Win a copy of TOY STORY 4

Win a copy of TOY STORY 4

To celebrate the release of Toy Story 4 on DVD and Blu Ray, thanks to Sony Home Entertainment and Disney DVD, you can win a copy!

About Toy Story 4

Woody has always been confident about his place in the world, and that his priority is taking care of his kid, whether that’s Andy or Bonnie. 

So when Bonnie’s beloved new craft-project-turned-toy, Forky, declares himself as “trash” and not a toy, Woody takes it upon himself to show Forky why he should embrace being a toy.

But when Bonnie takes the whole gang on her family’s road trip excursion, Woody ends up on an unexpected detour that includes a reunion with his long-lost friend Bo Peep. 

After years of being on her own, Bo’s adventurous spirit and life on the road belie her delicate porcelain exterior. 

As Woody and Bo realize they’re worlds apart when it comes to life as a toy, they soon come to find that’s the least of their worries.


All you have to do is email your details and the word WOODY!

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

Woman At War: DVD Review

Woman At War: DVD Review

Wrapped in the kind of visual quirks that you'll either embrace or run a mile screaming from, Woman At War is the story of an eco-terrorist who wreaks their havoc while being the least suspected person.

Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir is Halla, a woman who lives in warm jumpers and who is the bastion of her community. Cycling around from one event to the next, those who interact with her have little idea she is the eco-terrorist destroying pylons from around the countryside.

Armed with a bow and some ingenious ideology, Halla finds herself the centre of a growing hunt for the "Mountain Woman".

There is an oddity to Woman At War that makes the film an initially polarising one.

Early scenes show the band playing off the distance in the background for the film's soundtrack - or reflected in the mirror - and while it's a nice visual touch, it soon feels overplayed and overused as if to emphasise the film's quirk above all else.

Thankfully, the rest of the drama which transpires is a solid and entertaining fare that hits the right notes of humanity and tension throughout. There are crowd-pleasing moments, but never at the expense of the investment in Geirharðsdóttir's turns.

Ultimately, Woman at War is a film to be enjoyed, to bathe in its oddities and to appreciate its commitment to originality.

Crawl: DVD Review

Crawl: DVD Review

Sometimes, a film just simply does what it says on the tin.

Such it is with Crawl, an unabashed 87 minute B-movie creature feature that wastes no time simply setting up its premise, and then getting on with it.

Scodelario is a stoic and steely Haley, a swimming champion (fortuitous in later moments) whose fall from grace has coincided with her parents' splitting up. When a massive hurricane hits Florida, where she lives, she races to find her father (Pepper, grizzled and in a thankless role) as the flood waters begin to rise.

But trapped in their old house, the pair soon finds the biggest problem isn't the rising water - more what lies within in the form of gators, ready to snap...

There's very little to say about Crawl, other than it pits Haley, the former Apex predator in the pool, against the real life watery ways of the Florida marshes and flooded levees.

And it's, simply put, fine in places, stretched in others as it revels in its human vs immutable forces of nature edges.

Mixing Jaws and any other creature features is fine, but forcing the audience to believe their characters can display as much strength as they need to when they've been chomped is a bridge too far, and while the film's flaws don't divert they do distract from what's going on.

Keeping the watery shots to a minimum, and using the most of the space afforded to him, Aja mounts a reasonable case for tension, and delivers a few kills that will satiate some of the gorehounds in the audience. But a lack of a fuller cast makes Crawl's weaker moments stand out more as the walls close in.

It helps that Scodelario is watchable enough and has enough grit and compunction to keep the audience along for the ride, even when the script and the silliness starts to wobble.

It's not exactly a croc of a movie, but Crawl is a solid, if unspectacular, creature film that could have been shorter and as a result more taut. As it is, it's fine enough fare, and a weird counterpiece to Blake Lively's The Shallows

Zombieland: Double Tap: Film Review

Zombieland: Double Tap: Film Review

Cast: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin, Zoey Deutch

Director: Ruben Fleischer

It may open with a self-effacing voiceover from the familiarly neurotic tones of Jesse Eisenberg, and acknowledge that pop culture has other alternatives for zombie entertainment, but Zombieland: Double Tap barely offers much of a reason to exist other than a nostalgia do-over a decade on.

Taking place a decade after the first proffered guilty pleasures, Double Tap focuses on the core four of the group, Columbus, Wichita, Tallahassee, and Little Rock as they continue to negotiate life in a post-apocalyptic world.

When Little Rock ups and leaves, tired of Tallahassee's fatherly yolk, and Wichita walks following Columbus' proposal, the boys are left brooding and directionless amid concerns a new super-zombie is on the rise.

