Win a double pass to see The Girl In The Spider's Web

Win a double pass to see The Girl In The Spider's Web

Lisbeth Salander, the cult figure and title character of the acclaimed Millennium book series created by Stieg Larsson, will return to the screen in The Girl in the Spider’s Web, a first-time adaptation of the recent global bestseller. 

Golden Globe winner Claire Foy, the star of "The Crown," will play the outcast vigilante defender under the direction of Fede Alvarez, the director of 2016’s breakout thriller Don’t Breathe; the screenplay adaptation is by Steven Knight and Fede Alvarez & Jay Basu.

The Girl In The Spider's Web is in cinemas November 8th.

To win all you have to do is email your details and the word SPIDER WEB to this address: darrensworldofentertainment@gmail.com or CLICK HERE NOW!

Competition closes November 8th

The Breaker Upperers: Blu Ray Review

The Breaker Upperers: Blu Ray Review

There's no disputing the necessity and timeliness of The Breaker Upperers, a female written, directed and led comedy, aimed squarely at getting groups of women together and out into the cinema.

Fresh from success on the international circuit and at SXSW, van Beek and Sami play Jen and Mel, a couple of long-term mates who have an agency that essentially breaks couples up, because those involved are too scared to do it themselves.

Business is good, and Jen's approach is to never let it get personal.

However, when Mel gets the guilts for claiming to Annie one of those dumped that her other half went AWOL, things start to rupture between the two of them. It's further exacerbated when Mel starts dating Rolleston's lacking-in-smarts Jordan - it looks very much like the next couple heading for splitsville is Mel and Jen...

The Breaker Upperer's short run time helps, because, in parts, areas of this film feel like an extended sketch show thrown together with the flimsiest of threads and the best of intentions.

It's not to belittle any of those involved nor their intentions, but the general malaise which settles in to The Breaker Upperers is more prevalent when scenes don't centre on Madeleine Sami and Jackie van Beek's characters.

In between the hitherto-rarely seen on the big screen take on female friendship delivered by The Breaker Upperers, there are some high points. Sami, in particular, delivers a gutsy performance that drops the laughs with ease; van Beek's more of a straight man act to this, but it's herein the problem with The Breaker Upperers lies.

The simple cold hard fact of the matter is that everyone within is a character to varying degrees.

It means that when the emotional pull is supposed to come, it doesn't resonate as strongly as it should, largely in part to the feeling that swathes of this feel underwritten and ever-so slightly undercooked.

It's not majorly disparaging, just disappointing that there's potential here that feels lost in translation - and cameos from the likes of te Wiata as Jen's sex-obsessed hoitytoity mother and a sequence involving a 90s Celine Dion karaoke ballad means there are some genuine laugh-out-loud moments to be had.

Rolleston tries to play fast and dumb with Jordan, and a comment midway through the film as he gets a lift back home with his mum and beau in tow is genuinely one of the most scabrous and hilarious sentences uttered in the history of New Zealand cinema.

But that's the issue here - the humour is too few and far in between.

At its heart, The Breaker Upperers simply wants to be loved.

It doesn't want to be rejected like its suitors and yet it never quite offers a compelling enough reason to try and make it through the rocky periods and past the initial honeymoon period.

Edie: DVD Review

Edie: DVD Review

Less Reese Witherspoon's Wild, more a tame film that pulls no surprises, Sheila Hancock's Edie is a woman with a mission late in life.

Freed from the shackles of an abusive marriage that imploded into a stroke for her husband that imprisoned them both for 30 years and with a care home beckoning for her future, Edie decides on a whim to tackle a Scottish mountain climb.

With the cry of "Never too late for you, Edie" ringing in her ears, and with memories of a mountain promise made to her by her late father, Edie goes AWOL (with scant follow through from her daughter) to the Highlands.

After bumping into Guthrie's Johnny, Edie's conned into getting training from his so-called camping ways to tackle the journey...

Edie is predictable fare, that treads a familiar path to redemption without any flashiness or surprises.
It's in its subtlety that it works best, and with a twinkling performance from Hancock, and a genuinely empathetic grounded turn from Guthrie, the film's Odd Couple vibe of lost souls tends to work best early on.

Edie's determined to cast the shackles of the shadow of her past life off and climb both the literal and metaphorical mountain dragging her down. Equally, Johnny's uncertainty over being stuck in a small town, shackled to a partner's business plan, threatens to overwhelm his future and hold him back in much the same way as Edie's abusive husband did.

