King of Thieves: DVD Review

King of Thieves: DVD Review

As much a film about the fallout of a heist, than the execution thereof, the based-on-a-true-story King Of Thieves feels like a proposition that was better on the drawing board than on the screen.

Michael Caine is 77 year old widower Brian Reader, a former criminal who's urged by his wife to leave it all behind before her death. However, finding that there's nothing to live for, Reader pulls together a crew of former crims after he's approached by Basil (Daredevil star Cox) with a plan to rob the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit....

The thing with King Of Thieves is that it all unfurls in such a pedestrian way.

Underscored by scenes of jazzy music and digital cuts and quick cuts, the film's initially all about the subterfuge rather than anything else. It's not exactly an OAP version of the Ocean's Eleven series, but at times, it comes pretty close, thanks to a combination of one-note characters and a lack of real tension.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the back half of the film where it literally becomes about the audience watching cops listening to bugged conversations. Any sense of suspense dissipates at this stage as the big band music strikes up and the inevitable tears and fractures open up within the group.

A series of swipes at older people and their quirks seem a little more unfair towards the end and the characters simply end up shouting at each other, but Reader's earlier mournful tone as he reflects on his life is given nuanced life by Caine.

Most interestingly, Broadbent shows a crueller side oft kept buried and really plays against type - the rest of the crew are underwritten and do what they can with one-note performances. No more so than Cox whose enigma is clearly due to his character arc rather than writing (to say more is to spoil).

The one directorial flourish that Marsh brings to the table is an end sequence which displays the likes of Caine and Winstone from previous films and is a clever way to showcase their former worth.

Elsewhere, King Of Thieves may have its eye on diamonds as its central theme, but this ain't no shiner at all - it's dulled by the execution and what promised to be something different and cater to an older audience emerges as a rote formulaic and dull film that fizzles rather than sizzles. 

Five Feet Apart: DVD Review

Five Feet Apart: DVD Review

At times, struggling to justify itself as anything other than an option to sell a MOR soundtrack, Five Feet Apart's particular brand of sick lit is to be lauded for one simple thing - Haley Lu Richardson.

She plays Stella, an OCD Cystic Fibrosis sufferer, who lives in a hospital ward, and suffers from guilt. Also on the ward is Will (Riverdale's Sprouse) a fellow sufferer who's trialling new drugs to see if he can be cured.

But the two grow an inseparable bond, despite initially niggling each other and despite warnings to stay apart as otherwise it could kill them...

Less Fault In Their Stars, more TV soapy medical drama, Five Feet Apart knows exactly what it wants to do - and to be fair, does it admirably enough.

Every dramatic moment and trope of the genre is ticked off as the aching star-cross lovers' duo form their bond from their initial bickering through to their inevitable clash against the authorities. And every moment is sequenced by a soundtrack aimed at amplifying their aching and intensifying the brooding looks between the duo.

Sprouse is fine; he's required to do little except look out from under his hair as he ploughs the vulenrable-yet-caring road laid out for him. But the film's power lies in Haley Lu Richardson, whose expressiveness and open-approach to an at times expository laden "This is what Cystic Fibrosis is" gives the film a kind of heart that it needs as it dives headlong through its overlong and obviously cliched execution.

Baldoni does little behind the camera to make this an essential young adult entrant into the pantheon of the sick-lit genre, but thankfully Richardson's performance guides you along the narrative bumps and cliched melodramatic stumbles as they happen.

Five Feet Apart will be destined to be loved by some teens, and there is a worry that at times the film does over-simplify the complexities of the illness, but it does an admirable job of raising awareness. 

Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled: PS4 Review

Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled: PS4 Review

Released by Activision
Platform: PS4

The thirst for nostalgia continues with Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled, another remaster of the Bandicoot's trademark bran of cartoon insanity.

The original kart games were where Crash Bandicoot started to lose me, preferring as I did the narrative driven platform-based shenanigans which tested my button pressing, rather than my ability to read a race track.

That's not to say that Crash Bash and Crash Team Racing weren't iconic Naughty Dog properties, merely tastes lay elsewhere.

However, Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled is a karting fanboy's dream.

The remastered game fires on all cylinders as it dons a new coat of paint, and offers a slick, glitch-free blast around the tracks.

The one downside is the inordinate amount of time the game's loading screens take, compared to the amount of time you play on the track. It's almost as if the celebrations you're expected to have between each race will be enough to occupy gaming minds - well, that's not the case.

Much like the Crash Bandicoot remake last year, the game's difficulty settings will prove controversial too, with Medium being a chasm away from Easy in terms of being able to win. Easy is a breeze round the tracks; Medium, much less so.

The game's MO is the same as it always was - hurtle around the track, grab power ups, knock your opponents out of the way, and surge to victory.

From adventure mode where you're the sole player to online multiplayer, there's more fun to be had in the social elements of Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled, as the racing is better when you feel like there are actual stakes.

Yet, at the end of the day, it has to be said, very occasionally, this does just feel like a "Pick up, play, put it down, forget it" kind of game - underneath the slick look and the stellar graphics, the nostalgia's only going to get you so far.

But when the quality is this good, maybe you can forgive the fact that most gamers will be playing the same game they played in their youth, and recapturing the euphoric highs you had at the time.

Win a double pass to see Marvel's Spider-Man: Far From Home in cinemas

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.

 
All you have to do is email your details and the word SPIDER-MAN!

Email now to  darrensworldofentertainment@gmail.com 
Or CLICK HERE NOW  

Competition closes 11TH JULY.

Win a Toy Story 4 prize pack

Win a Toy Story 4 prize pack

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 Toy Story 4. 

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 Toy Story4 ventures to NZ cinemas on June 27, 2019.

All you have to do is email your details and the word TOY STORY 4!

Email now to  darrensworldofentertainment@gmail.com 
Or CLICK HERE NOW  

Competition closes 4th July.

Annabelle Comes Home: Film Review

Annabelle Comes Home: Film Review

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.

Yesterday: Film Review

Yesterday: Film Review

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.