BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: in bad company.

LIFE ISN’T the easiest for poor Philippe Seigner. Having worked so hard to get into a hotshot management firm (Macgregors), he’s forced to do the dirty work in trying to restructure a moderately successful company, Janson, out in the provinces. He has no friends, everyone at the company hates him because they rightly feel their jobs are being threatened, and he’s missing his new girlfriend. Plus there’s also the little matter of his conscience – it’s essentially a choice between giving up everything he’s ever worked for or selling a whole bunch of people’s careers short.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: the waning thirties.

I FIND Steven Soderbergh a fascinating director to watch – he’s either wildly overrated (sex, lies and videotape, Out of Sight, Erin Brockovich) or wildly underrated (The Limey, Solaris, Schizopolis). He’s one of the most eclectic Hollywood directors too, experimenting with digital cameras at the same time he’s making a big budget blockbuster. King of the Hill is Soderbergh’s third feature film (the first two being sex, lies and videotape which essentially made his career, and the second Kafka). King of the Hill fits into the underrated category, a sweet but hard-edged film looking at a young boy growing up in the Depression.

GREGOR CAMERON reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: living with the dead.

WHAT IF... the rapture worked backwards?

As an alternate to the shock and blood spatter genre of zombie Robin Campillo has written and directed a fascinating slow boiler of a horror movie that plays with some seriously philosophical questions. Right from the beginning we are treated to a classic zombie shot of them walking along the road from the cemetery. But here’s the difference: they appear to be immaculate. So what has happened? Cleverly, Campillo stays away from the material we can not know and thus opens up the film to both believers and others. He does however bring a number of interesting references into play.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: German Expressionism.

THE GERMAN Expressionism movement in film is still today one of the most fascinating movie periods in film history. Academics still write about it, whether it’s the sociological implications (the film movement occurred just after World War One, and was said to express the trauma of the German psyche) or the stylistic traits, the influence of which could be seen in film noir and horror films. The first major success was the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari from 1919 which is the archetypal Expressionist film in its tale within a tale of madness and striking visuals. Yet despite that film supposedly being the standard for Expressionism, it’s also interesting to see how few films actually take Caligari’s innovative visuals as a template, and when watching a film like Waxworks you can tell how much the movement had changed within five years.