Movies

Modern Whore is a hybrid film based on a memoir of the same name by Andrea Werhun. It blends documentary with fiction, featuring reenactments, testimonials, animations, and archival footage in a fast-paced and spirited reimagining of Werhun’s life as a sex worker. She teamed up with director Nicole Bazuin for the documentary, where she explores agency, labour, intimacy, and identity, telling stories about the behaviours of clients, the owners of her escort agency, and the unique growing pains of learning on the job.

The documentary is subversive. It takes the typically bleak genre of sex work films, grabs the microphone, and displays the real life of a sex worker straight from the horse’s mouth. The film includes conversations between Werhun and fellow sex workers, who discuss their experiences of sex work through the lens of race, gender diversity, and neurodivergence – though only ever in short cameos. It also includes conversations between Werhun and her mother, and with her long-term partner – both of whom are incredibly supporting of her.

It’s upbeat, it’s colourful. It deals with the darker side of sex work without making it the whole side. While it empowers and gives agency to sex workers who often don’t get to tell their own stories, I couldn’t help but feel some moments are self-indulgent. It makes sweeping statements about sex work based on Werhun’s very specific experience, while at the same time barely reaching below the surface. The over-dramatisation is often jarring and slapstick, and while it covers a lot of themes, it sometimes reads like the diary of a teenager. Then again, without her unreserved confidence, a film with total agency like this one would never get made.

All that being said, I appreciate that Modern Whore is radical and important. Sex workers are often betrayed only as victim or villain, and here is a film featuring a three-dimensional and uncategorisable woman who is both empowered and embodied. In Canada sex work is not legal, making it a critical film about labour rights. Here in Aotearoa, it will challenge the biases of some of its more prudish and discriminatory audiences. Ultimately, I was engaged throughout and I would encourage people to head along and check it out. It will be screening as part of the Doc Edge Film Festival at the Roxy Cinema on Saturday the 25^th of July. 

“Maman died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can’t be sure.” Those are the famous establishing lines in Albert Camus’ 1947 absurdist fiction The Stranger. The novel follows Meursault, a detached, emotionally flat young pied-noir man in French Algeria, whose apparent indifference to the death of his mother becomes the central focus of a trial he is later put on after murdering an Arab man on the beach beneath a blazing noonday sun.

I’m always nervous to watch a screen adaptation of a film – I’ve been let down so many times. I loved the novel when I first read it. For months after I held a scalpel up to my thoughts and actions, never more acutely aware of the performative nature of being.

François Ozon’s 2025 adaptation blew my expectations out of the water. Black and white, set in 1930s Algiers with spectacular performances from Benjamin Voisin (playing Meursault) and Rebecca Marder (his girlfriend Marie Cardona), the film is aesthetically striking. The monochrome format emphasises light and shadow and each scenes composition, only adding to the psychological intensity. With Camus’ sparse and detached prose described as ‘l‘écriture blanche’, or ‘white writing’, and the central, repeated motif of a blinding and oppressively hot sun, it was immediately obvious that a film adaptation could never have been in a colour format.

The novel received criticism due to its upholding of colonial views of indigenous Algerians as second-class citizens and its antipathetic treatment of Arab characters. The film, on the other hand, cleverly sets the story against the backdrop of French colonialism, giving a contemporary perspective on race and empire, and in some ways, challenging the absurdist backbone of the original text.  

While the slow burn might be difficult for some to sit through, for me the pacing was fundamental to the atmosphere, enabling each scene to feel essential, layering one on top of the other and building to the crescendo of the trial and Meursault’s subsequent sentence. The novel is short yet dense, hailed as a foundational text on absurdism that requires multiple readings. I found that the movie only added new depths to my understanding of the philosophical theory. Watching the film and reading the book calls the viewer’s heart into question, which to me is always a sign of excellent art.

Known for his spare, emotive black-and-white portraits of the denizens of queer, creative, and intellectual circles in 70s and 80s New York, Peter Hujar’s Day is a verbatim account of a certain day in the photographer’s life. Directed by Ira Sachs and shot on Super 16mm film stock, the film is a quiet yet commanding time capsule, a chance to eavesdrop on a dramatic reimagining of a tape-machine recorded interview between two friends, the writer Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall) and Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw).

The warm tones of the film, with deliberately janky cuts and scratches, shows them moving around Rosencrantz’s stunningly dressed apartment, shifting with the sun from table to couch to rooftop to kitchen while Hujar describes in detail what he did the day before. It is gentle and meditative, affectionate and slow. The pace gives space to the audience to consider the mechanisms of memory and legacy, the sieving effect of time, and the tragic loss of not only a brilliant photographer, but a human being with aches and pains and concerns around money, health, and work – just like the rest of us.

