FILM COLUMN | ISSUE SIX | MAHI Ā-RINGA / CRAFT Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickthelai on IG & Letterboxd | Columnist A Bucket of Blood (Roger Corman, 1959) Whether you’re burdened by imposter syndrome or choked by a creative block, if you’re an artist in a rut, seek the protagonist of A Bucket of Blood for reassurance that you’re not fucking up this badly. In this dark comedy, Dick Miller plays the nebbish Walter, a busboy at a beatnik café who doesn’t fit in with the sophisticated...

COLUMN | ISSUE FIVE | PUORO O AOTEAROA / LOCAL MUSIC Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickthelai on IG & Letterboxd | Columnist Music and movies pair together like Marlborough wine and Eltham cheese. For this issue’s film column, I’ve plucked out three song lyrics from present-day Aotearoa and partnered them with films that, to me, evoke those words. Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa, 1961) Song: Avantdale Bowling Club, Friday Night @ The Liquor Store (2022) The lyric: “The best of West Auckland's...

RICK'S REEL RECOMMENDATIONS | ISSUE THREE | WHENUA Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickthelai & Letterboxd | Film Columnist I Don’t Hate Las Vegas Anymore (Caveh Zahedi, 1994) A warning: mileage may vary for this road trip documentary. Caveh Zahedi is perhaps the documentarian most committed to self-sabotage since the time Morgan Spurlock ate 270 Big Macs to conceal his alcoholism in Supersize Me . Zahedi, an impolite, offhanded nebbish who is openly manipulative, is as hard to watch as...

RICK'S REEL RECOMMENDATIONS | ISSUE THREE | WHENUA Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickthelai & Letterboxd | Film Columnist Chocolat (Claire Denis, 1988) Don’t get mixed up here: I don’t mean ‘ Chocolat ’ (2000). Not the shlocky rom-com starring Juliette Binoche as a travelling chocolatier who brings love back to rural France with the power of sweeties, the DVD which you find on op-shop shelves next to Hayley Westenra CDs. I mean the lesser-known ‘Chocolat’ , about a native African...

COLUMN | WAIRUATANGA / SPIRITUALITY Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickthelai on IG & Letterboxd | Film Columnist 1. A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson, 1956) The goal is to escape. It’s the only goal. Hours, days, and months pass while Fontaine, a captured French Resistance fighter, chips away at the door of his prison cell. Sweeping away the wood shavings on the floor, he plies the frame of his bed for a wire with which to weave a rope. Bresson is famously a director who leaves...

RICK'S REEL RECOMMENDATIONS | COLUMN | TUAKIRI / IDENTITY Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickthelai on IG & Letterboxd | Film Columnist We're All Going To The Worlds Fair (Jane Schoenbrun, 2021) Spirit of the Beehive (Víctor Erice, 1973) The infallible tale of Mary Shelley’s ‘ Frankenstein ’ has seen a well-deserved refresh in the people’s consciousness since it was resurrected last Halloween season by Guillermo Del Toro, the monster-lovin’ sweetheart. As much as I was moved by his...