Nocturnal Animals - Official Trailer

Nocturnal Animals - Official Trailer

From writer/director Tom Ford comes a haunting romantic thriller of shocking intimacy and gripping tension that explores the thin lines between love and cruelty, and revenge and redemption. Academy Award nominees Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal star as a divorced couple discovering dark truths about each other and themselves in “Nocturnal Animals.”

Susan Morrow, a Los Angeles art dealer (portrayed by Ms. Adams), lives an incredibly privileged yet unfulfilled life with her husband Hutton Morrow (Armie Hammer). One weekend, as Hutton departs on one of his too-frequent business trips, Susan receives an unsolicited package that has been left in her mailbox. It is a novel, Nocturnal Animals, written by her ex-husband Edward Sheffield (Jake Gyllenhaal), with whom she has had no contact for years. Edward’s note accompanying the manuscript encourages Susan to read the work and then to contact him during his visit to the city. Alone at night, in bed, Susan begins reading. The novel is dedicated to her…

…but its content is violent and devastating. While Susan reads, she is deeply moved by Edward’s writing and cannot help but reminisce over the most private moments from her own love story with the author. Trying to look within herself and beyond the glossy surface of the life and career that she has made, Susan increasingly interprets the book as a tale of revenge, a tale that forces her to re-evaluate the choices that she has made, and re-awakens a love that she feared was lost – as the story builds to a reckoning that will define both the novel’s hero and her own.  

The Beatles: Eight Days a Week: Film Review

The Beatles: Eight Days a Week: Film Review

Cast: John, Paul, George, Ringo, The screaming masses
Director: Ron Howard

Beatlemania lives on some 50 years after the Fab Four hung up their touring boots with the one week only release of this documentary from former Happy Days actor Ron Howard.

Covering the period between 1963 and 1966, Howard's affectionate documentary about the life on the road may not prove much of a surprise to those who already know their Beatles lore, but he gets great cinematic truck out of displaying the lads' Liverpudlian cheeky charm to full comic effect as well as concert footage and screaming masses to relive the Beatlemania and its resultant euphoria.

With the ethos that they embodied the idea of how it would be to hang out with your mates, The Beatles' rise to fame is fairly reasonably charted with commentary from the boys themselves, as well as a few choice people from their inner circle - though tales of life on the road from those who accompanied them are limited only to journalist Larry Kane who offers a peek at life in the inner sanctum.

The thing is the documentary itself doesn't really provide any new ground and some of its choices of talking heads are perhaps bizarre and tenuous at best.

While Sigourney Weaver's attendance at the Beatles' Hollywood Bowl and companion footage give her credence, and Whooopi Goldberg's love for the mop-tops and attendance of their Shea Stadium show how inter-racial their appeal was, Eddie Izzard and Red Dwarf composer Howard Goodall are included for scant reason.

Using archival interviews for Harrison and Lennon are inevitable, but even interviews with McCartney and Starr add little to proceedings to be honest, given there's already so much out there about the group. It's all here again though - the screaming kids, the Bigger than Jesus controversy; almost as if another rote greatest hits package has been rolled out for a newer generation.

However, where Howard's more successful in breaking out of the workmanlike trappings of the genre is in the subtler touches. Whether it's painting a racial and more global picture of life when the Beatles hit America to demonstrate why their fame was so surprising abroad to animating cigarette smoke on stills, there are moments that impress greatly, even if the racial edges slow the verve of the film considerably down.

But there's no denying the blistering joy of some of their songs - it's hard to defy tapping along to the likes of I Saw Her Standing There and Help! as the live footage kicks in. With a fully restored 4K version of their Shea Stadium concert being presented after the film as a companion piece, there's no question that the Beatles phenomenon continues to live on in great style - and the film ends on an artistic high with some glimpses into the making of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Ultimately, The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years is a greatest hits of the band and a compilation of their finest moments. It may not speak more to fans who are already immersed in their world and is as such a fanboy piece rather than a probing documentary.- it's more a brief Hello, Goodbye rather than an in depth Day in the Life Of.

Kill Your Friends: DVD Review

Kill Your Friends: DVD Review

Rating: M
Released by Roadshow Home Ent

American Psycho meets the 90s Britpop music industry in this woefully weak drama.