What marks his day as different from anyone else’s are his phone calls with the likes of Susan Sontag and Fran Lebowitz, his appointment with Allen Ginsberg to photograph him for The Times – who was cool, distant, and took to chanting at every available moment – and his plans to photograph William S. Burroughs the following day. Otherwise, he takes several naps, puts off his work, eats Chinese takeout, and only seems to come alive after midnight, when he practices Bach on the harpsichord.

While perhaps only compelling to fans of Hujar, or audiences interested in artistic process, Whishaw and Hall do an incredible job of what would be a complex performance to pull off: the subtle embodiment of quirks and mannerisms of two historical figures to make it appear effortless and documentarian. Each frame feels like a picture, and for me the 76-minute runtime was the perfect length. Running like an alternate reel the entire time is a sense of loss, knowing that Peter Hujar, among many of the friends he photographed, died of AIDS in 1987 in the midst of the crisis, the devastating effects of which had profound effects on his artistry and legacy.

It’s a little difficult to know what to say about the sequel to a cult classic like The Devil Wears Prada. Set 20 years after where we left off, Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) has become a successul investigative journalist, Emily (Emily Blunt) has become a fashion executive at Christian Dior, Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) is still the editor-in-chief of Runway magazine – though the magazine is struggling with the decline of print media, and she is no longer allowed to throw her coat at her interns due to HR complaints – and Nigel (Stanley Tucci) is still as loyal and charming as ever.

What ensues is a tide of glamour and high fashion (with a surprising number of sequins, dungarees, and culottes), endless references to the original lore to make the fans happy, and a movie that oscillates from so-bad-it’s-good to plain bad from start to finish.

But can we ask for much from a sequel? The script was sharp and full of the quotable one liners that made the first such a hit – especially from Miranda, Emily, and Nigel. The plot was modern, with talk of Ozempic, glow ups, and viral memes. Streep and Tucci give phenomenal performances. It was fun picking out the celebrities making brief cameos, from Lady Gaga to Donatella Versace. It was slightly amusing watching them poke fun at the rise of tech bro giants and the subsequent loss of artistry and humanity that comes with AI.

What really bothered me was Andy Sachs. Following an online faux pas from Runway she is called in to save the day. It’s hard to believe in her moral integrity as a do-good investigative journalist when it slips out the backdoor the second she enters the high-fashion building, is taken to the dressing room, and loaned a Gabriela Hearst maxi dress before heading off to the Hamptons. What’s more, and this is a personal preference, but watching The Devil Wears Prada 2 in today’s climate felt almost as tone deaf as when the makers of Sex and the City 2 thought offering up a glitzy sequel would provide an escape from the gloom of the financial crisis of 2010. But hey, it was fun. I laughed. I cringed. It’s a sequel to a classic. You might as well go check it out.

What kinds of skeletons in your partner’s closet are you able to cope with? Where is your line? Has the world’s capacity to forgive shrunk in the age of outrage? Who is exempt? How do we judge intent? Are the kids alright?

The Drama, directed by Kristoffer Borgli, follows couple Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson) in the week leading up to their wedding as their relationship is tested by an unexpected conversation about their pasts. A film that makes you feel desperately uncomfortable and laugh out loud in unexpected moments, it takes you on a ride through an unravelling crisis that is twice cooked in the pressure of the looming wedding.

Pattinson does a wonderful job playing the charming and bookish Charlie, whose somewhat clean past makes him appear meek rather than saintly. Watching Charlie fumble with his words is incredibly painful. We see him grapple with his newfound knowledge, oscillating between fear and outrage, forgiveness and various forms of escapism, making him both moderately pathetic but also entirely human. Zendaya is captivating as always, putting a light touch on a complex character whose past is being scrutinised from the moral high horse of the present.

At first glance, the relatively simple plot might appear shallow, but I believe it asks the audience deeply personal questions, with as many answers as there are people in the room. The film could only ever be polarising – it’s in the title. The Drama plays out because people pass judgments on other people, and everyone in the audience might have a different idea about which character is the voice of reason.

All this might sound abstracted because I don’t want to give away the twist, and even without an in-depth analysis, the film is fun. It sent laughter and groans through the audience multiple times, and the onstage chemistry between Zendaya and Pattinson is infectious. But still, for me The Drama is about the individual’s moral compass in a world full of outrage (and it is fair enough to be outraged). If I had to put in my two cents though, I’d call on the strong human impulse to forgive.

