Every year it seems harder to filter my ‘must-sees’ down to a manageable list and 2015 is no exception. My picks below cover a range of genres and sensibilities that I hope to be both amazed and puzzled by. Going to the cinema is an experience and all these films will make sure it is a memorable one.
Films — by Collection
- Darren Bevan
- David Larsen
- Films for Teens
- James Croot
- Letterboxd
- Meet the Filmmakers: Auckland
- Meet the Filmmakers: Wellington
- Patricia Watson
- Rebecca McMillan
- Staff Picks: Angela Murphy
- Staff Picks: Bill Gosden
- Staff Picks: Cianna Canning
- Staff Picks: Felicity Drace
- Staff Picks: Hayden Ellis
- Staff Picks: Jenna Udy
- Staff Picks: Kailey Carruthers
- Staff Picks: Kate McArthur
- Staff Picks: Lisa Bomash
- Staff Picks: Lynn Smart
- Staff Picks: Megan Duffy
- Staff Picks: Michael McDonnell
- Staff Picks: Olivia Young
- Staff Picks: Poppy Granger
- Staff Picks: Rachael Deller-Pincott
- Staff Picks: Sandra Reid
- Staff Picks: Sibilla Paparatti
- Staff Picks: Tom Ainge-Roy
- The Lumière Reader
- Tim Wong
- Wellington Film Society's Picks of NZIFF 2015
Staff Picks: Hayden Ellis
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
En duva satt på en gren och funderade på tillvaron
The deeply eccentric Roy Andersson’s meticulously mounted comic sketches move from historic fantasy to hilariously deadpan humour as he muses on humanity’s inescapable absurdity. Golden Lion, Best Film, Venice Film Festival 2014.
Inherent Vice
“Paul Thomas Anderson has taken Thomas Pynchon’s novel about the death of the hippie counterculture and turned it, reasonably faithfully, into a surreally funny, anxious and beautiful film noir.” — The Telegraph
The Tribe
Plemya
This strange and original multi-award winner from Ukraine employs a deaf cast to enact its lacerating vision of teenage prostitution and gang war brutality in a Kiev boarding school.
45 Years
Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay are deeply affecting in award-winning roles as a retired Norfolk couple preparing for their 45th-anniversary party, when a ghost from the past raises awkward, long-buried questions.
The Forbidden Room
A demented mash up of lurid, long-lost movies that never existed, this new work from Canadian genius Guy Maddin plunges a starry art house cast into phantasmagorical scenarios of melodramatic weirdness.
Cemetery of Splendour
Rak ti Khon Kaen
A hospital full of sleeping soldiers is haunted by matters both historical and intensely personal in the latest gentle and entrancingly beautiful cinematic enigma from the Thai Palme d’Or winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
Holding the Man
The memoir of a gay love affair that began at school when the author fell for the captain of the football team and ended in tragedy 15 years later is already a classic of Australian literature, and now an inspiring, heartbreaking film.
The Lobster
Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth) casts Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, John C. Reilly and Léa Seydoux in a surreal English-language fable set in a world where singles are forced to couple up or be turned into animals.
Victoria
An after-midnight flirtation on the streets of Berlin gets thrillingly side-tracked by another chase entirely. Filmed in a single real-time take, it’s an edit-free pièce de résistance of acting, directing and mobile camerawork.
Mommy
The emotional roller-coaster of a single mother’s relationship with her ADHD teenage son is rendered with intense sympathy and dramatic flair by 25-year-old director Xavier Dolan. Winner of the Cannes Jury Prize in 2014.