Win Disney's The Lion King on Blu Ray

Win Disney's The Lion King on Blu Ray

Directed by Jon Favreau, the summer blockbuster, which reigned supreme with audiences worldwide — earning over $1 billion at the global box office and an A CinemaScore — journeys home with all-new bonus features, and music videos.

In “The Lion King,” pioneering filmmaking techniques bring treasured characters to life in a whole new way. Simba idolizes his father, King Mufasa, and takes to heart his own royal destiny. But not everyone in the kingdom celebrates the new cub’s arrival.

Scar, Mufasa’s brother — and former heir to the throne — has plans of his own.

The battle for Pride Rock is ravaged with betrayal, tragedy and drama, ultimately resulting in Simba’s exile.

With help from a curious pair of newfound friends, Simba will have to figure out how to grow up and take back what is rightfully his.

The all-star cast includes Donald Glover as Simba, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter as Nala, James Earl Jones as Mufasa, Chiwetel Ejiofor as Scar, Seth Rogen as Pumbaa and Billy Eichner as Timon

The Lion King hits home release on November 13.

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

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

2040: DVD Review

2040: DVD Review

Idealism seeps through the veins of That Sugar Film's follow up.

Damon Gameau returns with a self-professed optimistic piece of what life could be like in 2040 that's squarely aimed at showing his 4-year-old daughter Velvet that there is hope among the doom and gloom of climate change reporting and global concerns over the planet's future.

The tone for this film is set in the opening moments as a title board reveals that carbon credits used in making this film have been offset.

It's genially put together, and should be commended for its eternal optimism, but despite Gameau deploying visual tactics such as shrinking down commentators and experts to wee tiny levels so they can be dwarfed on the screen, the film's really only interested in presenting a utopian side of the argument.

"We have everything we need right now to make it happen," Gameau intones at one point.

And as he demonstrates how farming can do its bit, how self-driving cars will provide transport peace and how energy can be shared with others, it's easy to buy into. But Gameau shies away from getting any of the critical answers why this isn't happening yet or won't in future - whether it's out of a desire to make the film so positive that it doesn't make you want to scream at politicians and their global politicking or whether it's through lack of trying, it's never really clear.

The end result is that frustrations bubble up - despite the cutesy use of kids' vox pops talking about what they want to see in 2040. Sure, it's amusing in parts, and is as hollow as a once over lightly global approach, but much like the director's predilection in That Sugar Film, it's all about shallow rushes to the head.

In truth, the narrative naivete cloys, and while it's understandable that Gameau's trying to inspire rather than put obstacles up, its occasional head in the sands' approach does nothing to dispel a nagging sense of frustration and a feeling that everyone in the film is living in Fantasyland.

Crowd-pleasing it may be; inspiring it may also be, but based on any kind of reality and giving any steps forward to making it a reality, it is not.

Don't let the politics get in the way of a good dream, eh.

Last Christmas: Film Review

Last Christmas: Film Review

Cast: Emilia Clarke, Henry Golding, Michelle Yeoh, Emma Thompson
Director: Paul Feig

A contrived and loose retelling of a Christmas Carol, Last Christmas draws inspiration from the Wham! song of the same name.

A game Clarke pratfalls and perks her way through the story as Kate, a mess of a girl, dressed permanently as an Elf and awash in one night stands, homelessness and booze, following recovery from an illness.

Down on her luck in London, Kate spies the suave Tom (Crazy Rich Asians' Golding, who gets to be charming and pointlessly pirhouetting around London for no real reason) and the pair strike up an unlikely friendship.

She the cynic, he the optimist, encouraging her to look up at the sky - even though her first doing of this results in pigeon poo in the eye - much like the film for the audience, to be frank.

You can see where Last Christmas is going a mile off - it's the kind of candy covered schmaltz soaked affair that would work well in the festive season, when you're stranded with family, boozed up and don't want to talk to them.

Throwing in Brexit jabs via way of London patriotism, mocking the homeless for being quirky, and plastering the film with shots of London streets in the winter, it's a shock there's no Hugh Grant cameo or Love Actually crossover in among the syrupy sentiment.

And yet, were it not for a duly game Emilia Clarke, Last Christmas would be a real festive turkey.

(It's hard to credit Golding with anything other than being smooth or suave as that's what the script demands of him, and he delivers with warmth and ease, giving Tom and Kate's bond a nice glow.)

Clarke however is called on to shoulder the burden of a cloying script that continues to one-up itself for weak gags, goofy edges and generally being underwritten. And she delivers her hot mess with warmth, chutzpah, and the kind of commitment that's needed to sell the sentiment and holes. (Of which a lot emerge in the final act).

It's the latest film to be fashioned around music, from Blinded by the Light to Yesterday, and while they all suffer from the necessity of shoehorning the music in, Last Christmas does a little the same, but can be forgiven on some level, because of the time of year it's aiming for.