At the Q&A screening of The Weed Eaters, directed by Callum Devlin, someone put their hand up and said, “Thanks, that was hilarious, beautiful, disgusting.”

The Weed Eaters is a Kiwi horror-comedy that already feels like an instant classic. Four friends go rural for New Year’s Eve and smoke a bunch of weed that gives them the munchies so bad they end up eating people.

A DIY project between some incredibly talented mates, the cast and crew consisted mostly of the same seven people: Alice May Connolly plays Jules and was the on-set caterer, co-writer, and producer, Samuel Austin plays Campbell and was cinematographer and gaffer – the overlaps go on and you might as well scrap the titles and call them a band. A band that created an exceptional film that rides the line between horrific and hilarious better than I think I’ve ever seen.

The script sits in the perfect register of four Kiwi drongos who are seriously stoned and maybe a little bit bored. The acting from Connolly, Annabel Kean (Charlie), Finnius Teppett (Brian), and Austin was outstanding – their ability to make the eating of a human body somehow erotic, grotesque, and funny is a mix I’m not sure I want to know the recipe for.

Like any good horror, each time it got dark outside you heard a groan from the audience. At one point I thought the film was so far down the horror end of the spectrum it couldn’t possibly bring the audience back to safety. Then there was another cracker, flippant remark and we were suddenly back in that happy place.

I doff my hat to the rhythm of the film. Devlin says that “comedy is all about… the pacing”, which Austin put down to their combined musical experience and history of creating music videos. In terms of the music, the soundtrack was impeccable, celebrating local indie artists and featuring a jazz score written and performed by Callum Passells, who somehow overlaid the scenes where human flesh is consumed with music that made the act appear surprisingly chic.

The film does what a lot try to do (not always succeeding): stretch the audience’s response across such a wide range of emotions that all you can do is squirm and laugh. And squirm and laugh we did.

Those that have been hiking will be stunned to see the accuracy of their own experiences reflected in Bart Schrijver’s sophomore hiking film, The North. Those who haven’t may come away with a much more intimate understanding of why they should (or shouldn’t) put on a pack and experience all its joys and discomforts.

The movie captures perfectly the quiet of a summited hill and the way the sound of a rushing river suddenly disrupts that quiet, the blistered feet and wet boots, the mental and physical resilience required to set up and pack down a tent in the rain, eat dinner in a swarm of midgies, and listen to a creaking mattress as your partner twists and turns all night. 

The film follows Chris (Bart Harder) and Lluis (Carles Pulido) as they rekindle their friendship by traversing 600 kilometres of the Scottish Highlands, where they confront one another and ultimately, themselves.

From the interruptions of business calls, we know that Chris is a young professional with the rest of his life laid out for him: job, marriage, house, kids. His walking partner Lluis is the stereotypical loner artist – serious, distant, uncertain of his future – who seems to walk the entire length reluctantly.

While the sparse dialogue added emotional depth to the landscapes, it did the opposite in conveying the evolution of the two friends. For an entire month, they remained stiff and closed off from one another, and the endless walking didn’t seem to lubricate any confessions or confidences. When they both separately have their own road to Damascus moment of transformation standing alone on a desolate beach, one has to fill in the gaps to understand the emotional weight of their experience.

The lovely pacing of the film and raw depiction of hiking makes it a beautiful contemplation of the great outdoors. For me, the landscape is the hero of this film, which remains indifferent to the human dramas and inner turmoil of the two friends. Watching the wideframe shots of them trudging up a craggy, isolated slope while mist recedes and unfurls was pure visual poetry.

As of 2026, there are over 450 versions of Frankenstein’s monsters on screen – making it a brave thing to try do differently. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! is a fierce, weird, and ambitious take that brings a different story to life (literally): that of the monster’s bride. Replete with a stellar cast, it makes for a glitzy, action-packed, at times almost pantomime, yet overall enjoyable watch.

Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale), back with his familiar stitched-up forehead and oversized suit, visits the mad scientist Dr Euphronius (Anette Bening) to seek a remedy to his eternal loneliness: a woman.

Enter the bride (Jessie Buckley). A rowdy gal reinvigorated from the dead, whose unshakable past enmeshed in the shady, criminal underworld of 1930’s Chicago follows her back into the land of the living. What unfolds is a Bonnie and Clyde type sprint as monster and bride outrun the Chicago police department (Peter Sarsgaard and Penélope Cruz).

