackham Hall takes its own
title and applies it to its own audience and any complaints they may have.
Cast: Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen, Callum Turner, John Early, Olga Merediz, Da'Vine Joy Randolph
Director: David Freyne
A clever twist on the idea of the afterlife, director David Freyne's take on the romcom is an unmitigated blast of creativity that basks in an afterglow that may leave you contemplating your own future.
Essentially a traditional rom-com in which the heroine questions her choices in life and ponders the path-less-taken, Eternity sees Miles Teller and Elisabeth Olsen's Larry and Joan facing their own mortality.
While she battles end-stage cancer, he dies first after he accidentally chokes on a pretzel at a gender reveal party for family (after years of nagging by Joan to leave them alone). Awaking on a train, Larry finds himself living as a younger version of himself (one of Eternity's afterlife quirks is that you get to spend the rest of your life as the version of yourself when you were happiest) and heading to the Junction, a purgatory-like station / The Terminal where his AC (afterlife coordinator) will help him through to the next stage.
But when he gets there, he's told he has only seven days to choose where next to go - prompting him to plead with his AC Anna (Randolph, excellent throughout) to let him wait for Joan's arrival.
However, when Joan arrives, she finds her own afterlife thrown into confusion when her first husband Luke (a suave Turner) shows up, telling her he waited 67 years in the Junction for her after he died during the Korean War....
Eternity takes a great premise and imbues the tired trope with an (after)life full of quirk, warmth and whimsy.
From endless sight gags about what other afterlives have on offer and which the confused Larry and Joan should choose, Eternity makes much use of its relative chamber-piece approach to the story. But there are weighty philosophical issues in this, which never once are thrown at audiences or bog down the story.
There's a distinct feeling of what would you do in a similar position, while also leaving you pondering on accepting what you have now and possibly forever. These are big concepts which could pull down a film like this, but the warmth of the central players and the light touch of the script helps to keep things breezy for the most part. (A middle section could do with a trim, in truth.)
Eternity bristles with creativity and its trio make for timeless versions of the romcom heros and heroines. But rather than shade them in black and whites, all three of them play to the grey areas of their character - from Joan's inability to choose to Larry's insistence that after 65 years there's no decision through to Luke's lost life and love, it makes for an engaging love triangle.
It's a very charming film, one that provides unexpected moments of mirth and introspection and leaves wondering what forever would mean to you. On that front, spending a few hours with this Eternity is nowhere near long enough.
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Halle Berry, Barry Keoghan, Monica Barbaro, Nick Nolte
Director: Bart Layton
Crime 101’s desire to take seemingly disparate storylines and blend them into one proves to be a frustrating attempt in a film that’s slick and stylish, but somewhat disappointingly really has little under the hood.
Hemsworth
is Mike, a driver for hire and solo criminal whose push for perfection helps
him initiate a series of jewellery heists without consequence in Los Angeles.
Ruffalo is dishevelled and disheartened detective Lou, whose theory that a lone
wolf is acting is scoffed at by his colleagues and sees him roundly mocked. And
on the outskirts of this is Halle Berry’s Sharon Coombs, an insurer whose role in an
insurance company is fading due to the men in charge dismissing her as ageing
out.
When
one of Mike’s jobs goes awry and he narrowly escapes with his life, the sense
of self-doubt puts him on a path to apparent destruction – especially as his
handler (a grizzled Nolte) believes he’s no longer needed.
Director
Bart Layton knows how to layer the tension on in large swathes of Crime 101 and
despite a stellar cast, the intersecting story spends an inordinate amount of
time wallowing in set-up before delivering a payoff that’s not entirely worthy
of the journey itself.
While a wiry Keoghan adds a spruce of energy to the somewhat muted proceedings, the film never quite reaches full throttle, despite looking entirely polished and impressive. (Even a car chase sequence feels adequate and perfunctory, rather than brimming with edge-of-your-seat stakes.)
It
may look slick and may deliver in patches, but Hemsworth’s more muted and oddly twitchy performance, along with an arc that feels like it stumbles when it needs to
soar, means Crime 101’s overall feeling is one of frustration and style over substance.
Small character moments, such as the final section of the film offers, add much to what’s gone on – but while it’s solid enough, the fact it’s taken nigh on two hours to get to this stage does little to expel any niggling edges of growing annoyance. Ultimately Crime 101 promises much, but unfortunately delivers not nearly enough to justify its polished occasionally tense movie.
Cast: Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, Alison Oliver, Martin Clunes, Shazad Latif
Director: Emerald Fennell
The long-awaited Wuthering Heights remake emerges onto the cinematic screen in a mixture of would-be Gothic grotesquerie and lust.
The 2026 version of the Emily Bronte
classic opens with a dark screen, the sound of creaking and moaning bleeding
from the speakers.
It’s meant to signify something
seductive and illicit, but director Emerald Fennell’s penchant for misdirection
here kicks in and the film lures you in, promising one thing and delivering
another.
