COLUMN | ISSUE TWELVE | NOSTALGIA Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickthelai on IG & Letterboxd | Columnist A Boy Named Charlie Brown (Bill Melendez, 1969) Out of the gate, one must admit this feature – 86 minutes of Charlie Brown, what a dream! – isn’t the peak of Peanuts. It has the mood but not the wit, and in its slight lack of inspiration it even flat-out reprises scenes from the beloved, 25-minute television specials: Snoopy twirling on an icy lake to Guaraldi’s “Skating” (1965’s A...

COLUMN | ISSUE ELEVEN | MAHIMAHI / SEX Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickthelai on IG & Letterboxd | Columnist Toute Une Nuit (Chantal Akerman, 1982) Belgian pioneer of avant-garde film, Chantal Akerman, left behind a legacy of stillness in both domestic (kitchens and bedrooms) and transitory (train platforms and corridors) spaces, with critics' appeal commonly bestowed on her career centrepiece, Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). And yet I find that even this...

WEB EXCLUSIVE | REVIEW | NZIFF Written by Ricky Lai | Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickthelai on IG & Letterboxd | Columnist Remake dir. Ross McElwee United States, 114 minutes ‘You can see the lettering in the mud.’ Some folks just can’t put down the camera. Earlier in the week before seeing Ross McElwee’s meta-documentary Remake, I caught Brydie O’Connor’s Barbara Forever, a feature on American avant-garde pioneer of queer cinema, Barbara Hammer. Hammer was essentially an archivist, dedicating...

REVIEW | ISSUE NINE | WHAKAKATA / HUMOUR Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickthelai on IG & Letterboxd | Columnist The first UniFest short film competition resembles the kind of combination between creative outlet and filmmaking practice which I would have adored during my studies. It’s reassuring to see a body of undergrads wishing for the same, taking that into their own hands – run by the students, for the students. Each entry was held down by only two creative constraints: the theme of...

COLUMN | ISSUE NINE | WHAKAKATA / HUMOUR Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickthelai on IG & Letterboxd | Columnist Da Hip Hop Witch (Dale Resteghini, 2000) Directed by the music videographer who’d go on to lend tone-deaf visuals to Busta Rhymes’ ‘Arab Money, Da Hip Hop Witch was a Blair Witch parody riding on four plots interwoven with no discernible rhythm. (A) Female staff at the office for a tabloid magazine fight off their creep of a boss. (B) A gang of youngins from Salem search for the...

FILM COLUMN | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickthelai on IG & Letterboxd | Columnist Millie Lies Low (Michelle Savill, 2021) As everybody’s third or fourth choice for a Commonwealth nation — including ourselves, judging from how many of us move to Australia — it’s perhaps not as much a mystery where all the self-diagnosed ‘imposter syndrome’ in New Zealand comes from, especially if you’re competing with your colleagues for the best opportunities. The economy doesn’t...