Archive

Mother’s Day

Posted 12:43pm Sunday 15th May 2016 by Lisa Blakie

Rating: D (can I give this an F? is that a thing?) What is it with holiday specific movies always being so terrible? I’m not meaning Christmas movies (although there a lot of disappointments there) I’m meaning films like Valentine’s Day, The Holiday, New Year’s Eve and now Read more...

Niu Sila

Posted 12:40pm Sunday 15th May 2016 by Gini Jory

Rating: A+ Niu Sila tells the story of two boys, Ioane Tafioka and Peter Baker, growing up in the same street in 1970s suburban Auckland. One fresh from the Islands, the other as white as they come, this story spans 40 years of friendship, cultural differences, and takes a closer look at the Read more...

The Witness

Posted 12:38pm Sunday 15th May 2016 by Campbell Calverley

Rating: A It is hard to make a player feel completely alone in a game and still keep them engaged. It is even harder to make a puzzle game that treats the player intelligently while forcing them to learn new problem-solving skills. The Witness is the latest puzzle game from game designer Jonathan Read more...

Chicken Adobo

Posted 1:36pm Sunday 8th May 2016 by Kirsten Garcia

My whole family is actually visiting our homeland Philippines as this issue is being printed. They’re going to island resorts where they’ll be swimming in the reefs and I couldn’t go because of uni (sobs). So when Critic emailed saying they were doing a travel issue, I thought Read more...

Light Switch and Conduit: The Jim Barr & Mary Barr Collection

Posted 1:32pm Sunday 8th May 2016 by Monique Hodgkinson

Some art exhibitions simply make sense. The flow from one artwork to another is smooth, logical, creating a gradual sense of understanding and enlightenment in the viewer. They make you go “Oh cool, yeah, nice, wow, I get that.”  Light Switch and Conduit is not one of those Read more...

Going on tour

Posted 1:25pm Sunday 8th May 2016 by Millicent Lovelock

I had never felt so tired, so totally physically and emotionally spent, and yet I know that I will do it over and over again When I was thirteen and watching the My Chemical Romance documentary for the sixtieth time I thought that touring with your band looked like the nicest possible time. What Read more...

Chess

Posted 1:22pm Sunday 8th May 2016 by Campbell Calverley

Rating: F War is hell. This is a truism that has rung throughout the ages, with generation upon generation learning nothing from their predecessors. It is a morally and pragmatically complex business, with endless arguments about the necessity of some wars versus the abhorrence of others. Even in Read more...

Civil War

Posted 1:17pm Sunday 8th May 2016 by Anonymous Bird

There are hundreds, if not thousands of vigilantes, superheroes, and supervillains in the Marvel universe. They battle regularly. Cities burn, buildings fall, and there are always going to be human, civilian casualties. This is what Mark Millar’s Civil War is focused on. This Marvel event Read more...

Why Do We Need...Mars One

Posted 1:15pm Sunday 8th May 2016 by Anthony Marris

Mars One is a not-for-profit venture led by Bas Lansdorp, with the goal of sending people on a one way mission to Mars to establish a human colony by 2024…or 2027ish. The final dates are yet to be determined.  A competition held in 2013 asked for volunteers to go on the one way Read more...

Noma

Posted 1:09pm Sunday 8th May 2016 by Lisa Blakie

Rating: B Noma: My Perfect Storm follows the rise, fall, and rise again of world class restaurant in Denmark, named Noma. Rene Redzepi, the founder and I guess we can say protagonist of the documentary, is a passionate, driven, creative, innovative, ingenious, charismatic chef who is driven by Read more...

Phoenix

Posted 1:07pm Sunday 8th May 2016 by Shaun Swain

Rating: A Dark, mysterious, and artistically crafted are some of the many ways one could describe Writer-Director Christian Petzold’s intriguing new mystery-historical film. A refreshing and intelligent sense of insight flows from each frame of Phoenix, a story that, in more ways than one, Read more...

The Jungle Book



Posted 1:05pm Sunday 8th May 2016 by Jessica Thompson

Rating: A The Jungle Book, directed by Jon Favreau, is a noble re-invention of the whimsical Disney animated version that stemmed from the classic books by Rudyard Kipling.  Raised by a family of wolves in the Indian jungle, the hero of the story, the human boy Mowgli (played by Neel Read more...

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Posted 1:02pm Sunday 8th May 2016 by Halaevalu Maka

Rating: A If your life was made into a movie which actor or actress would you want to play you?  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, was originally inspired by the true story of Kim Barker and her biography ‘The Taliban shuffle: strange days in Read more...

