Our favourite moviebusters, The Society for the Promotion of Community Standards, usually rise from the trenches this time of year, bayonets armed and ready to thrust at those of us who thought The Passion of the Christ was crap. Ant Timpson – traditional target of The Society and a man they'd love nothing more than to stone or nail to a cross – has gangbanged together yet another deranged orgy of films for the TNZIFF. What's surprising then, Timpson notes, is that the stone-agers have yet to crawl out from under their proverbial rock:

Reviewed by Shahir Daud

EVERY NOW and again, I find myself compelled to revisit Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, a seething apocalyptic vision of Batman well into his fifties, returning to crime fighting after a decade of retirement. In his absence, Gotham City has finally receded into chaos, with the city awash with crime. Out of every iteration of the Batman myth, Miller's vision is perhaps the bleakest, honing in on Batman's deeply ingrained psychosis and nihilism, coupled with his ethically troubling vigilantism.

Love, writes CALEB STARRENBURG, takes center stage in Life is a Miracle: Serbian Emir Kusturica's Shakespearean, Fellini-esque – even Benigni-esque – spin on the Bosnian War.

There’s not a better-suited film to the broad horizontal strokes of the Embassy at this year’s TNZIFF than Wong Kar-wai’s 2046; if not for Chris Doyle’s astronomically high bar of cinematography, then for the girls. That’s not to detract from the film’s status as a “date movie”, mind you, which I’m sure caters equally to the opposite sexes’ yearning for the dapper romantic, but if ever a film embodied the movie crush, this is it.

Peter Jackson/NZ/1994; R4
Roadshow, NZ$29.95 | Reviewed by Alexander Bisley

THERE IS more to Peter Jackson than orcs and hobbits, you know. The maestro has a dark vision of 1950s New Zealand. Braindead, a splatter flick of manic creativity and breathtaking glee, is uproariously funny. It didn't endear him to Christchurch conservatives, but Heavenly Creatures is a bloody good movie. It tells a true story; sombre, scary and unsettling.

Andrey Zyagintsev/Russia/2003; R4
Roadshow, NZ$29.95 | Reviewed by Alexander Bisley

RUSSIA is a mess, but the artists are still managing to make some terrific films. Just take last year, following on from 2003's Tishe! (Viktor Kosakovksy), which tenderly rendered the world in a St Petersburg street with brilliant minimalism. In 2004, Wellington cinemas were blessed with The Return, In the Dark (Sergey Dvortsevoy), Father and Son (Aleksandr Sokurov, improving on Russian Ark), and, especially, the unmissable The Last Train (Aleksei German Jr). (On reflection, Aleksey Uchitel's The Stroll was probably less than meets the eye.) On that note, memo to the powers-that-be: how about a DVD of The Last Train?

A late, great addition to Auckland and Wellington legs of the festival: Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers has been belatedly confirmed, barely sprouted from its recent Cannes Grand Prix accolade. This late bloomer, directed by the silver-haired king-of-cool and starring the ghost-busting hipster-commodity of Bill Murray, arrives with ample deadpan in tow, and has been selected to close both festivals. Those of you who've already queued for hours might have to reconfigure your schedules to fit this one in. Expect ticket numbers to wilt fast.

(Double Dare)
Might just be me, but there’s something reassuringly streamlined about the two nziff program launches I’ve had the pleasure of attending. Either they’re clamping down on fringe invites, or the deficit of photographers has seen people reeling into cold-blooded withdrawal; whatever the case, Tuesday night at the Academy was suprisingly devoid of those horrible Karen Walker-designed wasps usually found hovering around bulging cheque books and free champagne. Make no mistake – the alcohol flowed freely, but when there’s a job to do, there’s a job to do, and I haven’t quite graduated into the freewheeling, substance-abused cynicism of Gonzo journalism just yet.

Delamu, Tian Zhuangzhuang's poignant, beautiful documentary about a place, a people, and a culture ceding to the inevitable encroachment of globalisation, takes its name from a mule called 'Peace', explains CALEB STARRENBURG.

