Archive

Dark Souls III

Posted 12:54pm Sunday 7th August 2016 by Campbell Calverley

What a pleasant surprise for me that Dark Souls III came out on my birthday! I have been a massive fan of From Software’s esoteric and brutally difficult Souls games for a long time now. I finished the first Dark Souls game for the second time earlier this year. I’ve never gotten tired Read more...

Songs of note

Posted 12:39pm Sunday 7th August 2016 by Millicent Lovelock

'Heretic'—Peach Milk Auckland electronic music producer Peach Milk has just released her EP ‘Finally’. ‘Heretic’, the second track, combines swelling soundscapes with frantic, crisp percussion, and disembodied vocals. The track opens with a slow, rising Read more...

The 5th Eye

Posted 12:33pm Sunday 7th August 2016 by Anonymous Bird

Critic spoke to Errol Wright and Abi King-Jones, directors of The 5th Eye, a film making it’s debut at the New Zealand International Film Festival. Eight years in the making, and finished only three weeks prior to the beginning of the festival, this surprising and informative film tackles the Read more...

Star Trek: Beyond

Posted 12:28pm Sunday 7th August 2016 by Alex Campbell-Hunt

Rating: B In this third instalment of the rebooted Star Trek film series, director Justin Lin of the Fast & Furious franchise takes over the helm from J. J. Abrams. This mercifully means fewer lens flares, but sadly also steers the movie towards being a mindless action flick.  In Star Read more...

Ghostbusters

Posted 12:25pm Sunday 7th August 2016 by Lisa Blakie

Rating: B I only watched Ghostbusters (1984) for the first time last year. I thought the characters were kinda boring and the story was a bit silly and didn’t really understand the hype. Going into Ghostbusters (2016), I had pretty low expectations and zero nostalgia for the original Read more...

Demolition

Posted 12:23pm Sunday 7th August 2016 by Samuel Rillstone

Rating: B Demolition directed by Jean-Marc Vallee tells the story of investment banker Davis Mitchell (Jake Gyllenhaal), who tragically loses his wife in a car accident, and follows the essential grieving process that follows. What starts as a complaint letter to a vending machine company turns Read more...

The China Syndrome

Posted 12:20pm Sunday 7th August 2016 by Alex Campbell-Hunt

Rating: A Going through a phase of watching ‘70s movies, as you do, I tracked The China Syndrome down after reading Roger Ebert’s effusive praise of it. The film was released at a time when nuclear power plants were a relatively new thing, and people were a bit apprehensive about Read more...

Banana Nuggets

Posted 12:09pm Sunday 7th August 2016 by Kirsten Garcia

It's good to practice what you preach. Following from my Food Waste article last week, I make for you: Banana Nuggets.  Our staple bananas are the sixth most common item Kiwi's throw out, which equates to 3,242 TONNES annually, costing us a whopping 8.42 million dollars! Bananas are Read more...

A Waste of Food

Posted 1:44pm Sunday 31st July 2016 by Kirsten Garcia

So instead of a recipe I thought I’d write another important aspect to consider about food. It's an all too familiar scenario at my flat with leftover dinners. It's a particular problem for one of my flatmates, who forgets about food and ends up buying more while the forgotten food Read more...

Ridiculous Sublime

Posted 1:40pm Sunday 31st July 2016 by Monique Hodgkinson

"The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again." -Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason:  Part II. c1795   I Read more...

In Order to Live

Posted 1:36pm Sunday 31st July 2016 by Hayleigh Clarkson

In Order to Live is an incredible real-life story of Yeonmi Park, a North Korean girl, who escaped into China and then into South Korea. Her epic fight for freedom is nearly unbelievable: Yeonmi survived starvation, abuse, trafficking, and near death just to have the simple freedoms we all take for Read more...

In Order to Live

Posted 1:35pm Sunday 31st July 2016 by Hayleigh Clarkson

In Order to Live is an incredible real-life story of Yeonmi Park, a North Korean girl, who escaped into China and then into South Korea. Her epic fight for freedom is nearly unbelievable: Yeonmi survived starvation, abuse, trafficking, and near death just to have the simple freedoms we all take for Read more...

Batman: The Killing Joke

Posted 1:31pm Sunday 31st July 2016 by Anonymous Bird

The Joker is the antithesis of Batman. While Batman continues to fight and defeat many, many villains throughout the years of DC comics, the one big villain that jumps to mind is the Joker. Comic genius and veteran Alan Moore (also wrote Watchmen, V for Vendetta) wrote The Killing Joke (1988), a one Read more...

Cyber warfare

Posted 1:28pm Sunday 31st July 2016 by Anthony Marris

Cyber crime is the catchall term used for crime which makes use of the internet. Interpol acknowledges that most law enforcement have two distinct categories: advanced cyber crime, in which sophisticated individuals or groups target computer hardware or software (“cracking” or Read more...

Pokémon Go

Posted 1:23pm Sunday 31st July 2016 by Lisa Blakie

Rating: B- When I was younger, my family used to go to this beach at Kaka Point near the Catlins. My brother convinced me that if I open my eyes underwater in the ocean I would see Pokémon. I never did – because, you know, salt water and stuff – but for whatever reason I one Read more...

The Cure

Posted 1:20pm Sunday 31st July 2016 by Millicent Lovelock

Three months ago I sat at work, squinting at my computer screen and chewing my lip. Ticketmaster reminded me I had two minutes left to buy my ticket before I would lose my place in the queue. I wasn’t sure, did I really need to see The Cure, the band that cushioned my teenage angst and later Read more...

High Fidelity

Posted 1:14pm Sunday 31st July 2016 by Nita Sullivan

Rating: A- The film High Fidelity, based on British author Nick Hornby’s bestselling novel, is perhaps a good example of the way some film adaptations are not always better than their literary beginnings. Despite this, the film does an admirable job of harnessing Hornby’s humour and Read more...

A Month Of Sundays

Posted 1:11pm Sunday 31st July 2016 by Alex Campbell-Hunt

Rating: B+ Australia seems to be quite good at producing heartwarming comedies, and when I went along to this one I was expecting something in the same vein as The Castle or The Dish. In the end, it felt more like a Wes Anderson production, in that it is artfully shot and could be described as Read more...

Sing Street

Posted 1:09pm Sunday 31st July 2016 by Lisa Blakie

Rating: B+ Summing it up in one sentence, Sing Street follows the story of Cosmo, a teenager living in Dublin in the ‘80s, who is motivated to start a band in the hopes of impressing a girl named Raphina. Yes, there are songs in this movie and they’re pretty good, so it’s Read more...

Batman: The Killing Joke

Posted 1:06pm Sunday 31st July 2016 by Anonymous Bird

Rating: B- (bad for Laura) This animated film adaptation of Alan Moore’s Batman: The Killing Joke accurately depicts the story from the original one shot comic. The first half begins with a prequel (not from the comic) about Barbara Gordon, Batgirl and the daughter of commissioner Gordon. Read more...