King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword: Film Review

King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword: Film Review

Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Jude Law, Eric Bana, Astrid Berges-Frisbey, Djimon Hounsou, Aidan Gillen, Neil Maskell
Director: Guy Ritchie

Playing like some bastard version of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Towers, and already a massive flop at the US Box Office, Guy Ritchie's take on King Arthur isn't quite as bad as you've been led to believe.

It's not perfect, either, but the visceral energy and sheer chutzpah that Ritchie imbues part of this fantastical tale with a visual thrill that's hard to shake.

It doesn't start off well, with a CGI heavy Return of the King /Two Towers / Warcraft style battle atop the ramparts that sees possessed pachyderms throwing rocks and taking on hordes of bad guys at the behest of a Mage blighting the land.

But the story concentrates on Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam aka Arthur, who witnesses his father's death before being cast off in a boat for his own safety.

Growing up on the back-alleys and streets of Londinium and denying his royal heritage, Arthur's forced to face his destiny when he manages to pull the sword Excalibur from the stone.
It's this that puts him on a collision course with his uncle, the ruthless leader King Vortigen (Jude Law), who's determined to deny Arthur his birth-right.

There's a kernel of a good gritty take on the Arthurian legend here, but it's buried deeply under the relatively rote and muddied CGI that blights large parts of King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.

In particular, Ritchie's geezer take on proceedings and quick cut montage adds a level of irreverence that is welcome in among the familiar trappings of conventional story-telling.
Ritchie used similar devices in his take on Sherlock Holmes and here, the speed and energy pays off with an unconventional way of doing a conventional story.

However, it's these stylish touches which add greatly to King Arthur and almost manage to distract from the occasionally flat delivery of some clunking dialogue (chiefly and unfortunately from former model Berges-Frisbey) and some rather exposition-heavy scenes.
The film's over-reliance on slow-mo also hurts proceedings as well, with it becoming a stylistic bridge too far and a visual trick that needs dialling down to achieve greater effect.

There's also a distinct feeling that the duality of destiny for the protagonists and their journeys on them would have made for a better film, with Arthur doing all he can to deny it, and Vortigen falling further into darkness as he desperately scrabbles to embrace it.

Ultimately, though it's the jumbling of all the ingredients that make King Arthur a disappointment of a film, with supernatural elements becoming the norm over the characters. When the film moves away from those (aside from the brilliant creation of a slithering octopus-like creature that lurks in Vortigen's catacombs), the human elements aren't strong enough to spring to life from the page.
It's a shame as Maskell's innate likeability and Hunnam's oafish-ruffian-geezer energy that make parts of King Arthur bearable.

It's just unfortunate that the weak script and a tighter edit weren't deployed to help save this from feeling like a derivative and sub-par fantasy epic that could ambles on its way and could have been so much more.

Paterson: Blu Ray Review

Paterson: Blu Ray Review

Jim Jarmusch's reflective and languid approach suits Adam Driver's rhythms in Paterson, a thematic companion piece to Ken Loach's I, Daniel Blake in its salutations of the common man.

Driver is Paterson, a routine bus driver in the burb of Paterson, who has a daily routine. His watch wakes him around 610am daily, he eats the same breakfast, heads to work at the bus depot and finds time to write poetry before his shift and during. Heading home every day at 6, he corrects a leaning post-box that moves daily, has dinner, walks his shared bulldog Marvin and goes to the local watering hole.

So far, so familiar as Jarmusch's patented loops play out over an 8 day period. But as the days progress, small variations crop up towards the end of the week in Paterson's life - from a girlfriend whose borderline OCD and creative obsession with black and white mean each return home is random to a cataclysmic moment involving his bus.

These are the beats of Paterson, where the ordinary is celebrated and the pace is languid to prosaic. As this ode to the mundane progresses, there are visual tics and tricks that Jarmusch throws into the mix to almost test as if you are paying attention to what's transpiring as the story's more lyrical edges wax and wane with time progressing.

Throwing in a cute scene stealing dog also helps proceedings (when the deliberate pace slows a little too much) as well with Marvin the bulldog (sadly RIP now) proving to be the juxtaposition to Paterson's life in a small way to many, but devastating to the celebration of the mundane. Driver's a relatively blank canvas throughout, with his small intrusions into life being catalogued more by the outre behaviour of others - from the bus depot boss whose life is full of dramas to the dreams of his cup-cake empire dreaming partner, his calmness gives the yin to everyone's extraordinary yang.

