As noted in our last post, the weather has been total crap here over the last month. Yes it’s winter, but it seems worse than last year. Anyway, the NZ International Film Festival just rolled through for a few weeks and we managed to catch considerably more films than we did last year.

Notable highlights: “The King of Kong” was by far my favourite and involved the true story of good versus evil in the eternal battle for the high score on Donkey Kong. Yes it sounds like the epitome of geekdom, but the story transcends the nitty-gritty of competitive video gaming and really gets into the people behind the chase. I think it’s way better than (insert name of your favourite movie here)! Honestly!

“The Visitor” was the other stand-out for me. It’s made by the same director who did “The Station Agent” a few years back and follows a similar path of a loner who’s life is changed by a chance encounter with people who’s lives are eye-openingly different from his. A quality feel-good movie with ample scenes of real NYC, perfect for those of us who’ve since left it behind.

We also saw “Time Crimes” which was sort of “Memento” mixed with “Back to the Future 2.” Pretty good, but not great. There was “Sukiyaki Western Django” which seemed like it should have been great (spaghetti western starring hipster Japanese Yakuza-types and a Tarantino cameo), but ended up sounding better than it was. Visually great though. And watching the trailer again is giving me second thoughts, but no, it was about a 5 or 6. Oh well. Lastly, there was a NZ documentary named “Rain of the Children” about a Maori woman and her son whose pasts intertwined with major Maori events. The movie wasn’t bad, but the most moving part was when the Maoris in the audience did a chant afterwards that you could literally feel in your chest. Awesome.