The Year in Review:
The Best of Film in 2015, Part 4
Ten films to write home about in 2015, plus ten discoveries and revelations.
Ten films to write home about in 2015, plus ten discoveries and revelations.
Thoughts on how (and how not) to be a cinephile in New Zealand. Also, the year in unknown pleasures.
On the lineage and legacy of Hayao Miyazaki’s most enduring film. Plus, Isao Takahata and a new Studio Ghibli showcase.
Last words on the New Zealand International Film Festival for 2014.
Notes on the queen of silent comedy and her role in King Vidor’s hilarious Hollywood satire.
At the New Zealand International Film Festival: double images, cinema as a frontier in Under the Skin and Manakamana, and respecting Hard to Be a God.
At the New Zealand International Film Festival: new films by Ari Folman and Bong Joon-ho, and one gone but not forgotten by Alejandro Jodorowsky.
Joanna Hogg’s penetrating new film—her best yet—explores a ménage a trois between husband, wife and house.
On the supreme sadness and power of escapism in the Zellner Brothers’ strange tale of an obsessive personal quest.
Documenting the “cursed dreams” of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki and the future of his Studio Ghibli legacy.
At the New Zealand International Film Festival: a trio of period dramas contemplate desire, aesthetic pleasure, and intellectual history in transition.
At the New Zealand International Film Festival: death, calamity, and comic fatalism by way of Iran and Iceland.
Highlighting New Zealand’s landscape and culture through an elaborate three-camera filming process, two memorable widescreen spectacles—one from Hollywood, the other homegrown, both thought lost for decades—can now finally be revisited on DVD.
Previously at the Wellington Film Society: Louis Malle’s one-of-a-kind surrealist experiment.
At this year’s Autumn Events, a slanted look at Carol Reed’s archetypal film noir, plus a few questions for a world expert in film restoration.
On the fashionable/unfashionable style of Stanley Donen’s 1957 musical. Plus, a digression on Rouben Mamoulian’s neglected Silk Stockings.
Previously at the Wellington Film Society: Howard Hawks’s riot act.
New to DVD: John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, plus other silent era discoveries from New Zealand’s nitrate treasure trove.
When plot takes precedence over all else. Plus, its much-needed antithesis, Rectify.
Previously at the Wellington Film Society: G.W. Pabst’s Weimar Republic landmark accompanied by the Joyless Orchestra.