A rage-filled feminist critique of violence against women with echoes of the #MeToo movement, the film is jam-packed with conspiracy and corruption, ensconced in the glitz and glamour of show biz, with a literary metanarrative reminiscent of Jekyll and Hyde to boot. Author Mary Shelley, infuriated by the patriarchy and desperate to see a female antihero disrupt the status quo, defies death to take possession of the bride, resulting in violent attacks on seedy men. Torrents of uncontrollable literary musings (to both amusing and annoying effect) spew from her ink-stained mouth.

If you haven’t already gathered, The Bride! is a hodgepodge assembly of plotlines. Violence against women, rage, loneliness, social upheaval, police corruption, possession, murder… it somehow also manages to ask (and not answer) Shakespeare’s question, ‘what is in a name?’

In the end, the inclusion of Mary Shelley in the film felt more like a director trying to justify her decision to make a spinoff, and the picking up and putting down of themes and ideas at times felt shallow (the thread of the monster overcoming loneliness and the brides lack of choice in being reinvigorated from the dead would’ve been enough to chew on).

Without Buckley’s incredible performance, I am not certain the film would hold. She is a rebellious and outrageous character with her frizzy white hair and jerky gait. While the plotlines are excessive, the movie moves quickly and the costumes are fabulous. Couple that with Bale’s humanity as Frankenstein’s monster and Buckley’s impressive physical performance and you have excellent cinema that is well worth the watch.

I haven’t read the book, but I can say with certainty that those who have will very likely not be pleased with this liberal adaptation of Emily Brontë’s groundbreaking novel Wuthering Heights. Smut-centric BookTok, however, will go absolutely feral.

A tale of lust and longing, madness and macabre, “Wuthering Heights” captures the storm of passion that ricochets between the somewhat-of-status Catherine Earnshaw (Margot Robbie) and servant-of-sorts Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi). From brooding glances to unspoken yearning, roiling anger to frenzied passion, bottomless despair to utter depravity, this film is truly a romance of epic proportions played fervently and intensely by its leads.

For an idea of what might await the viewer, one must only look at the poster: the clinch pose familiar from bodice-ripper books signals explicit passion and historical spectacle. Director, writer, and producer Emerald Fennell’s adaptation is designed to be as shocking to today’s audiences as Brontë’s would have been in the 1800s; it aims to disturb, disgust, and arouse.

Suzie Davies’ production design dances equally between two worlds: one decadent and hedonistic, the other stark and severe. It’s rich in symbolism and verging on surrealist, with not-so-subtle visual cues reflecting the inner turmoil of the characters. It’s certainly not afraid to depart from historical accuracy. Composer Anthony Willis crafts a soundtrack equally anachronistic, but no less fitting. Filmed on the desolate and melancholic moors the tale is famous for, Linus Sandgren’s cinematography is a visual feast that hungrily devours Catherine and Heathcliff’s insatiable appetites.

However, by leaning into the carnality and romantic aspects of the story, Fennell’s adaptation compromises what makes Brontë’s so great. The novel is not a romance, perversion is not sought, what Catherine and Heathcliff share is not the kind of love one yearns for. Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” – despite being much more explicit in a sense – will never reach the depravity of the original. Nor will it ever achieve the depth that made Brontë’s tale groundbreaking.

If you want to be stressed for two hours and 29 minutes then step right up for Marty Supreme, director Josh Safdie’s new film starring Timothée Chalamet that feels like watching the final moments of a heated sports match the whole time.

An American sports dramedy, Marty Supreme smashes onto the screen in a rapid, topspin shot that lands viewers right into the thick of it. Marty Mauser (Chalamet) is on the up and up, or so he says. He’s America’s current ping pong star, or at least he will be when he wins the British table tennis open in a few days’ time. Wily, scrappy, angry, delusional, cocky, arrogant, and with a dream that no one respects but he doggedly believes in, Marty goes to Hell and back again in the pursuit of greatness – never mind the chaos he leaves in his wake to get there.

With camera movements that travel at warp speed and music sequences that change faster than a ping pong ball swaps courts, Marty Supreme is designed to keep you on the edge of your seat and gasping for breath. Cinematographer Darius Khondji employs a handheld style and tilted angles to keep viewers unsettled while the distinct grain and rich filter – paired with a meticulously crafted period aesthetic by designer Jack Fisk – unmistakably roots the story in the 1950s. Meanwhile, editors Ronald Bronstein and Safdie keep the tension high with the quickest cuts in the west. Composer Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never) crafts a score that captures both the feeling of the time and the seesawing story with a soundtrack comprising original music and 50s hits. Sound is constant; with never a moment of silence and continuously changing music, viewers have no time to catch their breath. Always building in momentum, the score captures Marty’s mental unravelling as imminent chaos closes in and his life becomes increasingly frenetic.