And yet, in many ways, as it takes
on the tale of revenge-fuelled would-be lovers Cathy and Heathcliff, the
overlong film follows a more traditional route than the time-swapping narrative
and leans into the snark and dark humour among the pastel-filled fever dream
that Fennell created with Promising Young Woman and Saltburn.
Early scenes focus on Heathcliff
being brought into Wuthering Heights by Cathy’s monstrous father (Doc Martin’s
Martin Clunes as you’ve never seen him) and their relationship developing as she
gets to keep him like a pet.
Fast-forward a few years and Cathy,
all petulance, pride and prissiness, is now grown-up (with Robbie inhabiting the
wide-eyed role) and at a loss with her lot in life. Worried her father’s
corraling and gambling has ruined them, and obsessed with the rich neighbours
that have moved in, she heads to meet the Lintons, before injuring herself and
unable to return for weeks.
When she does, she’s a changed
woman, one who seems more hellbent on pursuing her awakening desires until a
single moment separates her and Heathcliff for years…
“Wuthering Heights”, as Fennell has
deemed it, captures the lusty confused desire of teenage years and sets it
against the aesthetics that its director has become known for.
Vibrant colours burst out from the
screen as Cathy herself blooms and a dollhouse motif that’s used throughout
hints at her own frustrations in among the Gothic architecture and wind-swept
landscapes of the wild moor on her doorstep.
And yet, in amongst the sumptuous
visuals and thrillingly evocative score and solid performances, there’s little
to grasp onto for emotional depth here. Whether it’s deliberate or not, not
once does the tragedy of the piece feel like it’s come to the fore. Both Heathcliff
and Cathy are monstrous and selfish in their own ways, their obsessions fuelled
by a twisted revenge that only harms themselves, rather than those around them.
Lashings of humour outweigh the
growing sense of toxic nastiness – particularly Alison Oliver’s Lady Isabelle,
a girl lost and oblivious to the world around her, obsessed with dolls and
crafting them from people’s actual hair.
In truth, “Wuthering Heights” could
have lost maybe 20 minutes or so, and still have fit the director’s desires –
but its sex-fuelled desire and longing still feels as relevant today as it did
then – even if the film’s occasionally shallow take on the complexities of
Bronte’s work is lost to a 21st century audience.
Cast: Elle Fanning, Dimitrius Schuster-Kolomatangi
Director: Dan Trachtenberg
The director of Prey, the Predator movie that revamped the franchise, returns with a new twist on the alien hunter series.
In this latest, shot in New Zealand, the film switches the traditional point of view from the victims of the hunter to the hunter himself (NZ actor Dimitrius Schuster-Kolomatangi.)
The latest Predator starts brutally as the runt of the litter Dek (Schuster-Koloamatangi) is taught to fight by his brother Kwei. Knowing Dek's fate is to be cast out and executed by their father due to his weakness, there's a frisson of genuine heft in the film to start off with as we're forced to side with the killer creature that's terrorised others in the past.
But the shift to a softer predator only belies the general feeling of this film that's essentially an Odd Couple buddy riff with some sci-fi, a large dose of the wider mythology and a cute cuddly Grogu CGI buddy.
When Dek is sent to the deadly planet Genna on his own self-imposed mission to kill a creature, claim a trophy and head home for revenge, the stage is set for a hunt in the vein of prior Predator films.
However, what Trachtenberg does is to subvert expectations, by pitting the planet with all its deadly flora and fauna against him. Dek's mission to self-empowerment is further complicated by the discovery of half-synthetic Thia (a pixie humour-filled Fanning, who gets to showcase two sides of the same character thanks to the story) who promises to help him, in return for reuniting her with her missing torso.
To say more about Predator: Badlands is to diminish the slight narrative and to rob the audience of what unfurls. Needless to say, this B-movie creature feature lends itself more to the comedic than the bloody, but never scrimps on the action sequences (which in truth, become more garbled and amorphous the more CGI is involved).
Yet what emerges from Predator: Badlands is an intriguing expansion of the world that's spawned plenty of films since the first in 1987 - and Trachtenberg is clearly at home as he builds a world that he's clearly intent on populating with critters, threats and camaraderie.
The mix doesn't always quite work and the over-reliance on the CGI-led antics lets Predator: Badlands down in parts. But along the way, the journey is a genuinely enjoyable one that leans into exactly what you'd want from a film like this - and one which has seen its violence dialled down and confined to alien shenanigans to secure an R13 rating.
More than just a perverse coming-of-age film that's set in the Predator universe, and blessed by performances from a truly impressive Fanning and a solidly physical Schuster-Koloamatangi, Predator Badlands shows there's real potential again in this universe - and while it remains to be seen where Trachtenberg will take it next, there's some level of security knowing this is a talent who always surprises within the genre (witness Prey) and yet keeps it in the confines of what's expected.
Predator:Badlands is streaming on Disney+ now.PlayStation State of Play showcase State of Play will return this Friday at 11am. Tune in live this Friday at 11am for 60+ minutes of news,...
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