John Dies at the End

Posted 12:55pm Sunday 1st May 2016 by Lucy Hunter

I quite like insects. I don’t mind them on me unless I can feel the weight of them. If one is stuck somewhere I will administer a gentle transport of cardboard over glass jar and dispatch the creature outside. However, while reading John Dies at the End, I developed a fear of bugs. If you are Read more...

A deep and tumbling kind of laughter - John Ward Knox

Posted 12:52pm Sunday 1st May 2016 by Monique Hodgkinson

It would be easy to mistake the current exhibition at the Hocken Gallery for an empty space, so diminutive is the scale of John Ward Knox’s paintings. Yet what a deep and tumbling kind of laughter lacks in size, it makes up for in the intimacy, skill, and sheer beauty of the Read more...

Murtabak

Posted 12:47pm Sunday 1st May 2016 by Kirsten Garcia

This week I’m going Southeast Asian on you all with one of my favourite street foods. The name comes from the Arabic word for folded. It’s essentially roti with minced meat, and a scrambled egg folded inside. It can be eaten by itself, with curry or even just tomato sauce. You have to Read more...

Lightsabers

Posted 12:40pm Sunday 1st May 2016 by Anthony Marris

Described by the revered Jedi Master Obi Wan Kenobi as an elegant weapon for a more civilised age, the lightsaber is a blade of energy which can deflect blaster bolts, cut through steel and sever the odd limb or two. Fandom website Dorkly ranked the lightsaber as the coolest fictional weapon in a Read more...

That Dragon, Cancer

Posted 12:36pm Sunday 1st May 2016 by Campbell Calverley

Rating: A When you hear that a game has tackled the heavy topic of a child battling with cancer, it’s understandable you’d be skeptical. It’s likely to be emotionally manipulative, or merely uncomfortable rather than honest, or just corny. That Dragon, Cancer is none of these Read more...

Teenage Fans

Posted 12:34pm Sunday 1st May 2016 by Millicent Lovelock

Yesterday I sat thinking about my thesis as I listened to Sandy Hsu’s “Teenage Girls” on repeat. It’s a tender song, but rough around the edges, recorded in a bathroom with some lo-fi piece of recording equipment that manages to capture Hsu’s crystal voice but muffle Read more...

Eye in the Sky

Posted 12:31pm Sunday 1st May 2016 by Nita Sullivan

Rating: A- Before seeing Eye in the Sky, a fairly topical military thriller that centres on the arguments around and ramifications of using drones in modern warfare, I had pretty high expectations and I wasn’t disappointed.  Dame Helen Mirren leads a pretty star-packed cast (Alan Read more...

Orphans & Kingdoms

Posted 12:28pm Sunday 1st May 2016 by Alex Campbell-Hunt

Rating: A It’s an interesting coincidence that both of the new Kiwi movies currently showing cover similar subject matter - both involve juvenile delinquents getting into a dangerous predicament alongside a reclusive adult, with everyone eventually bonding and becoming better Read more...

A Warrior’s Tail

Posted 12:24pm Sunday 1st May 2016 by Lisa Blakie

Rating: D A Warrior’s Tail is a low budget Russian animated film which I’m hoping was poorly translated because I have no idea what the narrative was actually trying to convey. Every character was obnoxious and annoying and lame and had their own bizarre storylines going on. So Read more...

Allegiant

Posted 12:21pm Sunday 1st May 2016 by Jessica Thompson

Rating: C+ I wanted to give Allegiant a chance, I swear. I walked into that cinema, illegal chips under jacket, with clean judgment and an open mind. Excited, if anything, to see director Robert Schwentke amend the travesty that was Insurgent. Alas. Allegiant is the third installment to the Read more...

Chicken Kiev

Posted 1:18pm Sunday 24th April 2016 by Kirsten Garcia

The origins of this dish are unknown but it seems to have been made popular by the Soviets. It’s like garlic bread but instead of bread, we’re using chicken. I was considering calling this recipe a butter bomb since that’s what you’ll essentially get. I do love butter. I am a Read more...

Fashion Rules OK

Posted 1:13pm Sunday 24th April 2016 by Monique Hodgkinson

There comes a point in each semester when the uni’s endless sea of stripes, denim, grey, black and white becomes a bit too monotonous to bear. At this point, vintage fashion never fails to provide a fresh and energising splash of colour. Fashion Rules OK, the new exhibition at the University Read more...

