Reviews

Every now and then, a film comes along that completely satisfies; speaks to your own sensibilities and is riveting from the first to the last frame. Pike River is that film for me. I grew up under those mountains and I can…

“It’s times like this, you’ve got to ask yourself: What would Liam Neeson do?” Warren Harrison (Maaka Pohatu) might be an “ordinary human from Lower Hutt”, but the Taken-obsessed father of 18-year-old Lucy (Louise Jiang) finds himself and his daughter in…

This story was originally published on The Spinoff. I really didn’t want to see The Weed Eaters. As a “minuscule-budget stoner horror”, it falls into none of my preferred genres of film. I’m terrified of horrors (can barely watch a…

Stranger Things star Dacre Montgomery spent many Christmas holidays in New Zealand, where his father is from, but his first trip to the South Island was during lockdown to film a modern horror ghost story in freezing conditions. Went Up the…

This story was originally published on The Spinoff. One of the many crack-up conversations in Marlon Williams: Ngā Ao E Rua – Two Worlds happens when the musician visits his mum in Lake Kaniere. They are heading out on a…

Reviewed by: Philip Moore “Tina” — which means mother in Samoan — is a beautiful and deeply moving film about Mareta, a Samoan woman played with incredible warmth by Anapela Polataivao. Mareta is a teacher whose life is turned upside…

The word kindness comes up over and over in Prime Minister as the key to Jacinda Ardern‘s political philosophy. That sounds gooey and naive, but this disarming and intimate documentary about her six years as New Zealand’s head of government…

Reviewed by Philip Moore. Conclave is a great mystery thriller surrounding the choosing of a new Pope. Ralph Fiennes plays Cardinal Lawrence who is tasked with doing the voting to the select the new pope. We are introduced to a…

Margaret Moth’s life could have been ripped straight from a pulp fiction novel. The New Zealand-born photojournalist spent her youth dropping acid and skydiving before traversing the globe to blaze trails for women in the world of war photography. Rising…

This story was originally published on The Spinoff. Most probably think of it as a small country town, but when I moved there from an even smaller country town at age 15, Gore was a metropolis. It had a Warehouse.…

In comedy, timing is everything. With the Government’s recent reintroduction of military-style boot camps for young offenders, the timing of TVNZ’s new youth dramedy Camp Be Better couldn’t be better. Although it’s fair to say that the spa pool, horse-riding…