Blessed with dry humour and quiet reflections on life, Paterson's simplicity and gorgeousness is in its execution. Its rhythms and wry humour may not be for everyone, but for those who fall for the loops of life and the idiosyncracies within, this slow celebration of the mundanities of it all works wonders. 

Win a copy of Paterson on Blu Ray

Win a copy of Paterson on Blu Ray

Paterson (Adam Driver, STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS, GIRLS, INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS) is a bus driver in the city of Paterson, New Jersey — they share the name.

Every day, Paterson adheres to a simple routine: he drives his daily route, observing the city as it drifts across his windshield and overhearing fragments of conversation swirling around him; he writes poetry into a notebook; he walks his dog; he stops in a bar and drinks exactly one beer; he goes home to his wife, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani, MY SWEET PEPPERLAND, ABOUT ELLY).

By contrast, Laura’s world is ever changing. New dreams come to her almost daily, each a different and inspired project. Paterson loves Laura and she loves him. He supports her newfound ambitions; she champions his gift for poetry.

In this film by acclaimed director Jim Jarmusch, the quiet triumphs and defeats of daily life are observed, along with the poetry that's evident in its smallest details.

Paterson is out now from Madman Home Entertainment and you can net yourself one of two Blu-Ray copies!

To win a copy 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 PATERSON!
Competition closes May 25th

Good luck!

Snatched: Film Review

Snatched: Film Review

Cast: Amy Schumer, Goldie Hawn, Christopher Meloni, Wanda Sykes, Joan Cusack, Ike Barinholtz
Director: Jonathan Levine

Luring Goldie Hawn out of retirement 15 years after her last appearance would appear to be a coup for Amy Schumer's particular brand of comedy.

But Snatched squanders both Hawn and Schumer with a script and story that feels a little too haphazard to bring many laughs to the fore.

Schumer is self-absorbed Emily, who, as the film starts, is dumped by her fella (Randall Park, in an all-too brief cameo) on the eve of a trip to Ecuador. Fleeing home with her tail between her legs, Emily feels a pang of remorse for her once globe-trotting, now stay-at-home catsitter mother Linda (Hawn) after she discovers a photo album filled with people and places she's been.

On the spur of the moment, Emily invites her now cautious mother along in an attempt to re-connect.
However, it all goes to hell in a hand-cart when Emily and her mother are kidnapped and they set about trying to escape.

It's fair to say that Snatched has moments of comic bravura within.

Schumer once again proves adept at nailing the cruder and grosser elements of the female comedy that's been long ignored in mainstream media and comedy. From "Did she really just say that?" one-liners to scenes where she makes herself the butt of the joke in the worst possible way, Schumer's strength lies in the ability to shock.

And it's used to get some good solid laughs early on - particularly when Emily is trying to pull a bloke who's interested in her. Despite her continuing obnoxiousness and vacuously weak personality, Schumer's strength lies in giving the character of Emily the sort of vibe that many of the female audience will feel great empathy with.

Less successful though is the script, which feels piecemeal, under-developed and generally squanders its characters for no real impact.

Hawn is largely wasted, and the potential for a story-line that looked at how the Instagram loving Emily can't connect, whereas Linda used to connect with humanity while abroad and now largely feels sidelined by a digitally obsessed vacuous world goes wanting after tantalisingly being teased early on.

It doesn't help that the script bounces from one sequence to the next, with vague threads trying to pull them together - and while the episodic nature of it all proffers a few guffaws here and there, there's a general nagging feeling that it could have been more.

Christopher Meloni's OTT performance feels like something out of an 80s romance adventure film and wildly out of place, but the script by Ghostbusters' scribe Kate Dippold can't really seem to nail a thread and follow it through, despite the potential dream comedic team on the screen.

Ultimately, while Snatched is a shade over 85 minutes, it feels a lot longer, thanks in large parts due to a script that doesn't bring enough funny and criminally under-uses its leads.
If it had a stronger script and perhaps a bit more depth as well as some more screwball, this could have had great potential. Instead, it feels like a lot of the potential wins it could have traded on have been used to help defeat be snatched from the jaws of victory.

Voyage of Time: Film Review

Voyage of Time: Film Review

Terrence Malick's Voyage of Time is astonishing on the big screen.

It sounds like a trite aphorism to describe this this way, but the big screen only amplifies the jigsaw puzzle that Malick's (Tree of Life) assembled.

Less a coherent narrative, more a free form visual art project, the looping rhythms pull together in simple ways, exacerbating the idea of the universe from beginning to end.

