Moonlight: Film Review

Moonlight: Film Review

Cast: Mahershala Ali, Alex R Hibbert, Janelle Monae, Ashton Sanders, Trevante Rhodes
Director: Barry Jenkins

More is unsaid in Moonlight's triptych than is actually revealed and in parts, it's as intoxicating as it is tantalising.

Drawn unequivocally from its roots as a play and transposed on screen as such under a three act structure, Jenkins' film of the coming of age story of a black man growing up in Miami delivers subtly and with swathes of nuance as it plays out, relying heavily on the viewer to listen for minor details and to bring the tapestry threads together.

But not once does Moonlight ever shift the intimate scale or focus from its leads as we take in three stages of Chiron's life.

From badgered kid to bullied teen to ultimate manhood, Chiron's tale is finely balanced and precariously executed as the world swirls around.

A minimalist score and pared back soundtrack give Moonlight a resonance and a power that compel, but it's the personal moments which leap head and shoulders above anything else here.

This is never anything more than Chiron's journey pilgrimage through life from start to finish, and if that sounds like a trite dismissal of the film and its protagonist, it's not. Over 3 phases of Chiron's life, the struggle for his identity and his place in the world is carefully, quietly and powerfully positioned.

Whether it's bathed in the titular moonlight at the edge of the sea at the beach or swathed in the red glow of the room of his combusting addicted mother (Naomie Harris) as she rails against him, Jenkins' eye for visual detail predicates the story's journey.

But it's the raw and humane delivery of the story by the different age leads that build a dramatic powder-keg of a personal portrait in a (less successful and more obvious) wider tableaux of social commentary that's dripping with sub-text.

And while there's an argument that Jenkins' script shines a light on the continuing problems faced by black Americans, the truths espoused within are universal and yet intimately dispatched.

It's hard to resist Chiron's story or not empathise with his heartbreaking situations - from bullying at school, to violence from a mother, to seeking acceptance from and continually being rejected by his peers. There are universal truths within Moonlight that work as powerfully as they can because of the simplicity of the story's execution and the pared-back nature of the film's execution.

Ultimately, it's the stripped back almost play-like feel of Moonlight that helps it shine - even though there are abrupt cuts at times that are symptomatic of a dramatic curtain call, the emotion is never lost as the story unfurls. With a sparse OST and large periods of silence, Jenkins' builds a veritable atmosphere that ironically, helps it to speak volumes.

From Mahershala Ali's dealer surrogate father figure to the three iterations of Chiron, the vulnerable veracity and tale of acceptance seep through, be it in the dialogue or within the relatability of the story.

As a contemporary portrait of African-Americans, it's vital;  and it's also easy to see why awards are being showered on this occasionally Oscar-bait piece; but as a piece of film alone, it's a strong cinematic experience that never once loses its focus and nuances to help it connect to global audiences.

MOONLIGHT is releasing January 19, exclusively at Rialto Cinema Newmarket and Lighthouse Cuba Street

Deepwater Horizon: DVD Review

Deepwater Horizon: DVD Review

Mixing both traditional disaster movie with damning indictment of BP's role in the April 20th 2010 Gulf Of Mexico oil slick proves to be a potent mix for director Peter Berg.

It seems natural that Berg, whose MO recently has become to champion the everyman (see Wahlberg in Lone Survivor) for their fight against the impossible or the powers that be, would be drawn to this true story that ultimately led to the tragic deaths of 11 men. And it makes sense to have him re-team with actor Wahlberg, whose heartland appeal and filmography is full of representing for the common man.

For those uninitiated with what's been dubbed one of the largest man-made disasters, Wahlberg plays Mike Williams in this biographical re-telling of that fateful night. Just about to start on a 3 week rotation on the rig some 48 nautical miles off land, Williams and rig head honcho Mr Jimmy Harrell (a wiry taut Russell) suspect that the project's being rushed by BP after it falls 43 days behind. With crucial safety tests being bucked and avoided, and pressure being piled on from the big wigs on site, including Malkovich's Vidrine, the seeds of disaster are sown when they refuse to listen to those who know the equipment and signs of what lies ahead...

Blessed with technical jargon and large dollops of good ole blue collar workers simply doing their jobs and disagreeing with the man, Deepwater Horizon is less a conversation about corporate negligence, more a full on slamming of the health and safety ignorances on display.

