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