Archive

Long Way North

Posted 1:20pm Sunday 6th August 2017 by Diana Tran

Rating: 4/5 Long Way North is about a 15-year-old rebel who runs away from home after getting yelled at by her father. And it is so much more. Sasha’s journey has all the elements that make for a jolly adventure: unresolved family tensions, a potentially dangerous cute boy, a sassy barmaid, Read more...

War for the Planet of the Apes

Posted 1:17pm Sunday 6th August 2017 by Todd Johnstone

Rating 4/5 Seeing an orang-utan and a gorilla riding horseback into battle is a great sight; it’s pure CINEMA. War for the Planet of the Apes embraces these strange sights. After all, the main character in the film is a highly intelligent chimp who talks, surrounded by a troop of slightly Read more...

Critic’s Ultimate Guide to Peanut Butter

Posted 1:14pm Sunday 6th August 2017 by Liani Baylis

My heart genuinely goes out to those unfortunate enough to be cursed with a nut allergy - I’m sorry. That does, however, mean more peanut butter for me. You don’t die and I get more PB all to myself - there can be no loser. I thought this week I’d shake it up a bit as an ode Read more...

Italian Inspirations Review: Taking Dad to the DSO

Posted 1:03pm Sunday 6th August 2017 by Ihlara McIndoe

Sadly, it’s always a struggle to find somebody to claim the second ticket of my double DSO pass. My friend pool of Western Art Music fans (the “WAM-fam”) is on the light side, and is significantly diminished once you remove those who are members of the orchestra, so have no need Read more...

That No I.d. Friend And The Story Of Jay-z

Posted 1:01pm Sunday 6th August 2017 by Grimm Selfie

In July 2017, Jay-Z released his long awaited return with the album 4:44. Like any good story there’s a person behind the elevator miss-haps, sipping lemonade in the shadows, that makes things happen. In this case it’s a person known as No I.D. It’s an odd thing when we listen Read more...

Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator

Posted 12:55pm Sunday 6th August 2017 by Lisa Blakie

The title says it all. Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator (DDADDS) is a Dad dating simulator where you are a Dad looking to date other Dads. Yes, it’s as good as it sounds. I’ve been looking forward to this game for quite some time because I love games that focus on building Read more...

Art Week Cover Competition

Posted 2:23pm Sunday 30th July 2017 by Critic

Art Week is approaching and to celebrate, Critic wants artists to send us your artwork. We will choose a piece to go on the cover of Critic for the week, plus you get prizes! The magazine prints at 300ppi so please send high-resolution images. If your work is digital you need to send it at Read more...

Bleaker House By Nell Stevens

Posted 1:15pm Sunday 30th July 2017 by Jessica Thompson

“I am scared that the life I want to lead, the life of a writer, is inevitably built on loneliness, and I need to know if I can hack it.”   Bleaker House is Nell Steven’s first novel and she hit the nail on the head. The book is messy, unpredictable, and absolutely Read more...

‘Extrait d’Image’ – Lisa Reihana

Posted 1:09pm Sunday 30th July 2017 by Waveney Russ

‘Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique’ by Joseph Dufour is wallpaper. Spectacular, exceptionally rare, two-hundred-year-old wallpaper. Flagged as ‘armchair tourism’, the wallpaper depicts the over twenty different indigenous groups that Captain James Cook or Louis Antoine de Read more...

Hungover Pancakes (Minus The Guilt)

Posted 1:02pm Sunday 30th July 2017 by Liani Baylis

Eating less or no animal products has become increasingly trendy – very #2017 if you will. Brainstorming content for this week’s article got me thinking. What do you do if Sunday morning you’ve mastered eggs, hauled that hangin’ ass out of bed to impress your lass, only to Read more...

Despite the Falling Snow

Posted 12:54pm Sunday 30th July 2017 by Gem MacDuff

Rating: 2/5 Despite a plot that anyone with half a brain could predict, your heart would have to be made of cement not to fall in love with Sam Reid’s earnest portrayal of the male lead in Shamim Sarif’s Cold War drama, Despite the Falling Snow. Reid plays the warm young Alexander, Read more...

The Journey

Posted 12:50pm Sunday 30th July 2017 by Rossana Boni

Rating: 4/5 Based on true events, The Journey depicts how political rivals Martin McGuiness and Ian Paisley finally hammered out a peace accord after forty years of conflict in Northern Ireland, known as the ‘Troubles’. As the respective leaders of Northern Ireland’s Sinn Fein Read more...

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Posted 12:45pm Sunday 30th July 2017 by Lisa Blakie

Do we really need another Breath of the Wild review circulating out there? Probably not. But I think I had a different experience to everyone else who has played this game, because I hated it when I first started it. The Legend of Zelda is a franchise I will love unconditionally forever. Ocarina Read more...

Critic Reviews: Spring Break

Posted 9:21am Monday 24th July 2017 by Sam Fraser-Baxter

It was a typically arctic night, as just over a thousand scarfies flooded into the Union Hall for OUSA’s Spring Break event on the Thursday of Re-O week. The event was touted by OUSA as an act of solidarity; a collective ‘fuck you’ to winter. They couldn’t have timed it Read more...

Critic Interviews New Zealand’s Funniest Comedian: Rhys Darby

Posted 1:35pm Sunday 23rd July 2017 by Joe Higham

Touching on his time in the NZ Army, his belief in reincarnation, his comedy heroes and more, Rhys Darby had a chat to Critic as he returns to New Zealand and Australia for his new Mystic Time Bird tour.  Joe Higham: How's the tour going so far? Rhys Darby: Great, yeah, fantastic. Only Read more...

Gilead

Posted 1:30pm Sunday 23rd July 2017 by Jessica Thompson

It took longer than I’d expected for me to get into this book. Marilynne Robinson has proven herself a talented, tender and transportive writer in her other novels, and over the years she has received a veritable feast of awards. Published in 2004, Gilead was the winner of the 2005 Read more...

Finger Paintings

Posted 1:27pm Sunday 23rd July 2017 by Waveney Russ

Envision cruising in through the Octagon and walking straight up to ‘La Débâcle’ by Claude Monet (if you know where to find it that is, thanks Dunedin Public Art Gallery), then shoving your hands onto the oil painting’s exterior; your Fatty-Lane-grease-infused digits Read more...

As Good as Real Coconut Yoghurt, But Made a la StudyLink

Posted 1:22pm Sunday 23rd July 2017 by Liani Baylis

The ‘health’ industry appears to be a rich kids’ game. Forgive me that StudyLink is all a girl’s got going right now – amirite? I’m determined to eat well (booze aside), but every time I step into the supermarket I reconsider the nutritional value of the dust Read more...

Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

Posted 1:16pm Sunday 23rd July 2017 by Todd Johnstone

Rating: 3/5 We witnessed Peter Parker’s long-awaited entrance into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in last year’s Captain America: Civil War. Homecoming sees Tom Holland return as the third leading man to don the Spidey-suit, and lead what is essentially a teen high-school movie set Read more...

My Cousin Rachel (2017)

Posted 1:14pm Sunday 23rd July 2017 by Rossana Boni

Rating: 2/5 Channelling (poorly) his inner Guillermo del Toro with a disproportionate amount of candles, chiaroscuro and murder-mystery piano motifs, South African Director Roger Michell (Notting Hill, The Mother) gives us a new version of Daphne du Maurier’s twisty novel. The story that Read more...