How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World: Film Review

How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World: Film Review

Cast: Jay Baruchel, America Ferrara, F Murray Abraham
Director: Dean DeBlois

The animated dragon saga hits its conclusion capper with The Hidden World, a film that's a visually layered but occasionally muted end to the series.

Jay Baruchel's Hiccup is back, this time as the chief of Berk, and still pal to alpha dragon Toothless.

With Hiccup facing marriage to Astrid (Ferrara), the world of Berk is thrown into disarray with the arrival of a new dinosaur hunter Grimmel (Murray Abraham) determined to wipe Toothless' kind from the world.

As the tribe up and leaves from Berk, Hiccup begins to doubt himself, and worries what future lies ahead for them all - and most importantly, for his pal Toothless.

There is no doubting the calibre of the animation of How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World.

Certainly, the sequence where The Hidden World is discovered is visually astounding, shimmering as it does with colour, and subtle hues.

And there are moments between Toothless and his new lady dragon friend that are up there with some of the best animal courtship sequences you've seen on TV animal shows (complete with some truly adept orchestral scores helping the scenes soar).

The visuals are award-worthy, and certainly do much to build on previous installments.

But it has also to be said, there's a lot of distraction in How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World which pulls away from engaging with Hiccup one last time. Tedious back and forth bonehead banter between Tuffnut and Ruffnut grates immensely and derails the emotional heft that's brewing.

When How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World concentrates solely on Hiccup and Toothless though, it soars. From the age old message of learning to love with loss, and realising they have to move on, Jay Baruchel does some of his best work, giving Hiccup the bittersweet sadness he needs to carry it off.

It's a good solid end and capper to the trilogy, and while the emotional edges work best when they stay focussed, the ultimate open end feel to the film allows you to hope against hope that one day, Hiccup and Toothless will reunite on the big screen.

Mega Time Squad: DVD Review

Mega Time Squad: DVD Review

More loopy, than Looper, Mega Time Squad is a blast.

A ludicrously-fuelled tale of crime and lack of ambition in middle New Zealand (Thames, to be precise), director Tim Van Dammen's follow up to NZIFF hit Romeo and Juliet: A Love Story is nonetheless stylish.

Anton Tennet is John, a small town hoodlum who's less a player, more easily-to-be-played. Part of a crime gang run by Jonny Brugh's Shelton (the humourous lunatic of the piece), John's sent to rob a triad at his behest to prevent the Chinese from getting a foothold in Thames.

While carrying out the deed, John gets his hands on a mysterious piece of Chinese jewellery that has mystical time-travelling properties...and suddenly finds he has ambitions he never realised.

Fresh, enticing and flipping funny, Mega Time Squad is easily one of the best time at the movies.

With a laconic style and some unexpectedly humorous moments to pierce any of the meanness (of which there's little) van Dammen celebrates the Kiwi in the middle of the country, and never once loses any of the smarts of the film's genre. It may play up the mystical elements of the bracelet and then never quite deliver (the film's only criticism), but van Dammen's clever enough to use the genre for what it needs, and never loses sight that the core of the story is of a man stuck where he is split between wanting to be and not.

Very much a celebration riddled through with a lunatic lo-fi joie de vivre (and some truly amusing yet human imagery, pies under a cloche being the best), Mega Time Squad is enjoyable.

There's nothing pals and pies can't solve, and amid the wannabe gangster storyline and growing absurdities, Mega Time Squad packs as big a heart as you could ever want from a NZ film.

What Men Want: Film Review

What Men Want: Film Review

Cast: Taraji P Henson, Tracy Morgan, Aldis Hodge, Josh Brener
Director: Adam Shankman

An uneven script, doused in a smattering of MeToo gags and some current pop culture references, does not help Taraji P Henson in the latest take of the Nancy Meyers Mel Gibson  flick, What Women Want.

Henson is Ali, a ball-busting sports agent, who's stuck in a firm that's clearly a boys' club and bouncing from one one night stand to another. Rejected again to take partnership in the firm, Ali finds her world further complicated when at a bridal shower she meets a psychic (an unhinged Erykah Badu) who gives her the ability to read men's minds.

Faced with the possibility of using this to get ahead at work, Ali becomes re-energised and desperate to get a star client before her other compadres.

Clever references to Get Out and crowd-pleasing Black Panther moment aside, What Men Want seems to be lost in its own execution, an uncertain mess of where it wants to go and how it wants to get there.

Henson is uniformly excellent though, giving Ali a ball-busting bluster that's needed early on, and a life that shows that she's as good as the boys in the Boys Club sports agent company to get ahead. But saddled with material that's rote and formulaic does little to help Henson rise out of the mire, no matter how hard she tries - and no matter how hard the script tries to mix Jerry Maguire with Entourage.

It helps little that it aims for every low-hanging fruit it can, barely hitting some of them with the crass bat swinging in every direction.

There are obvious learnings here, and perhaps that's what hinders What Men Want - unless you're a gaggle of women, boozed up and after a girls' night out, the film's less than content to satiate many in the audience. It's shallow as you'd expect, giving the men thoughts about body image, promotion, social climbing and work insecurities, as well as the usual sex issues.

