Knock Knock: DVD Review

Knock Knock: DVD Review

Rating: R16
Released by Roadshow Home Ent

Mixing lust, paranoia and a healthy dose of what would you do, Eli Roth's Knock Knock follows Keanu Reeves' Evan and his night from hell.

Essentially a lucky man - husband, beautiful wife, good kids, Evan has it all. Staying home for a long weekend to work while his family goes away, his life is changed by a knock a the door in the middle of a storm.

Standing on his doorstep is two young women, drenched to the bone and doing the decent thing, Evan invites the lost duo in to get warmed up and phone a cab. But the pair seduce Evan despite his initial protestations - and soon one night could cost Evan everything.

Knock Knock is lurid and trashy and ultimately not particularly good.

The chamber piece is so OTT that it lacks any credibility of situation or drama; a fact not helped by Reeves' less than capable acting and a script that lacks any real bite preferring to pile on the hysterics rather than the psychological edge.

Sure, you could argue Eli Roth's gone for shocking and aimed for an ethical dilemma but the two girls are simply not up to scratch in anything other than looks and their subsequent cat and mouse games leave you feeling much less sympathy for anyone in their plight than you should. Perhaps if Roth had swathed the thing in a bit more subtlety, Knock Knock would have been more effective.

As it is, its torture horror ethos and OTT vibe badly cripples its intentions.

It's one Knock Knock joke that really does lack a decent punchline.

Rating:

Daddy's Home: Film Review

Daddy's Home: Film Review

Cast: Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Linda Cardinelli, Thomas Haden Church
Director: Sean Anders

Mining the Step dynamic has already proven fertile ground for Will Ferrell.

In the 2008 comedy Step Brothers, along with John C Reilly, Ferrell managed the fine line between sentimental and argumentative as the blending of two families took place.

But with Daddy's Home, Ferrell has managed to completely miss the comedic mark.

Ferrell plays Brad, a jazz radio station worker and step-dad to Linda Cardinelli's Sara's two young kids. Desperate to hear them utter the words Dad, Brad's world is turned upside down with the arrival of their leather-clad muscle bound biological father Dusty (Wahlberg, in reasonable comic form).

What starts off as genial jostling and an attempt to accommodate Dusty gradually sees Brad reach boiling point as Dusty starts to get his feet under the familial table...

Daddy's Home is excruciating, to say the least.

The best gags - all 3 of them - are to be found in the trailer of this weakly written and flat comedy that has neither the punch lines nor the sense of sparkle to carry it along.

Half the problem is at a script level where any such issues should have been ironed out; a lack of punchlines in relevant places doesn't help matters either as scenes limp to an end rather than a hilarious conclusion.

Ferrell plays mild-mannered fine and admittedly provides some laughs in some of the film as he tries to overcome his insecurities, bring his one-up-manship game and be the dad he's always wanted to be. There's some chemistry with former Other Guys co-star Wahlberg and Wahlberg at least appears to be having some fun flexing his comedy chops and flaunting his dance moves at the end. But there's little to no sparkle in the pacing of the story and its execution; it's almost as if someone's looked at the template of the Competitive Dad in The Fast Show and tried to bring it up to date.

Thomas Haden Church provides a few guffaws as Brad's blustering radio boss who's full of irrelevant stories - but his screen time is limited.

Ultimately though, Daddy's Home is a film which suffers because the funny just isn't there; it's too tame to be an R rated laugh-fest and too flat to be a family comedy. Plus, unbelievably at just over 95 mins long, it still feels too bloated.

There is a saying that sometimes you save the best till last, but with this Boxing Day release, it's clearly not the case. Daddy's Home is another embarrassment to Ferrell's CV and a comedy that forgets its simple MO - to provide laughs.

Rating:

Paper Towns: DVD Review

Paper Towns: DVD Review

Released by 20th Century Fox Home Ent

The road to coming of age films is littered with many entries, each of them iconic to their generation.

But as the audience grows and yearns, their desire to get a new self-knowing and quintessential entry of their own increases.

2014's The Fault in Our Stars was such an entry into the pantheon. Author John Green cashed in on the sick-lit genre and breathed a new life into a genre whose viewers had seen it all, with two leads that sparked amid the tropes of the genre and raised the material above its intentions.

Paper Towns feels like a slight but retro entry to the field, using its MO to remind teens that sometimes life is about the journey and not the ultimate destination, as well as dishing out some life lessons that are obvious to anyone over a certain age.

This time around, it's free spirit and impulsive versus safe and steady in the story of model Cara Delevingne's Margo and Nat Wolff's Quentin. Friends from first meeting, the duo's paths intertwine but rarely intersect, but one night, the enigmatic Margo bangs on Quentin's window and begs him to come with her on an adventure one night.

But the following day, Margo disappears, and a series of clues are left behind for Quentin to decipher as to her whereabouts. So, grabbing his two best friends, Radar and Ben, the group sets out to track Margo down.

Paper Towns will in no way match the success of The Fault in Our Stars. 

Going more for cute and twee, this road trip flick occasionally meanders en route to its destination. The easy bond between Quentin and his buddies is nicely explored, but there's no real learnings here or insight into the human condition, merely an acknowledgement that leaving high school is the start of something new and your comfort zone is about to be shattered.

