At Darren's World of Entertainment - a movie, DVD and game review blog.
The latest movie and DVD reviews - plus game reviews as well. And cool stuff thrown in when I see it.
Win a double pass to see Marvel's Spider-Man: Far From Home in cinemas
To celebrate the release of Marvel's Spider-Man: Far From Home in cinemas, you can win a double pass thanks to Sony Home Pictures!
About Marvel's Spider-Man: Far From Home
Peter Parker returns in Spider-Man™: Far From Home, the next chapter of the Spider-Man™: Homecoming series!
Our friendly neighborhood Super Hero decides to join his best friends Ned, MJ, and the rest of the gang on a European vacation.
However, Peter’s plan to leave super heroics behind for a few weeks are quickly scrapped when he begrudgingly agrees to help Nick Fury uncover the mystery of several elemental creature attacks, creating havoc across the continent.
Marvel's Spider-Man: Far From Home is in cinemas July 3.
To celebrate the release of Toy Story 4, you can win a prize pack.
The iconic toy gang is back on the big screen with an all-new adventure in Disney and Pixar’s ToyStory4. To celebrate the release there are 3 prize packs to giveaway Each prize pack includes - 1x notebook - 1x stationery set - 1x cap - 1x laptop bag - 1x set of button badges. Disney and Pixar’s ToyStory4 ventures to NZ cinemas on June 27, 2019.
Cast: Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Mckenna Grace, Madison Iseman, Katie Sarife
Director: Gary Dauberman
The Conjuring Universe continues to proffer more cinematic goods, as the appetite for horror shows no sign of lapsing.
The latest sees the Warrens transporting Annabelle home and confining the malevolent mannequin in their artifacts room, blessing the casing and putting up lots of Keep Out signs to stop people trespassing.
But when Ed and Lorraine head away from the weekend, leaving ten-year-old daughter Judy (a quietly nuanced McKenna Grace) in the hands of her babysitter, Annabelle gets out, awakening all kinds of chaos in the demonic room.
There's no denying that Annabelle Comes Home is effective at stretching out its conveyor belt of scares, and orchestrating the kind of spooky atmospherics the series has become known for.
There are some nice moments as the curse of Lorraine's visions appear to have been passed on to the daughter, and there's a familiar theme of being ostracised for their beliefs after their experiences, but Annabelle Comes Home is less interested in nuances, more in pulling back the curtain and giving you a jump scare a couple of moments after you've expected it.
Dauberman shoots it all well, there's the requisite number of spooky scenes and sequences, and there are plenty of close ups of the glass-eyed doll as you expect it to jump at you.
But in truth, after a while you feel like the contents of the demonic room are being rolled out as potential spin-offs. There's the Hellhound case from the past, the haunted Shinobi, the wedding dress that melds with its wearer, the haunted boardgame - they all feel like they're jostling to see which could work for future audiences and extend the universes further after this seventh entrant.
Haunted house cliches collide with a degree of claustrophobia, and an element of a small cast gives Annabelle Comes Home the tautness it requires.
However, this really is the cinematic equivalent of the ghost ride rolling into town every year as part of the carnival.
Deep down, you know what to expect, you enjoy the ride for its nostalgia or for the attempted tweaks the organisers have put in to keep it fresh - but buried underneath its smoke and mirrors tricks, this franchise needs to stop heading down the generic route, get back to genuine deep scares and psychological scars or it'll deserve to be confined to its grave.
Cast: Himesh Patel, Lily James, Ed Sheeran, Joel Fry, Kate McKinnon
Director: Danny Boyle
All the hallmarks of a Richard Curtis comedy are present in Danny Boyle's Yesterday.
A romantic quandary, a declaration of near love in the rain, a sense of detachment from the real world - it's all here in this crowd-pleasing piece that proves everyone's charming in Curtis' eyes.
Patel stars as frustrated musician Jack Malik, a pub singer whose original compositions do nothing for the audience, despite the continual support of Lily James' Ellie, his manager and would be lover (a shockingly shamefully underwritten character whose need for existence being tied to a man feels like something of a parallel world concept where MeToo never happened).
When Jack's hit by a bus during a 12 minute global power outage, he wakes up sans two front teeth, and to the fact the Beatles never existed. Much like coke and cigarettes. (The whys and wherefores of this are part of the script's weakness and Curtis' desire to thrust us deep into fantasy land at whatever cost).
So, seizing on their music, Malik launches his own big for stardom - meeting up with Ed Sheeran and impressing global audiences - but is he losing sight of what actually matters most?
Crowd-pleasing and cute may sound like damning terms for a pop-what-if-fairy-tale, but given Patel's innate likeability, Boyle's raw translation of the Beatles' music and the writer's couldn't give a damn attitude to logic, Yesterday feels like the latest jukebox musical to be hoist upon audiences who want easy fare.
A jaunt through Liverpool late in the piece, complete with postcard tourism neon letters, feels like a tourism cash-grab, a hollow celebrity map that skates the surface and exists solely to give you the sense of the feeling rather than the depth of the feeling.
But it's all done so pleasantly, and in a manner that lulls a crowd into enjoyment territory; there's a noticeable sag when the love part of this fairy tale tries to tug at you, however Patel's performance and charisma lift any lows up.
It's hard to dismiss a feeling that this is a way to sell us The Beatles once again, in much the same way Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman blast out all time favourites, and while the music's still timeless, Curtis' writing and Boyle's showing of why it's timeless simply falls into the show, not tell, category of a song being belted out.
