Tag: Review
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Train to Busan.
An explosive debut feature from Yeon Sang-Ho, Train to Busan joins the likes of A Girl Who Walks Home Alone at Night and Maggie as one of several recent and refreshing additions to the overcrowded zombie movie vault – here to rejuvenate the genre and breath new life into the un-dead. It’s the first zombie…
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Ethel & Ernest.
The cinematic adaptation of Raymond Briggs’ graphic novel, Ethel & Ernest tells the story of the artist’s parents – their marriage, their lives, their triumphs and tragedies. It opens with a brief interview with Briggs where he briefly describes how he remembers his parents and their relatively undramatic relationship. What follows is the tale of…
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American Honey.
Andrea Arnold has a deserved reputation as a filmmaker who tackles the grimmest and most distressing of scenarios through her work; never shying away from the violence, neglect and reality that might be involved. From the dread that builds in her short film Wasp, to the bleak visual nastiness of Red Road to the frank sexual…
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Imperium.
From Donny Brasco to Point Break, there is something totally intoxicating about undercover cop movies. Director Daniel Ragussis’s feature debut centres around such activity. The plot: young and lonely FBI desk worker Nate Foster is asked to go undercover to infiltrate several neo-nazi organisations to determine and confirm their potential terrorist activities. Imperium shares many…
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The Girl with All the Gifts.
TV director Colm McCarthy has turned his hand to cinema with his debut feature The Girl with All the Gifts. Evidently inspired by Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, and other such Brit-zombie re-imaginings that have gone before it, The Girl with All the Gifts is a violent and sombre affair. We are introduced to a…
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Captain Fantastic.
Peter Bradshaw gave Captain Fantastic one star in the Guardian; describing its protagonist as “essentially a cross between Charles Manson and Captain von Trapp.” Although my reaction to the film completely opposes Bradshaw’s, I adore his description of Ben, the father of 6 children whom he is raising, educating and training in the wild, using…
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Hunt for the Wilderpeople.
Based on the written work of Barry Crump and spawning from the mischievous mind of director Taika Waititi comes Hunt for the Wilderpeople – the tale of a troublesome foster kid and his somewhat reluctant foster-uncle. The unlikely duo find themselves on the run in the density of the New Zealand bush, chased by both the…
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Café Society.
For the last year I’ve been terribly aware of being an apologetic Woody Allen fan. This is of course a conversation for another time but it makes me even more aware of whether or not his latest work either flops or soars. I could breath a sigh of relief when Midnight in Paris rolled into…
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Tickled.
New Zealand journalist David Farrier seeks out the strange and the sensational for a living. He has made a career out of entertainment reporting which often includes interviewing life’s true individuals. He is one of the co-directors of Tickled a documentary funded by a 2014 Kickstarter campaign with the erotic fetish of competitive tickling torture…
Hannah McHaffie 