★★★★★ - THE GUARDIAN  - Daniel Craig dispatches James Bond with panache, rage – and cuddles -  The standard bearer of British soft power is back, in a film yanked from cinemas back in the time of the toilet roll shortage, based on a literary character conceived when sugar and meat rationing was…

RNZ's Kim Hill talks to the art restorer Dianne Modestini, who features in The Lost Leonardo - now playing at Light House Cinema! The ‘Salvator Mundi’ is the first Leonardo da Vinci painting to be discovered for over a century, though some question whether it is in fact by the painter. In 2017 the…

★★★★ - GUARDIAN  - Adam Driver magnificent in wild Sparks musical -  Driver and Marion Cotillard brim with nervous energy in this bizarre musical collaboration between Leos Carax and the Sparks brothers.  Leos Carax is the sly anarchist of French cinema whose sorties are sadly few and far…

★★★★★ - STUFF  - Why Nicolas Cage's answer to John Wick is also a stone-cold poetic delight -  A few months back, I wrote that Gunda, a wordless, black and white documentary about six months in the life of a pig, was the very best film I had seen so far in 2021. So imagine my delight, that not…

★★★★ - STUFF  - The Da Vinci documentary that's also a jaw-dropping thriller -  Any aspiring Hollywood writer who came up with the scenario of The Lost Leonardo would be told to go back to their day job and quit wasting everyone's time. It's just one of those yarns that only real life, real…

★★★★ - DAILY MIRROR  - A visually impressive, mythologically rich and heartfelt origin story that boasts laughs, grief and romance along with a great double-act from Simu Liu and Awkwafina -  Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is not the first superhero film to tackle family discord but few…

★★★★ - STUFF  - A fresh take on Marvel boilerplate -  Early in the brisk-by-Marvel-standards running time of Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings, we are taken to Shaun/Shang Chi's (Kim’s Convenience’s Simu Liu) one-room apartment in present-day San Francisco. Among all the usual dross and…

★★★★ - STUFF  - A brisk, exciting and likeable tale about one man and his famous tower -  Only one worker died during the construction of the Eiffel Tower. Learning that last night, watching this “freely inspired” film about the tower and the man whose name is on it, was enough to send me to the…

★★★★ - DEADLINE  - Riveting Documentary Explores Record $450 Million Sale Of Da Vinci Painting Some Claim Was A Fake -  Is it a fake or is it real? That is just one of the intriguing questions posed in The Lost Leonardo, a fascinating and riveting new documentary that tells the tale of the…

★★★★★ - STUFF  -  1969's forgotten music festival now an unmissable documentary -  Attracting almost the same number of attendees and arguably a bigger roster of talent as Woodstock, it’s the summer of ‘69 music festival you’ve probably never heard of. Held over six weekends, the third Harlem…

★★★★★ - EMPIRE  - After 50 years hidden away, the historic performances of the Harlem Cultural Festival are unearthed from the vault. Questlove’s directorial debut explores the impact of the six-week event on culture, through live footage and retrospective conversations with festival-goers and…

★★★★ - RTÉ  - Ciarán Hinds makes his bid for the sweetest film of 2021 with The Man in the Hat -  "This won't take too much of your time. And you don't need to be blown out of your seats; you can just be a human being and watch this little journey and feel things. It has its own heartbeat, unlike…