Music and Movie reviews by The Southland Times:...

Movie & Music reviews

Movie: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint

REVIEWED BY NADINE HEMA - © Fairfax NZ News

After 10 years, the final chapter of Harry Potter has been unleashed on loyal fans around the world – and it will come as no surprise that it has broken box office records worldwide, including in New Zealand.

Movie: Transformers Dark of the Moon

Starring Shia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Josh Duhamel

REVIEWED BY SHAUN YEO - © Fairfax NZ News

OPINION: Movie reviewer Shaun Yeo reckons the the latest Transformer movie rocks.

Movie: Bad Teacher

Starring Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake, Lucy Punch, Jason Segel; directed by Jake Kasdan

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Elizabeth Halsey (Diaz) is a teacher. As the title suggests, she's a bad teacher. Set to leave teaching forever and marry her rich fiance, Elizabeth finds herself back at square one when her fiance dumps her.

Movie: Green Lantern

Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard

REVIEWED BY: SHAUN YEO - © Fairfax NZ News

Previously, when non-comic readers thought of comic books and their related spinoffs they thought of the zap-pow campy Batman of 1960s TV and the kiddie fare of Saturday morning cartoons. But fanboys everywhere knew the world of comics was as diverse and compelling as the artform itself.

Movie: Super 8

Starring Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, Kyle Chandler

REVIEWED BY NADINE HEMA - © Fairfax NZ News

Wow, OK, where do I start? Super 8 is awesome and here is why.

Movie: X-Men First Class

Starring James MacAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Kevin Bacon; directed by Matthew Vaughn

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

It's well-established, in the X-Men universe that Professor X and Magneto are sworn enemies.

Movie: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides 3D

Starring Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, Geoffrey Rush, Ian McShane; directed by Rob Marshall

REVIEWED BY NICOLE GOURLEY - © Fairfax NZ News

Jack Sparrow (Depp) returns to our screens on a new journey, this time to find the renowned Fountain of Youth.

Movie: Source Code

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan; directed by Duncan Jones

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Duncan Jones' first movie, Moon made a bit of a splash.

CD: Pay Your Dues by Simon Thompson

REVIEWED BY CHRIS CHILTON - © Fairfax NZ News

REVIEW: Believe the buzz.

Fully paid up

Movie: Thor

Starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins; directed by Kenneth Branagh

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Thor is the latest film in the story arc that's set to culminate with The Avengers next year. It's an ambitious project, bringing together Thor, Iron Man, Captain America and the Hulk.

Movie: Red Riding Hood

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

In a small village on the edge of a large forest, the people live in fear.

Movie: My Wedding and Other Secrets

Starring Michelle Ang, Matt Whelan; directed by Roseanne Liang

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Emily and James meet in fencing class, fall in love and decide to get married.

Movie: Rango

Starring Johnny Depp, Abigail Breslin, Isla Fisher, Bill Nighy; directed by Gore Verbinski

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Rango is having a bit of an identity crisis. A formerly urban (supposedly) chameleon lizard, he finds himself in a very different landscape when he's tipped off the back of the moving truck, out of his terrarium and on to the freeway.

Movie: Love Birds

Starring Rhys Darby, Sally Hawkins; directed by Paul Murphy

Doug (Rhys Darby) is an average Kiwi bloke, with an average Kiwi job. He's a massive Queen fan, and things seem to be ticking over pretty well. Until his girlfriend leaves him and a rare New Zealand shelduck – shot in the wing – falls on to his roof.

Movie: 127 Hours

Starring James Franco, Amber Tamblyn; directed by Danny Boyle

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Reviewer Maree Field warns this true tale of survival isn't for the faint-hearted.

Movie: True Grit

TRUE GRIT Starring Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Fourteen-year-old Mattie Ross is on a mission. Her father has been murdered, and his killer, Tom Chaney (Brolin), has escaped into the Indian territories of the old West.

Movie: Black Swan

Starring Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Nina (Portman) is a ballet dancer with a company in New York. She's a talented dancer but also fragile, repressed and completely overshadowed by her overbearing stage mother (Hershey).

Movie: The King's Speech

Starring: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Sometimes, the simplest ideas make the best possible movies.

Movie: The Green Hornet

Starring Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Cameron Diaz

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Britt Reid (Rogen) is the spoilt only son of newspaper magnate James Reid.

Movie: Burlesque

Starring Cher, Christina Aguilera, Stanley Tucci

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Ali (Aguilera) is a small-town girl with big dreams. And, like all small-town girls with big dreams in the movies, Ali heads to Los Angeles, hoping to make it big.

Movie: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Starring Ben Barnes, Georgia Henley, Skandar Keynes, Will Poulter

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

The Chronicles of Narnia: Dawn Treader opens with the two younger Pevensie children, Lucy and Edmund, exiled in Cambridge during World War II. They're bored, restless and stuck with their awful cousin, Eustace Scrubbs, played with a convincing kind of prissiness by Will Poulter.

Movie: Easy A

Starring Emma Stone, Emma Stone, Amanda Bynes, Patricia Clarkson, Stanley Tucci, Thomas Haden Church

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Olive is your average high school girl: smart, but invisible.

DVD: Skippers Gold

Doug and David Beck (RRP $29.95)

REVIEWED BY PAT VELTKAMP SMITH - © Fairfax NZ News

Invercargill film-makers father and son Doug and David Beck have their DVD Skippers Gold out just in time for Christmas gift giving – and we're not forgetting the best gifts come home.