There's no way anyone from BP will be happy with this as the unethical practices they appear to push rise to the fore like mud from a bore well in a pipe under the Gulf of Mexico. To be fair to Berg, he simply lets the story tell itself in almost biographical fashion and lets the actions of those within be the condemnation he needs for the film to sit well with audiences.

While the first half of the film sets up its stall with a swirling heady mix of superstitions being presented ahead of a shift to the banality of daily routines from Wahlberg talking to his screen daughter about how the oil is a monster below the surface and Jane The Virgin star Rodriguezdealing with mechanical issues on cars at home, Berg manages to bring a kernel of life to a group of characters that barely get any more once they're on the rig. While Hudson's relegated to the sidelines once the inferno hits, she's the anchor the audience need to weigh in the emotion, because once the chaos takes over the rig, a lot happens and to be frank, a lot of the time, you're not entirely sure who it's happening to.

A brief note of praise must go to the sound design of Deepwater Horizon - it's simply as terrifying as any disaster film you've encountered before; from the creaking of the platform to the bubbling underwater, here is where Berg's film finds its menace and where audiences will cower.

However, like the seething oil beneath the surface bubbling to top, Berg can't help his own jingoism manifesting in the final third of the movie (a US flag flapping on its pole while the rig explodes and fireballs is up there with anything as subtle executed by Michael Bay) and it's to the detriment of all that's preceded. Choosing to end the film with pictures of the killed is a fairly salutary approach and tars proceedings with mawkish sentiment that really doesn't resonate. Though in Berg's defence, the whole coda of Deepwater Horizon would be tricky to negotiate.

Ultimately, Deepwater Horizon is a scathing film, a visceral take on a disaster and while some of the excesses could have done with being reined in a little, Berg's relative desire to play this balanced and straight down the middle and never talk down to its audience may actually see it succeed infinitely more than any biased polemic against BP ever could. 

Win The Neon Demon

Win The Neon Demon

Beauty Isn't Everything. It's The Only Thing.

From provocative director Nicholas Winding Refn (DRIVE, ONLY GOD FORGIVES), THE NEON DEMON is an outrageous and sexy psychological horror. 

Aspiring model Jesse (Elle Fanning) has just moved to LA. 

Seeking refuge from the vampiric LA modeling scene in her new friendships with make up artist Ruby (Jena Malone) and fellow models Sarah (Abbey Lee) and Gigi (Bella Heathcote), Jesse soon finds herself victim to their envy and desire

• Glittering: Look At All Those Stars! Elle Fanning, Bella Heathcote, Jena Malone, Abbey Lee, Keanu Reeves And Christina Hendricks. Studded.

• From The Director: Of Drive, Bronson And Only God Forgives, Nicholas Winding Refn.

• Sexy And Scary: A Psychological Horror Film With Skin And Suspense. Black Swan On Steroids,

To stand a chance of winning a copy, all you have to do is drop me a line with your name and address!

To enter simply email NEON DEMON to this address: darrensworldofentertainment@gmail.com or CLICK HERE NOW!

Please ensure you include your name and address - competition closes Feb 19th 

Lion: Film Review

Lion: Film Review

Cast: Dev Patel, Sunny Pawar, Rooney Mara, Nicole Kidman, Abhishek Bharate, David Wenham
Director: Garth Davis

The name Saroo Brierly may mean little to many.

But based on Garth Davis' soon to be bound for Awards season picture starring Slumdog's Dev Patel (adapted from Brierly's book A Long Way Home), this tale of the long term effects of adoption and self-worth is likely to change that.

The tale of a boy lost in India and adopted out to an Australian family won't leave a dry eye in the house, thanks to its simple ungarnishing of proceedings, and decision to hint at nastiness and to suggest mawkishness rather than revel in both things.

It starts in 1986 where the young Saroo (a stunningly sympathetic first turn from new actor Sunny Pawar, all big brown eyes and tousled hair) bullies his elder brother Guddu into letting him come with him to find work. Trapped in India's smaller outlying villages and with their mother toiling in a local quarry, the young pair are a financial life-line to staving the wolves from the door.

But when Guddu disappears having momentarily left his sleepy brother at a railway station, Saroo wakes to find himself all on his own. Inadvertently ending up on a decommissioned train that travels 1600 kilometres away from his home and forcing Saroo into a landscape where people speak only Bengali and not his native Hindi, the youngster becomes lost and in a fight for survival on the streets.

