At Darren's World of Entertainment - a movie, DVD and game review blog.
The latest movie and DVD reviews - plus game reviews as well. And cool stuff thrown in when I see it.
Rating: R18 Released by Roadshow Home Ent Amy Schumer has had a blistering 2015 and this collection of her two series goes someway to explaining why. Mixing stand up, skits and NY set street chats complete with some near the knuckle humour, Schumer skewers perceptions, cooks a snook at Hollywood sexism and generally elicits as many laughs as she can. It's helped by some strong writing which mocks the double standards and some moments that shock; there's no target off limits and no boundary too hard to push. Explicit humour is threaded through here and there, but make the contrast between the hypocrises that Schumer's trying to demonstrate and actual attitudes stand out. If season one is strong, season two sees the show and its humour hit its straps and vault its own ambition. Complete with a mischievous twinkle in her eye and a geniality which is disarming, Inside Amy Schumer is a devious treat, a daredevil sketch show which hits more often than it misses
The Doctor is in.... a festive mood with this collection of the 10 Christmas episodes the show's dished out since its revamp.
Over a 4 disc set, you get to relive David Tennant's 6 Festive outings, including his demise and Matt Smith's more knockabout Xmas eps (apart from the one where he died obviously) and Peter Capaldi's first Xmas outing. (Though one wonders why this set wasn't released in the New Year after the latest with River Song)
Complete with a bonus feature where Rufus Hound takes a look at the Christmas specials and why they work, this set is a must for any Who fan - sure, they've all been released before, but when you have eps like The Christmas Invasion and Voyage of the Damned, you can see why it's all worth it.
Ongoing threads will make little sense to the casual viewer, but Dr Who this time around has never been afraid to embrace some of the excess of the festive period at the expense of the spectacle.
A nice collection of 5 graphically drawn cards makes this set a real treasure but to the die hard Who fan it's more a stocking filler as these are out already in many different forms.
Cast: Simon Pegg, Kate Beckinsale, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Eddie Izzard, Rob Riggle
Director: Terry Jones
It could have been so good.
Using the remaining Monty Python team as the voices for aliens and having Simon Pegg as a hapless human caught in their plan, Absolutely Anything is a film that never quite reaches its potential.
Pegg plays sadsack teacher Neil, who's desperately in love with his downstairs neighbour Catherine (the ever radiant Kate Beckinsale) but who lacks the edge to do anything about it.
One day on a whim, a group of aliens presiding on high choose a random human to be granted the powers to do "absolutely anything" with - and end up bestowing this on Neil....
Riffing on Bruce Almighty, Absolutely Anything is another of those movies which had some serious comic potential, but ends up feeling like a sketch the original Monty Python team would have jettisoned or used as an ongoing non-sequitur gag in one of their films.
Boasting an incredible Brit cast (Joanna Lumley, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Eddie Izzard) who are largely wasted, Pegg flounders as Neil, trying to imbue the usual loser character with a bit of edge, but floundering around dealing with a series of silly scenarios that border on the tedious rather than the chucklesome in this what if an idiot had all the powers in the world. Pegg channels his usual charm as the hapless guy caught in the middle, and he gels well with the gorgeous Beckinsale's just looking for a decent guy Catherine, but it never quite hangs together as it should.
Rob Riggle pushes things over the edge as Catherine's stalker and even Robin Williams, in what would be his last role, adds to the syrupy mess as Dennis, Neil's dog, who's biscuit and trouser-leg obsessed. The Americans add little to this comedy except to compound the clumsiness of its execution.
Channeling some of Douglas Adams' Hitch-hikers Guide To The Galaxy's Vogons, the Python's CGI renderings are nicely executed, but poorly scripted and fail to build on the premise of their return.
Quite frankly, Absolutely Anything would have worked better if the story had put aside its more fart-obsessed silliness and embraced its childish premise; as a kids' comedy, this film would have had some real legs and a more amused audience as it heads towards its Python-esque elements of silliness in its final stages.
