It: Film Review

It: Film Review

Cast: Bill Skarsgard, Jaden Lieberher, Finn Wolfhard, Sophia Lillis
Director: Andy Muschietti

Abuse in all its forms predicates the 2017 retooling of Stephen King's celebrated It.

Channeling into the 1980s vibe set down by Netflix series Stranger Things and also reminiscent of the horror comedy of The Goonies, the re-telling of mid-town America's outsider kids (the self-styled Loser Club) and their fight against evil is a genuinely chilling creep-fest that perhaps overplays some of its hand toward the end.

For those unfamiliar with the book and the mini series which starred Tim Curry, the remake centres on the tragedy of Bill (Midnight Special's Jaeden Lieberher) whose younger brother disappears one night in a storm. As the family struggles to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives, Bill and his other friends get ready for the end of school and subsequent summer vacation.

But the ensuing freedom is anything but for the friends, who find summer days riddled with bullies and the on-set of adolescence.

Things are further exacerbated when they all begin to experience horrific visions and all share the fact that a clown is front and centre of their collective mania...

It works well as a set piece rollercoaster ride of jump scares and psychotic thrills, guaranteed to make you jolt out of your seat whether you're coulrophobic or not.

But as the film goes on, the reliance on jump scares and the inevitable Stephen King silliness sets in, fatiguing the final strait of this over-long, but largely terrific and atmospheric piece.

A chilling pre-credits sequence sets the stall out well - a sense of uneasiness pervades with menace as Bill's younger brother meets Pennywise the clown as he tries to retrieve something from a drain. It's here that Skarsgard earns his stripes as the sinister clown, bouncing from mirth to downright nastiness on the turn of a coin. Director Muschietti (Mama) wisely uses the clown sparingly throughout giving the film the edge it needs to be unsettling - and Skarsgard makes the best of every single scene the demented and cracked-painted monster appears in.

Perhaps equally successful are the smaller details that ooze through It.

There's an effective damning of adults in mid-town Americas, where kids are raised in the shadow of implied incest, abuse, poverty and continual neglect and bullying. There's the skating of the line between innocence of childhood and the oncoming terror of adolescence and menstruation. There's the innate tragedy of trauma affecting both families of loss and the children of abuse; in short, there's a lot from the King novel which is laced within to terrific use.

It may feel very familiar because of how the cinematic world's been shaped by such tropes ever since, but given how deliberate the pacing of Muschietti's first It film is and how much time is spent with the kids' group and within their own dynamics, even the stereotyped and familiar feels largely fresh and thrillingly frightening. In the quieter moments and the internal relationships fare the best, with Lieberher and Amy Adams-lookalike Lillis adding heart to the proceedings and universal recognition to teen awkwardness.

Ultimately though, It is a nightmarish yet somehow episodic meshing of phobias and primal premises wrapped up into one effectively retro package, guaranteed to haunt you.

A Ghost Story: Film Review

A Ghost Story: Film Review

Cast: Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara
Director: David Lowery

Director David Lowery's A Ghost Story is a very simple story, and yet, in parts, can be equated to Terrence Malick's Voyage Of Time.

Centring on Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara's unnamed duo, the film is the story of Casey Affleck's man who is killed in a car crash near his house. Bid farewell by Mara's character at the morgue, the white sheet drawn stiffly and quickly back onto the body, Affleck's character sits starkly up and heads back home.

Still covered in the white sheet, but with two eye holes now adorning it (akin at times to looking like an elephant as the drapes hang), the ghost stays around the house, watching Mara's character, and then when she moves on, ultimately observing those who head to their former home.

Stretched on a micro-budget and with the eeriness factor high, A Ghost Story is laced with atmosphere and a mournful tone that drags into the existential. As the Ghost wanders around, the stripped back visuals are blatantly hypnotic. Essentially just a sheet, it's somewhat intriguing to note that you end up projecting your own internal expressions onto the Ghost and there are times where you almost imagine there are tears flowing under the sheet.

