Magic Mike XXL

Posted 2:01pm Sunday 26th July 2015 by Shaun Swain

Rating: 4/5 Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike was a low-budget arthouse tragicomedy about male strippers that surprised audiences with its narrative depth. Now removing the “tragedy” and substituting the “arthouse” with “road trip”, Gregory Jacobs’ Read more...

Paper Towns

Posted 2:03pm Sunday 26th July 2015 by Mandy Te

Rating 3/5 Like all things John Green, Paper Towns is a metaphor. With last year’s release of The Fault in Our Stars, comparisons will inevitably be made between these two films. However, Paper Towns — while similarly containing teenage characters who speak unnaturally — takes Read more...

Interview with Virginia Heath

Posted 2:12pm Sunday 26th July 2015 by Mandy Te

Critic: When going through all the Scottish film archives, did you have specific things in mind when choosing what you would use, and how did you know which footage to pick? It was a fluid process. I wanted an overall theme of love and loss, which relates to a lot of things such as war, Read more...

The Falling

Posted 2:02pm Sunday 19th July 2015 by Jaxon Langley

Rating: 3/5 Following her heartbreaking docu-drama, Dreams of a Life, Carol Morley brings us The Falling — a bewitching, deadpan period portrait of female adolescence that explores the subject of mass psychogenic illness and treads into other dark territory. Although it is well-written and Read more...

Ted 2

Posted 2:05pm Sunday 19th July 2015 by Shaun Swain

Rating: 1/5 If I described Seth MacFarlane’s sequel to Ted as incredibly masturbatory, I would only be lowering myself to the level of MacFarlane’s tasteless sense of humour. But it doesn’t matter. Ted 2, despite its painfully large budget, provides no inspiration for good Read more...

Madame Bovary

Posted 1:56pm Sunday 19th July 2015 by Mandy Te

Rating: 3/5 As a writer, Gustave Flaubert spent his career chasing after “le mot juste” — “the right word” — and, for many people, Madame Bovary truly captures his perfectionist style. However, film adaptations of Madame Bovary have yet to embody that Read more...

NZIFF Programme Launch Film: Mavis!

Posted 1:59pm Sunday 19th July 2015 by Mandy Te

Rating: 3/5 This year’s New Zealand International Film Festival (NZIFF) is Dunedin’s biggest film festival to date. With almost 100 films from 25 countries, the 39th Dunedin International Film Festival celebrated the launch of its programme with a delicious array of macarons, dips, Read more...

Interview with Jacob Rajan

Posted 1:57pm Sunday 12th July 2015 by Mandy Te

Indian Ink’s play, Kiss the Fish, will be coming to Dunedin soon. Mandy Te caught up with Jacob Rajan to understand his background and how the Indian Ink Theatre Company was born. What personally drew you towards acting and pursuing acting professionally? I was never into performance Read more...

Interview with Lara Macgregor

Posted 1:49pm Sunday 5th July 2015 by Mandy Te

Critic had a chat to artistic director, actor and director Lara Macgregor about directing Punk Rock and what it’s like to work both behind the scenes and on stage.  Punk Rock will be showing from 27 June to 18 July at Fortune Theatre. You’ve acted in several theatre Read more...

The Gunman

Posted 1:33pm Sunday 17th May 2015 by Anonymous Bird

Rating: 1/5 Basing this film on the novel The Prone Gunman by Jean-Patrick Manchette, Morel attempts to execute a gritty, regretful hero story but falls incredibly short. Instead, we are given an unsuccessful, drawn-out action film with an annoying love triangle that permeates the entire Read more...