NZ Audiences may get one moment of laughs when there are declarations of war towards the end, but quite frankly, Absolutely Anything offers very few laughs elsewhere. It's a mess of a film and a travesty of wasted talent.
Cast: Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano, Jane Fonda
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Following up the Oscar-winning The Great Beauty, Italian director Paolo Sorrentino once again heads into whimsical and philosophical territory with this two hour, occasionally meandering piece.
Caine is famous and retired composer Fred Ballinger, who's holidaying at a sumptuous hotel occupied by quirky individuals, and friends. One of those is screen writer Mick Boyle (Keitel) who's teaching a group of writers how to finish off their screenplay in the hopes of turning it into a film and making his way back to Hollywood.
Ballinger meanwhile, is being courted by the Queen's Emissary (Doctor Who and Inbetweeners star Alex MacQueen) who is on a mission to get the maestro to perform his Simple Songs symphony for Prince Phillip's birthday, because according to the emissary, he never stops listening to the Simple songs. But Ballinger outright refuses, for personal reasons.
Also in the hotel is actor Jimmy Tree (Dano) trying to escape from the role which made him big, and Ballinger's daughter (Rachel Weisz) who's just been broken up with. Plus a portly former footballer who bears an uncanny resemblance to Maradona who just wants to be left alone.
Populated by characters and accentuated versions thereof, Home has moments of extreme beauty and moments of extreme tedium, as the philosophising continues and moments of profundity are unleashed on the audience. And yet at times, thanks to some truly wondrous eye candy and vistas that are committed to the screen, he almost pulls it off as the idiosyncracies are dialled up to 11. (A scene where the maestro sits alone in a field full of cows and conducts them, with their cowbells ringing springs squarely to mind - some will adore this indulgence, others will despise it)
With ruminations on ageing and people's place in the world, this is Caine's film by far, his almost mullet-like grey hair and sunken eyes suggesting a life well lived and occasionally regretted. As the acceptance of truths storyline progresses, all the other supporting players fade away into inconsequence which is a real shame - Keitel's ultimate fate never really has the gravitas that it should and Weisz's humane role as the woman scorned falls further out of the director's orbit.
That's some of the problem of Youth, a film whose mournful and reflective tone seems to have nowhere to go and is trapped in its own esoteric and quirky surroundings, a sort of Grand Budapest Hotel for the OAP population. Perhaps this kind of film works better in foreign language where the words drip with a beauty that's hard to translate to English; no matter, though, Youth with its occasionally deep vein of humour and endless philosophy works on some levels, but not others.
Rating: M Released by Madman Home Ent Those expecting a mumblecore classic from the director of Computer Chess Andrew Bujalski will be completely upended by this rom-com with a prestige cast.
Centring on two personal trainers in a gym Kat and Trevor, played by Marvel stalwart Cobie Smulders and Guy Pearce, it's the story of Danny (a very laconic Kevin Corrigan) who ends up at the Power 4 Life gym when he ends up being dumped.
Divorced and minted, he's the very epitome of boredom - in fact, he hits up local chatrooms at night to offer $200 for someone to come round and hook up his big screen TV. But his desire to hook up is taken to the next level when he meets up with Kat, who offers him home improvement fitness training.
Uptight Kat is solely focussed on her work but Danny has other plans in the only way he knows how - in his shambling and amusing fashion, he starts to work away at her defences.
Meanwhile, Trevor is keen to expand his empire and the cash Danny is sitting on, proves to be just the opportunity he needs...
Results is not exactly anything approaching the film that Computer Chess was (which is perhaps a good thing as I was not one of those singing its praises) and is in fact as close to mainstream as you can possibly get with the romantic comedy genre.
While there are moments that feel looser and improvised in the script, giving you more the feel of the movement as a whole, it's fair to say that Results at times shambles and ambles toward its destination. That it gets there greatly on the charm of its leads (particularly the under-rated Corrigan) is not to damn it with faint praise, merely to highlight the fact that this is perhaps one of the lighter entrants into the festival.