There's a cheesy cornball edge to Last Christmas, but it's sadly not enough one way or another to push this into so-bad-it's-good-territory. Instead, it just is, and were it not for Clarke, the film would have crumbled into a bad Christmas hangover.

Doctor Sleep: Film Review

Doctor Sleep: Film Review

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Cliff Curtis, Kyliegh Curran
Director: Mike Flanagan

A follow on to The Shining was a book nobody ordered, yet Stephen King delivered it.

And thus it is with Mike "House on Haunted Hill" Flanagan's film version of said book.

Picking up decades after the Overlook Hotel scarred his psyche, Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor, withdrawn and dour) is stumbling around life, living his father's tortured hell of violence and alcoholism. Riding a bus to the middle of nowhere to start anew, Torrance finds himself pulled back into the world he desperately wants to avoid when his gift connects him with Abra, a girl who's witnessed a brutal murder.

But it also puts her on a collision course with a group of vampires led by Rose the Hat (an enigmatic, charismatic and magnetic turn from Rebecca Ferguson) who feed on Abra and Danny's special gift....

Doctor Sleep is sombre, evocative and at times, mournful.

It's also not its own beast, with shots recreated from Kubrick's cupboard with panache and familiarity and with a final sequence that suffers because it's a repeat of some of The Shining's best moments, given a new spit and polish.

It may be muted and contemplative, and lack its own horrors, but there are elements of Doctor Sleep to much admire.

Ferguson, channeling a kind of demonesque Stevie Nicks is a powerful presence, and a baddie who plays with your sympathies from the start. Owning the screen from the moment she's on, her lithe and charismatically terrifying demon is a human step up from anything witnessed in Near Dark, and she manages easily to con empathy out of the audience that should be opposed to her.

McGregor has a tougher job, selling an iconic follow on to a tortured Danny; but a quiet turn, coupled with the film's more languid approach to the psychology of what happens next, reaps muted rewards.

A more showy performer would have damaged the film's intentions, and McGregor's languid pace and style yields limited results when it should.

It's not all perfect.

Curtis is wasted in a one note role, various shocks are squandered simply for narrative speed, and yet there's a laid back pacing here that doesn't quite work.

The final sequences at the Overlook Hotel serve only to remind what The Shining offered - an abject take on terror, on a family unit imploding in the face of evil - and Doctor Sleep suffers in comparison.

Yet, while the source material may be the issue here, Doctor Sleep's commitment to its lived in characters offers limited rewards - go in expecting an all-out psychological assault like Kubrick mastered and you'll be sorely disappointed.

 It may struggle to provide iconic moments of its own, and some of its best you'll have seen before, but Doctor Sleep's atmospheric nightmare has a way of weaving into your soul when it shouldn't.

Death Stranding: PS4 Review

Death Stranding: PS4 Review

Developed by Kojima Productions
Released by Sony Interactive

Maddening, mournful, elegaic, boring, tedious, pompous, eccentric, idiosyncratic and much more beyond, Death Stranding is the kind of game you can throw any adjective at and it'll stick.

It's polarising too.

Hideo Kojima's latest, three years in the making, Death Stranding is a rarity among AAA gaming - an almost indefinable and singular experience that infuriates as much as it amazes.

And it will irritate you to high hell and back, regardless of its top notch production values, because of the initial grind that's demanded of you.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world after the Death Stranding event shattered the US into fragments, you play Sam Porter Bridges, who uncannily looks like The Walking Dead's Norman Reedus (largely because he is).

Tasked with delivering various packages around various points of an open world, Sam is a glorified courier boy, a kind of riff on Kevin Costner's character in Waterworld, trudging from one delivery to the next.

But the job's not that easy as scattered around the open world are various problems to face - be it rain which Kojima has called Timefall and which erodes your parcels, or ghostly creatures known as BTs which can take hold of you, shake your luggage loose and then pull you down in a pit of tar. And there are even rogue couriers known as MULEs, who went mad and now just steal parcels for the hell of it.

It's easy to see why this all sounds either deeply pretentious or utterly bonkers.  Yet at the heart of it, it's incredibly familiar mix of combat and fetch quests.

Kojima's world serves as a metaphor for the disconnected we've all become, but the majority of the game is mostly fetch quests, peppered with combat the mechanics of which come from Horizon Zero Dawn to stealth ripped from the Metal Gear Solid days.

There's a strange likes system in play too, where other players can approve of buildings you make, or ladders you place, and you can do the same too. You're encouraged to leave signs a la Dark Souls' notes to help other players - it's all very well and good, but it does remove some of the elements of discovery in the open world, and there's certainly a feeling at times that successes can't all be your own.

