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.
To celebrate the release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story on December 15th, we've got a prize pack of Star Wars merchandise to give away!
About Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
From Lucasfilm comes the first of the Star Wars standalone films, “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” an all-new epic adventure. In a time of conflict, a group of unlikely heroes band together on a mission to steal the plans to the Death Star, the Empire’s ultimate weapon of destruction. This key event in the Star Wars timeline brings together ordinary people who choose to do extraordinary things, and in doing so, become part of something greater than themselves.
“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” is directed by Gareth Edwards and stars Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Donnie Yen, Mads Mikkelsen, Alan Tudyk, Riz Ahmed, with Jiang Wen and Forest Whitaker. Kathleen Kennedy, Allison Shearmur and Simon Emanuel are producing, with John Knoll and Jason McGatlin serving as executive producers.
The story is by John Knoll and Gary Whitta, and the screenplay is by Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy.
“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” opens in NZ theatres on December 15, 2016.
The next installment in the blockbuster franchise, UNDERWORLD: BLOOD WARS follows Vampire death dealer, Selene (Kate Beckinsale) as she fends off brutal attacks from both the Lycan clan and the Vampire faction that betrayed her.
With her only allies, David (Theo James) and his father Thomas (Charles Dance), she must stop the eternal war between Lycans and Vampires, even if it means she has to make the ultimate sacrifice.
The latest iteration of Call of Duty heads to space, and that's what the free VR update, Jackal Assault, decides to concentrate on.
It's fortunate that it's free as well, as it's so short that it's frustrating when it ends.
Set in space, you basically are on a recon mission to see what's wrong with a satellite when a horde of bad guys warp in and start shooting - all you have to do is fly around and shoot back.
It's a simple premise, and to be honest, it's simply and tautly executed, that you feel like this is a mere morsel and you could handle a full meal.
Using the twin sticks to pilot your craft, the game's extremely responsive and utterly compelling in its smoothness and simplicity. Marking targets and firing rockets give the incoming craft very little chance, but given how many of them there are, it's anything but simple to fire through Jackal Assault. It requires a few tactics and some smart manoeuvring to ensure you don't go down when you're so close to achieving your objective.
It's just a shame that this well-crafted VR Experience is so damned short. Sure, there's replayability in beating your own score, but the repetitive factor becomes an issue.
While there's an argument not to bleat because it's free, Call of Duty: Jackal Assault is a title that you'd happily part money with for more of - it's engaging, beautifully pulled together, smooth and slick.
Cast: Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard, Jared Harris
Director: Robert Zemeckis
You must remember this.
A kiss is just a kiss.
There's a great romance to 1942's star-crossed lovers flick Casablanca, and director Robert Zemeckis tries to swathe his latest, a drama about a French resistance fighter and a Canadian intelligence officer who meet behind enemy lines, in a lot of that too.
But unfortunately, this is more Casa-blankly than Casablanca.
Kicking off in North Africa in 1942, where Pitt's Max Vatan drops out of the sky, floating into the dunes like a fallen angel, the story puts Cotillard's Marianne Beausejour in cahoots as the duo plot an execution on a German ambassador.
Reuniting later in London after the mission ends, and picking up after a sandstorm tryst saw them succumb to each other, Max finds his loyalties tested with an assertion that all is not as it seems....
For a film titled Allied, there's an irony that this feels like a flick of two disjointed halves.
The first that's supposed to set up the romance and build the romantic tension and bond between Max and Marianne is a bitter disappointment, lacking in time to let moments develop and jumping around to get to the crux of the conflict.
Suffering from an exclusion of time to dwell, the time-hop serves only to stiffen the pair's relationship and point out their relative lack of chemistry, while heightening the fact the scenes that are supposed to tie us to the characters are missing as some of the emotional beats fail to hit their mark.
Which is a shame as the largely terrific and at times should be taut back half of Allied kicks it up a gear (and simultaneously shoots itself in the foot with a French set escapade that feels like something from Dad's Army and Allo Allo). Although it suffers from what's preceded it with tension without suspense and romance without heart play out, as it hurtles towards its denouement.
It's a shame because in among the stifling and stultifying story, there is some wonderfully evocative period detail and terrific costuming that is redolent of old school Hollywood romances. And certainly in the second half, Pitt's portrayal of a man struggling with the moral dilemma of love or loyalty is marvellously underplayed and relatively effective.
But what cripples Allied is the fact there's a palpable lack of thrills, a disturbing absence of tension and suspense when there should be as it climaxes and an overall nagging feeling the whole thing is slightly underwhelming despite its old movie star sensibilities.
Hollow and unsatisfactory, Allied is dressed in such old Hollywood charm and draped in such wonderful attention to detail that you realise you've spent a great majority of the film gawking at its clothes and its setting rather than its story and the lack of chemistry between its stars.
Ultimately, that proves to be a fatal flaw in the film that aims for heart-breaking but can barely stop its audience at times from emitting a yawn.
Cast: Elle Fanning, Jena Malone, Keanu Reeves, Bella Heathcote Director: Nicholas Winding Refn Simultaneously surreal and vapid, Nicholas Winding Refn's visual powerhouse The Neon Demon is a translucent dream of a film that's centred around a tale as old as time.
More a visual experience than a narrative triumph, Nicholas Winding Refn's The Neon Demon will engage some and infuriate others, but proves once again this cinema's enfant terrible knows exactly how to pull people's strings and visually present a film.
