Anyone who has aspirations of working in a commercial kitchen should not see La Cocina, it will kill those dreams stone dead. While well-acted, at times insightfully written and artfully shot, this extremely bitter pill of a film makes for a fairly miserable night at the movies. La Cocina is set in the kitchen of a fictitious New York restaurant
Read moreGuaranteed to fascinate and infuriate, the Australian/ Irish co-production The Surfer, which stars Nicolas Cage and Julian McMahon is an impressively strange beast. Frequently shifting gears between Wake In Fright-style ‘civilised foreigner meets Aussie ferals’ drama, surreal Twilight Zone-esque moral fable and a critique of the idiotic ‘manosphere’ culture, it constantly challenges our expectations. Fans of the criminally overlooked 1968
Read moreOur 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 moreBob Trevino Likes It is a low-key American drama based partly on the experiences of its writer/ director Tracie Laymon. At first it feels very slight, almost like a quirky, amiable tele-movie but it ends up packing a surprising emotional punch. Barbie Ferreira (Nope) plays Lily Trevino a very easy going and unassertive young woman who is treated with indifference
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 moreAnyone making a gangster film these days faces unenviable comparisons with the genre’s classics, The Godfather, Goodfellas and to a lesser extent Casino. The Alto Knights, from director Barry Levinson and writer Nicholas Pileggi (Goodfellas, The Irishman), is destined to be another victim of this comparison. While well-made and well-acted, it’s a straightforward mobster biopic that noticeably lacks the poetic
Read more