Nicholas Hoult plays an A&R man who's determined to get to the top and won't let anyone stand in his way. Threatened by James Corden's rival, he bashes him out of existence; but when a new pretender to the throne signs to their agency, Hoult's Steven Stelfox takes matters even further.

But with a police investigation into the crime underway, and pressure growing to sign the next big indie thing, Stelfox is going to need a bit of luck carrying it all off.

Kill Your Friends is a pale imitation of what a drama like this should be.

Hoult doesn't have the range as Stelfox and is not a patch on Bale's charismatic and seething Patrick Bateman. It doesn't help the script isn't quite there either and complete with a copper who's trying to be David Tennant in his formative years, the whole thing has a veneer of wannabe wafted heavily over it all.

The music industry is all stereotypes and while it's mildly amusing to spot the 90s tropes, the satire is nowhere near as scathing as it hopes to be.

Nihilism should be fun and anti-heroes should be worth fighting for - but you can't escape the feeling in Kill Your Friends that the whole thing would have been better if Stelfox had been caught early on and the case closed.

Blair Witch: Film Review

Blair Witch: Film Review

Cast: James Allen McCune, Callie Hernandez, Corbin Reid, Wes Robinson, Valorie Curry
Director: Adam Wingard

17 years ago, a little film called The Blair Witch Project redefined the found footage horror genre and set the world alight in 1999.

A sequel, Book of Shadows did little to build on what the film offered in the first place (except to expand out some ideals of the first) - and now 20 years after the first film's found footage was shot, a bait and switch threequel from directing wunderkind Adam Wingard (You're Next, The Guest) was unveiled at San Diego Comic Con.

Previously masquerading under the title The Woods, Blair Witch once again heads back into the woods of Burkittsville and into the world of urban legend. This time, it's due to James (Allen McCune) whose sister Heather Donahue went missing first time around. When footage purportedly of Heather shows up on YouTube, James contacts the poster and asks to meet.

This leads to 4 friends, including one lifelong friend and documentarian Lisa (Hernandez), heading to the woods to see if they can find the original house and consequently, James' sister.

But this being Blair Witch, you can guess what happens next as the freaky moments begin to hit....

A lot's changed since the first Blair Witch arrived on the scene with its lo-fi skills and reasonably high concept game-changing ethos - and Wingard's smart enough, and also crippled enough by its legacy, to embrace that.

This one has wearable tech (ear cams) and utilises a drone and walkie-talkies; there's talk of the dark net, and a hint of Creepypasta's Slenderman thrown in as well, but at its heart, this film is as old-fashioned and as familiar as the first one. In many ways, a lot of the film feels like the first Blair Witch, slightly re-hashed and done again; there are cracks and noises in the woods, there are those stick figures, and there's the old pesky witch again.

But just as the jaded blanket of cinematic familiarity threatens to strangle your idea of what this film's setting out to do in its first 2 acts (which feel like a carbon copy of number 1), Wingard changes it up a little and throws in some effective jump scares that you know are coming but arrive with bone-crunching glee, before a distinctly claustrophobic finale.

It's more about the execution of some of these moments and the touches (a camera use in the Descent like finale's quite inventive) because most of the rest of it feels eerily familiar. And there's one element which is likely to provoke plenty of discussion and head-scratching confusion over timelines. (But to say more is to spoil, though needless to say resolution is frustratingly wanting)

If anything, Blair Witch plies deep into a world we now inhabit.

It's a world where the internet distorts and dissects urban legends, where internet grainy films are pored over endlessly and debated in reddit threads or forums; it's a world that's got too savvy for cheap thrills. And that was essentially what the first Blair Witch film offered - a lo-fi grainy hand-held take on a ghost story told around the camp fire. In among the truly impressive and dissonant, distorting soundscape, Wingard cleverly evokes that sense of questioning and plays on those down-the-rabbit-hole moments to provoke some thrills and expand some of the mythology that many may feel adds a sheen of freshness after the usual mundane set up antics.

And yet, if you go down to the Woods today, you're in for a familiar surprise in many ways, which is ironically, both Blair Witch's strength and its weakness.

