NZIFF: Remake (Ross McElwee, 2025)

With most of the films I saw at the NZ International Film Festival this year, I had almost no context going in. I only picked two films to watch, so I relied on my usher schedule to dictate what else I would write about.

McElwee directed Sherman’s March, a documentary I have been meaning to see for years.

Whenever I get to it, this film is going to hang over it. Indeed, this film will loom over his entire career. 

Remake is based around an attempt to adapt Sherman’s March into a feature film, and the death of Ross’s son Adrian (1989-2016), whose life had been partially documented through his father’s work.

A reflection on Ross’ss career, and relationship with his family, Remake is made up of footage from his previous films, and footage his son shot for his own unfinished project. 

Filmmaking is about control and choice - what we show and what we do not.

In going through his footage, and his motivations behind his choices, the filmmaker is trying to reckon with his career, and his relationship with his son.

Halfway through the film, it begins to condense in time, moving through all the footage Ross has covering the year leading up to his son’s death.

The ellipses of the footage mirror Ross’s sense of loss and desire to know more about his son’s internal life, and the life that was not captured on camera.

One sequence of Adrian’s footage included is a to-camera monologue his son shot, a familiar format for addressing the viewer - however, the younger McElwee forgot to record sound. So all we have is Adrian silently mouthing words at us - another avenue into knowing denied.

Another sequence  is made up of extended POV shots his son recorded while skiing.

Ross says it gives him a stronger sense of alignment - when Adrian/the camera stops in a clearing to survey the surroundings, Ross, as narrator, hypothesising on his son’s train of thought.

The elder McElwee shows some fear that his camera turned his son into an object, and put him at a distance from his family - now this footage is all he has.

Ross’s narration, the last element, the filmmaker’s attempt to provide context and understand, is ultimately a document of helplessness, regret and self-interrogation

As the film progresses, the lack of footage filmed by Ross himself becomes a metaphor for the changing relationship between parent and child - his son made his own choices, and he grew up into someone else.

A reflection on time, regret, and human subjectivity, Remake is a quietly devastating work - an act of cinematic self-laceration that by its very specificity, reaches toward a deeper human truth, one that haunts its filmmaker (and the viewer): the ultimate unknowability of the individual human experience.

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Late Fame

NZIFF: Late Fame (Kent Smith, 2026)

 When he is recognised on the street by a young poet, Meyers (Edmund Donovan), Ed Saxberger (Willem Dafoe) finds his settled life upended.

Swept into Meyers’ club of young artists, Saxberger is shocked to discover they are fans of a poetry collection he published as a young man.

Gratified by the attention - especially from actress Gloria (Greta Lee) - Saxberger joins the group.

Will the group inspire his muse? Or is the group just using Saxberger to trigger their own?

There is no way I would have seen this film without the festival. I like Willem Dafoe, but I do not keep up with his filmography.

I am glad I did.

Based on a novel by Arthur Schnitzler, the film is a perceptive, quietly satirical take on malaise and the desire to harken back to an imagined past.

Saxberger is introduced going about his days - working at the post office, drinking with friends.

He seems to be going through the motions of a routine.

When he is drawn into the group, it feels like he is suddenly energised.

There is an uneasy tension to the group’s dynamic - there is a vampiric quality to Meyers, and the way he and his friends seem to be more interested in the aesthetics of a Pat age.

Most of the people they associate with Saxberger are people he himself looked up to - the key difference is that he actually interacted with them. To him, Allen Ginsberg was a person, not a remote ideal stripped of humanity and context.

Saxberger also feels like a leftover from an earlier version of New York - a more egalitarian and desperate time, before the city remade itself for the wealthy parents of Meyers’ group.

The film plays on ego and vanity the club are a group of rich kids cosplaying as poor artists.

This is foregrounded in a hilariously deadpan scene in which our protagonist visits Meyers’ apartment. Dafoe never leans toward the joke. 

What makes the film fascinating is that Saxberger is not as invigorated as his new friends hope.

His interest is more human - he is a lonely man who sees an opportunity to connect with a woman.

Lee’s Gloria is the most heightened of the group - and the performer keeps that mask up for most of the runtime. Her front is a way to both join the group, and shelter her internal self.

 

It is a deceptively broad performance - but it is one of the elements that maintains the film’s underlying tension:

This group goes on about wanting to get at something more real - but they are ultimately all putting on a show for each other.

Jake Lacey has a great one-scene role as a wealthy editor who is interested in publishing Saxberger’s memoir - a sign of how is already being converted into an artefact of the past.

A great New York movie, and a fantastic showcase for Dafoe.

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The History of Concrete

NZIFF: The History of Concrete (John Wilson, 2026)

It is always the films you do not choose to see that end up surprising you the most. It’s a tired line with me and the NZ International Film Festival, but evergreen.

This film is a great test case.

Usually I leave movies as soon as they are done.

However, because I was an usher for this screening, I had the opportunity to get the audience’s reaction to the film.

