Steve Newall

March isn’t just about the Oscars – there’s a butt-ton of new releases entering cinemas. Watch our new release preview.

The Oscar-nominated doco plays at the Fraud Film Festival just days before the Academy Awards

Even if you know what’s coming, this energetic biopic on disgraced Olympian figure skater Tonya Harding still packs surprises, writes Steve Newall.

Our writers pick the most exciting films of this year.

The Maze Runner series has traveled far from simple origins, writes Steve Newall.

Timely in many ways, almost quaint in others, Steven Spielberg’s media drama flirts with weighty issues, only some of which prove relevant…

There’s something for kids of all sizes in our video guide to this summer’s school holiday family movie fare.

A lunchtime phone call to The Disaster Artist billboard number connected our Editor to James Franco while live on a US talk show.

The Disaster Artist proves to be a hilarious and heartfelt tale of ambition, friendship, and the imponderable mind of creative force Tommy Wiseau.

A long-forgotten tape of childhood memories forms the basis for Ross Sutherland’s spellbinding live show.

Watch as Flicks editor Steve Newall takes you through the month’s key releases.

Brimming with humour and heart, innocent without being naive, and celebrating the joy of creativity, Brigsby Bear’s return to cinemas deserves to be welcomed.

Minimal narration from Willem Dafoe makes for engrossing viewing here that puts the emphasis squarely on spectacular footage of… mountains. Often playing tricks with one’s sense of scale, never mind inducing occasional vertigo (as the camera looks down an insanely long drop over the shoulder of an even more insane free climber, for example), Mountain […]

We preview the month’s cinematic highlights hitting New Zealand screens, which include a college campus horror version of Edge of Tomorrow and a tender tale of friendship set in space. Edited by Thomas Asche.

As with the 1990 original, this year’s version of Flatliners sees young medical students taking their lives into their own hands, temporarily inducing death in an effort to peer beyond the veil and into the afterlife. You may have already detected that this is a Very. Bad. Idea. Because something follows Ellen Page and her […]

One of the reasons Kiwi author Margaret Mahy’s works are so beloved is the believable characters she establishes, with young adults in particular convincingly brought to life on the page. Mahy’s fully formed protagonists frequently grapple with the increased responsibilities of adulthood, and that’s true of this big screen adaptation of her 1984 novel — […]

Managing to be even more ridiculous than its predecessor, Kingsman: The Golden Circle sadly lacks the surprise factor of Matthew Vaughn’s 2014 breath of fresh (sometimes wonderfully foul) air. Unable to repeat the apprenticeship aspect of The Secret Service, its sequel kicks off with formerly-wayward youth Eggsy now a fully-fledged Kingsman agent, and attempts to […]

If you belong to things like Cool Fun Cat Group on Facebook like I do, you’ll love this light look at the cats of Instanbul. Free-ranging across the city, they have no defined abodes besides those they adopt for themselves, and their personalities are likewise allowed to flourish. Kedi introduces a bunch of lovable felines, […]

Considering how generic this slice of vaguely xenophobic counter-terror wish-fulfillment is, it comes as a surprise how bloody American Assassin turns out to be. From the get-go, the film’s violence is frequently shocking (well, R16-level shocking, not the fully traumatising kind). Quickly squandering any emotional investment in its lead, American Assassin dares you to care […]

With so much of its business relying on scary facades of one kind or another, a behind-the-scenes doco on Auckland “scream park” Spookers could well have ended up being merely diverting. Would we really need to know how exactly they go about terrifying thousands of willing, paying, customers each weekend? While the film’s first documentary […]

Setting out its stall within minutes, the child-centric first chapter of It quickly proves unafraid of inflicting gore on innocent kids and boasts a freaking terrifying Pennywise thanks to Bill Skarsgård, whose swift arrival on screen defies typical convention of building up to reveal a horrific entity. Debates will rage about whether he’ll prove as […]