It's here that Edie stumbles really - its desire to repeatedly and unsubtly beat home parts of its message mean that - coupled with endless use of slow mo towards the end - the film becomes mired in sentiment and treats its audience with less respect. Along with the fact that logic and some key plot threads are just left dangling, this is never anything but Edie and Johnny's friendship, set to the backdrop of what appears to be shameless tourism video promotion for the rolling vistas of bonnie Scotland.

But in among the battle of unnecessary wills and heads being butted testing boundaries, Hancock and Guthrie quietly impress, imbuing the film with a resonance of a less-is-more execution.

It's unlikely that Edie will trouble either box offices or end of year lists, but it does offer an older audience a viewpoint seldom seen - of life after marriage, and in the twilight years. It's here that Hunter's film packs a quiet power - but had those in charge pulled back and removed some of the padding, the inter-generational friendship story could have flourished more than it comes close to hinting at. 

Beirut: DVD Review

Beirut: DVD Review

A formulaic spy thriller about a flawed hero called in to resolve a kidnapping that has a personal connection, Beirut is a solid but unspectacular thriller that ticks all the boxes and hits all the beats.

Mad Men's Jon Hamm is Mason Skiles, a former diplomat, who despite all the schmoozing and boozing is unable to prevent an event at his pad in Beirut turning into a tragedy in 1972.

Wounded emotionally by what occurs and having left the region, Skiles is forced to return when a colleague is kidnapped - and he finds himself entangled in the clandestine goings on of the political uprisings and the American intentions for them.

Beirut is that typical story, one of you not knowing whose side is whose, and which person is to be trusted.

In many ways, it feels all too familiar, just set in a different world we're used to seeing.
But the war torn Beirut feels gritty and grimy, and when Skiles returns a decade after leaving to see the evidence of civil uprising and the destruction, Hamm plays it excellently as Skiles steps out of the airport. At once shocked and simultaneously trying to work out how best to negotiate survival, the nuances of Hamm's flawed hero are thrown sharply into focus.

In fact, Hamm largely is the presence which keeps Beirut going; the conflict's cost is etched deep within his drawn face, his eyes puffy from decades of alcoholism and regret.

Elsewhere, Beirut's hoary tropes feel like they exist simply to hit dramatic beats, and it's not helped in parts by a script that largely feels ripped from plenty of other sources. The drama's at its best when it's invested in the personal, and it's never better than when Hamm elevates it. 

Bohemian Rhapsody: Film Review

Bohemian Rhapsody: Film Review

Cast: Rami Malek, Gwilym Lee, Tom Hollander, Ben Hardy, Mike Myers, Lucy Boynton
Director: Bryan Singer / Dexter Fletcher

To be honest, Bohemian Rhapsody does not, and will not, care for what critics think.

This broad, crowd-pleasing attempt to turn Queen's life story - and ultimately, that of Freddie Mercury - into a cinematic experience, is more akin to putting an inordinate amount of money into a jukebox and blasting out Queen's Greatest Hits on repeat, with Brian May's guitar riffs ultimately numbing you into submission..

That is to say, the Antony McCarten-penned biopic is electric and offers a kind of magic only when its lead Rami Malek prances around on stage, overbite and all, effecting the mannerisms of Mercury himself and the flamboyancy of performance. It's here that Malek just about manages to transcend his "Stars In Their Eyes" moment to remind you of why these songs endure.

Unfortunately, it's all the rest of what sits in between the culmination of the Live Aid performance and Queen experimenting with their sound that feels like a bum B-side, depressingly put out solely because the label demands it.

Racing formulaically between narrative beats, and hitting every familiar moment of a rags-to-riches story - including family tensions and subsequent resolutions, Bohemian Rhapsody suffers from plodding plotting, a defiant coyness over the star's bisexuality and rampant hedonistic lifestyle and also offers an insulting nod'n'wink at hidden gay sexuality throughout. (It's no wonder Frankie Howerd's Up Pompeii is playing on a TV early on).

In many ways, it feels like a three act West End musical in its execution (though some drone shots at the Live Aid performance at the end are thrilling, a sense of spectacle and scale evident in every swoop from the skies through the crowd and to Freddie himself on stage) and is pigheadedly determined to ensure that it provides more dancing to the crowd as it dances around its subject, and subsequently provides rarely any insight into Mercury other than what the downpat story beats demand of it.

