Hunt for the Wilderpeople (Taika Waititi)

[Henry Gale]

IMDb / Wiki

[Henry Gale]

Loooooooved this. Maybe even better than What We Do in the Shadows, and I do not say that lightly.

Just one of the most deeply funny, heartfelt, exciting, awe-inspiring combinations cinema of recent years to me. It's so beautifully esoteric in its design, from the perfect vistas in its cinematography all the way to the closes-ups of faded tchotchkes on shelves, all blanketed in its endless laughs and the score that often sounds like if Carpenter and Vangelis collaborated sometime between Blade Runner and Escape from New York, yet for all those diverse parts it all comes together as something I can't imagine anyone disliking. Maybe the most audibly elated audience I've been with in a while. I can totally picture Kevin Feige being screened this and immediately wanting Waititi for Thor based on it, as those films are similarly big sweeping buffets of elements that shouldn't work together on paper yet meld together so crowd-pleasingly.

Not sure what the release is going to be like everywhere else, but if it's anywhere near you, absolutely go out of your way to see it with the most people possible. Easily one of my favourites of this year so far.

[Winston*]

I love that something that seems so thoroughly and specifically Kiwi to me can be that appealing to an international audience.

Same thing with WWDITS, which has a bunch of jokes about real bars in my city.

[Ivan Drago]

Yeah, I saw this at the Nashville Film Festival a couple months ago, and can pretty much echo Henry Gale's sentiments. It's hilarious and very well done.

I'd love for this to get a wider release.

[Stay Puft]

Majestical.

[TGM]

Majestical.

Yup, that feels like the right word to describe this movie.

[Irish]

*** / ****

Big yay for Sam Neil, the kid, the girl on the horse, the two dogs, and all of the New Zealand countryside. Everything around these characters is warm, interesting, and compelling.

Big nay for everything else, because the movie has weird tonal shifts and the material fits together awkwardly.

[Grouchy]

This was a beautiful film that actually made me quite choked up near the end. Sam Neill and the fat kid build an amazing chemistry together and the film is goddamn beautifully directed. There's enough creativity in the way Waititi shoots action and chooses the soundtrack for his set pieces for three movies.

[Morris Schæffer]

*** / ****

Big yay for Sam Neil, the kid, the girl on the horse, the two dogs, and all of the New Zealand countryside. Everything around these characters is warm, interesting, and compelling.

Big nay for everything else, because the movie has weird tonal shifts and the material fits together awkwardly.

I kept thinking the whole movie rests so ridiculously on a misunderstanding, that perhaps they really should have gotten that cleared up rather than, you know, pursuing their escape so as to make them really look guilty. Of course, then we'd have no movie. I dunno, I guess I expected a reasonable adult in such a situation to tell the kid prematurely the fun was over.

Otherwise, very enjoyable. Cracked up when the cop was talking to the media and said they were gonna bring them in dead or alive, and then corrected himself.