Cinemas & Home Entertainment This Week…
GRIM PICKINGS this week includes key dates to dismember with that friendly neighbourhood SPIDER-MAN lightening the recent MCU mood on the big screen while home entertainment delivers Jordan Peele’s brilliant sophomore offering!
CINEMAS
SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME
Being the first film to follow on from AVENGERS: END GAME is no mean feat but returning director Jon Watts (CLOWN, COP CAR) rises to the occasion with a light-hearted, exciting and relentlessly breathless entry in the MCU. From its healthy balance of humour and high concept spectacle, SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME delivers a narrative that is as rich in its character development as it is in its action-packed set pieces with refreshingly and surprisingly realistic stakes! Our friendly neighbourhood Super Hero (Tom Holland) decides to join his best friends Ned (Jacob Batalon), MJ (Zendaya), 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 (Samuel L. Jackson) uncover the mystery of several elemental creature attacks, creating havoc across the continent!
HOME ENTERTAINMENT
US
Oscar-winning filmmaker Jordan Peele follows up his 2017 feature GET OUT with a nuanced, unsettling and suspenseful genre effort that finely balances its horror and humour. US proves that Peele is no one trick pony, he’s a modern auteur of horror and we can only hope he sees fit to work further in the genre in the years to come. Haunted by an unexplainable and unresolved trauma from her past and compounded by a string of eerie coincidences, Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) feels her paranoia elevate to high-alert as she grows increasingly certain that something bad is going to befall her family. Universal Pictures 4K Ultra-HD/Blu-ray and Blu-ray releases contain six Deleted Scenes which offer little additional insight, six detail rich though brief Production Featurettes ranging from rehearsal footage of actress Lupita Nyong’o getting into her doppelgänger character to Jordan Peele discussing his passion of the horror genre, in lieu of a feature commentary there is Scene Explorations where cast and crew breakdown standout scenes and finally outtakes from the beachside scene titled ‘We’re All Dying’. The 4K Ultra-HD release is presented with Dolby Vision augmentation which unfortunately adds very little given the film occurs predominately at night and the release is also accompanied by a Dolby Atmos track which only proves its worth during the film’s climatic showdown.
THE NIGHT EATS THE WORLD (DVD Only)
After wowing festival-goers at this year’s Alliance Francaise French Film Festival, Dominique Rocher’s THE NIGHT EATS THE WORLD will open in limited release across Australia. Despite an overworked premise that could have lifted from one of many THE WALKING DEAD episodes, THE NIGHT EATS THE WORLD transplants its action to Paris and its slow-burn approach ratchets up enough tension to fuel a suspense-riddled experience worthy of witnessing on the big screen. After waking up in an apartment the night after a raging party, Sam (Anders Danielsen Lie) comes face to face with his new reality, an army of zombies have invaded the streets of Paris and he is the lone survivor. Petrified with fear, he barricades himself inside the building to survive. He wonders how long can he last in silence and solitude, and the answer comes when he learns that he’s not all alone after all. Defiant Screen Entertainment’s DVD release contains no supplementary features.
PIMPED (DVD Only)
Following its win at Monster Fest 2018 for ‘Best Australian Feature’, writer/director David Barker’s debut feature, PIMPED, a taut and intense psychosexual thriller, opens in limited release in cinemas across Australia. With exceptional performances from leads Ella Scott Lynch (LOVE CHILD) and Benedict Samuel (GOTHAM), this stylish though grim exploration of duality, toxic masculinity and retribution is one not to be missed. Sarah Montrose (Lynch) is a conflicted, mysterious woman who meets the philosophical, smooth-talking Lewis Blake (Samuel). Handsome and captivating, Lewis is the bait in a sick and twisted game conjured up with his low-life-rich-kid housemate, Kenneth. When the men’s sexual game backfires with wild abandon, Sarah is forced into an unlikely and bloodied alliance. And when her fragile psyche is threatened by a monster, she calls on all her strength and cunning to do battle with a psychopath, and her own inner demon. Pinnacle Films’s DVD release contains no supplementary features.
DRIVE-IN DELIRIUM: WITH A VENGEANCE (Blu-ray Only)
DRIVE IN DELIRIUM: DEAD BY DAWN (Blu-ray Only)
Umbrella Entertainment unleash their fourth and fifth high-def entries in their DRIVE-IN DELIRIUM series this week with one focusing primarily on action & sci-films films while the other on horror and exploitation flicks! All feature programming of trailers are uncensored and remastered in high definition, most of which for the very first-time worldwide and whats more each set contains of six hours of these cinematic pre-show treasures! DRIVE-IN DELIRIUM: WITH A VENGEANCE: Locked and loaded with over six hours of handgun-happy vigilantes & badass babes of Blaxploitation, ultra-hip heists, spaghetti shoot ’em ups and bitumen burning post-apocalyptic car-quakes (not to mention alien close encounters of the horny kind). DRIVE IN DELIRIUM: DEAD BY DAWN: The crypt of coming attractions has been defiled once more unleashing a shock-quenching instalment devoted to flesh & blood. Gushing with over 6 hours of old school slice & dice, Giallo grooviness, Hammer Glamour, gut munching cannibal capers, swanky Euro-trash and creature feature monster madness (not to mention a tsunami of boobs & pubes). Both compilations come with bonus trailers, roughly ninety minutes of standard definition VHS trailers mined from Aussie released ex-rental tapes with each set unique to their respective release!
Grim Pickings is written weekly by Jarret Gahan.