As someone who isn’t the biggest Chalamet fan, I must give him credit where it is due. With mile-a-minute dialogue and a complex, high-strung character, he makes every action seem intentional yet unpredictable. Gwyneth Paltrow and Odessa A’zion also deserve praise in their supporting roles. As for Bronstein and Safdie’s script – game, set, match.

If you were to hire an actor to play someone in your life, who would you ask them to play? A friend you fell out with? A grandparent you never got to meet? Someone you can’t say what you want to? What moment would you want to recreate or make real if you had the chance?

Rental Family plays with this concept by diving headfirst into the world of Japanese professional stand-in services. A service utterly foreign in our Western world, the industry has been around since the 1990s in Japan. As the 2025 dramedy explains, it’s an enterprise that sells emotions. In a culture where there are strict codes, their services provide alternatives.

“We play roles in clients’ lives. Parents, siblings, boyfriends, girlfriends, best friends,” Rental Family business owner Shinji Tada (Takehiro Hira) says. “And help them connect to what’s missing.”

In director Hikari’s film, Phillip Vanderploeg (Brendan Fraser) lands himself a job quite by accident as the “token white guy” at Tada’s business. The struggling actor who has only booked small roles since his claim to fame as a superhero fighting gingivitis in a toothpaste commercial will now play very real roles in people’s lives. A husband at a wedding, a friend to a famous ageing actor (played exceptionally by Akira Emoto), and a father to young Mia (Shannon Gorman). What Phillip doesn’t realise is that as he forms genuine bonds with these people, the lines between performance and reality will begin to blur.

Fraser delivers an exceptionally sparkling performance, filling each scene with tender yet concentrated emotion. Each movement is intentional yet utterly natural. Mari Yamamoto too is magnetic as Phillip’s coworker Aiko and Gorman offers sensitivity and intent beyond her years.

With postcard-worthy cinematography from Takuro Ishizaka and production design by Norihiro Isoda and Masako Takayama that beautifully balances the sterility of public spaces and the rich personality of private ones, Rental Family is exquisitely crafted. Where it shines most, however, is in Hikari and Stephen Blahut’s screenplay, which offers such thoughtfully woven dialogue that it feels like you’re watching a poem unfold in real time that quietly whittles away at the moral complexities of the service to reveal the beauty of human connection.

Where the voices of many women were silenced throughout history, Gloria! sings their stories from the rooftops. Screening as part of the 10^th Italian Film Festival, the subtitled film begins in 1800 with the rhythms of everyday life in Venice’s Sant Ignazio College, a religious institution for girls overseen by stern priest Perlina (Paolo Rossi). Mute Teresa (Galatéa Bellugi) is at the centre of it all, a powerless servant girl trapped in a hostile environment who yearns to be the conductor of her own world. Longing to be a part of the all-women orphanage orchestra, she arranges the sounds that accompany her daily duties into drumlines and choruses. When Perlina becomes distracted by preparations for the arrival of the newly enthroned Pope, Teresa and a quartet of students begin secretly gathering each night to take turns on the piano they find hidden in the cellar, their clandestine sessions revealing hidden truths, giving birth to new compositions, and setting the girls on a new path towards autonomy.

Celebrating the lives of the many Italian women written out of the margins of music history, Gloria! speaks to anyone who has felt restrained, underestimated, and silenced. Teresa and her newfound companions Lucia (Carlotta Gamba), Bettina (Veronica Lucchesi), Marietta (Maria Vittoria Dallasta), and Prudenza (Sara Mafodda) fizz with a chemistry rivalling even the most practised quintet. Each a powerful presence in her own right, together they capture the magic of girlhood in a way that is both tender and tenacious.

Cinematographer Gianluca Palma and production designers Susanna Abenavoli and Luca Servino juxtapose shadows with highlights, giving the midnight corners more brilliance and comfort than the stark, gleaming halls of the daylight-flooded college. Director Margherita Vicario and Anita Rivaroli’s intentionally anachronistic script is sharp and scintillating, the story humming along adagio, accelerando into a crescendo that resounds with relief, vindication, and freedom.

It would be hard not to smile by the time Gloria! reaches its final note. The music that flows forth from Margherita Vicario’s directorial debut is not the dirge of a long-suppressed song but a joyous, revolutionary riot that dares viewers to shout along in solidarity.