And with History of Concrete I was very curious.

The reactions ran the gamut - from amusement to complete frustration.

I loved it. 

What starts out as an attempt at home renovation gone wrong turns into a quest - not just to learn about concrete, but the world we have built from it.

Every time Wilson meets a new person with a seemingly unrelated story or goal of their own, the film re-orients itself around this person.

The film goes in so many directions, I forgot that the initial ‘sequence’ is based around our heroes’ attendance at a creative writing workshop for Hallmark movies.

Thus, as we learn more about the titular substance, we also take in how it has affected Wilson’s city (the film could double as a document of the US’s decking infrastructure), and the story of the various denizens within it.

Recommended.

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NZIFF: Seoul Guardians (Cho Chul-young, Kim Jong-woo, Shin-Wan Kim, 2026)

An on-scene chronicle of the siege of South Korea’s parliament in 2024, Seoul Guardians was not on my radar when I was looking at the listings for the NZIFF.

In December of that year, president Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law and referred to the opposition parties as supporters of North Korea.

This self-coup ended when parliamentarians passed a motion to cancel his declaration.

The president would later be impeached.

Happening a month after the US re-elected Donald Trump, it felt ironic. 

Trump had also attempted a coup four years earlier, but he had not been punished - and he was rewarded with a return to power.

South Korea’s response felt like a model of how to defend democracy.

Part of the reason for this rapid response - from MPs and ordinary citizens - is context.

South Korea had gone through a series of authoritarian governments, an era which only came to an end in the late eighties.

This is not the distant past or a hypothetical fear, something this film makes clear from the outset, intercutting the siege with brief cutaways to the infamous Gwangju massacre of 1980, an enduring symbol of the South Korean dictatorship, and the desire to avoid reverting back to it.

The film does not dwell on these events, preferring to let them linger in the background - the unspoken threat of how this attempted coup could have turned out.

There is some narration, but most of the film is presented as a fly on the wall, intercutting between different news cameras and phones - providing a truly subjective impression from inside the parliament.

 There is a raw immediacy and claustrophobia to this footage, as we are placed among the staffers struggling to barricade the doors against the military units trying to shut down proceedings.

It is chilling and - despite knowing how it resolved - incredibly tense.

Watching legislators try to follow processes while soldiers are literally outside the doors emphasises how tenuous democracy truly is.

And even though the coup attempt was thwarted, there is no sense of catharsis:

The film ends intercutting the anti-government protests with the president’s supporters.

The President’s coup may have failed - but the forces he represents remain.

Seoul’s guardians have won this one battle, but the fight for democracy will continue.   

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OUT NOW: Coyote v ACME (Dave Green, 2026)

After his latest scheme fails, Will E. Coyote turns his attention from eternal prey the Road Runner (Eric Bauza) to the manufacturer of his defective gadgets, the ACME Corporation.

Enlisting lawyer Kevin Avery (WIll Forte) to make his case, Coyote finds himself at the heart of a conspiracy to preserve the company’s monopoly - at all costs.

Aside from catching the occasional short or compilation of clips on Youtube, I have not watched Looney Tunes since I was a kid. 

Still, there is an elemental quality to Will E. Coyote and Road Runner’s eternal battle of wits that is easy to grasp. 

If this film falls down, it is in this respect.

This is a legal drama, the familiar story of a broken down lawyer regaining his ideals in a case against a massive conglomerate.

On first glance, Will Forte is perfect casting as the Coyote’s human foil - Forte’s comic persona is a heightened form of buffoonery that makes sense for the surreal anarchy of Looney Tunes. 

Surprisingly - aside from an excruciating attempt at an opening statement at the final trial - he is relatively lowkey. He keys into Avery’s sense of disillusionment and fear of failure. 

 

John Cena is also effectively cast as Forte’s arrogant legal rival - and for similar reasons. 

What is ironic about this film is that it is the Toons who feel miscast.

There is an inherent pathos to Coyote - a pure and primal desire that is easy to grasp.

Making him the co-lead of a legal drama is a funny idea - for a short.

Fundamentally, the movie is not that funny. As the film progressed, I found the laughs growing more sporadic - and it dawned on me that the concept did not have the endurance for a feature.

This film is so plot-dependant, Coyote feels slightly off as Forte’s comic or dramatic foil.

There is an anarchy to the shorts, foundational to their DNA, that gets neutered. 

Bugs Bunny shows up as the film’s version of Deep Throat but he is basically exposition, while other heavyweights Daffy and Porky are basically walk-ons.

Some of the toon casting works - Foghorn Leghorn as the pompous head of the corporation.

And vocal performer Eric Bauza, who handles the lion share of the familiar casts’ voices, does a good job.

But a lot of it feels undercooked - Elmer Fudd as a senator is a fascinating idea but the joke is never milked.

I am glad it was released, and it is good that it has turned out to be a modest success for its distributor. 

As a finger to the powers that be at its former studio, I salute it. As a movie, it is just fine.

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