News & Opinion
Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back is full of priceless moments
Footage offers a candid, unflinching look at the group’s personalities and the creative process.
Bruised isn’t quite the knockout that director Halle Berry was aiming for
The first-time director enters the ring for a MMA sports drama.
Let there be carnage indeed: the Venom sequel is sly, sharp and wickedly funny
This is what the first Venom movie should have been: a devilishly different comic book blockbuster that’s very damn funny.
Demons, cults and violence in Hellbound make Netflix’s new Korean sensation worth a look
It’s still a novel luxury to get super violent Korean TV shows at the same time as the rest of the world.
Titane is just your average, everyday film about a woman impregnated by a car
This disgustingly weird French film will make you say “I can’t believe they went there.”
The Wheel of Time is a lazy pastiche of other, better fantasy series
It takes a whole lotta money, mythology, and “high-mindedness” to end up with a show this inessential.
Xmas-themed Hawkeye is a much-needed holiday from MCU doomsday threats
The show gets a lot of early mileage out of Clint and Kate’s master-apprentice/Grinch-and-Cindy-Lou relationship.
Filled with pretentious theatre kid energy, tick, tick…BOOM! still offers explosive musical moments
Hamilton creator Lin Manuel Miranda is still stuck on legacy, in this passionate musical memoir of Jonathon Larson.
Tiger King season 2 is engrossing car crash television – but do we really want more?
There’s more Joe Exotic, more Carole Baskin, more magnificent tigers. But have audiences moved on?
Cowboy Bebop and the challenges of adapting animation for a live-action series
Before judging the Netflix Bebop, just what is and isn’t possible in translating animation to the live-action medium?
NZIFF 2021 mini-reviews (our latest reviews)
Our freshest mini-reviews from Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival 2021.
Sweet, surreal fantasy Petite Maman shows Céline Sciamma in total command of the visual medium
The new film from the director of Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a delicately constructed and rewarding drama.
The Rescue will likely be the most astonishing against-the-odds film of 2021
You’re likely to leave drenched by your own tension-induced sweat or emotion-fuelled tears.
The Night House is a wonderfully scary haunted house horror
Delivers the thrills and chills you’d expect while also subverting expectations.
All we wanted for Christmas was a sadistic Home Alone movie, but instead we got Home Sweet Home Alone
The new Home Alone under-delivers on two important fronts: cartoon carnage and humiliating pain.
Social norms, niceties, sexism and roaring racism collide in the captivating Passing
Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga play characters who can “pass” as white in the 1920s.
Last Night In Soho raucously rewinds giallo style and 60s glamour
Edgar Wright’s giallo-style horror can be overly stylised, despite moments of ‘cinematic wonder’.
Dopesick relays America’s opioid crisis with gripping and harrowing efficiency
It’s not at all surprising that OxyContin is to pain relief what Facebook is to social harmony.
Tom Hanks + a robot + a dog make the apocalypse kind of adorable in Finch
Aw, look at that lil robot. And that lil dog. And that…Tom Hanks.
The only thing eternal about Marvel’s pompous epic Eternals is its running time
It’s wild that director Chloé Zhao can go from Oscar-winning brilliance…to this, the tedious nadir of the MCU thus far.
Army of Thieves is a strangely charming heist thriller set in the Army of the Dead universe
Army of Thieves is pretty inessential – but it’s generally good fun. Sometimes that’s enough
Share