Author Ellena Zellhuber-McMillan

With a disconnected structure that barely qualifies as coherent narrative, The Measure of a Man is so ‘slice of life’ it could be the exemplary film of that genre. Incredibly well acted, the subtlety...

Less documentary than visual essay, Out of the Mist relies heavily on its narration by Kiwi author Eleanor Catton. The language employed is more flowery and verbose than your high school final, however, giving...

In making great use of drones, Young explores Christchurch's broken city centre in a fresh and intriguing way, contrasting with more gloomy, traditional news footage of the damage. Highlighting the...

With its easy flow and footage from multiple sources, the structure and aesthetic of Philip Dadson: Sonics from Scratch beautifully reflects Dadson's calm personality and career-long commitment to...

Though the events documented in The Price of Peace happened seven years ago, the story resonates with current Western discourse concerning government surveillance. Offering a much-needed portrait of Māori...

Director Kim Longinotto’s cinema vérité offers a raw insight mediated only by the occasional subtitle. In letting her subjects speak for themselves, Longinotto avoids impressing an interpretative filter...

Charming and warm, Paper Towns offers a teen flick with a bit of depth. Wolff adds another solid performance to his growing filmography, and the perfectly cast Delevingne is everything she should be. Abrams...

The Lobster delicately balances humour and brutality to tell a brilliantly absurd, yet altogether touching story. The largely matter-of-fact cinematography is beautifully offset by scenes in dramatic slow...

Ruth & Alex is a competent film but fails to grip its audience, and does little more than communicate how cumbersome selling a home is. Keaton recycles her performances from her previous work;...

Stories within stories are a structure, and a plot device that is probably as old as the notion of telling stories. From Nelly in Wuthering Heights to the Granddad in Princess Bride, we have seen how it plays...

Despite overusing genre tropes, Spy is an enjoyable romp for those that are after a good bit of stupidity and solid laughs. Melissa McCarthy’s characterisation is concise and well-executed, and she is...

Post-colonial theory sounds like something best left in a textbook, but in the context of a film industry that still limits characters of colour to sidekicks and stereotypes, it is worthy of broader...

"I have only questions," stated director Warwick Thornton when asked by Sight and Sound about his 2009 Camera d'Or-winning feature film debut, Samson and Delilah. It is not surprising, given the film’s...

When writing his review of Brick for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers stated that the film’s director, Rian Johnson, ‘risked ridicule’ by setting his neo-noir in a high school. Arguably, the bigger risk was...

Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know could perhaps best be described as the indie version of Love Actually; it too uses small, interconnecting stories to capture a moment in time. But, unlike Love...