Though it's part of Kojima's vision of connecting disparate gamers - and while servers have gone off until the game launches, it'll be interesting to see if players embrace or pervert his intentions of camaraderie. Collaboration could be the way forward, but it does rob the good feeling of solving a tough moment in an open world game - and it's divisive an idea at best.

Equally, there's a degree of having to maintain Sam's health and even clothes, the levels of which have not been seen since Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Again, this move will either irritate or you'll embrace it fully.

Kojima's cast is exceptional - there's no one in the contacts book who's not been raided, and while it's strange to hear famous actors voiced by others, it's as distinctive and as barmy as anything else in the game.

The game's product placement needs to be called out though - the ad for AMC's Ride with Norman Reedus reminds you you're not playing anything other than a character, and seems a demented choice. But far worse is the gratuitous Monster cans - it's a worrying sign for AAA Games if this is what sponsorship looks like, and it certainly disrupts some of the narrative flow, taking you outside of the world Kojima's set up.

Ultimately, how you'll feel about Death Stranding is tied up in how much you're willing to invest in Kojima's vision.

It's definitely singular and will polarise some, as the plaudits for Game of the Year rain down. It's not quite a home run on that front, and there's too much of a grind at times to be had to ever truly make it pleasurable.

However, if you're looking for an experience that's as eccentric as it is intriguing, Death Stranding is second to none.

Bellbird: Film Review

Bellbird: Film Review

Hamish Bennett's follow up to his award-winning short Ross and Beth from 2014 is a crowd-pleasing, quietly restrained film about life on a Northland farm.

Marshall Napier is Ross, the third generation farm owner, who's left devastated after a loss and who tries to find what's next in his life. Recently returned to his life is his son Bruce (a dramatic and poignant turn from Cohen Holloway, who shines throughout), who works in the local dump but who's gradually coaxed back onto the farm and into family life in general.

Bucolic and beautifully shot, Bennett's film is a small restrained movie about relationships and reconnections, that taps into the rural way of few words.

If Bennett overdoes it with the cutaway shots which depict life on the farm, it's seemingly about building an atmosphere and a sense of location within Northland that goes to explain Ross' connection to the land and his community.

Suffused with charm, and lovely wry one-liners (particularly from Rachel House), Bellbird has a heart that's hard to deny, as it negotiates grief in a typical she'll be right mentality.

Its leads are where the film's strength are, and Napier deserves as much credit as Holloway, for bringing to life a Kiwi type that's prevalent in the community. In truth, it's more about what's unsaid than said as this slow-paced family drama unfolds, but Bennett's wise enough to pepper his script with heartland humour that will prove a winner with audiences.

Newcomer Kahukura Retimana also deserves mention for neighbouring Marley who injects a level of care into how he tries to look after Ross; there's much of the film which speaks to how communities try to care for their own, something city dwellers may ruefully gaze upon as they view this low-key relationship piece.

Ultimately Bellbird wins by its gentle restraint, and its affectionate celebration of the quieter moments of life, and of what comes next when the worst happens.

Arctic Justice: Film Review

Arctic Justice: Film Review

Voice cast: Jeremy Renner, Heidi Klum, John Cleese, Alec Baldwin, Anjelica Houston
Director: Aaron Woodley

Sometimes, animated family fare is simply a story and some animation, no deeper message, and nothing more profound to espouse.

So it is with Arctic Justice (known globally as Arctic Dogs), a climate change awareness piece with lashings of self-belief served up for an audience.

Arctic fox Swifty (Renner) is a wannabe delivery dog in the small Arctic township of Taigasville.

Yearning to be "put to the test, so he can deliver his best", Swifty has gone most of his life unnoticed, other than by his polar bear friend PB (Baldwin, solid and gruffly warming) and by his potential love interest and town engineer, Jade (Klum, relatively one note).

When the dogs of the ABDS delivery service go AWOL, Swifty gets his chance to step up - but uncovers a wider conspiracy, masterminded by walrus OVW (Cleese, in raspy maniacal mood).

Arctic Justice feels very familiar, with its animation recalling many other elements of prior films.

A despot in the form of OVW with Puffin helpers? Very Minions and Despicable Me.

A mate who even looks like a whiter version of Sulley from Monsters Inc, lead foxes who look like they could come from Zootopia, there's a distinct feeling of deja vu in this animation.

There are some zanier touches from James Franco's Lemmy, an albatross who's a few fish short of a picnic, but they're few and far between and really needed more of them to be inserted throughout.

While the climate change message is present, it's hardly pushed down people's throats, but it becomes ever more clear toward the end as Swifty and his pals face an extinction event for their town.

Worthy messages of being more than "just" a somebody work nicely too, and while some adults will identify with the slight at the monotony of jobs, Arctic Justice does enough for the younger kids to keep them happy throughout - but potentially not the adults.