Steve Newall

Village by the Sea is a documentary about New Zealand painter Edith Collier, tracing the time she spent in the Irish village of Bunmahon in 1914-1915. This is writer-director Michael Heath’s follow-up to his 2007 biopic of the artist Edith Collier: A Light Among Shadows. He was kind enough to answer a couple of our questions… FLICKS: […]

A romantic caravan trip around Britain’s Lake District becomes a killing spree in this mix of black comedy, horror and satire that a number of Flicks writers are extremely excited about seeing at the NZ International Film Festival. We have a chat to director Ben Wheatley, whose amazing Kill List was a major highlight from last […]

Since 2009 poet Bill Manhire, composer-pianist Norman Meehan and vocalist Hannah Griffin have written and recorded three albums. Persuading the Baby to Float explores their collaborative process: the ways the songs were composed, and what lies behind the words and music. We put forth a bunch of questions for director Keith Hill to answer… FLICKS: […]

We Feel Fine is a low-budget drama set in Auckland, following a random collection of characters all connected via a bizarre video project. Features Morgana O’Reilly, a Florian Habicht cameo and music by Golden Axe. We put out a few questions for directors Jeremy Dumble and Adam Luxton to answer… FLICKS: Hello from Flicks.co.nz. How are […]

Rodney Ascher’s documentary Room 237: Being an Inquiry into The Shining in 9 parts explores hidden themes in Stanley Kubrick’s horror masterpiece The Shining ranging from symbolism to conspiracy theories. Nine segments address specific aspects of the film, drawing on the ideas of Kubrick experts to produce an in-depth analysis. With Jack Nicholson’s performance in Kubrick’s Stephen King […]

In KLOWN, playing as part of the Incredibly Strange section of the NZ International Film Festival, audiences get to tag along with Danish comedians Frank Hvam and Casper Christensen as they go on what’s supposed to be a part canoeing, part whoring holiday of debauchery… and so does a 12-year-old boy. Raunchy and shocking, KLOWN sounds […]

I recently wrote about my first impressions of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter after seeing a couple of scenes from the film, including a chunk of its finale which was a bit tough to discuss without ruining it. The other thing that happened after this screening was the opportunity to interview writer Seth Grahame-Smith. He’s the […]

After years of setup in the form of individual hero-centric films, The Avengers had a hell of a lot to live up to. Not because the films that precede it are all awesome (they’re a mix of the good, the bad and the okay), but because this ambitious effort needed to transcend what preceded it […]

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the notion of slavery-ending, Civil War-winning US President Abraham Lincoln actually having had a secret past as a vampire hunter is a little bit far-fetched. So spare a thought for the cast and crew of the upcoming Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter who turned up to work each day with […]

Way back in November 2013 I found myself in Twizel, and on the set of Slow West. The debut feature by Scottish director John Maclean, Slow West is, as the title suggests, a Western – albeit one with unique elements, and not just the New Zealand geography standing in for that of Colorado… FLICKS: You’re […]

FLICKS: Why did you sign on to do this film? MICHAEL FASSBENDER: It was just that John and I had done a couple of films together before. I liked working with him. The short films we’d done we worked out pretty well. And then it was just wanting to do a feature with him and […]

Not many bands make it past twenty years with any semblance of relevance, much less get the cinematic treatment. That’s especially true here in New Zealand, but since the ’90s we’ve had the pleasure of watching Shihad defy the odds in many different ways. Their music’s been heard all over the country and indeed the […]

When it was released six years ago, Sione’s Wedding didn’t quite make the economic or cultural impact expected. One school of thought blames piracy for the former, but the latter is more readily explained by the film doing merely an average job at charting overly familiar comedic territory (albeit with a Polynesian Auckland twist). So […]

With Ed Helms starring in this tale of a straight dude running off the rails on a business trip, it is tempting to write this off as The Hangover Part III. But what makes Cedar Rapids tick is in how it carves out a space of its own between mainstream comedy and Sundance-style indie fare. […]

On paper, Cyrus looks like a bit of a Sundance-baiting exercise. In one corner are the Duplass brothers, “mumblecore” filmmakers and in the other a cast that includes John C. Reilly, Catherine Keener and Marisa Tomei. But that’s not factoring in Jonah Hill, who’s about as far away from an arthouse drawcard as, oh, I […]

Ever-watchable, Michael Caine enriches damn near everything he appears in, and he elevates this grim vigilante-fest from pretty darn good to essential viewing. Not for the squeamish, Harry Brown is chilling from its kinetic and brutal opening frames right through to the increasingly explosive violence inflicted by both Brown and the truly horrible council estate […]

As one of those folks who bristle every time they hear the word remake, I wasn’t expecting much from Michael Bay-and-pals’ take on A Nightmare On Elm Street. Wes Craven’s original still stands up on its own merits, for starters, and then there’s the casting of Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy Krueger in a “re-imagining” […]