Archive

Amour

Posted 4:23pm Sunday 10th March 2013 by Jonny Mahon-Heap

Director Michael Haneke is comfortable with depicting horror. Whether capturing a home invasion in Funny Games, or pre-World War 2 atrocities in The White Ribbon, his slowly built tension and pace creates very creepy, yet successful films – Amour won the Palme d’Or and the New York Times film of Read more...

Tomb Raider (2013)

Posted 4:23pm Sunday 10th March 2013 by Baz Macdonald

It has been a long time since the heyday of the Tomb Raider franchise. The teenagers of the 90s enjoyed nothing more than playing with their heavily-breasted gal pal Lara Croft, but as the generation moved out of their mums’ basements and into the real world Lara was unfortunately left on the shelf Read more...

The Plague

Posted 4:23pm Sunday 10th March 2013 by Lucy Hunter

Rats are dying. Arriving home one night, Dr Bernard Rieux witnesses a sick rat rupturing and spurting blood from its mouth. Soon thousands are dead, burning in piles in the streets. Dr Rieux acknowledges the dead rats with intrigue. Then his door-porter dies of a peculiar fever, with a terrible Read more...

The Sweeney

Posted 5:18pm Sunday 3rd March 2013 by Kathleen Hanna

I had a real problem with this film, more so than any other crime film I’ve seen. The tagline for The Sweeney is “act like a criminal to catch a criminal.” It’s not the moral ambiguity of that I have a problem with. Hell, all movies should be morally ambiguous up to a point, especially those in Read more...

Beautiful Creatures

Posted 5:18pm Sunday 3rd March 2013 by S M Morgan

Beautiful Creatures is a supernatural fantasy, adapted from a book, which jumps right into things six months before the lead’s, Lena’s, birthday. On her birthday her powers will be claimed for either the “light” (good) or “dark” (evil) depending on the judgement of her “true nature,” which will Read more...

Safe Haven

Posted 5:18pm Sunday 3rd March 2013 by Rosie Howells

Straight off the bat, you should know I’m not built for “Soul-Searching-Romance.” I didn’t even enjoy The Holiday, which I understand essentially makes me The Tin Man, or Kim Jong Il, or something. So I was a little worried to hear that Safe Haven’s writer Nicholas Sparks is also responsible for Read more...

Alizarin Lizard

Posted 5:18pm Sunday 3rd March 2013 by Lisa Craw

If you live in Dunedin and you’ve never heard Alizarin Lizard, shame on you. Alizarin are one of the best current New Zealand bands, though are perhaps more occupied with crazed 42-date tours than they are with self-promotion. This, their second full-length album, is classic Lizard, filled with Read more...

Atoms For Peace - AMOK

Posted 5:18pm Sunday 3rd March 2013 by Basti Menkes

For those of you who are not already aware, I am an enormous Radiohead junkie. At any given moment you can probably catch me listening to them, forcing them onto the unfortunate folk around me, or possibly fantasising about one of the members. But as unhealthy as my addiction to Thom Yorke and his Read more...

Crysis 3

Posted 5:18pm Sunday 3rd March 2013 by Baz Macdonald

Last week’s announcement of the PlayStation 4 has the gaming community asking what the future for our medium holds. What stories are to be told? How they will look? How they will play? I ask, why wait for the future when it is happening now? The release of Crysis 3, the third installment in the Read more...

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo

Posted 5:18pm Sunday 3rd March 2013 by Dominic Tay

Every year, more than 30 million passengers fly into Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport. If you landed here at any time between 1991 and 2011, you’ll probably remember your journey out of the international terminal, past rows of luxury hotels, and into the heart of Mumbai. You Read more...

Anna Karenina

Posted 10:25pm Sunday 24th February 2013 by Sam McChesney

Patriarchy sucks mad d. From the creators of Pride and Prejudice (2005) comes one of the best-looking films since, well, Pride and Prejudice. Adapted from Tolstoy’s novel, which was recently named the greatest ever by Time magazine, Anna Karenina stars Keira Knightley and ... that guy from Read more...

A Good Day To Die Hard

Posted 10:23pm Sunday 24th February 2013 by Christine Edwards

So John McClane is back, and this time he’s wreaking havoc in a completely new place: Russia. As always, this Die Hard is about a badass cop who seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and, to make things right, goes in guns blazing and kicks the bad guy’s arse. This newest instalment, Read more...

Movie 43

Posted 10:23pm Sunday 24th February 2013 by Josie Cochrane

I had zero hopes for this movie before viewing, based largely on the film editor’s opening email to me: “Review Movie 43 – apparently one of the worst films of all time. Go on, I dare you.” A dare is a dare of course! Even with my low hopes, my first text when I left the movie was “Well mum, Read more...

Hitchcock

Posted 10:23pm Sunday 24th February 2013 by Finn Bulman

A movie about the making of a movie. Sure, it may have been done before, but Hitchcock pulls it off wonderfully. The story follows the life of famous film director Alfred Hitchcock, or “Hitch,” as he goes about creating one of the greatest horror films of all time, Psycho. He is met with Read more...

Aliens: Colonial Marines

Posted 10:23pm Sunday 24th February 2013 by Baz Macdonald

For those of you waiting for an exciting new game to play after the dry months since pre-Christmas releases, Aliens: Colonial Marines is not for you. The gaming industry has once again started the year in controversy. Last year we endured the disaster that was the ending of BioWare’s Read more...

The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson

Posted 10:23pm Sunday 24th February 2013 by Thomas Thomson

Jeanette Winterson’s The Daylight Gate is a fictionalised re-telling of the events leading up to the Pendle Witch Trials of 1612. Set in Lancashire, a county then fabled for its wildness and strangeness, a stronghold of both Catholicism and witchcraft, the book describes an England feverish with Read more...

Trick Mammoth

Posted 10:02pm Sunday 24th February 2013 by Basti Menkes

Trick Mammoth is a Dunedin pop trio consisting of Adrian Ng (songwriting and vocals), Millie Lovelock (guitar and vocals), and Sam Valentine (drums). Enigmatic frontman Adrian describes their sound as “lo-fi music with a 90s guitar-pop edge.” He has been writing solo material under the Trick Read more...

Tomahawk - Oddfellows

Posted 10:02pm Sunday 24th February 2013 by Basti Menkes

Alternative metal supergroup Tomahawk are back with their first album in six years. Instead of picking up where the Native American-inspired Anonymous left off, the Mike Patton-led band of misfits have taken the Tomahawk sound back to its very roots, producing something truly unique. As the Read more...

My Bloody Valentine - m b v

Posted 10:02pm Sunday 24th February 2013 by Basti Menkes

How do you follow up a genre-defining masterpiece? My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields has spent the last two decades pondering that very question. Since its release in 1991, the band’s magnum opus Loveless has established itself as not only the definitive shoegaze album, but as one of the most Read more...

Men Like Us

Posted 5:59pm Sunday 7th October 2012 by Taryn Dryfhout

There is no way I can do this great film justice in a 300-word review. The opening sequence of Men Like Us illustrates the abundance of heterosexual images found in Western culture and sets the scene for nine men’s stories to be told, most of which begin with the way in which they were raised to Read more...