Tomorrow there will be Apricots

Posted 1:08pm Sunday 24th April 2016 by Jessica Thompson

14 year old Lorca is obsessed with reading cooking books in an attempt to win the love and respect of her mother Nancy, an icy chef who grieves the death of her husband. Lorca struggles with her mother’s uncaring nature and cooks the most delicious sounding treats in attempt to woo and prevent Read more...

Why do we need..augmented reality?

Posted 1:00pm Sunday 24th April 2016 by Anthony Marris

Augmented reality (AR) is where applications on mobile and tablet devices are able to use both the camera lens and a database to add additional information onto a real world scene in real time (or near to). This is different from Virtual Reality. In VR, the scene is created from nothing and fed to Read more...

Don’t Starve - Shipwrecked

Posted 12:58pm Sunday 24th April 2016 by James Tregonning

Rating: A- Don’t Starve was originally released for PC in 2013, and was pretty successful, getting a PS4 port the next year. It’s a survival game in which you, a scientist named Wilson, have meddled with powers beyond your ken and have been sucked into an unknown world, where you have Read more...

Mind of Mine - Zayn Malik

Posted 12:53pm Sunday 24th April 2016 by Millicent Lovelock

When Zayn started releasing singles post-One Direction I was worried that it was going to take him an album and a bit to get into the swing of things. I wasn’t overly impressed by ‘Pillowtalk’, although it is a catchy tune I don’t think it is all that cohesive, and Read more...

Interview with Lakes

Posted 12:51pm Sunday 24th April 2016 by Sam Fraser-Baxter

Lakes are an eclectic and constantly evolving act. In this digital age of music, finding a way to set yourselves apart can be a little difficult. Lakes have had no trouble finding their own musical niche. From the early days with the debut release Reflections of the Night Before, Lakes created an Read more...

Zootopia

Posted 12:45pm Sunday 24th April 2016 by Jess Alsop

Rating: A- I knew very little about Zootopia before I saw it, so I’ll admit I was expecting some kind of strange Madagascar knock-off. Luckily I was wrong.  Instead, Zootopia is about a world run by animals that have evolved from their ‘savage’ days of being predators Read more...

Sherpa

Posted 12:41pm Sunday 24th April 2016 by Lisa Blakie

Rating: A If anyone you know doesn’t know what white privilege is, or is too ignorant to even try to understand, all they need to do is watch Sherpa and everything around the concept will become abundantly clear. If not, you need to disassociate yourself from them ASAP. Sherpa is a Read more...

The Man Behind the Pope

Posted 12:39pm Sunday 24th April 2016 by Andrew Kwiatkowski

Rating: 0/5 or anything less than zero, or the lowest letter grade possible Fresh from my Grandmother’s funeral mass and with great trepidation I marched into the theatre to watch a film about the head Catholic honcho, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, or as you know him, the incumbent Pope Francis. Read more...

Florence and the Uffizi Gallery

Posted 12:37pm Sunday 24th April 2016 by Jessica Thompson

Rating: B+ Florence and the Uffizi Gallery is my entire art history course for this semester. But try not to let that put you off. In a tiny cinema this simple documentary swept me out of my seat into another country, for a high quality tour of Italian Renaissance art. Directed by Luca Viotto Read more...

One-Cup Desserts in One Minute

Posted 1:14pm Sunday 17th April 2016 by Kirsten Garcia

As students, most of us are probably limited in time, resources or ingredients to whip up sweet stuff like you (or more likely, your Mum) might at home.  But we are a creative and persistent bunch, and there are ways to make do with modest supplies and a microwave, all in the time of a study Read more...

Hākui: Women of Kāi Tahu

Posted 1:05pm Sunday 17th April 2016 by Monique Hodgkinson

Visiting the current exhibition Hākui: Women of Kāi Tahu was an insightful, valuable, special and rare experience. The Otago Museum, working closely with Whānau, rūnaka and iwi throughout New Zealand, have created a gallery space which tells the life stories of Kāi Tahu Read more...

How to be Both

Posted 12:58pm Sunday 17th April 2016 by Hayleigh Clarkson

This is an incredible novel full of wit, sarcasm, and characters that are a touch arrogant and temperamental. Ali Smith’s How To Be Both has won the 2014 Costa Novel of the Year award, the 2015 Women’s Prize for Fiction award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2014. It is a Read more...

