What is a five-star film? Well, we can tell you what it isn’t. It isn’t a flawless film. It isn’t necessarily a film you’re going to love. Hell, it probably isn’t a film that everyone at Flicks HQ loves.
However which way you define it, a 5-star label is not one we award lightly or often. But when we do, it’s a love our critics scream from the mountaintops.
Focusing squarely on the films with official 2018 NZ release dates (sorry Paddington 2 & Spider-Verse…), here’s what we officially 5-starred.
American Animals
Coming soon to home release
Evan Peters (X-Men: Apocalypse) and The Killing of a Sacred Deer‘s Barry Keoghan star in this true story heist thriller, told in part by the actual men who committed the crime. Nominated for the Sundance Grand Jury Prize. From the director of 2012’s The Imposter.
What our critic Matt Glasby said: “As a thriller, it’s funny, fast and tongue-chewingly tense… you’ll be digging your nails into the arm-rest”
BlacKkKlansman
Available on Blu-ray, DVD & VOD (see options)
An African-American police officer from Colorado teams up with a white counterpart in an audacious double-act to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan. Spike Lee crime drama based on a true story.
What our critic Katie Parker said: “BlacKkKlansman may be the most accessible, and perhaps most entertaining, work of Lee’s latter day career but it is also his most important.”
Free Solo
Currently in cinemas (find times & tickets)
The filmmakers of Meru follow Alex Honnold as he becomes the first person to ever free solo climb Yosemite’s 3000-foot-high El Capitan Wall.
What our critic Daniel Rutledge said: “This is a documentary blessed with a giddy combination of nigh perfect elements. It’s a study of human excellence in a form that naturally lends itself to being supremely cinematic, anchored by a main character who is deeply fascinating, all brought together by just the right filmmakers.”
Hereditary
Available on Blu-ray, DVD & VOD (see options)
The spirit of a recently deceased matriarch haunts her surviving family in filmmaker Ari Aster’s debut, starring the great Toni Collette.
What our critic Aaron Yap said: “Hereditary stumbles slightly with some unnecessary, last-minute exposition, but it’s nothing that’ll undo the sheer terror already established by Aster’s bold, artfully crafted nightmare imagery and Colin Stetson’s tremulous, anxiety-ridden score. This one’s genuinely gut-wrenching — pack some diapers.”
Lady Bird
Available on Blu-ray, DVD & VOD (see options)
Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf and Tracy Letts star in this Northern California coming-of-age drama written and directed by Greta Gerwig. Winner of Best Picture & Actress at the 2018 Golden Globes. Nominated for Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Leading & Supporting Actress for Ronan & Metcalf.
What our critic Amanda Jane Robinson said: “Exquisitely renders the complex, funny, turbulent love between mother and daughter, which is to say, the way desire can feel like betrayal. The cinematic shorthands Lady Bird covets — a spiral staircase, a kitchen island, a TV room, New York — all speak to a compensation for class that is somehow thrilling to see reflected.”
Leave No Trace
Available on DVD & VOD (see options)
A small mistake derails the ideal lives of a father and his 13-year-old daughter in this drama from Oscar-nominated director Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone).
What our critic Steve Newall said: “Granik keeps us spellbound by a duo geographically and emotionally isolated from society. As it irresistibly encourages the viewer to invest in its characters, Leave No Trace proves to be an example of the magic that can be conjured by a filmmaker and their actors.”
Loving Vincent
Available on Blu-ray, DVD & VOD (see options)
Hand-painted animated drama about the life and mysterious death of Vincent van Gogh. The film uses a new oil painting for each shot, with movement added from one frame to the next by a painter’s brush. Around 100 artists have been involved in the film, and in the process have composed more than 56,000 paintings.
What our critic Liam Maguren said: “There’s a stirring reason why the world is rendered in van Gogh’s vision and why the flashbacks contrast it with black-n-white photorealism. It’s an approach that transforms something seemingly basic into a burning, sincere reflection of the artist’s undying passion”
Mission: Impossible – Fallout
Available on Blu-ray, DVD & VOD (see options)
Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his IMF team (Alec Baldwin, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames) are back, along with some familiar allies (Rebecca Ferguson, Michelle Monaghan) in a race against time after a mission gone wrong.
What our critic Aaron Yap said: “Fallout is a resounding anomaly: the dizzying high of a 20-year-old blockbuster franchise coming into its own at film #6 — and it’s a glorious thing.”
Shoplifters
Currently in cinemas (find times & tickets)
Filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, modern master behind acclaimed Japanese family dramas such as Like Father, Like Son and Our Little Sister, won the 2018 Palme d’Or at Cannes with this tale following a family of small-time crooks who take in a child they find on the streets.
What our critic Amanda Jane Robinson said: “Family dramas are often at their most heartwarming when concerned with crime families, and in this tradition, Shoplifters is an utterly moving exemplar.”
Sorry to Bother You
Currently in cinemas (find times & tickets)
Lakeith Stanfield (Get Out) leads this oddball comedy as a black telemarketer who discovers the secret to professional success – putting on a white voice. Also stars Tessa Thompson (Thor: Ragnarok), Steven Yeun (Okja), Armie Hammer (Call Me By Your Name), and the almighty Terry Crews.
What our critic Steve Newall said: “Its hectic, heady mix of disparate elements fuses together into a whole that defies description as it smartly, often cynically, critiques racism, classism, late-stage capitalism, assimilation, conformity, art and commerce, romance, consumerism, activism—you name it”
Stray
Coming soon to home release
Set in the chilly environments of New Zealand’s South Island, this stark drama follows a self-confined man reeling from an act of violence.
What our critic Amanda Jane Robinson said: “Carefully considering the relationship between masculinity and situation, New Zealand film history echoes throughout Stray. And yet, the perceptive contours shaped throughout the film truly do constitute a breath of fresh air.”
Suspiria
Coming soon to home release
Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name) puts his own spin on Dario Argento’s classic 1977 fantasy horror. Stars Chloë Grace Moretz (Let Me In) and Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash stars Tilda Swinton and Dakota Johnson.
What our critic Aaron Yap said: “Genuinely mesmerising, sustaining a two-and-a-half-hour duration with lashings of camp, rhapsodic dance choreography and wildly unpleasant body-horror that somehow doesn’t even begin to prime us for the orgiastic freefall of a climax.”
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri
Available on Blu-ray, DVD & VOD (see options)
Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell give Oscar-winning performances in this darkly comic crime mystery from the writer-director of In Bruges, following a mother who’s fed up with her daughter’s murder case having gone unsolved for months.
What our critic Adam Fresco said: “Writer/Director Martin McDonagh follows his uproariously funny In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths with that rarest of cinematic treats, an entertaining and stimulating movie, with a superb script, rich characters and a cracking cast.”
Widows
Currently in cinemas (find times & tickets)
Oscar-winning director Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) co-writes and directs fellow Academy Award winner Viola Davis (Fences) in this heist thriller based on the 1983 TV series. Co-written with Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn.
What our critic Katie Parker said: “At a time when Hollywood is still struggling to imagine women in traditionally male roles—and failing spectacularly with films like Ocean’s 8—Widows is not just the best female-led movie we’ve seen in years; it’s the best heist movie we’ve seen in years, that just happens to star women.”