However, they're both pulled into the search for Little Rock sooner than they'd think...

It's incumbent in some ways on a sequel to do something new and exciting.

Zombieland: Double Tap is more interested in repeating the vicarious highs of the first film sadly, than forging on with a new narrative. Ironically, it double dips on itself, rather than double tapping.

Sure, it deepens the nuclear family vibe of what's already occurred and extends the squabbling, but despite initially teasing the zombie elements as being key this time around, it jettisons them save for a finale action sequence that feels piecemeal and bolted on.

Thankfully, Zoey Deutch adds a lot to to the proceedings with her Legally Blonde / Cher from Clueless hybrid tracksuit clad Madison injecting much humour into the narrative which flounders for a reason to flourish other than to rehash insults and relive the tensions between Tallahassee and Columbus.

There are some inventive moments though, specifically a Graceland-set fight sequence that clearly comes from the mind of Deadpool's Rhett Reese, and which shows some flair and panache punching among the undead.

But Zombieland: Double Tap is less interested in making its putrid zombies interesting, and more concerned with referencing pop culture elements from the past decade that the original Zombieland missed or have sprung up during the intervening years.

From the Walking Dead to a Shaun of the Dead homage, this all feels like tired fare, a tale that's as decaying as the undead within.

Zombieland may have been a fresh as comedy horror, but Zombieland: Double Tap is sadly not. It's passable enough fare for a loaded night out, but stripped to its core, its raison d'etre is at best, shaky.

Yesterday: DVD Review

Yesterday: DVD Review

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.

Booksmart: DVD Review

Booksmart: DVD Review

Proving the girls can do it just as well as the boys (and even better), and staying remarkably fresh and vibrant from beginning to end pays great dividends for Olivia Wilde's Booksmart.

It's the story of Beanie Fedelstein's Molly and Kaitlyn Denver's Amy, two high school pals, who've nerded it up their entire time through high school to get to the colleges they wanted.

But upon discovering the lower achievers have also got into impressive colleges, Molly has a meltdown, fearing they've wasted their lives. So determined to cut loose at the end of year party, the duo decide tonight's the night.

However, the one big problem is they don't know where the party is....

It's tempting to categorise Booksmart as the female Superbad, but in truth, it's a lazy comparison.

Whereas McLovin et al set the tone for the genre, the one-last-blast-before-we-quit-high-school genre has been done to death.

Yet Booksmart, thanks to some impressive comedic performances, a zing of direction and a pumping soundtrack that boosts the energy levels throughout, barely falters at all.

Fresh without ever pandering, inventive without ever being cheap and just damn funny, the coming-of-age comedy gets the female touch - and even outdoes most of its competitors. (A drug trip is so excellently inventive, it genuinely surprises.)

Women leads that are relatable, people of colour and backgrounds all over the place and nary a male in sight makes Booksmart one of the genuine glass ceiling smashing comedies out there - without ever deliberately setting out to be "woke" or conform to a feminist agenda. It's in its own league, and as genuine to its protagonists and supporting characters as it should be.

Sure, there's the usual high school message about being true to yourself and suffering self-sabotaging, but thanks to its great leads' chemistry and comic timing, Booksmart is a whipsmart high school comedy that raises the bar substantially.

Backtrack Boys: DVD Review

Backtrack Boys: DVD Review

More gentle amble through troubled boys' lives and less about the dogs they're paired up with, director Catherine Scott's genial Backtrack Boys heads to Australia to talk second chances and maturity.

With an unfussy and unobtrusive camera, Scott follows the lives of boys in Aussie Bernie Shakeshaft's programme aimed at turning kids around as part of his residential programme.

It's tried and tested material admittedly - for every troubled kid, there's a familiar story to follow (the commonalities in these types of yarns is never earth-shattering), but what Scott does is to centre in on three boys, and make you care for them via simplicity of execution, and intimate portrayals.

Perpetual offender and youngster Russell, aka Rusty, is the wild card, a ready to bite, ready to fight, ready to run kid who's one incident away from jail; there's Zac, the teen who's like a big brother, but whose anger underneath his soft edges could destroy him and Tyson, the kid from jail, who's trying to go straight.

It's obviously heart-warming fare, and is intensely devastating when things don't go right as they should. While some may berate Scott for never really presenting the victims' side of the offending, her maturity in holding the boys upto account via their own interactions is commendable.

It's affecting admittedly, and gentle in many ways, but Backtrack Boys continues the lines set down by last year's Celia Lashlie doco, in that social interventions and people make the difference. These are not new conclusions, and there's an underlying sadness that these stories have to be repeatedly trotted out, but with sensitively handled fare such as this, maybe ultimately, the message will get through.