Granted, there's a slow lyrical touch to the rhythms of A Ghost Story, which won't be for everyone, and a long shot of Rooney Mara's character simply eating a pie that's been delivered to her bereft home may push the limits somewhat of those who feel its artful folly.

But it's in the execution of the existential, the way it plays with structure and in its pursuit of the poignancy of loss that A Ghost Story manages to thrive, and ultimately soar. As the Ghost watches the world around him, the elegaic score and the incredible use of sound help the film to transgress its.physical limitations and budgetary constraints.

There will be some who dismiss the mood piece for its ambitions, its 1:33:1 aspect ratio and on whom the subtleties will be lost, but the brooding and ponderous piece is a singular experience. Its use of time and its execution thereof make for interesting bedfellows and provide much debate after the film's gone and finished.

If anything, A Ghost Story captures the futility and inevitability of loss, the sadness of those left behind and posits that a house is not a home without those who live within. It's an incalculably beautiful film that aches as well as it plays out, and it's utterly mesmerising.

Win a Destiny 2 prize pack

Win a Destiny 2 prize pack

It's here - Destiny 2 has arrived!

And to celebrate the release of the latest from Bungie and Activision, you can win a neat little prize pack including a PS4 copy of the game, Cayde figurine and a poster!

About Destiny 2

From the makers of the acclaimed hit game Destiny, comes the much-anticipated sequel. An action shooter that takes you on an epic journey across the solar system.

Humanity’s last safe city has fallen to an overwhelming invasion force, led by Ghaul, the imposing commander of the brutal Red Legion. 

He has stripped the city’s Guardians of their power, and forced the survivors to flee. 

You will venture to mysterious, unexplored worlds of our solar system to discover an arsenal of weapons and devastating new combat abilities. 

To defeat the Red Legion and confront Ghaul, you must reunite humanity’s scattered heroes, stand together, and fight back to reclaim our home.

  To win the pack thanks to Activision, Bungie and Total Interactive, all you have to do is email  your details to this  address: darrensworldofentertainment@gmail.com or CLICK HERE NOW!

Include your name and address and title your email DESTINY2!
Competition closes Sept 14th

Good luck!

Snatched: DVD Review

Snatched: DVD Review

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.

Alien Covenant: Blu Ray Review

Alien Covenant: Blu Ray Review

38 years after the original Alien film delivered the perfect blend of sci-fi and horror in space, director Ridley Scott continues to mine the world as he follows up the muddled pretensions of Prometheus, a film that looked to expand and explore the origins of the xenomorphs.

This time around, Scott tries to once again blend cod philosophy with abject moments of horror as he takes a new crew and plunges them against the perils of planetary exploration and the unknown.

Centring on the crew of the Covenant, an Ark-like project that's hurtling toward a new paradise home with 2000 colonists asleep on board, things start to go awry when the crew are awoken by the effects of a "random localised event."

With an uncertain newly-appointed captain at the helm (played by Crudup), the ship's taken off its course when it receives a transmission that hints at a better planet than the one they've had their sights on. Despite the protestations of Katherine Waterston's Daniels, the ship heads towards the potential new Eden - but on landing, survival becomes anything but certain.

Alien: Covenant mixes both the good and the bad as it tries to unspool its terror among the toe toe story.

But by shifting away from the claustrophobia of the likes of Alien and Aliens, the jump scares end up a little predictable (although nonetheless scary) and almost feeling like they're trying to hit beats and scenes we've seen before with more successful characters. It's a degree of fan service in the extreme, in some ways.

Continuing the prequel vibe that was so brilliantly realised in 2012's Prometheus, pristine white spaceship corridors and wondrous lighting give Alien: Covenant an inescapable sense of style while it's in space. But it's when the film shifts to the murky Milford Sounds that its darkness starts to come through, as large portions are swathed in muddied execution and lighting, as well as rote typical familial tropes.

