Win a copy of Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Win a copy of Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

To celebrate the release of Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, you can win a copy on DVD, thanks to Sony Home Entertainment.

About Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Based on the true story of a real-life friendship between Fred Rogers and journalist Tom Junod. 

An award-winning cynical journalist, Lloyd Vogel, begrudgingly accepts an assignment to write an Esquire profile piece on the beloved television icon Fred Rogers. 

After his encounter with Rogers, Vogel's perspective on life is transformed.

Starring Tom Hanks

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

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

Monos: Film Review

Monos: Film Review

Director: Alejandro Landes

With a visually arresting start and an intriguing opening, Columbian film Monos is an intensely taut drama that is as compelling as it is an examination of the feral spirit that lies within us all.

It's the story of a group of teenage troops, who inhabit a mountain top and who are training. Given a cow and a hostage to look after, the octet descend into a chaotic state when things go awry.

In the scheme of life, what happens is minor, but the ripples are wide-ranging and powerful.

Landes' film holds back many details of the wider world, preferring instead to place the viewer in a world of intensity and a powderkeg waiting to ignite. All that's proffered is about The Organisation and even that's scraps at best.

They could be training as child soldiers, and it could be a parable about loss of innocence in Columbia, but robbed of the wider perspective in parts, Monos makes a struggle of that side of its drama.

However, as an examination of a teenage mini society, Monos is life through a prism, a swirling cauldron of efficiency and terrifying consequence.

Thrillingly shot and nervously scored, Monos gets by largely on its visuals and its inherent sense of unease - there's something compelling afoot in these mountains, and thanks to Landes' power opening, Monos is a sickeningly unsettling drama.

PlayStation 5 unveiled

PlayStation 5 unveiled

PlayStation will finally unveil more details of its PlayStation 5 line up on Friday June 5 at 8am.

Join us Friday 5th June at 8am NZST for a look at the future of gaming on PlayStation 5: https://t.co/HrzO62uIYV #PS5 pic.twitter.com/8CegPLjxkR

— PlayStationNZ (@PlayStationNZ) May 29, 2020

Jim Ryan of Sony says: "With each generation, from the first PlayStation to PlayStation 4, we aim higher and we push the boundaries further, to try and deliver better experiences for our community. This has been the mission of the PlayStation brand for more than 25 years. A mission I have been a part of nearly since the beginning.  

There are few things as exciting as the launch of a new console. While this road to launch has been a bit…different, we are as thrilled as ever to bring you with us on this journey to redefine the future of videogames.

We’ve shared technical specifications and shown you the new DualSense wireless controller. But what is a launch without games? 

That’s why I’m excited to share that we will soon give you a first look at the games you’ll be playing after PlayStation 5 launches this holiday. The games coming to PS5 represent the best in the industry from innovative studios that span the globe. 

Studios, both larger and smaller, those newer and those more established, all have been hard at work developing games that will showcase the potential of the hardware. This digital showcase will run for a bit more than an hour and, for the first time, we will all be together virtually experiencing the excitement together.

A lack of physical events has given us an amazing opportunity to think differently and bring you on this journey with us, and hopefully, closer than ever before. 

This is part of our series of PS5 updates and, rest assured, after next week’s showcase, we will still have much to share with you. 

Neon NZ Movie Review - Blinded by the Light

Neon NZ Movie Review - Blinded by the Light

You've seen Blinded by the Light many times before, and in many different iterations.

The very familiar coming of age tale, set in Luton in England in 1987 centres around Cara's Javed, a young Pakistani man who yearns to be his own person, but who's stuck at a crossroads.

When Javed ends up going to college, he finds his world is irrevocably changed when he's gifted two Bruce Springsteen tapes, and being at the age of discovery, the doors of his perception are blown wide open by the Boss' music and lyrics.

But in the background of Javed's life lurk the National Front, the possibility of love, and the inevitability of a showdown over his desires and his dad's directives...

Blinded by the Light has an energy that bursts through the bubbling cheesiness which seeps in almost immediately.

Chadha is less interested in reinventing the wheel in this music-inspired movie, and more interested in perhaps showcasing a story that was prevalent in 1980s UK life, but rarely recorded. The indolence and ugliness of racism lurks casually in Javed's life, and while Chadha's only interested in occasionally using it for drama, the evocative montage of 80s Britain under Thatcher which begins the film serves only to showcase the good and the bad of the era.

