Critically Acclaimed 'The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier' Continues in Episode 3 on March 28th

Critically Acclaimed 'The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier' Continues in Episode 3 on March 28th

Critically-Acclaimed  'The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier'  Continues with Episode Three: 'Above The Law' on March 28th Series Continues with Episode 3: 'Above the Law' Arriving Tuesday March 28th

Fellow Survivors, Today we can share the release date for the critically-acclaimed The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier's upcoming Episode 3: 'Above the Law'.   Beginning Tuesday March 28th, players can download Episode 3: 'Above the Law' on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC/Steam, iOS, and Android-based devices. The episode will also download for all users of the special Season Pass disc for consoles, which includes the critically acclaimed two-part premiere episodes, and grants access to Episode 3 and all subsequent episodes in the five episode season for download as they become available.  After the shocking events of 'Ties That Bind: Part Two', Javier struggles to find a role in his newly reunited family. Meanwhile, tension within the walls of Richmond grow. Will Clementine and the rest of the group turn against Javier? It may be time to choose between the family you're born into and the family you've made... The two-part premiere of The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier launched to widespread critical acclaim. In their review of the premiere, IGN.com said that, "Smart characterization and writing for Javi and his family, plus the return of Clementine, add weight to a largely unfamiliar but already engaging new frontier that I can't wait to continue to explore," adding that its "uncharted territory feels familiar and, excitingly, fresh." GamesRadar said that A New Frontier, "demonstrates the resonant power of interactive storytelling," and that it, "finds the right balance between rewarding longtime players who've shaped their own version of the story and welcoming those who might be hopping aboard this grim adventure for the first time." Game Informer said the two-part premiere has, "shocking deaths, intense betrayals, and split-second decisions to second-guess," claiming that "Everything leads up to a hell of a cliffhanger, making me intrigued to see what happens next."  The Walking Dead: A New Frontier acts as both a new beginning for players fresh to the series and unfamiliar with Clementine, as well as a continuation for players who have experienced Seasons One and Two. Players new to the series are able to start a story that is tailored to this new beginning. Players continuing onward from prior seasons have multiple options for quickly configuring their tailored backstory, or importing past save files from various platforms.   The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier Episode Three: 'Above The Law" is rated 'M' (Mature) for Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, and Use of Drugs by the ESRB. Future content in the season is yet to be rated.   To date, The Walking Dead: A Telltale Games Series has sold more than 50 million episodes worldwide, earning more than 100 Game of the Year awards from outlets including Metacritic, USA Today, Wired, Spike TV VGAs, Yahoo!, The Telegraph, Mashable, Polygon, Destructoid and GamesRadar, and was also the recipient of two BAFTA Video Games Awards for Best Story and Best Mobile Game.    The Walking Dead is set in the world of Robert Kirkman's award-winning comic book series and offers an emotionally-charged, tailored game experience where a player's actions and choices affect how their story plays out across the entire series.   For more information on the game, visit the official website, Facebook, and follow Telltale Games on Twitter. For more information on The Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman, and all of his titles, visit www.Skybound.com and www.TheWalkingDead.com.

A Cure For Wellness: Film Review

A Cure For Wellness: Film Review

Cast: Dane deHaan, Jason Isaacs, Mia Goth
Director: Gore Verbinski

Tipping its hat to horror and Gothic pretensions, Gore Verbinski's suspense-filled A Cure For Wellness soaks in mystery for 2 of its 2 and a half hours run time.

A pallid and drawn Dane De Haan stars as Lockhart, an ambitious investment banker, who's extorted to bring back the head of a financial company from a mysterious spa in the Swiss Alps.
With the clock ticking to return the man in question ahead of a company merger, Lockhart finds his efforts frustrated by the staff and owner of the spa who believe it's better for all if they stay and get some treatment.

But as Lockhart starts to look around, he digs deeper into the disturbing secrets of the spa - however, will he be too late?

There's a mania infecting every frame of A Cure For Wellness.

With Bojan Bazelli's precise and exquisite cinematography, A Cure For Wellness is infected with a starchly stiff look that manifests in every scene.

Moments are perfectly framed and add much to the overall sheen of A Cure For Wellness' frankly lunatic edges, giving the film a detached feeling that hangs heavy in the air as it plays out.

While DeHaan's growing incredulousness seems to be at odds with what you'd expect from the character, this Gothic-tinged film, with its transfixing blend of weirdness and and surreal nightmare edges is a Lovecraftian parable and dreamscape made real.