While Malek is transcendant at times, and occasionally sells the internal conflict of Mercury well, he's let down massively by a script that's as formulaic as it is predictable.

Ultimately, Bohemian Rhapsody is more interested in serving a crowd a slice of rock'n'roll pie than providing a full meal - heaven alone knows what Freddie would have made of it.

Shadow Of The Tomb Raider: PS4 Review

Shadow Of The Tomb Raider: PS4 Review

Released by Square Enix
Platform: PS4

The Lara Croft reboot series has been a brilliant shot in the arm that the game needed.

The first re-energised Lara and gave her an origin story that was intriguing and engaging; the second built on the promise of the first and added puzzles and tomb raiding to the series to show the foundations were more than solid.

But with the third, the pressure's really on - because most of the new dynamics have been put into place prior and there's nowhere to hide.

In this latest, and set after events of Rise Of The Tomb Raider, Lara's quest against Trinity, the shadowy organisation that's been haunting her life, steps up. Set in south America in the legendary city of Paititi, Lara has to stop an apocalypse after things go slightly awry.

Camilla Luddington returns to the role of Lara, giving the latest a feeling of a trilogy of work (and certainly an ending hints at this being the conclusion of a cycle, rather than a direct continuation) and a sense of a character arc.

Much of the emphasis lies on tomb raiding this time around, and exploring caves, and the darker visuals sometimes make gameplay a little harder to stand out. There's a little less emphasis on combat this time around, and really the focus is about rounding Lara out to be more of a tomb raiding individual than just a cypher for actions and moments.

It does mean that parts of Shadow Of The Tomb Raider feel a lot like stuff you've seen before - but the character work that's put in doubles down on ensuring there's less sense of ennui than could become evident after a while.

While there may be edges of Indiana Jones about Lara's escapades, Luddington and the writing team go into overtime to ensure that she never loses her voice in the melee, and as a result, while the game may suffer from a feeling of over-familiarity, it's still a solidly executed, if slightly unspectacular, episode in the ongoing retooling of the Lara Croft series.

Suspiria: Film Review

Suspiria: Film Review

Cast: Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, Mia Goth, Chloe Grace Moretz
Director: Luca Guadagnino

Feeling a lot like a contemporary cinematic bedfellow / brother to Gaspar Noe's Climax, Guadagnino's Suspiria is an odd beast to say the very least.

50 Shades of Grey star Dakota Johnson plays Susan Bannion, a dancer summoned to Berlin during post Cold war times to audition for a company run by Madame Blanc (Swinton, in icy enigmatic turn).

Initially holding back, Bannion rises to the star pupil role, as her roommate Sara (Goth) begins to grow suspicious of what's going on at the Tanz Academy.

While Suspiria offers one of the most uncomfortable scenes set to celluloid this year, Guadagnino's homage, less remake, has more of the feel of an art film, rather than a full on horror.

With contorting bodies, some truly impressive choreographed dance scenes and a general feeling of unease early on, Suspiria sets the scene well as it ramps up the feminist vibe.

But it begins to fudge the execution of the film, failing to deliver much suspense and horror in equal measures as it unspools. Leading to a finale that's more ludicrous than terrifying is the final blow for this, thanks to some truly weak prosthetics and laughable dialogue. (Which is baffling given that some of the earlier work on this front is more than laudable, and the hints of the madness of possession that swirl early on.)

Mixing in allegories for the East vs West confrontation in Germany, an ongoing series of radio reports about the Baader Meinhof hostage crisis and an old man's quest to find his wife, the film's tendency to hardly deliver on any of these dallies very close to feeling it's undercooked rather than fully formed. It doesn't help the characters field a once over lightly approach either.

That said, Swinton and Johnson impress mightily; from Johnson's naif lost in the pull of something she doesn't understand to Swinton's performance that is evocative and subtle (to say more is to spoil), there is something to admire about the female led Suspiria (and doubtless there will be treatises on the women-led power piece and how it handles men).

Ultimately though, the 2018 remake of Suspiria is as polarising as you'd expect; it fails as a horror film, succeeds as an art piece, and consequently, feels insubstantial and almost inconsequential. The 1977 film from Dario Argento would be slightly appalled.