Reviews

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…

We all make mistakes, but can we accept our errors and take action before things start to unravel beyond our control?  In New Zealand director Christine Jeffs’ powerful new feature film A Mistake, adapted from the novel by Carl Shuker, American…

This story was originally published on The Spinoff. There’s a crumbling empty McMansion somewhere in Coatesville that became the “beating heart” of new local body horror Grafted, director Sasha Rainbow tells me. “When you walked in there, it had this…