Why Do We Need.... Artificial General Intelligence

Posted 12:56pm Sunday 17th April 2016 by Anthony Marris

The creation of an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), a synthetic self-aware intelligence that is capable of replicating, and ultimately exceeding human thought processes has been both the dream and concern of scientists, programmers, engineers, and futurists for decades. Prominent minds like Read more...

Fallout 4

Posted 12:47pm Sunday 17th April 2016 by Lisa Blakie

Rating: A- Bethesda Studios game director and executive producer Todd Howard recently received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Game Developer’s Choice Awards for his incredible contribution to open world gameplay and the gaming industry as a whole. Bethesda is extremely well known for Read more...

Behaving Yourself At Gigs

Posted 12:43pm Sunday 17th April 2016 by Millicent Lovelock

The Dunedin music scene is now living in a post-Chick’s Hotel wasteland. We’ve lost our best venue, the venue where there were gigs worth going to, and it’s going to take a while to get back on our feet. But, when we do, we’re going to have to have gigs in Read more...

Sleepless in Seattle

Posted 12:42pm Sunday 17th April 2016 by Nita Sullivan

Rating: A- I last rewatched this epic 1993 romance on Easter weekend, when TV2 was running old movies all day for the public holidays, and to be honest, it was as good as when I watched it the first time.  90s movie romance power couple Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks are the two leads in Read more...

The Lion King

Posted 12:35pm Sunday 17th April 2016 by Samuel Rillstone

Rating: A+ Disney's The Lion King brought a whole new generation into the world of heart-crushing, soul destroying feelings over a death in an animated movie. Mufasa’s death (I would say spoiler alert but I mean, c’mon) to me is one of the most emotionally heart-wrenching pieces Read more...

Kung Fu Panda III

Posted 12:33pm Sunday 17th April 2016 by Lisa Blakie

Rating: B For whatever reason the original Kung Fu Panda was quite an obsession for me.  When it was released in 2008 one of my Mum’s friends had lent us some illegal copies of new release films to cure our boredom over weekends. When I saw Kung Fu Panda for the first time, Read more...

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Posted 12:28pm Sunday 17th April 2016 by Jessica Thompson

Rating: A+ I never used to be a fan of New Zealand films, though I could see their value, they seemed to follow their own rules that I didn’t understand (seeming a bit too small budget for my liking), until I saw Hunt for the Wilderpeople.  Directed and written by the glorious Taika Read more...

Bubblegum Industrial Fashion Shower

Posted 12:46pm Sunday 10th April 2016 by Lucy Hunter

“As well as being good friends we’re artistically compatible,” says Christian McNab on his relationship with collaborator Nikki Cain. Bubblegum Industrial Fashion Shower was an exhibition involving performance, music, painting, video, and garments made by Nikki and Christian. It is Read more...

Reservoir Dogs

Posted 12:42pm Sunday 10th April 2016 by Tom Lord

Rating: A+ I am proud to say that this is one of the few reviews I have written that is completely unbiased and impartial. And by that, of course, I mean the opposite – this film is just too damned good to be impartial.  At 99 minutes it is the perfect length for nearly any Read more...

Batman v Superman

Posted 12:38pm Sunday 10th April 2016 by Nita Sullivan

Rating: D Ok, so, Batman v Superman was just terrible. During the exhausting 2hr 31m runtime, the film follows the plight of both an unpopular Superman and ageing Batman as they initially battle each other, and then combine forces to take down a villainous Lex Luthor. To be honest, I walked out Read more...

My Big Fat Greek Wedding II

Posted 12:36pm Sunday 10th April 2016 by Jess Alsop

Rating: C+ I made the mistake of rewatching the first My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) the night before I saw this, and it honestly set my hopes far too high. In one of the least coherent films I’ve seen in a while, Toula (Nia Vardalos) and her husband Ian (John Corbett) are getting ready to Read more...

45 Years

Posted 12:33pm Sunday 10th April 2016 by Alex Campbell-Hunt

Rating: A Kate and Geoff Mercer are about to celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary. A few days prior to the party, Geoff receives a letter. The body of his former girlfriend, Katya, has been found in the Swiss Alps - perfectly preserved in the ice, into which she fell 50 years ago. (Possible Read more...

Dutch Babies

Posted 12:21pm Sunday 10th April 2016 by Kirsten Garcia

It all started with an episode of Bob’s Burgers. They stop at a diner and rave over these pancakes called Dutch Babies.  My BF is Dutch so I asked him what they’re like  and he has no idea. The next morning, I’m stalking Chrissy Teigen on insta and I find a post from Read more...