It's also on the ground that the very familiar tropes of sensible people doing stupid things begins to manifest and the action, such as it is, takes a mind-dumbing turn. It's not massively helped by a a CGI alien that while modelled on HR Giger's original creatures, is less successful in its digital execution. (And subsequent scenes with the alien white make it look like a cross between Xenomorph and the Slenderman mythos, perhaps a nod to the internet sensation that's horrified many).

But to be fair, an early culling of relatively rote and underwritten crew members proves to be a blessing in disguise, an effective tonic to clear out the narrative chaff that would have undermined the story as went on. However, in doing so, the deaths prove to be inconsequential in terms of emotional heft, and serve only to showcase the body horror elements of the Alien's MO. There are nice apocalyptic touches (skeletal remains scatter the entrance to a city) that will fuel a lot of the fan debate after the lights have gone back up.

Elsewhere, while the cod-philosophical elements and talk of Byron/ Shelley/ Ozymandias et al continue to push the "Who am I, where do we all come from, playing God" debate that began in (and over-stuffed large parts of) Prometheus, it's Fassbender's continuing aloof and generally creepy synthetic that pushes a lot of the story forward (in ways that are many and spoilery here) as the story tries to build the myth of the Engineers and their place in Creation.

Fassbender works well as the nightmarish exploration vibe that's wrapped up in suspense and wilfully obtuse execution plays out, and Scott works his usual deft touches in the build-up of suspenseful moments that are peppered throughout. Waterston is initially quite fragile, a soul ripped apart by grief, but whose delicacy becomes hardened by the end, as she channels Ripley. (Though, this is also a problem, as there's really little else to do with the nuances of the character). And McBride does solid dramatic work as the pilot Tennessee, proving that Scott at least can turn expectations around of his actors - even if the script doesn't serve the characters as well.

By stripping out parts of the claustrophobia and trying to mesh parts of Aliens with Alien and mixing it with exposition, Alien:Covenant is a tonally jerky film. With moments of episodic action and sporadic exposition, it loses the primordial fear that the originals instilled, and while its technology and the execution thereof is second to none, the basics of what makes a solid Alien film feel lacking. The back half of it though, soars, with the confrontations that have been wanted and desired

While it's fair to say the Alien elements have teeth once again, the very essence of what made their virulence so terrifying is only slowly coming back to what makes the Alien franchise such a benchmark in sci-fi horror.

At the end of the day, it's simply a case of man versus the unknown that made the first films so iconic; by just adding layers of mythology and delusions of creators as well as their subsequent debate, is stopping the series from going back to its most terrifying basics. 

Win a double pass to see Victoria and Abdul

Win a double pass to see Victoria and Abdul

The extraordinary true story of an unexpected friendship in the later years of Queen Victoria’s (Academy Award winner Judi Dench) remarkable rule. 

When Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal), a young clerk, travels from India to participate in the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, he is surprised to find favor with the Queen herself. 

As the Queen questions the constrictions of her long-held position, the two forge an unlikely and devoted alliance with a loyalty to one another that her household and inner circle all attempt to destroy. 

As the friendship deepens, the Queen begins to see a changing world through new eyes and joyfully reclaims her humanity. 

Victoria And Abdul releases in New Zealand on September 14.

To win a double pass, all you have to do is email your details to this  address: darrensworldofentertainment@gmail.com or CLICK HERE NOW!

Include your name and address and title your email VICTORIA!
Competition closes Sept 14th

Good luck!

Win a double pass to see Mother!

Win a double pass to see Mother!

To celebrate the release of Mother! from Darren Aronosfky on September 14th, you can win a double pass to see the movie at the cinemas!

About Mother!
A couple's relationship is tested when uninvited guests arrive at their home, disrupting their tranquil existence.

Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer.

To win the double pass thanks to Paramount Pictures, all you have to do is email  your details to this  address: darrensworldofentertainment@gmail.com or CLICK HERE NOW!

Include your name and address and title your email MOTHER!
Competition closes Sept 14th

Good luck!