Sam Brooks

new zealand’s metal gear

A ★★★★★ review of Bright Star (2009) Revisiting this for work and man it still hits. The two leads, obviously, but the entire texture of work, love, labour, art and understanding being so interwoven. The costumes! The cinematography! The...

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A ★★★★★ review of Jackie Brown (1997) It’s wild that only six years separates this and Kill Bill. Such a perfect understanding of character, expression of character, and how character redefines setting. Career best performances from nearl...

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A ★★★★★ review of Support the Girls (2018) Rewatched this for research and man, Regina Hall’s performance in this is an absolute masterclass. Narrows in on the reality of This Woman doing This Job in That Country, clinging to competence as dig...

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A ★★★★½ review of It Was Just an Accident (2025) Horrible and hilarious. An incredible pile on about what it means to lend humanity to someone who refuses you that, and what that costs you again and again and again. Craft and performances off the ch...

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A ★★★ review of Hamnet (2025) The first hour is bizarrely disjointed - painterly compositions smashed together with bog standard medium close ups, basic as hell shot-reverse shot editing, expositional writing - and the performers ...

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A ★★★★★ review of Marty Supreme (2025) Second watch pulled out more for me without diminishing anything: Every performance perfectly calibrated - Chalamet’s surgical detail and sweaty charm, Gwyneth’s flatness cutting through everything li...

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A ★★★½ review of Song Sung Blue (2025) A kind of delightful throwback to 90s (hell, even 40s) star vehicles - the kind of movies that let actors with boatloads of charisma showboat for a couple of hours. Nothing groundbreaking, but a solid...

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A ★★★★★ review of Peter Hujar's Day (2025) More experiment than anything but as a journalist obsessed with people’s speaking rhythms, a playwright obsessed with the musicality of dialogue, an artist obsessed with process and practice, and a st...

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This family drama epic is absolutely incredible. Can’t recommend higher. Enviable momentum and flow, flawless shifts between perspectives, so many gutpunches about family, familiarity, inheritance, and the passing of time.

A ★★★½ review of Pillion (2025) Disarmingly sweet for the subject matter, maybe to the point where it doesn’t actually get beneath the surface of the couple at the centre. Melling and Skarsgaard both do tremendous work, especially w...

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A ★★★★ review of Twinless (2025) I’m into so much of this - Dylan O’Brien’s brilliant performance, the pseudo-Almodovarian tone, Lauren Graham’s brief, brittle turn - that I wish it was an all-timer as opposed to merely “almost exact...

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A ★★★★ review of A Mighty Heart (2007) Way more than the Jolie star vehicle it was dismissed as at the time, it’s remarkable how she slips into the ensemble while delivering one of her best, subtlest, performances. Other than that, it’s a ...

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A ★★★ review of Margin Call (2011) If the pedestrian camerawork and sluggish editing didn’t tip you off, this is basically a play. Fun concept and uneven performances (Tucci, Irons, Quinto on fire … Bettany, Baker less so) occasionally...

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A ★★★★★ review of In the Loop (2009) I don’t think any modern film has nailed the shift from breakneck black comedy to banal bureaucratic horror better. Ianucci is a genius, obviously, but everybody is on the same wavelength here - banal...

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A ★★★★½ review of Duplicity (2009) My comfort watch. The screenplay is a masterclass in dialogue, subtext and exposition - we know everything we need to know about these people without weepy backstory. Roberts and Owen on absolute fire...

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A ★★ review of Wicked: For Good (2025) A reminder that the second act of this musical is absolutely nobody’s favourite second act of a musical. Flat visuals, incoherent editing, and absolutely perfunctory filler. Watching everybody onscree...

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A ★★★★★ review of Chungking Express (1994) Still the absolute best, and the perfect watch for a rainy start to the year. Hazy love, surgeon specific sense of place. Wild to be the same age as WKW when he made it.

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A ★★★★★ review of Sentimental Value (2025) As someone who presumably has no kids, this cut as close to the bones. A really beautiful, funny and dark meditation on what we owe to our family as humans, what we owe to our collaborators as artists...

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A ★★★★★ review of Predators (2025) Incredible. Not as simple as an indictment of true crime as entertainment, but the limits of entertainment and storytelling as public service - how altruistic can you be when you’re profiting from the...

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A ★★★★★ review of Marty Supreme (2025) Incredible. So much movie in the best way. Relentless without being stressful, intimate and detail perfect without being tunnel visioned. Obsessed with the score and cinematography, so many angles and...

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A ★★★★★ review of The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) Look, the only reasonable choice for Anderson’s best film. Almost all the cast doing the best work of their careers, a perfect marriage of meticulous craft with just enough air for melancholy humanity...

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A ★★ review of Bugonia (2025) Stone and Plemons commit hard but to what end? Lanthimos is as much of a misanthropist as ever, but with none of the heart or wit that could define his previous work. This is a cheap hostage thriller ...

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A ★★★½ review of Highest 2 Lowest (2025) What a wild film. Some of the worst of Lee (the wife, the entire first hour, the score, the dialogue) and the best of Lee (the surgical attention to environment, dialogue, and context).  It is impossi...

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A ★½ review of Hedda (2025) Did everyone think they were doing Miss Julie? Tessa Thompson wildly unconvincing as Hedda, her Tomb Raider (2000) accent never makes it past her lips, but I guess Nina Hoss makes it out of this all, ...

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Critical Corner: Hoods Landing, Life on a Loop In this edition of Critical Corner, a review of a fantastic debut novel and a moving show about aged care. “All happy families are alike, unhappy families are unhappy in their own way” is something A...

I reviewed Hoods Landing by Laura Vincent and Life on a Loop, playing at Q Theatre this week! dramatic-pause.ghost.io/critical-cor...

A ★★★★★ review of A Woman Under the Influence (1974) One of the all-timers. There’s not much new I can say about THE American Film, with perhaps the best film performance of all-time, but some new things on this viewing: 1. The closer I get to the age I...

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How I Review: A New Series The introduction for a new series (for paid subscribers only!) of in-depth interviews with New Zealand critics. A few months ago, I was sitting at an Auckland Phil concert, near a man who was clearly...

I'm doing a new series called How I Review for the newsletter! I'm talking to five New Zealand critics on their practice, their process, and their philosophies around criticism. dramatic-pause.ghost.io/how-i-review...

A ★★★★½ review of Take Shelter (2011) Brilliant performances from both Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain. I’m obsessed with this film’s concepts of apocalypse - personal, social, and environmental. David Wingo’s score is an all-timer. ...

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