It’s less than 2 weeks till The Wel­ling­ton round of the New Zea­l­and Inter­na­tion­al Film Fest­iv­al

Typ­ic­al Wel­ling­ton beha­viour at this time often includes
– Cour­tenay Place place being full dur­ing day­light hours
– people tak­ing no lunch breaks to allow for an extra long lunch break to catch a film
– tak­ing a day off work to see 4 films in a row
– Tak­ing 2 weeks off work to spend the time in a darkened cinema
– Catch­ing up with people you only see once a year at film fest­iv­al
– tak­ing mini trips to oth­er Cit­ies just to see films you missed in Wel­ling­ton
– excess­ive listen­ing to the Ran­cho Notori­ous pod­cast to see what Dan or Kailey think of a film or spe­cial watch­ing tips
– run­ning between the Para­mount and the Embassy to catch a film
– eat­ing while stand­ing in line for a film
– try­ing to guess which film will come back when caught in a timetable dilemma

 

In light of what will be a won­der­ful 2 weeks in Wel­ling­ton, here’s our per­son­al tips for what to catch dur­ing the fest­iv­al. Also trust us if you can see some­thing at Film Fest­iv­al see it at Film Fest­iv­al. Don’t wait for a film to  return, for Video on Demand. noth­ing beats the big screen and noth­ing beats a big screen filled with fel­low film fans, even worse the return­ing film might be some­thing edited down for tim­ing or some oth­er stu­pid reas­on.

CocteausHeath­er C

 

Aunty and the Star People – inspir­ing, uplift­ing and she’s a loc­al.

Beauty and the Beast – one of the great ori­gin­al clas­sic fairytales which looks to have amaz­ing detail..

Beloved Sis­ters – for the emo­tion and pas­sion of two cen­tur­ies pri­or.

 

RealitiTom Beard

REAL­ITi: While NZ does­n’t have a stel­lar track record for sci­ence fic­tion movies, Chad Taylor and Jonath­an King make an intriguing team that should bring dark, lit­er­ate men­ace to this exist­en­tial dysto­pi­an thrill­er.
Particle Fever: Themes don’t come much big­ger than the nature and fate of the uni­verse, so this doc­u­ment­ary about the Large Had­ron Col­lider and the search for the Higgs boson should appeal to more than just phys­ics junkies.
Good­bye to Lan­guage 3D: God­ard infam­ously said that “a film should have a begin­ning, a middle and an end but not neces­sar­ily in that order”. He con­tin­ues to throw out the rules, not just for the 3D tech­no­logy nor­mally reserved for pop­corn fod­der, but for lan­guage itself.

Boy­hood. Because of the idea of the lead aging from 6 to 18 over the course of the story, and because it’s a Richard Link­later pic­ture.
Hard to Be a God. Nev­er heard of the dir­ect­or but the NZIFF write-up is irres­ist­ible.
Under the Skin. Jonath­an Glazer’s long-evolving back cata­logue points to him even­tu­ally doing some­thing extraordin­ary and I’m hop­ing this is it.
 
Run­ner-up: 
Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? I’m a Michel Gon­dry nut. He can do no wrong. I actu­ally have a crush on him.
The Tale of The Prin­cess Kaguya – for what is film fest­iv­al without a Stu­dio Ghib­li film
Nation­al Gal­lery – behind the scenes at the nation­al gal­lery, it looks like all the things i crave in a doc­u­ment­ary
The Lady from Shang­hai – I love the old restored films that are brought back every year. I still remem­ber the year Rear Win­dow played at The Embassy and des­pite hav­ing seen that film on video many of times it blew my mind. So to not see any­thing Orson Welles would be a crime against cinema

Bonus Track
The King­dom of Dreams and Mad­ness – behind the scenes at Stu­dio Ghib­li the year that Miyaza­ki Hayao was com­plet­ing his last film The Wind Rises and Taka­hata Isao worked on The Tale of Prin­cess Kaguya