NZIFF 2015 Nelson 5 Aug–26 Aug 2015

Films — by Collection

James Croot

After growing up enchanted, uplifted and confused (especially when they played the reels of At Play in the Fields of the Lord in the wrong order) by afternoons and evenings at Dunedin’s Regent Theatre, the New Zealand International Film Festival has been an annual highlight of my more than 20 year career writing and talking about cinema.  2015 is an especially exciting year for us Christchurch-based festival goers, we’ve finally got a picture palace worthy of the event in the Isaac Theatre Royal. Even better for me, it’s right across the road from my workplace at Fairfax Media. Roll on mid August…

Best of Enemies

Robert Gordon, Morgan Neville

Anticipating the punch-counterpunch set-up of today’s TV punditry, but so much more incisive, the 1968 TV debates between liberal Gore Vidal and conservative William F. Buckley Jr resound again in this terrific documentary.

City of Gold

Laura Gabbert

This affectionate portrait of Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold is also a love letter to the culinary and cultural wonders of Los Angeles, from Beverly Hills fine dining to strip mall noodle joints and taco carts.

Inherent Vice

Paul Thomas Anderson

“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 Wolfpack

Crystal Moselle

In this stranger-than-fiction doco, we meet six brothers who have spent their entire lives locked by their father into their Manhattan apartment – where they watch movies obsessively and film their own ingenious re-enactments.