School holiday time means plenty of animated adventures are on offer in Kiwi cinemas this week. But that doesn’t mean that adults also aren’t catered for in this week’s crop of new releases.
Calvary (R13, 100mins; ****1/2) Read Sarah Watt’s full review
Reuniting The Guard’s writer-director John Michael McDonagh with its star Brendan Gleeson, this sees the latter playing Father James, a small town priest somewhere out in the photogenic wilds of Ireland’s northern coast. McDonagh is taking on some big themes here. Calvary is a rumination on the state of the Catholic Church, the various malaises of modern life, the purpose of faith in the modern world and what ”being good” might look like in a society without much cause for optimism about human nature. And all of that, somehow, is shot through with McDonagh’s trademark raucous humour, his great love of the language and the tricks it may perform, and a beautifully sketched parade of indelible characters.
Ernest and Celestine (G, 76mins; ***1/2)
An award-winning children’s film from Belgium, it is easy to see why this has attracted such acclaim. The tale of a bear and a mouse, Ernest and Celestine
