Film in Elsewhere

Unusual or interesting DVDs, cult and classic films, movie reviews, genre overviews and interviews.

Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly updates.

BLUR: TO THE END a doco by TOBY L

3 Nov 2024  |  2 min read

When Blur finally got to play at Wembley Stadium, the preeminent venue in Britain, it was very late in their career. It happened just last year, more than three decades after their debut album. The band had barely spoken to each other for a decade when they reconvened in early 2023 to record the intimate, downbeat album The Ballad of Darren, the least stadium-built album in their long... > Read more

ONE HAND CLAPPING, a doco by DAVID LICHFIELD

14 Oct 2024  |  2 min read

The lives, music and world of the Beatles – together or solo – is starting to fill whole corners of large libraries, not just a shelf or two. It is no exaggeration to say that every month, if not every fortnight, another book arrives, some better than others. There have been a few biographies of Paul McCartney (and also Barry Miles' generous book, ghost written for his... > Read more

Soily

MIDAS MAN, a film by JOE STEPHENSON

3 Sep 2024  |  2 min read

Among the many big problems for a film like this – a biopic of the short, fast life of the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein – is that many of the characters in it are so familiar: four of them among the best known faces in the world, even now. So invariably some responses default to: well he (Jonah Lees, Phantom of the Open) does look a bit like John Lennon but he's far too short;... > Read more

I Just Don't Understand

FANNY: THE RIGHT TO ROCK, a doco by BOBBI JO HART

26 Aug 2024  |  2 min read

It is strange and happens more often than you might think: we write about someone rather obscure or pull an unusual song From the Vaults . . . and a few weeks later that person or song appear in other media, often a British rock magazine. Or we profile someone who is well off the radar and the next thing you know they pop up on other people's websites or social media. Or worse, we write... > Read more

LET IT BE, REVISITED (2024): Once more in reel time

27 May 2024  |  4 min read

At the start of this new version of the Beatles' 1970 documentary Let It Be, the original director Michael Lindsay Hogg (MLH) speaks briefly with Peter Jackson who used eight hours of (mostly) unseen footage shot by MLH for his expansive Get Back feature of 2021. In a comment which deserves close inspection, Jackson observes that MLH was seeing the music in real time as new songs were... > Read more

SIXTY YEARS AGO (2024): The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Shows

10 Feb 2024  |  1 min read  |  1

By now most people would concede February 9, 1964 was a turning point in global culture. That was the night the Beatles played on the Ed Sullivan Show and 73 million Americans (out of a population of 192 million, somewhere between a third and half of the nation) tuned in. It is said there was no reported juvenile crime in New York City that night. True or not, the story is emblematic of... > Read more

KING LOSER, a doco by ANDREW MOORE and CUSHLA DILLON

24 Jan 2024  |  2 min read

Those who missed the short, frantic and furious flight of Auckland band King Loser (1992-1997) missed attitude, three albums, some singles, style, cacophony, arrogant confidence, changing line-ups and a rich cult following. And frequently great rock'n'roll noise on the cusp of violent chaos. Almost two decades after the breakup, fan and filmmaker Andrew Moore was on hand to film the... > Read more

MEET ME IN THE BATHROOM, a doco by DYLAN SOUTHERN and WILL LOVELACE

6 Apr 2023  |  5 min read  |  1

Inevitably the cultural life of a city will rise and fall, and New York has seen its fair share of peaks and troughs. For a while between the Forties to the early Sixties it was the global centre of the visual arts and jazz – but as painters and musicians drove further into abstraction the audiences were left behind. Then there has always been the city's plague of economic... > Read more

WHEN BOB CAME, a doco about Marley in Aotearoa

5 Feb 2023  |  2 min read

Although New Zealand has seen many great and memorable concerts, few – aside from the Beatles in 1964 – have changed the landscape of music and culture in this country. But the Auckland appearance by Bob Marley and the Wailers on April 16 1979 at Western Springs (tickets $8.70) before a peaceful and diverse crowd of 22,000 arrived at the end of a volatile decade. The nation... > Read more

MOONAGE DAYDREAM, a film by BRETT MORGEN

25 Sep 2022  |  4 min read  |  1

A decade ago the international touring exhibition David Bowie Is posited that Bowie displayed many aspects: David Bowie Is dance, fashion, music, art . . . He was a human palimpsest, repeatedly wiping clean for another image to be written on himself. Bowie's capacity for change – Ziggy Stardust and Thin White Duke to the Goblin King in Labyrinth and appearing as a nasty... > Read more