Using a myriad of pre-shot footage and the voiceover of Cate Blanchett intoning over and over again about "mother", the film uses its plentiful visuals to dizzying array and startling effect.

While parts feel like nature docos strewn asunder and stripped to their basics, there's a general feeling of awe in this. It's unlikely the sumptuous visuals (flowing lava, creatures under the sea, firing synapses springing into life) won't leave you at any point feeling a degree of existential crisis and potential insignificance in some small way.

Waxing lyrical, the film's one continual bum note is the trite and cursory come back that love is all that matters; and there are definitely moments that make you feel Malick via Blanchett's flat vocals, really should just be quiet and let the imagery do the talking. This is perhaps Voyage of Time's weakest element, its desire to pull together a narrative and a line in existential questioning that leaves it to fall short.

It's this point that may prove the film's so divisive, and which may be something that's an anathema to the audience, but for those willing to appreciate the assembly of elements that others have shot and to allow the ebb and flow of it all, Voyage of Time is something spectacular.

Because when Voyage of Time really knocks it out of the park is in its eye-popping visuals, bursting from the screen with Joie de Vivre and Arthouse inclinations.

Ultimately, this is cinema in its purest form and as it should be - awe-inspiring and a reminder of the power of the visual medium.

Live By Night: DVD Review

Live By Night: DVD Review

For Ben Affleck's latest directorial outing after Gone Baby Gone, The Town and Argo, he heads to Boston and gangster land for an adaptation of a 2012 Dennis Lehane novel.

Affleck is small time two-bit robber Joe Coughlin, who finds himself in the middle of a mob war between the Irish and the Italians after the end of World War I. Having survived the Somme, Coughlin's got no desire to become another soldier in another fight, but finds himself slap bang in the middle of a war when he attracts the wrong sort of attention of Irish mob boss Albert White (Glenister, in an almost unrecognisable role.)

Escaping barely with his life, Coughlin relocates to Florida and allies himself with the Italian mob with the aim of getting back at White. Sent to the hotter climes and to run the rum business as well as advance the Italian mob's desires, Coughlin finds himself in the middle of another fight when the KKK comes calling and Prohibition continues to bite.
Despite all the elements being in place for a reasonably strong crime caper, Affleck's Live By Night fails to find any hint of life or energy to keep you engaged.
It's a problem from the muted start; and despite the attention to the period detail and some truly effective crime scenes, Affleck fails to hit any of the emotional highs that are necessary.

With a strong cast (Messina particularly impresses as Coughlin's Florida right hand man and Cooper's stoic work as the conflicted yet practical Sheriff) and the hint of a good story, nothing quite gels as it should. It's a shame as the premise is there - when was the last time you saw a gangster film in the Florida coast? But Affleck's character lacks any of the bite of a gangster or a man out for revenge - most of the film his expressionless and emotionless face merely spouts words and phrases; there's no heart and no fire in a moment of it, and the malaise is contagious.

It doesn't really help that Coughlin's so inherently a good guy (as witnessed by his continual wearing of white suits) when a bad guy's touch would have added more to the film.

Under-sketched characters don't add much either- Saldana's presented as a matriarch of the Rum industry in Florida and fades when her presence comes into Coughlin's shadow; and Miller's one-note turn at the start gives little edge either.

To be fair, it can't all be laid at Affleck's door; his eye brings a sutiably taut (if murky) final shoot-out and there are some truly wonderful vistas caught on camera.

But without the fire in the cinematic and narrative belly, Live By Night is left to flounder and wither on the vine. And that's a rum deal for all of us. 

Win a DISNEY'S PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES prize pack

To celebrate the return of Captain Jack Sparrow in DISNEY'S PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES, I've teamed up with Walt Disney NZ to bring some truly awesome Pirates swag!

You can win one of five prize packs me hearties, in which are included the following treasures:

5 x adult t shirts

5 x bandanas

5 x skull glasses

5 x badges

5 x double in-season passes

About DISNEY'S PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES

Johnny Depp returns to the big screen as the iconic, swashbuckling anti-hero Jack Sparrow in the all-new “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales,” a rip-roaring adventure that finds down-on-his-luck Captain Jack feeling the winds of ill-fortune blowing strongly his way when deadly ghost sailors, led by the terrifying Captain Salazar, escape from the Devil's Triangle bent on killing every pirate at sea—notably Jack.

DISNEY’S PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN : DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES

Starring Johnny Depp, Javier Bardem, Geoffrey Rush

In Cinemas May 25

Cert : TBC

To win a one of these packs 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 YARRRRRRR!
Competition closes May 25th

Good luck!