Complete with some great use of sound, the suspenseful atmosphere is ramped up to 11 and the creaks and clanks of the walls and Lockhart's crutches add a sense of a very real rhythm that comes, lulling you into an odd dreamlike mentality that helps you view the film.

As the body horror ramps up to its natural and expected crescendo, the actual denouement of the film is as utterly daffy as you'd expect. In fact, the sheer insanity of the end actually threatens to derail the film at this point, potentially derailing the meticulous work done by Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski and his team.

Large parts of the film feel like they've been ripped from plenty of other source materials (from a catalogue of horrors to elements of Scorsese's Shutter Island), and even the slow pans down the corridors recall The Kingdom, Lars von Trier's foray into TV.

And yet, despite the ending sequence, A Cure For Wellness remains a largely taut and well-executed trip into the fevered mind. It's a trip, to be sure, but the paranoia, suspense and madness within make it a journey well worth experiencing.

Office Christmas Party: DVD Review

Office Christmas Party: DVD Review

It's the time of the year.

It's the season for excessive partying and generally letting everything fly.

So it's no surprise that Office Christmas Party looks to fill the seasonal blow-out with a comedy aimed at the fun-loving audiences seeking an R rated raunch fest.

Essentially, with a threadbare plot, it's the story of Silicon Valley star TJ Miller's Clay, who's the local branch manager of a computer company handed down to him by his father. But the company's facing tough times and when Clay's sister Carol (Jennifer Aniston in boss bitch mode, already pioneered in elements of Horrible Bosses) shows up with the threat of closing down their branch, Clay's determined to land a big client and save the day.

His plan - to woo Courtenay B Vance's Walter Davis with the biggest office bash they've ever seen - and despite Carol's refusal to let them party with redundancy around the corner...

Office Christmas Party sets its stall out early on.

It's actually quite tame in comparison to prior R Rated fare like The Hangover that wore its crudity and boorishness on its sleeve. There's a real feeling of family in the film, from the family of workers to the bickering family dynamic between Carol and Clay, and it softens proceedings from what you may be expecting.

Miller does a version of his Pied Piper CEO character Erlich Bachman, and at times, feels constrained by the script and story. (Miller's always at his best in a loose approach or improvising, and it distinctly feels like he's been reined in).

Bateman and Munn have a tentative romance brewing and dynamic that's sweet but never cloying, though equally it never feels riveting and lively, with the softness more at the fore. Bateman plays his usual laconic everyman, Munn plays a computer genius who's human, Aniston plays icy cold to perfection, and Miller gets goofball manchild down pat.

But there's little zing where there could be more - and even when the party kicks in, the chance to ramp up the raunch is squandered. It should have been more Crass-mas than anything else.

It ends up once again being a film that's stolen by Ghostbusters star Kate McKinnon's performance. This time, she's an uptight oddball HR rep who's determined to squash the fun, while secretly harbouring a desire to be involved.

In among the awkward moments and the obligatory pushing the attempts to make this Project Xin an Office block, Office Christmas Party never quite fully hits the vibe it should. Sidelined by the sweetness and stunted by the lack of some strong frat elements and not enough laugh out loud gags, this is, unfortunately, one Office Christmas Party that delivers a hangover and needed many more of the boozy highs. 

Bad Santa 2: DVD Review

Bad Santa 2: DVD Review

Released by Madman Home Ent

Christmas comes every year.

And with it, there's a large portion of the world who are cynical and unimpressed as the commercial holiday kicks into gear, with its enforced jollity and OTT happiness.

The original 2003 outing of Bad Santa was the perfect antidote to the festive cheer - a crude, crass and comical caper that pitted a foul-mouthed thief and his dwarf friend against the festive season. Coupled with Terry Zwigoff's writing and Thornton's not giving a sh*t Santa, Bad Santa was near perfect holiday fodder, destined to take the shine off the saccharine season.

Unfortunately, Bad Santa 2 is the complete opposite; a piece of trashy cinema that plumbs the depths of depravity and somehow manages to mine deeper in its attempts to garner some jollies.

This time around, Billy Bob Thornton's beer-soaked Willie Soke is contacted once again by Marcus Skidmore (Cox) to help him crack open a safe with millions within. The kicker this time is that the safe is housed in a Chicago charity organisation, run by Christine Hendricks' Diane, a former alcoholic turned good. Ditching the innocent Thurman Merman (Brett Kelly, once again providing the naive simpleton approach), Sokes sets out to crack the safe and start again after being suicidal. But the kicker is that the con-job is being pioneered by his white trash estranged mother Sunny (Bates)....

Released 13 years almost to the day of the first film, Bad Santa 2 is distinctly difficult to love.