It's not a fatal flaw for Yesterday by any stretch of the imagination, but Yesterday does feel like cinematic candy floss fluff, something that's so inherently determined to make you like it, it does little to hide its flaws. Or explain any of its logic - it's like at times a Comic Relief sketch writ large, and pushed through a Richard Curtis bingo set of tropes and ideas.
Thankfully Patel's charisma and relatability, complete with Boyle's visual energy, make Yesterday a crowd-pleaser whose saccharine touches don't totally overwhelm the audience - but they won't rightly win over the cynics, who will feel worn down by the lack of sense or sensibility.
A searing cross-genre look at the chasms between the classes, Bong Joon-Ho's latest, which took top honours at Cannes this year, is, for the great majority of its run time, an edge-of-your-seat piece, that slightly loses it in the last 15 minutes.
Centring on a family of four who live under the line (in this case, literally, the family lives below the street and often look up to people urinating near their one solitary window), Parasite follows Ki-woo, who's offered a well-paid tutoring job, proffering the family hope of escape from their hand-to-mouth routine.
Inveigling his way into the Park household, Ki-woo manages to seize an opportunity for his sister to become a fellow tutor to the youngest of the household...
To say more about Parasite is to go against director Bong Joon-Ho's wishes in terms of spoilers, but suffice it to say that Parasite dances an extremely fine line between edge-of-your-seat suspense, utter revulsion and horror, and excoriating commentary on the classes that has become the norm for his other films.
There's much to unpack in Parasite - and much of it can't be debated without spoilers.
Whether it's the way the rich refer to and interact with the poor, or the subtleties of microcosms of society which are laid bare, there's a tapestry here to explore that's brilliantly writ large on the big screen.
In all honesty, at times, it's depressing stuff if you're clued into the social mores laid bare, and laid thick with the blackest humour one could find for such an outing.
But it deserves commendation for the way the director and scriptwriters pivot the film roughly half-way through. What seems obvious is given a gut-punch and turned into something that becomes not what you expected.
All of that said, and a coda ending aside which seems like a tonal mismatch from what's transpired, Parasite is a thrilling ride at the cinema, and easily one of the best films of the year.
It's a subversive, subtle and subliminal ride that's as rewarding as it is compelling.
With its subtle genre changes, and its dancing neatly on the taut tightrope of thrills and suspense, it's a game-changer in terms of subverting expectations, and yet delivering a wide broad film that's begging for a Hollywood remake, but which will be all the better if they don't.
Based on James Baldwin's novel, and opening with a quote from him, the gorgeously shot If Beale Street Could Talk is once again proof that Jenkins knows lighting perfection from shot to shot.
Told across different time periods, Jenkins' latest is the story of childhood friends and lovers Tish (Layne) and Fonny (James) who in the 1970s in downtown Harlem found themselves the victims of an egregious crime of the times.
When Fonny's arrested and imprisoned for the rape of a neighbourhood woman, Tish vows to fight to clear his name and get him out of jail. But their plans for a future together are derailed by constant stops and starts in the quest to reunite.
If Beale Street Could Talk is lyrical poetry personified.
Much like Moonlight did, the film takes a deep dive into its subjects, placing them front and centre of every shot, bathed in different lighting moments to evoke mood and internal turmoil and emotion.
But it also conveys the deep love of the duo, with many shots being close ups of their face as the slow, quiet and deliberate tale weaves its web over the audience. However, it has to be said, despite the layered performances of the central leads, and the sterling work done by King in a supporting role as the mother, the film feels like it holds you away at emotional arm's length.
It's an interesting stance, with its languid pace doing much to keep the audience at bay, and stopping the anger at the injustice rising up. Sure, there are some racist cops of the period, that feel like they've been ripped from the fringes of movie Detroit; and there's some commentary on life of the time, but there's never the righteous indignation being given the chance to rise up and continue.
It's perhaps Jenkins' approach to the story which has been told time and time again; he cares not for the well-worn tropes (all of which are present and correct), but is rather more consumed with the details of the situation, lacing all of it with a trembling OST that evocatively quivers when needed.
As commentary on the time, and the period as well as the crimes, If Beale Street Could Talk falls short - but what it does provide is something more mellow, more intimate and perhaps more astounding because of it.
It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but If Beale Street Could Talk is a masterclass of how to make a film and a well-worn subject look incredibly good, deeply rich and resonant, even if it does feel emotionally aloof.
The full programme for the 51st New Zealand International Film Festival has been revealed in Auckland this evening. 144 feature-length films from 45 countries will screen over 18 days beginning on Thursday 18 July.
“We’re delighted to finally unveil and launch the full programme, with its typically eclectic and far-roaming range of local and world cinema,” says programmer Sandra Reid. “It’s always an inspiring experience selecting the films and getting to share our choices with our audience. May they enliven your winter.”
NZIFF is run by a charitable trust and encourages lively interactions between films, filmmakers and New Zealand audiences in 13 towns and cities around the country. The full NZIFF programme will be on the streets from Tuesday 25 June for Auckland, and Friday 28 June for Wellington. NZIFF starts in Auckland on 18 July and in Wellington from 26 July in 2019.
To celebrate the release of Marvel's Spider-Man: Far From Home in cinemas, you can win a double pass thanks to Sony Home Pictures!