Would it have been too much to ask for a thriller that leaves its protagonist's paranoid delusions flailing and unfettered, as opposed to splinding them into an elaborate architecture of explanation? (Buzzers to your immediate right, folks). Like father like son, director Brad Anderson seems to have willed himself into amnesia, only the jury's out on where slaying our sense of intelligence falls in relation to slaying our children; all he manages to offer up in defense is one fat (no, not phat) call-out to the forefathers of Gen-Y disaffection.

(Double Dare)
One feels the problem with the programme launch every year is that half an hour of mingling is not nearly enough minutes to consume all the free liquid on offer – despite the Paramount having doubled its foyer width-to-people ratio this time around. It’s fair to say, however, that the “stamina bags” distributed at the entrance – locker room carriers stuffed with tissues, energy bars and other assorted sustenance – were well received, if not somewhat ill-conceived; greeted by a large blue DVD flyer poking out of the thick-bound festival booklet, the last thing I know I’m going to be doing in July is renting movies.

Helena Brooks – director of New Zealand's latest In Competition-selected short Nothing Special – took time out from strolling down the red carpet to explain to EMMA BLOMKAMP in Cannes how one guy in France can send you into a world where dreams are merely a natural extension of a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck.

Sándor Lau/NZ/2003; R0
Siren Visual, NZ$19.95 | Reviewed by Tim Wong

SÁNDOR LAU'S solo northbound walkabout – 500km from Auckland to Cape Reinga by foot, to be exact – sounds encouraging for blisters and swollen ankles, but is more like an unexpected collision course with Israeli stoners, Tasmanian hippies and other backpacking anomalies. Claiming to be New Zealand's only Chinese/Hungarian-American, Lau's trek "backwards" to the country's spiritual tip is an arduous one (try telling those Stateside to get off their ass and walk a fraction of the distance), and yet unearths up some heady personalities buffeted by a witty disgust for oil, urban sprawl, McDonalds and the WTO.

CALEB STARRENBURG discovers Kung Fu Hustle, Stephen Chow's latest, possibly greatest hybrid of vulgar slapstick and outlandishly choreographed martial arts.

Childhood innocence is at the forefront of Chilean political upheaval in Andrés Wood's sobering Machuca, says CALEB STARRENBURG.

With the TNZIFF having just recently looted four of the best from the Cannes 2005 shelf (Palme d'Or winner The Child, Best Director winner Michael Haneke's Hidden (Cache), Joint Camera d'Or winner Me, You and Everyone We Know, and Cannes' Jury Prize winner Shanghai Dreams), it seems fitting we hear from Kiwi globetrotter EMMA BLOMKAMP about her week in the French Riveria mingling, after-partying and queuing pointlessly to see movies at the one and only Festival de Cannes....[Read More]

Reviewed by Aaron Yap

IF Ong-Bak restored the pain factor in the martial arts genre, highlighting every second of agony in all its blood-drenched, bone-crunching, skin-perforating glory, Born to Fight restores, for lack of a better phrase, the death factor in the action genre in general.

IMOGEN NEALE and KIM LESCH checked out films Butterfly and Gay Republicans respectively at this year's Out Takes Gay & Lesbian Film Fesival.

A grubby, bloodstained horror flick loaded to the brim in gratuitous violence, High Tension is baseless, misanthropic, and yet perversely thrilling, says TIM WONG.

Reviewed by Jacob Powell

WARREN MILLER is not a name likely to make it onto many critics' top 10 directors list. His films may not delve the depths of the human condition BUT you do have to admire his intense passion for all things snow, which set apart his labours of love from other 'extreme sport' films and keep many people coming back for their seasonal Warren Miller fix. This year the granddaddy of the modern snow 'sportumentary' brings us Impact, his 55th instalment, and does a creditable job at continuing his legacy.

An aesthetically wounded, socially disparate peek into a place where time stands still, Minginui casts a far darker veil over a wilderness traditionally posterized by New Zealand cinema, writes TIM WONG.

Welcome, apparently, to our hang out for the rest of Winter. Those familiar with Lumière's previous attempts at independent publishing should note that the tangibles of print have been curtailed this year for the more flexible realms of the Internet. As much as we champion the tree-chopping lustre of bound pages and ink-bled paper, this new weblog allows us the freedom to have our say here, now and beyond the obesely scheduled flickering pictures of the Telecom New Zealand International Film Festivals.