In among the cacophony of Calcutta, Saroo is literally lost, his tiny frame and pleas floating adrift in a sea of taller people and bustling bodies, all heading about their daily business and ignoring the plaintive cries of the child, abandoned, bedraggled and desperate to find his way home.

After time passes and the authorities fail to find his family (as Saroo simply knows his mother only as Mum), Saroo is adopted out into the arms of waiting Aussie family, the Brierlys (a taciturn and supportive Kidman and Wenham).

As Saroo grows, and becomes a man, (now in the form of Patel, who convincingly nails the Aussie accent) he finds his seemingly content existence is nagged by the ever-growing question of what happened to his family, and weighted by guilt that they must spend their everyday wondering about him.

A chance discussion at a party sends Saroo into a Google Earth filled psychological sink-hole as the desperation to reclaim his core essence takes hold and he searches the virtual world to find his home...

There are no 2 ways about it, the first half of Davis' Lion will break your heart.

Thanks largely to a simplicity of execution, the fact most of it is shot at Pawar's level, thus exacerbating the scale and distance he feels from the world around him and an eminently watchable turn from the youngster himself, the Slumdog Millionairesque trappings of the start immediately tug on the heart-strings, but wisely hold off from ripping them right out.

The emotion at the start is palpable and the tragedy of the situation plays out largely as expected, but does so tremendously affectingly.

Patel shoulders the greater burden of the film, trying to bring to life to the reality of a traumatised youth ripped from his past and denied a sense of self by circumstance. And he delivers in spades, thanks to a subtle and nuanced turn that says so much without words.

While some may critique the fact that the crippling tide of emotion creeps up with a degree of narrative convenience, Davis' sensitive script in the adult portion of Saroo's story is finely attuned to the reality and the qualities of those destined to be hit unexpectedly later in life by resurfacing trauma.

With haunting recollections of Guddu guiding him, Patel's navigation through slightly choppier personal waters is perhaps the strongest portrayal of the situation. It helps that the first half of the movie breathes in the right way, and when the necessary time jumps come, you're already completely invested in proceedings, characters and their arcs.

Kidman and Patel share some tremendously empathetic scenes that will destroy anyone invested in the story, as Saroo struggles with his guilt over his hiding of his obsession from the foster mother who's unconditionally loved him; there's a veracity in the smaller quieter moments of Davis' script that drop emotionally effective bombs throughout.

Granted, there will be some who will feel this is clearly Oscar bait from The Weinstein Company, the Google Earth dramatically convenient and the credits sequence milking it, but the truth of the movie Lion is the incredibly powerful way in which it portrays a hauntingly effective and emotionally resonant true-life tale that was 25 years in the making.

Make no mistake, this life-affirming tear-jerker is one of 2017's first essential film experiences - and an unashamed cinematic journey worth taking.

Captain Fantastic: DVD Review

Captain Fantastic: DVD Review

Revelling in as much quirk as is cinematically possible and throwing kids into the mix on a road trip film certainly worked well for Little Miss Sunshine.

And to a degree, large parts of it are reused in Captain Fantastic, screenplay and director Matt Ross' film.

Starring Viggo Mortensen as Ben, it's the story of how his brood, who live life off the grid in the woods are forced into the wilds of American civilisation when Ben's wife kills herself. Deciding to gather up the clan and go and rescue her from the horrors of a Christian funeral as per her own wishes, Ben throws his brood onto the bus (named Steve) and sets out on their mission.

Embracing its anarcho-survivalist and pseudo intellectual edges, Captain Fantastic manages to pack in a great deal of humour at the idea of kids trotting out offbeat mantras, from celebrating Noam Chomsky's birthday instead of Christmas and from just generally mining unexpected language from young children's mouthes.

And while Mortensen shines, imbuing Ben with both a sensitivity of belief and a deep love for wanting what he believes best for all, the script's over-reliance on reaction shots to those encountering Ben and his brood for the first time begins to ultimately grate as the road trip moves from point-to-point with nary any reality within.

It serves as a vehicle to pour commentary on America's current obsessions - and indeed a billboard with "Is it immigration or is it invasion" on it feels scarily timely as they rumble toward a Trump-fuelled election.

But when Captain Fantastic lays off the twee quirk and the indoctrination of a doomsday preppers type ethos, it tries desperately - and inevitably - to inject drama and conflict from Ben's beliefs and others' objections to them.