Much like its main star, who spends a disproportionate amount of time soaked in the booze, it's hard to see how anyone will get any laughs from this if they're sober. Every single punchline mines low hanging fruit and somehow manages to dig even deeper, ensuring the final outcome is a cloyingly annoying mix of depravity and puerile stupidity.

To be fair to the cast, they embrace this wholeheartedly, with Thornton once again proving to the antithesis to the normal dwellers of the red Santa suit. His deplorable and despicable antics prove fertile ground for some base jokes, but there's a real hint of tragedy about this man who can't get off unless he's called Santa and who starts the film by literally pissing on the past and trying to hang himself.

Equally prone to some kind of depression allegory is Kelly's Thurman Merman, a man-child whose outlook on life is clearly disconnected from the real world and whose eternal jollity comes naturally and provokes nervous laughter when anyone else would be calling for mental intervention.

The original wore its toxic despising of the enforced holiday period like a badge, a kind of honest heart on sleeve truth seldom acknowledged about the holiday period. This sequel, with its irritating desire to annoy with vulgar humour feels like a real let down for an attempt to follow a much-loved anti Christmas classic tradition.

Bad Santa 2 is one present under the Christmas tree that nobody cinematically will want; sure, some may get a perverse kick out of moments in its 90 minute run time, but others will want to run away as fast as their little elf legs can carry them. 

Aquarius: Film Review

Aquarius: Film Review

Cast: Sonia Braga
Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho

Sometimes, the words tour de force are bandied around performances with gay abandon.

But in the case of Aquarius, Kleber Mendonça Filho's film, Sonia Braga deserves the accolade.

Braga stars as Dona Clara, a music critic in her 60s, who stands resolute in her apartment building when all else have moved out and the developers come to tear it down. Refusing to move on after a full life in the same building, Dona Clara digs in, but not by drawing battle lines - but by simply living her life.

Reflecting on her past and living in her present, Braga's extraordinary class in the role lends the whole piece a sort of innate charm. Broken up into 3 chapters, the story follows its own lyrical beats and pace as it demonstrates a life well loved and friendships well nourished. The enigmatic Sonia Braga is a commanding presence throughout, imbuing the ageing Dona Clara with a sheen of genuine feeling that this is a life well-lived as society has changed around her.

And Filho's film also impresses too.

From the stunning seaside vistas from the Aquarius apartment in Brazil to the casual reveals about health issues or deaths, this is a film that's masterful and takes its time while spinning its observations out. Building on the life of her aunt early on and how she set the trend, it's easy to see Dona Clara's blossoming into a similar role as she fends off demands from her children to sell up and the developers, insisting that she's better leaving.

If there's to be a flaw it's the tail end of the film where the fight with the developers comes to a head with an abruptness that seems crowbarred in. Certainly, the final scene leaves you feeling the story's incomplete and unfinished, which given what you've invested in over the past 2 hours 20 mins is frustrating to say the least.

Aquarius is a lesson in class from Braga - she's the reason to see this film, a reminder that great performances are central to film. It's a pinnacle performance.

Win a Ghost In The Shell prize pack

Win a Ghost In The Shell prize pack

Produced by Avi Arad, p.g.a.  Ari Arad, p.g.a.  Steven Paul

Based on the comic THE GHOST IN THE SHELL by Shirow Masamune

Screenplay by Jamie Moss and William Wheeler and Ehren Kruger
Directed by Rupert Sanders

Cast: Scarlett Johansson, “Beat” Takeshi Kitano, Michael Carmen Pitt, Pilou Asbaek, Chin Han and Juliette Binoche

About Ghost In The Shell

In the near future, Major (Scarlett Johansson) is the first of her kind:  A human saved from a terrible crash, who is cyber-enhanced to be a perfect soldier devoted to stopping the world’s most dangerous criminals.  
When terrorism reaches a new level that includes the ability to hack into people’s minds and control them, Major is uniquely qualified to stop it.

As she prepares to face a new enemy, Major discovers that she has been lied to:  her life was not saved, it was stolen.

She will stop at nothing to recover her past, find out who did this to her and stop them before they do it to others.

Based on the internationally acclaimed Japanese Manga, “The Ghost in the Shell.”

Ghost In The Shell hits cinemas March 30th

To win The Ghost In The Shell prize pack, all you have to do is enter simply email your details to this  address: darrensworldofentertainment@gmail.com or CLICK HERE NOW!

Include your name and address and title your email GHOST!

Please ensure you include your name and address; title your entry GHOST! - competition closes March 30th!

Allied: Blu Ray Review

Allied: Blu Ray Review

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 Alliedis 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.