It mines some effective thrills, and some genuinely unsettling and atmospheric moments, but it can't quite live up to the power of the first and in parts, feels like a re-tread of the iconic horror.

Ironically, Blair Witch is hampered by the first film's collective cultural importance to cinema; Wingard comes close to replicating parts of that film's success, but it can't help but escape its feeling of deja vu when the lights go up.

Win Hunt For The Wilderpeople

Win Hunt For The Wilderpeople

To celebrate the release of Hunt For The Wilderpeople on DVD and Blu Ray, I'm giving you the chance to win!

Ricky (Julian Dennison) is a defiant young city kid who finds himself on the run with his grumpy foster uncle (Sam Neill) in the wild New Zealand bush. 

A national manhunt ensues and the two are forced to put aside their differences and work together to survive in this hilarious and heart-felt adventure.

You can win a copy of the year's biggest New Zealand film that's simply a phenomenon.

Directed by Taika Waititi, Hunt For The Wilderpeople is out now on DVD and Blu Ray

To enter simply email to this address: darrensworldofentertainment@gmail.com - simply CLICK HERE darrensworldofentertainment@gmail.com and in the subject line put WILDERPEOPLE 

Win Narcos Season 1

Win Narcos Season 1

Narcos

Based on the incredible true story of Pablo Escobar, Narcos is an inside look at the men who would stop at nothing to take down the notorious cocaine trafficker.

This ground-breaking series takes an unfiltered look into the war that would change the drug trade forever.

They were violent, crazy and filthy rich guys used to getting what they want… one way or another.

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As It Is In Heaven 2: Film Review

As It Is In Heaven 2: Film Review

Cast: Frida Hallgren
Director: Kay Pollak

10 years ago, a Swedish film found itself in the unique position of resonating with audiences.

In New Zealand alone, the film spent 52 weeks in the box office charts thanks to both its feelgood factor and its word of mouth as the story of a conductor after both a second chance at life and love scored critical acclaim.

A decade on and a sequel to As It Is In Heaven has shown and with it, a collective feeling of what next for the story which felt resolved and unworthy of further exploration.

In that time, a lot has changed and quite possibly, some of the assumed character familiarity has faded. Needless to say Michael Nyqvist's conductor Daniel Dareus is no longer with us, having given up the ghost after his path to redemption was completed in the first film.

But the wild child student Lena from his choir who he slept with is about to give birth as the action picks up nine months later.

Ostracised by some for her relationship and saddled with a past, Lena decides to help drunk priest Stig to get more into his church as well as settling some old scores by showing she can put on a version of Handel's
Messiah for a grand re-opening.

Juggling motherhood as well as a potential new love interest, pressure grows on Lena to measure up to her own expectations and deal with her past. However, with the community and authorities turning against Stig, it looks like Lena may have bitten off more than she can chew.

As It Is In Heaven 2 is simply an off-key muddle when compared to the vastly superior first film.

Whereas the first had subtlety and nuance aplenty as well as warmth of character, this one jettisons all of that for a broad comedy opening, a birth in snow and a muddling priest that feels like Father Ted met with Sweden in a tonal road crash.

Once things settle, they don't get much better with the script preferring to fall into a rut that sees Lena consistently clashing with the priest Stig who then chastises her. It's a stuttering way to carry out the drama and ironically for a film about a community choir, a one note story throughout that drags the 130 minute run time to a halt.

To be fair, Frida Hallgren remains a beguiling presence as the movie plays out and is certainly worthy of stepping into the conductor's role of the film even if she has little to work with. And the script writers clearly haven't thought about how to conclude the film with a jarring character death that's supposed to hit emotionally failing to land - and the death ex machina event prematurely brings events to a close with threads left narratively unfed on the vine (closure of churches, a removal from the priesthood et al). Add to that some jarring religious imagery that borders on the blasphemous for some, and As It Is In Heaven 2 is a scathing cousin of a great film that once set so many hearts and souls alight.

Lightning very rarely strikes twice in the same place and As It Is In Heaven 2 is sadly a reminder of that fact - disappointing, difficult and out of tune, it's probably safe to say you'd be better off re-watching the original and bathing in that glory, rather than submitting yourself to this inferior and unwarranted sequel.