But equally, it doesn't all quite gel together - Danny's story gets a little lost in the final mix and Trevor's meeting with a Russian bodybuilder (bizarrely played by Anthony Michael Hall) and his oppressed girl (Brooklyn Decker) are just two of the ingredients that feel slightly under-cooked.
Not only do physiques get worked out in Results, but so too do relationship issues (perhaps, unsurprisingly) ; it's all gently told and ironed out in a wry manner, and you won't be surprised to see everyone is messed up in their own ways. That it doesn't quite convince in parts and skirts the mainstream rather than the indie that Bujalski's been known for, gives it the cred that it needs to be part of the festival - and may provoke the debate and perhaps disappointment in equal measure in his followers that the festival thrives on long after the lights have gone up.
Cast: Jack Black, Dylan Minnette, Amy Ryan, Odeya Rush
Director: Rob Letterman
Given the popularity of the 62 odd children's horror novellas by American writer R L Stine, the film of Goosebumps has a lot of readers to satisfy.
But by cleverly using the scares that make the series so popular and not dumbing them down, the Goosebumps movie is a smart, occasionally nightmarish trip and scary take on the typical story of the new boy moving to a new town and trying to fit in.
That boy is Dylan Minette, whose Zach has moved to the small backwater of Madison where his mum (Amy Ryan) is taking up the deputy principal-ship of the high school. But Zach finds his attention focussed on the girl next door (Odeya Rush) whose father (Jack Black) keeps her home schooled and locked up a night a la Rapunzel.
However, when Zach breaks in to investigate what he believes to be a domestic, he discovers the father is actually the famed horror writer R L Stine. And things get more complicated when Zach inadvertently lets loose a monster from the pages of Stine's books...
Using a mix of CGI, comedy horror and old school scares, Goosebumps works cleverly to keep its audience entertained without ever stooping to the lazy cliches and writing.
While the kids are most likely to be taken in by the suspense and the chase set pieces, adults will find some joys too in this Rear Window / The Blob / Zathura / The Shining / IT pastiche, which revels in meta-commentary about book sales, Stephen King and writing - it even throws in a Gulliver's Travels sight gag too as gnomes tether Black down.
Black channels madcap as Stine, but keeps it on the right side of not going OTT and also does a great job as the menacingly homicidal mannequin, Slappy, the main villain of the piece (and fave of the book series). Minnette continues his road to fame as the likeable Zach (who has a great bond with his mother) and Rush manages the part well, but the pair lack some of the chemistry which feels forced upon them; there's the obligatory comedy sidekick in Ryan Lee's champ to get you through the mix of jump scares and tension.
The FX are reasonable; certainly when the words spring to life off the page and bring the creatures into the world, it's a great effect, though later on there are moments when the film starts to creak. Equally, there's a lot of simply chasing around which does grow a little repetitive towards the end as if the story itself is running ever so slightly out of steam.
But all in all, Goosebumps succeeds in a self-aware wave of nostalgia for the books' source material and a reverence to what makes them so popular - they simply set out to scare their readers and offer entertainment; it's something which the film manages in great spades of both parody and B-movie moments.
As we head to the end of the year and movie fatigue is on the verge of setting in, it may actually give you Goosebumps because of how good it actually is.
Spun off from Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul was always going to have a heap of expectation resting on its shoulders.
Starring Bob Odenkirk as James Morgan, the lawyer who defended Bryan Cranston's Walter White, Better Call Saul looks at events six years before the original series happened.
Over 10 eps, the show's quirkiness comes to the fore as several Breaking Bad characters appear from within; and the series sees Saul involved in various cons and crossing various paths.
Nicely written, brilliantly acted by Odenkirk and written by Vince Gilligan, the series rattles along at a reasonable pace; there are moments that recall the original series and the appearance of many Easter Eggs for fans is a clear nod to the Breaking Bad series.
But it emerges as its own beast, demonstrating a darkness and rich story-telling that allows it to stand alone and entice viewers to Walter White's World as well. But it's also the relationship between Saul and his brother Chuck that forms the heart of this show as well as keeping you engaged by its own stories and moments that make you sit up.