The film's best asset is a dusky-voiced Delevingne, who imbues Margo with a spiky free-as-a-bird-yet-troubled mentality and who impresses greatly in the early scenes. But, narratively, she's missed from the film and spends great swathes of it as a gone girl, and really the film suffers from her absence and infectious vulnerability and joie de vivre.

It's not that there's anything wrong with a sincere Wolff et al, just that the safe revelations (OMG, who knew the hot girl could have slightly geeky leanings) and bland life lessons lead to particularly unsurprising moments; while there's a minor subversion of the tropes at the end, the final result is no less surprising.

The Fault In Our Stars star Ansel Englort makes a brief cameo aimed at tipping a wink to the teens who will lap up this film, but it has to be said Paper Towns feels slight in its intentions and resonance, perfectly adequate in its execution and pitched squarely and modestly at its teen audience who will adore it.

Rating:

'71: DVD Review

'71: DVD Review

Rating: R16
Released by Universal Home Ent

Thrilling, tense and visceral are perhaps the best ways to describe the drama '71.

Set in Belfast in 1971, a near wordless Jack O'Connell stars as rookie Brit soldier Gary Hook. As the film begins the trainees are being put through their paces, with the importance of team-work being drilled into them.

But recruited to the Belfast lines to help with peace-keeping duty, this squaddie soon sees the reality of team-work thrown out the window when a tense meeting between Catholics and Protestants on one street sees him cut-off from the rest of his squad.

Suddenly forced on the run behind enemy lines on one night, Hook's out of his depth when it comes to surviving what lies ahead - and his troubles, much like Northern Ireland's, are just beginning.

First time director Yann Demange rightly won best director at the 2014 British Independent Film Awards with this gripping take on the survival film. As bombs go off and the shocks hit, Demange knows how to lull you into a sense of dread, let it coil around you and choke you with it.

In among the visceral riot, close camera shots force you into the POV of Hook et al as you try desperately to see what's coming where but are only confronted with the uncertain reality of a sea of seething faces. Equally fuelling this powderkeg is O'Connell, whose near-mute presence forces him into a physicality of a performance that helps convey everything he needs and the internal conflicts.

As he staggers from one moment to the next, picking his way through dense fog and streets littered only with burning cars or petrol bombs, he's a commanding presence, a mix of frightened, vulnerable and determined.

Equally chilling are the politics of the time, as the words "We look after our own in the army" and relying on the kindness of strangers take on new meaning on the bomb-torn Belfast streets as allegiances are struck and betrayals are meted out, never overtly but always with subtlety as the conflict begins to take shape.

A final cat and mouse sequence set in a stairwell is the ultimate noose-tightening as storm clouds gather and the nail-biter heads to its denouement. Tragedy inevitably follows Hook on the streets of Belfast but not once does Demange milk this, preferring to showcase the sickening reality of the impending Troubles rather than linger on it.

'71 is an intense and riveting film, one which takes you into the pulsing heart of conflict and defies you not to succumb to a heart attack as it pursues its devastating conclusion.

Newstalk ZB Review - Talking In The Heart of The Sea

Newstalk ZB Review - Talking In The Heart of The Sea

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/saturday-mornings-with-jack-tame/audio/darren-bevan-the-heart-of-the-sea/

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/saturday-mornings-with-jack-tame/audio/darren-bevan-the-heart-of-the-sea/

Dean O Gorman Trumbo Interview

Dean O Gorman Trumbo Interview

Jack Tame caught up with Dean O'Gorman, star of The Hobbit to discuss Trumbo, where he plays Kirk Douglas - and looks uncannily like him.

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/saturday-mornings-with-jack-tame/audio/dean-ogorman-hitting-the-big-time/

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/saturday-mornings-with-jack-tame/audio/dean-ogorman-hitting-the-big-time/

Adventure Time: Jake and Finn Investigations: PS4 Review

Adventure Time: Jake and Finn Investigations: PS4 Review

Platform: PS4
Released by Bandai Namco

The Adventure Time series is incredibly popular - and it's no surprise that yet another game has been released for the show.

This time around it's a real-time fully 3D orientated adventure game that features combat.

As well as solving puzzles and interacting, the game's fully concentrated on providing an experience for fans of the show.

It all kicks off in Jake and Finn's tree-house where the pair discover a ticker-tape machine that sends them on a series of adventures. Heading around the tree-house first though, you get a chance to get used to what's around and how to interact with the world they live in. It's a slow start to the game which takes a while to find its feet and also suffers from a little bit of tedium as it comes to the puzzle solving.

Once you're through those hoops though, the game opens up to more of an experience and a world that's worth diving into as you negotiate your way through various chapters within. There's also an additional chapter which will be the basis of downloadable DLC and gives players the chance to take on the persona and vampire abilities of Marceline.

Graphically, the game is up there with some of the best of its kind; it fully embraces the world it's emulating and the 3D edges give it a feel that's conducive to what it wants to achieve. As you wander around collecting items and presenting them to people when necessary, the game begins to open up and its ambitions stretch beyond its cartoon-like appearance.

While the start of the game is a little bogged down in mechanics and there's a glut of dialogue that simply has to be sat through, younger kids will get a kick out of the game and will likely be drawn into the story. Potentially, the older ones may get a little bored from time to time, but if you're willing to sit through it, Adventure Time: Jake and Finn Investigations is a solid game for the summer months.