Movie: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1

Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Ralph Fiennes Director: David Yates

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

It's the beginning of the end for Harry Potter and friends, as The Deathly Hallows brings the extensive cast together for the first part of the end of the series.

CD: New Age Savage by Pretty Wicked Head and the Desperate Men

REVIEWED BY CHRIS CHILTON - © Fairfax NZ News

Hard to believe it's been 20 years since Invercargill first got turned on to this album.

Movie: Red

Starring Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, Karl Urban

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) is a retired CIA agent, quietly going about his days and phone-flirting with the woman who issues his pension cheques (Mary-Louise Parker). Until a group of assassins breaks into his home and tries to kill him.

Movie: Paranormal Activity 2

Director: Tod Williams, starring Kristi rey, Katie Featherston, Micha Stoat

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Last year, Paranormal Activity burst out of the gates and became the sleeper hit of the year.

Review: Rock 4 Rakiura at Ascot Park Hotel

CHRIS CHILTON - © Fairfax NZ News

The 250 or so people at Rock 4 Rakiura owe their great night out to Marty Pepers, and Lipstick singer Toni Biddle is the first person to admit it.

Movie: Vampires Suck

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

OPINION: Stephenie Meyer has a lot to answer for.

CD: Platinum September by Jeremy Dundas

REVIEWED BY CHRIS CHILTON - © Fairfax NZ News

Announcing the arrival of homegrown pop prodigy Jeremy Dundas, a star rising from within our midst.

Movie: Tomorrow When the World Began

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

OPINION: Winding down for the summer before school starts, a group of Australian teenagers decide to go bush for a few days, reasoning it's their last chance to be all together.

Movie: Scott Pilgrim vs The World

REVIEWED BY MAREE SCOTT - © Fairfax NZ News

Scott Pilgrim (Cera) is your typical average early-20s slacker type. He's unemployed, living in a one-room apartment, and he's half-heartedly dating a 17- year-old high school girl.

CD: Bricks And Mortar by The Yardmen

REVIEWED BY CHRIS CHILTON - © Fairfax NZ News

Blue-collar rock 'n' roll doesn't drill into your forehead any straighter than this.

Time to engage your brain

Movie: Sex and the City 2

REVIEWED BY LISA KNIGHT - © Fairfax NZ News

Our reviewer Lisa Knight reckons it had no sex ... and not a lot of city, either.

CD: Pump up the volume

REVIEWED BY CHRIS CHILTON - © Fairfax NZ News

Come a long way, mon. Invercargill's biggest home-based hope Rhythmonyx finally have something tangible to offer their audiences at the end of one of their stonking, sweaty gigs.

Movie: Iron Man 2

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Reviewer Maree Field reckons it's a fun blockbuster.

Review: Tribute sounds beautiful

Russell Cowley Memorial Tribute Concert at First Church, Invercargill

REVIEWED BY PAT VELTKAMP SMITH - © Fairfax NZ News

The wonderful legacy of the late First Church organist, musician and mentor Russell Cowley shone through yesterday as a handful of his proteges from throughout New Zealand gathered to honour his memory, share some of theirs and perform in a Hospice Southland benefit concert.

Movie: Alice in Wonderland

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Reviewer Maree Field finds Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland a bit of a trip.

CD: Helen Van Linden by Helen Van Der Linden

myspace.com/helenvanderlinden

They still talk about Helen Van Der Linden's jaw-dropping performance at the Gold Guitars last year.

Movie: Shutter Island

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley; directed by Martin Scorsese

Shutter Island is an imposing, isolated place, which houses an asylum for the criminally insane.

CD: Freedom by Jackie Bristow

When Jackie Bristow opened for a Daniel Lanois concert, the ace producer/songwriter/musician told his audience from the stage that she sang like a bird.

Movie: The Lovely Bones

Starring Saorise Ronan, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz

At the age of 14, in 1973, Susie Salmon (Ronan) is murdered by a neighbour (Stanley Tucci). From there, Susie watches the aftermath of her murder, and its impact on her family.

Movie: Under the Mountain

Starring Sam Neill, Oliver Driver, Tom Cameron, Sophie McBride

Teenage twins Rachel and Theo (Sophie McBride and Tom Cameron) are sent to stay with their aunt and uncle in Auckland after their mother dies.

Movie: Where the Wild Things Are

Starring Max Records, Catherine Keener, James Gandolfini; directed by Spike Jonze

It's a neat trick, taking a book like Where the Wild Things Are, which has about 10 words per page, and turning it into a movie. An exceptionally good movie, at that.

CD: I Dreamed A Dream by Susan Boyle

Sony Music, $29.90

Who really cares what the critics think of surprise star Susan Boyle's album, released just in time for the Christmas market.

CD: In the Land of Music

Rouge Records

Linn Lorkin never fails to impress – with her unique sense of style and French-cafe voice she has impressed again with her "second outing" CD, In the land of Music, which is a digital remastering of the analog vinyl album released in 1986 in which Lorkin was accompanied by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra with a rhythm section comprising New Zealand celebrities Carl Doy, Frank Gibson jnr, Martin Winch and Billy Kristian and featuring Brian Smith and Rodger Fox.

Movie: New Moon

Starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner

Reviewer Lisa Knight admits she's a total Twihard to the core

CD: Christmas in the Heart by Bob Dylan

Say they trawled skid row, found a shambling derelict and hauled him into the studio to sing a bunch of hokey Christmas standards.

Movie: This Is It

Starring Michael Jackson, directed by Kenny Ortega

Here lies a treasure trove of previously unseen Michael Jackson footage for his fans, though those wanting to find out more about the enigmatic King won't be enlightened.

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