FILM COLUMN | ISSUE SEVEM | MATARIKI Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickthelai on IG & Letterboxd | Columnist The pūrākau about the formation of Matariki tells us that its stars were formed by an act of grief and anger by Tāwhirimātea, the god of wind and weather. To match, I’ve dusted off three essential films on the subject of wind. The Wind (Victor Sjöström, 1928) Checks out. If there was ever a more comprehensive depiction of wind in film, it’d have to be called Wind 2. Now that we bask...

WEB EXCLUSIVE Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickthelai on IG & Letterboxd | Columnist Leviticus is named after the book from the Old Testament, which in part lays out the archaic laws of sexual morality. Most controversial is one commandment which, even in its slight variations of phrasing from one translation to another, has rippled appalling consequences throughout the rest of history: ‘18:22 – You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination’. Historians and scholars...

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...