THE BEATLES AND INDIA, a doco by AJOY BOSE

28 Aug 2022  |  4 min read

The title of this 90 minute documentary is interesting in itself: it is not “The Beatles in India”, because that would be largely confined that period in early 1968 when they attended the Maharishi Mahesh Yoga's ashram in Rishikesh, Northern India. The title being “and India” means it can look at the broader influence of the Indian instruments, music and philosophy... > Read more

LOVE IN BRIGHT LANDSCAPES, a doco by JONATHAN ALLEY

26 Aug 2022  |  4 min read  |  1

There are a rare few Australian bands which New Zealanders have taken to heart: anything fronted by Paul Kelly or Nick Cave, Midnight Oil, the Go-Betweens, Hunters and Collectors . . . And the Triffids helmed by the gifted, intense and ultimately doomed David McComb. A devilishly handsome and lovely man – but someone who clearly didn't tolerate fools, whom I met him in the late... > Read more

Clear Out My Mind (David McComb from Love of Will)

A MIGHTY WIND, INTERVIEW (2003): And the Wind cries hilarity

25 Aug 2022  |  8 min read  |  1

It was less a mighty wind which briefly blew through Auckland this week than a brisk breeze in the form of actors Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer and Michael McKean. The trio may not be glossy-page stars who command headlines, but they are heavy-hitters in Movieworld. That’s because of their collective comedic history of three decades, and also because on the sharp end of this... > Read more

I GET KNOCKED DOWN, a doco by SOPHIE ROBINSON and DUNSTAN BRUCE

5 Jun 2022  |  1 min read

This documentary about the British anarcho-rock band Chumbawamba – who had the Tubthumpinghit (“I get knocked down”) in 97 – opens with an unhappy, well-dressed man walking through an alley and announcing, “My name is Dunstan Bruce. I'm a 59 year old man and I'm struggling, struggling with the fact we seem to be all going to hell in a handcart, that we're... > Read more

NOTHING COMPARES, a doco by KATHERINE FERGUSON

5 Jun 2022  |  1 min read

Troubled and troublesome, powerful and fragile, Sinead O'Connor lived out her psychological, religious and private struggles in the public domain. This engaging doco – an autobiography given O'Connor's voice is heard throughout – moves from an abusive childhood in guilt-obsessed Catholic Ireland to global fame on the back of her extraordinary, expressive voice and candour.... > Read more

A-HA, THE MOVIE, a doco by THOMAS ROBSAHM

5 Jun 2022  |  1 min read

When the Norwegian band A-ha topped the charts in the mid 80s they arrived on the wings of their soaring synth-pop single Take on Me, its animated sketch-pad video and the Bowie-like cheekbones of singer Morten Harket. If only that hit, its follow-up The Sun Always Shines on TVand a couple of early albums made an impact here, the band were always feted in Europe (a series of number one... > Read more

WHEN THE WHIP COMES DOWN; POLY STYRENE and SHANE MACGOWAN (2021) Two documentaries

31 Oct 2021  |  2 min read

"When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended solely for self-flagellation"   -- Truman Capote .  Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliché When Marianne Elliott-Said reinvented herself as Poly Styrene to front her band X-Ray Spex she was – even in Britain's punk era – someone different: a sassy, street-smart woman in her late... > Read more

KAREN DALTON: IN MY OWN TIME a doco by ROBERT YAPKOWITZ and RICHARD PEETE

30 Oct 2021  |  2 min read

"When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended solely for self-flagellation"   -- Truman Capote Popular culture has never been short of cult figures to resurrect and Karen Dalton certainly qualified. Just two studio albums in her lifetime – she died in 1993 age 55 – but a steady decline into obscurity, dependencies and Aids from... > Read more

Reason to Believe (from the posthumous album 1966)

THE SPARKS BROTHERS, a doco by EDGAR WRIGHT

19 Jul 2021  |  2 min read

In The Sparks Brothers – a documentary about Sparks, the idiosyncratic band of brothers Russ and Ron Mael – British television personality Jonathan Ross says they had “a punk sensibility, a desire to shake things up and make you think”. The irony is – despite Steve Jones saying in pre-punk days he and fellow Sex Pistol Paul Cook loved Sparks – gobby punk... > Read more

ZAPPA, a doco by ALEX WINTER

19 Mar 2021  |  4 min read  |  1

The further we get from Frank Zappa, who died in late 1993, the closer he seems to come. His late wife Gail ensured his vast catalogue was given reissue (more than 60 albums in his lifetime, more than 50 posthumous releases), his son Dweezil tours his father's music as Zappa Plays Zappa (in early 2018 he and his cracking band played Auckland), there have been books and academic... > Read more