Hunt For The Wilderpeople

(PG) 4.5 out of 5Director: Taika Waititi.Cast: Sam Neill, Julian Dennison, Rima Te Wiata, Rachel House, Oscar Kightley, Rhys Darby."Is it a velociraptor, Mr Neill?"FOR a country of 4.4 million people, New Zealand has long punched above its weight when it comes to producing great movies.In recent years Whale Rider, The World’s Fastest Indian, Boy, and What We Do In The Shadows have all attracted large audiences and critical acclaim in and out of their...

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Star Trek Beyond

(M) ★★★Director: Justin Lin.Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, John Cho, Simon Pegg, Anton Yelchin, Idris Elba, Sofia Boutella.BACK in 2009, JJ Abrams boldly took Star Trek where it hadn’t been in 30 years – the mainstream.With one eye on the past and the other firmly on the franchise's future, he and writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman crafted a Star Trek film that not only appeased the legions of Trekkies but also won...

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Ghostbusters (2016)

(PG) ★★★★Director: Paul Feig.Cast: Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, Neil Casey, Chris Hemsworth."Up there! A Twitter troll!"FOR the sake of humanity, many pundits have been hoping this movie is awesome and goes big at the box office.Positive reviews and a large gross would help quell the din surrounding its release, which comes partly from grown men (well, mostly men who are mostly grown) complaining about one of cinema’s...

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The Legend Of Tarzan (2016)

(M) ★★Director: David Yates.Cast:  Alexander Skarsgård, Samuel L. Jackson, Margot Robbie, Christoph Waltz, Djimon Hounsou."First man to mention that Phil Collins' song gets a punch in the face."IS there a definitive take on Tarzan?It doesn’t seem like it. Modern audiences wouldn’t have a clue about the Weismuller films of the ‘30s and ‘40s, and almost everyone has forgotten the low-budget Tarzan movies of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s. The Christopher...

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The BFG

(PG) ★★★½Director: Steven Spielberg.Cast: Ruby Barnhill, Mark Rylance, Penelope Wilton, Jemaine Clement, Rebecca Hall, Rafe Spall, Bill Hader."Terrorist!"THIS film is a reminder of many wonderful things.It reminds us of how great it is when Steven Spielberg makes one of his all-too-infrequent family films, how clever the late Roald Dahl was with words, and how much fun it was to discover the works of both Spielberg and Dahl for the first time as...

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