Ultimately, while a love story with Aldis Hodge is reasonably well handled, Tracy Morgan's involvement feels like a muted amount of bluster to be fired in the direction of the audience. Supposed to be a foil for Henson's Ali, Morgan's Joe Dollar feels weak and badly-timed for the necessary gags.

All in all, What Men Want is a weak attempt at a feminist bout of humour. Were it not for Henson's all-in approach, the film would be torture for nearly two hours.

As it stands now, it's still torture, but a little more endurable in parts.

Win American Animals on Blu Ray

Win American Animals on Blu Ray

To celebrate the release of American Animals, thanks to Madman Home Entertainment, you can win a Blu Ray copy!

About American Animals

Nobody wants to be ordinary

From Bart Layton (The Imposter) and starring Evan Peters (The X-Men Series), Barry Keoghan (Dunkirk & The Killing of the Sacred Deer), and Ann Dowd (The Handmaid's Tale) comes the extraordinary and thrilling true story of four friends living an ordinary existence who brazenly attempt to execute one of the most audacious art heists in US history. 

But not everything is as it seems, and as the daring theft unfolds through each of their perspectives, they start to question whether their attempts to inject excitement and purpose into their lives is simply a misguided attempt at achieving the American Dream.

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

Competition closes March 5th

Win Mega Time Squad

Win Mega Time Squad

To celebrate the release of Mega Time Squad, you can win a copy, thanks to Madman Home Entertainment

About Mega Time Squad

Out of time without a clue

A small-town crim finds an ancient Chinese time-travel device that can help him pull off a heist and start a new life-but he may not survive the consequences of tampering with time. 

The Castle meets Looper, Mega Time Squad is a study in high-meets-low, combining elements of the sci-fi, the crime thriller and the comedy to make a comedy heist film with a time-traveling twist.

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

Competition closes March 5th

Win The Girl in the Spider's Web

Win The Girl in the Spider's Web

To celebrate the release of The Girl in the Spider's Web, thanks to Sony Home Entertainment, you can win a Blu Ray Copy!

About The Girl in the Spider's Web

Golden Globe ® and Emmy ® winner Claire Foy (Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama, “The Crown,” 2017; Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, “The Crown,” 2018) brings to life the iconic role of Lisbeth Salander in the next exciting chapter of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo franchise, THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S  WEB, debuting on digital February 6, 2019 and on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray™, DVD February 20, 2019 from Sony Pictures
Home Entertainment.

Director Fede Álvarez (Evil Dead; Don’t Breathe) brings insurmountable suspense and tension to
the film adaptation of the fourth book of the acclaimed Millennium series to create a thrilling cinematic experience.

THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB also stars Sverrir Gudnason (Borg vs. McEnroe), Lakeith Stanfield (Get Out; Sorry to Bother You, TV’s “Atlanta”), Sylvia Hoeks (Blade Runner 2049) and Stephen Merchant (Logan; Hot Fuzz).

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 February 28th

American Animals: Blu Ray Review

American Animals: Blu Ray Review

A sizzling and hyper-stylised drama that blends heist aesthetics and thrills with contemporary interviews, Bart Layton's American Animals is a slick film that grips and pulses from the outset.

Assembling a clutch of young actors (including American Horror Story alum Evan Peters and The Killing of a Sacred Deer's Barry Keoghan), it's the story of Spencer Reinhard (Keoghan) and his part in a library heist which took place at Transylvania University in Kentucky in 2004.

Despite the fact he has everything he needs in life, but bemoaning the fact that he's after some kind of life-altering experience to change him as an artist, Spencer forms a friendship with a hyper Warren Lipka (Peters).

Hitting on the idea to rob the library's rare book collection and its multi-million dollar haul, Warren and Spencer recruit two others to their plan - and start pulling together a heist.

Jumping between interviews of the real people involved and the drama, with moments of fourth wall breaking and unreliable narrators, American Animals' aesthetic and vibe seizes from the outset.

Layton assembles the pieces with the same kind of compelling bravura we witnessed in his doco The Imposter, but never loses sight of the two main leads in all the action.

Bringing the kind of tension that was missing from the recent Ocean's 8 film, the heist preparations excel - a swirling interplay of ideas executed in the head benefitting from taut editing and a pulsing soundtrack of music. It's a perfect insight into the minds of those involved over how it should play out, and for an audience, it's never less than gripping.

To say more about American Animals is to betray the sense of what plays out, a bastardisation of the American dream and a warning that nothing comes for free - even with talent. But Layton's less focussed on the themes of the piece, laying them out for subtle watchers to pick up on.

He's more interested in providing a film that thrills, in a format that makes the very best of docu-drama, with the emphasis on the drama. It helps the general idea of the heist is so audacious and the premise so compelling, but what American Animals also does is deliver two impressive turns in Keoghan and Peters.

Peters displays the intensity we've come to know from AHS but gives his Warren a kind of gleeful Joker style mania, the kind of guy you'd want to hang out with at a party. Keoghan, meanwhile, gives Spencer a feeling of being lost, an artist struggling to find their voice, and a would-be criminal struggling with his moral compass.

Throughout American Animals, the queasily compelling mix works incredibly well; the slick stylish piecing together of the elements of the drama and the documentary add much to what transpires - a portrait of the dispossessed and the bored - but it also gives the audience a thrill ride that has as much substance as it does style.