A Little Life

Posted 12:46pm Sunday 26th February 2017 by Jessica Thompson Carr

Rating: 10/10 Very few books make me cry out loud. Internally, sure, a few have broken my heart, and safe to say I am no longer a whole person after a childhood of Charlotte’s Web and every last book in an epic series, but I don’t remember the last time I actually wept into my pillow Read more...

Introducing the Music Editors

Posted 12:59pm Sunday 26th February 2017 by Bianca Prujean

SIDE A: Welcome to the first 2017 issue of the music section. Your previous music editor, accomplished writer and journalist, songwriter of New Zealand’s most beloved band, and voice of a generation: Millie Lovelock, has vacated her post at Critic. Big shoes to fill… Who am I? Read more...

OM MANI PADME HUM

Posted 1:03pm Sunday 26th February 2017 by Monique Hodgkinson

My first glimpse of this work was an unexpected one: while chatting with a friend in Nova. I was thoroughly preoccupied with my cappuccino and not ready to be introduced to my new favourite contemporary art piece, but there it was, unavoidable —OM MANI PADME HUM by Tiffany Singh, towering Read more...

The Great Wall

Posted 12:30pm Sunday 26th February 2017 by Brandon Johnstone

Rating: 4/5 The Great Wall is a Chinese-US co-production, marketed heavily to Western audiences as an intense, gritty action film. About ten minutes into the film it becomes pretty clear that this is a bold-faced lie. Set during the gunpowder-fueled Song Dynasty, Matt Damon and Pedro Pascal star Read more...

Riven: The Sequel to Myst

Posted 12:29pm Saturday 8th October 2016 by Campbell Calverley

Rating: CLASSIC To round off the year, I would like to be indulgent and review something slightly different. Riven: The Sequel to Myst is my single favourite game of all time. In the game, you have been transported by your friend Atrus through a Linking Book – books that spirit people away Read more...

Dunedin Symphony Orchestra

Posted 12:32pm Saturday 8th October 2016 by Ihlara McIndoe

When an audience with a mean age of seventy energetically jump out of their seats in enthusiastic applause at the end of a work, you know it’s been a good performance. Associate Professor of Music, Anthony Ritchie’s composition Gallipoli to the Somme traces the journey of Dunedinite Read more...

The Good Place

Posted 11:28am Saturday 8th October 2016 by Anonymous Bird

Rating: A- In the pilot episode of The Good Place, Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) is sitting in a perfectly pleasant waiting room. Michael (Ten Danson) calls her into his office and explains that she has died, and she is now in the afterlife. He assures her that she is in “The Good Read more...

Harry Styles — Going solo & Another Man

Posted 12:35pm Saturday 8th October 2016 by Millicent Lovelock

Four days ago Harry Styles posted three blank white photographs to his Instagram, a day later he revealed three covers for Another Man magazine. Two of the covers feature Styles in a dog collar (not the priest kind), staring broodily into the camera, in the third he is dressed in a turtleneck Read more...

2001: A Space Odyssey

Posted 12:08pm Saturday 8th October 2016 by Jac Aske

Rating: F--- I want to preface this by saying that I only saw this movie because my Dad got a Kubrick box set from The Warehouse and said we had to watch it. It’s about some astronaut guys who are on a spaceship going somewhere and it sucks. I don’t care how fancy a director Stanley Read more...

Dear Amy

Posted 12:39pm Saturday 8th October 2016 by Hayleigh Clarkson

Helen Callaghan’s debut novel Dear Amy is one hell of a ride. Callaghan writes from the perspective of Margot, a teacher at the local college and also the writer of the Dear Amy help column in the local paper. Typically she deals with mundane relationship issues until one day she receives a Read more...