Truth the key to White Lies story

An area of New Zealand history that has been swept under the carpet is the subject of a new home-grown movie which releases this week. White Lies, adapted from Whale Rider author Witi Ihimaera’s novella Medicine Woman, is set in a time when new laws prohibited unlicensed healers, making the practise of much Maori medicine illegal.

Spies bring us in from cold

It’s amazing how some of the best television drama remains engrossing, despite the fact that the viewer doesn’t have the foggiest what’s actually going on for much of the time. Monday’s new SoHo spy drama Restless is opaque from start to finish, but in the crisp, elegant tradition of British espionage tales, the style carries us over the mystery of substance.

Man of Steel – feminist film of the year?

Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, the Superman reboot that will open in New Zealand next week, is quite possibly the most feminist action movie of the year. Striking for its absence of naked ladies, it also features a tough Amy Adams performance as Lois Lane and women all over newsrooms and the military, not just in the bedroom.

Zombocalypse now

The defining image of World War Z, according to director Marc Forster, is not a zombie biting into someone’s flesh but the wildlife montage that plays behind the opening credits, which might best be summed up in the words of one of his characters: ”Mother Nature is a serial killer.