Following 16 year old naïf Jesse (a waif-like and impressive Elle Fanning) who heads to LA on the dream of becoming a model, the story is a familiar retread of the old innocent going down into the woods, where the Big Bad wolves of the modelling industry live. Orphaned and with only a portfolio of questionable quality to her name, she finds her "deer in the headlights" look is fresh and engaging within an industry that (in this case) literally chews up and spits out talent. Finding a friend in Jena Malone's make-up artist Ruby, who practises her art on the dead as well as the living, Jesse's circled by a pack of predators, both in the form of a sleazy motel owner (played with terrifying duplicity by Keanu Reeves) and a couple of models (Bella Heathcote and Abbey Lee ) who are wary that Jesse may usurp them. But as Jesse's seduced by the world she wants to enter and her power grows with her hold on those around her thanks to her innocence, the wolves are circling...
Too weak to be a scathing satire on the fashion industry (the viewpoints espoused in wooden dialogue and bon mots are hardly new or fresh), The Neon Demon's trance-like hold comes from its visual trappings. Swathes of blues and reds swamp the screen as a sensory synthesiser score blasts from within; the allegory is all too obvious but the execution of it is seductively sublime, once you succumb to its rhythms (which may prove too hollow and grating for some). As hallucinatory elements take hold, and the music video aesthetics fall by the wayside, a final act horror tale comes to the fore and some darker elements rise to the top. But there are moments that are telegraphed throughout by the somewhat underwritten peripherary of characters; each exchange between the models is soaked with double meaning (One asks if the other is "food or sex") as the cynicism of scatty and catty dialogue is despatched.
Both Fanning and Malone impress; the former in her gradual growing and ultimate journey as she morphs from innocent to power; and the latter for a performance that pushes all the buttons it should as it provocatively goes to where it's always been heading. It may be that Refn fetishizes the models, the actresses and their ultimate transposition to the screen but ultimately The Neon Demon is a visual triumph; an intense blast of provocateur cinema that won't be for all, and is certainly not flawless as it borders on stultifying tedium at times; it's electric in other parts and, thanks to some incredible visuals, best experienced on the big screen.
As part of the VR Worlds experience, The London Heist is a stand out.
With its Lock, Stock and 2 Smoking Move controllers mentality, this East-end set tale of gangsters, shooting and a jewel is one of the standalone elements of the PS VR Worlds title - and could easily have been a game in its own right, if it had been expanded out.
Set up and under suspicion for having nabbed a jewel, you're in the action from the get-go, either being tied up in a warehouse or sat in the seat of a car shooting at bad guys heading your way.
Essentially a collection of cut-scenes where you get to interact with the world around you as well as firing some guns as besuited bad guys take you on, The London Heist is a Statham style experience which could have been more.
The cockney accents are laid on thick and the action is a clear indication of the Guy Ritchie style ethos at work - but again, it's too short an experience to qualify as a game (even though it is part of the PS VR Worlds package).
You get to practise in a shooting alley as well, and the pace and thrill of the overall game is definitely worth investing in. It's just a shame it wasn't a longer piece - as it could have been one of the stand out titles for the PS VR launch.
Released by Universal Home Ent So it appears the answer to the question how do you keep the Star Trek franchise fresh and exciting as it enters its 50th year is to throw in a motorbike sequence that has shades of Evel Knievel within. Perhaps that's no surprise given the helmer of this piece is Fast and Furious' Justin Lin and at times, the action is very much a case of spectacle over sense in Star Trek: Beyond.
In this latest, Kirk (Chris Pine) and the crew of the Enterprise are three years into their five year mission to explore new worlds (the first of Simon Pegg's script references to the original). But Kirk's nagged by a sense of tedium and monotony.
However, just as his apathy is about to see him accept a vice-admiralty, the crew of the Enterprise are lured into a trap by an evil villain named Krall (Idris Elba)....
Star Trek: Beyond certainly has the reverence for the franchise, and the script by Simon Pegg and Doug Jung is clearly steeped in affection, as well as an execution that's energetic.
Some of the greater moments of the series are embraced for this outing too; from the pairing and squabblingly affectionate duo of Karl Urban's Bones with Zachary Quinto's Spock to a lovely visual at the end, this is a film that knows what made the series so beloved by fans. But it also knows that character is what made the Trek universe so vital and why it stands a testament of time. The Enterprise ensemble is a little crowded by Pegg and Jung's script smartly splits them all up when the ship goes down (one of the film's best sequences, both taut, tight and thrilling); and it's here that the character driven moments tend to take over and remind you why it works.
But then it's also a film that bows to fun too, with the aforementioned motorbike sequence likely to polarise and the use of a Beastie Boys track simply confounding any kind of seriousness, opting for silly instead. Perhaps, that's bravura - time will tell, but certainly with some of the FX ships in Krall's swarm flying around looking like iron filings trapped in a blender that's on double time, that debate could be a heated one. Certainly the fun and pace of Justin Lin's Star Trek filmallows the spectacle to head over any kind of common sense.
And then there's the bad guy - Idris Elba as Krall, who seems to suffer from Villain Writing 101, where the baddie comes skulking out of the shadows, delivers his disgruntled reason for taking down everyone and retreats off again ready to beaten. Krall is not a memorable villain at all, and it's a shame given the stature of the actor within that he's reduced to a prosthetics once over.
Above it all though, and as Trek so often has, it all comes back to Captain Kirk.
Chris Pine's wearied initial and melancholic approach is a nice touch, and the script's chutzpah to drop them 3 years into the 5 year mission gives the whole thing both a nostalgic gloss and a nod that even the future is space is as dull as the monotony of a 9 to 5 on Earth. But it's never anything less than Pine's film and he delivers it with grace, action hero swagger and a vocal nod to where it all started.
Star Trek Beyond may not be perfect, but it's fun blockbuster fodder that offers up action over smarts. While its franchise's future is never anything less than assured, it's great to see the reverence it treats its own past with - without alienating those who simply want a rip-roaring night out (as long as you beam your brain up).