It doesn't always work, simply because the film's solely (and perhaps understandably) on Ben's side (and ultimately the audience as well) and never wants to offer any kind of alternative. The conflict in the last third of the film with Frank Langella's reasoned father in law seems shoe horned in and unable to allow any consequence to flow; loosely, the father in law wants custody of the children out of anger for what's happened and this narrative thread simply melts away out of convenience rather than from resolution.  And a thread over a son's desire to go to college or another's rebellion are given meat early on but don't amount to anything when faced with the love of their father.

It's maddening to say the least, given how wonderfully shot and crowd-pleasing the whole thing is - thankfully, it's helmed by Mortensen's turn as Ben, and when he delivers a eulogy and has his inevitable long dark night of the soul, there's a real poignancy to the moral struggle within - and that's solely testament to Mortensen's presence on the screen.

Otherwise, this culture clash dramedy feels like a hollow experience that revels in its absurdity and trades on a caricature of happy / sad to achieve its emotionally manipulative aims. 

Nier Automata: PS4 Demo Review

Nier Automata: PS4 Demo Review

Nier Automata may only be a 30 minute demo, but it has to be said that demo has done much to mean there's now a countdown on until its March release.

For those unfamiliar with the spin-off from the Drakengard series, this short and bittersweet demo's got everything that the game looks set to offer in its upcoming release.

Loosely, the plot is:

The distant future…

Invaders from another world attack without warning, unleashing a new type of threat: weapons known as “machine lifeforms.” In the face of this insurmountable threat, mankind is driven from Earth and takes refuge on the Moon.

The Council of Humanity organizes a resistance of android soldiers in an effort to take back their planet. To break the deadlock, the Resistance deploys a new unit of android infantry: YoRHa .
In the forsaken wasteland below, the war between the machines and the androids rages on. 

A war that is soon to unveil the long-forgotten truth of this world...

Playing as an automaton 2B in the demo is a thrill, and as you fight your way through an industrial complex, taking on hordes of robots left behind in a war that have been powered up, the game finds new ways to engage you in the button-mashing process.

With changing perspectives at the start of a fight (the game goes from 3D face-view to 2D over the top view), there's never a dull moment in a degree of the repetition of taking on the creatures. Platinum Games have imbued 2B with a robot sidekick that shoots a stream of bullets into the rampaging throngs and can unleash a super-weapon as well when necessary. But they've also given 2B some relatively sweet moves as well - from the traditional Devil May Cry hack and slash to the usual heavy attack, the fluidity of the action is mightily impressive and conversely not too distracting as the fights rage on.

But it's the emotional levels of Nier Automata that start to come through as the demo plays on. Through industrial vistas, spiralling 2D shots of twisted metal come to life and the world feels ruined and real.

However, it's the story and the ending that really make this demo stand out and mark it as something that's worth fighting through for 30 minutes. With Manga-esque cut scenes to book-end moments, there's a humanity and bizarrely a darkness which shine through Nier Automata's gob-smakcing conclusion. It's a smart and clever move by the developers who don't give anything away but offer such a jaw-dropping reveal in this post-apocalyptic world - and it's one best experienced by yourself in this demo.

Simultaneously serving as a massive tease and also proffering a good idea of what the industrial hack'n'slash may offer come March has served Nier Automata well - Square Enix will be salivating at the reaction to the game and it's certainly one that has shot the game to the top of the 2017 must list.

Nier Automata demo is available now for free download.

Win a double pass to see XXX - The Return of Xander Cage

Win a double pass to see XXX - The Return of Xander Cage

The third explosive chapter of the blockbuster franchise that redefined the spy thriller finds extreme athlete turned government operative Xander Cage (Vin Diesel) coming out of self-imposed exile and on a collision course with deadly alpha warrior Xiang and his team in a race to recover a sinister and seemingly unstoppable weapon known as Pandora’s Box.

Recruiting an all-new group of thrill-seeking cohorts, Xander finds himself enmeshed in a deadly conspiracy that points to collusion at the highest levels of world governments.

Packed with the series’ signature deadpan wit and bad-ass attitude, “xXx: RETURN OF XANDER CAGE” will raise the bar on extreme action with some of the most mind-blowing stunts to ever be caught on film

xXx: RETURN OF XANDER CAGE releases January 19th!
.
To stand a chance of winning a double pass, all you have to do is drop me a line with your name and address!

To enter simply email XXX - Xander Cage to this address: darrensworldofentertainment@gmail.com or CLICK HERE NOW!

Please ensure you include your name and address - competition closes January 19th