Our Kiwi cousins are renowned for punching above their weight with sporting success, Russell Crowes and musical superstars like Split Enz and Crowded House. New Zealand also has a thriving post-punk and alternative music scene largely based around the famed Flying Nun record label. Before that, was a small but energetic punk scene in the 1970’s. The erratic, undercooked but
Read moreThe success of 2023’s The Super Mario Bros Movie and the dollar signs it registered in the gleaming eyes of studio execs guaranteed we would be subjected to many more years of video game movie adaptations. The latest is A Minecraft Movie which is based on the hugely successful game Minecraft that has obsessed tweens the world over. For those
Read moreKorean writer/ director Bong Joon Ho’s latest excursion into misanthropic weirdness, Mickey 17 is certainly ambitious, mixing science fiction, jet black comedy, farce, action and political satire. That, however, is its problem, the film is a mess. Mickey 17 flails about in all directions never settling on a clear or satisfying approach and it isn’t especially funny, thrilling or politically
Read moreSome silly humour and 80’s movie “hooray for entrepreneurial capitalism” clichés aside, One Of Them Days is a vibrant, sassy feel-good comedy that celebrates and affectionately jokes with African American culture. The set up in this film is pretty familiar, having seen it in movies like Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Due Date, where the responsible person’s life is constantly
Read moreBased on a Stephen King short story and directed by Osgood Perkins, who gave us last year’s overrated Longlegs, The Monkey is an awkward mash-up of grossout horror and quirky comedy that isn’t especially scary or funny. The eponymous monkey is a slightly creepy looking toy critter that two young twins, obnoxious bully Bill and his main victim, nervous younger
Read moreThe inventive, witty, energetic and occasionally gory Companion from writer/ director Drew Hancock is an early instalment in what will no doubt be a growing movie subgenre, the ‘personal robot thriller’. Iris (Sophie Thatcher) is a young woman who we see at the start of the film in a ‘meet cute’ at a supermarket with the goofy Josh (Jack Quaid,
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