Elsewhere, the film's cornball and corny dialogue sags a little in the excessive 2 hour run time - an expeditious edit could have given the film a pep and zap that it needed in parts as it spins its all-too-familiar tale.

There's a heart here, but rather than leading with the drama, the film hits every dramatic cliche and and services its leads ahead of the script; yet there are moments when the film excels, such as Chadha's reveal of a daytime club, and the heady thrill of youth within. These are the moments that Blinded by the Light could have had more of, not ones which feel rote and almost ridiculous.

It may be sweet, and crowd-pleasing at times, but Blinded by the Light does little exciting with the musical genre except to pillage someone else's back catalogue to sell nostalgia and probably Spotify soundtracks (in this case, the Boss) .

However, don't be surprised that in the year Rocketman soared to audience success and Bohemian Rhapsody won big, Blinded by the Light will have your heart tapping away in your seat, even if your head is warning you repeatedly against doing so.

The Last of Us Part II State of Play reveals extended gameplay

The Last of Us Part II State of Play reveals extended gameplay

Naughty Dog has just revealed an extended gameplay sequence for their upcoming The Last Of Us Part II game, due out on June 19.

It came as part of the State of Play broadcasts, and offered a more indepth look at what lies ahead for Ellie and Joel in the sequel to The Last Of Us.

Watch the extended Last of Us Part II gameplay below.

Neon NZ: Movie Review - Angel Has Fallen

Neon NZ: Movie Review - Angel Has Fallen

It was inevitable, really.

Given he'd saved the President, saved London and had a happyish ending, it should be no surprise that Presidential lucky charm Mike Banning (Butler) would be in the firing line.

And given three years has passed in each of the release cycles of Olympus Has Fallen (2013) and London Has Fallen (2016), it's time for Angel Has Fallen.

Bruised, battered and addicted to pills after the rollercoasters of the job of the Secret Service in the previous two outings, Banning is starting to feel mortal. Tempted by the possibility of the top job at the Secret Service, his world's turned upside down when the entire Presidential secret service team is wiped out - leaving him as the sole survivor.

Framed for the attempted murder of the US President, Banning goes on the run, determined to prove his innocence...

Reviving cold war politics, throwing in some "timely" barbs about Russian collusion, and dumping some machismo on the idea of private contractors benefiting from war, Angel Has Fallen does little to build on its surprise success of the first film.

Choosing instead to go for elements of The Fugitive and a bad episode of 24, Butler deals with lots of pained close ups to show his ailing state, and deals out plenty of killshots as sense and sensibilities go out the window.

Beginning with what seems like a gun porn secret service recruitment Call of Duty style video and ending with an extremely passable and well-executed finale, Angel Has Fallen has glimpses of something beyond the C-grade action banal genre it's clearly pitching for.

Butler's Banning looks shabby, like he may not make it (though really, there's never any true doubt) but yet in his interactions with Danny Huston's quietly calm mate-turned-bad-guy, there's a feeling of two veterans lost in a world that no longer needs them in the way they were needed first time around.

The action sequences are, in truth, executed in a fairly workmanlike way; there's nothing special or spectacular in the explosion porn that's on display - complete with slowmo. And yet, in its finale, Angel Has Fallen delivers a sequence that may be familiar in many ways, but is nonetheless compelling to enjoy.

And then there's Nick Nolte.

As Banning's dad, and at his shaggiest, this doomsday prepper off-the-grid paranoic is one of Nolte's most grizzled and begotten roles. But it's worth it alone for some of the lines he dishes out, which have to be seen to be heard.

Ultimately, Angel Has Fallen isn't smart enough to be taken seriously, and never really rises against its rote execution. It's flabby too, with its 120 minutes run time being the longest of the trilogy and also the most needlessly long.

Angel Has Fallen may wrap up the surprise trilogy, but in truth, this series was done with the first one - it may try to be contemporary here, but you've seen it all before. It's time this Angel had its wings clipped.  

Arctic Justice: DVD Review

Arctic Justice: DVD 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.