Tuesday new releases: 11 November 2025

Bugonia, Good Fortune and Predator: Badlands are in cinemas, Hedda is streaming on Prime Video and Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost is streaming on Apple TV.

Because I have watched far too many science-fiction movies, for the last few days I’ve been idly imagining thousands of nanobots inside the hole in my gum, breezily going back and forth rebuilding bits of jawbone, flesh and skin according to an ancient map of human anatomy and centuries of subsequent mutations.

Yes, now that you mention it, these painkillers are quite strong.

Today’s newsletter is a quick catch-up on some new releases, mostly using material recycled from last week’s RNZ At the Movies show.

Bugonia (Lanthimos, 2025)

But, despite his usual visual flair (supported this time by Robbie Ryan’s marvellous VistaVision cinematography), Bugonia is probably more of a Will Tracy film than a Lanthimos one.

Tracy has been writing and producing edgy 21st century satires for a few years – he was a writer on Succession and wrote the screenplay for the wild comedy horror film The Menu, which starred Ralph Fiennes as a demented Michelin-starred chef taking his revenge on everyone who ever crossed him.

Tracy was also a producer on Ari Aster’s recent Covid-comedy Eddingtonand Jesse Armstrong’s satire about a billionaire’s retreat turning murderous, Mountainhead.

So, Tracy’s script for Bugonia fits right into that jet-black worldview – that we should pretty much acknowledge that the modern world is on a wild ride to inevitable annihilation and that our only positive is that the ultra-rich oligarchs that are driving it will not only go down with the rest of us - they’ll probably go first.

(Read and listen to the full review.)

Good Fortune (Ansari, 2025)

That scene is one of several that we shall charitably call homages to previous films about the angels who walk among us. In Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire, Peter Falk’s ex-angel chose the life of a human because he too fell in love with fast food. Ansari’s opening shot is of an angel standing on the domed roof of Griffith Observatory, looking down on Los Angeles as Nicolas Cage did in the American remake of Wings of Desire, City of Angels, even wearing a similar long raincoat.

It also consciously reminds us of It’s a Wonderful Life, a film we are all going to watch again on Christmas Day, aren’t we? Or Powell & Pressburger’s classic A Matter of Life and Death. It’s nowhere near as good as any of those films, of course, and it being 2025, there’s a shit-ton more cursing, but Good Fortune is not without its charms and, thanks to the ethereal Keanu Reeves, it has a few things to say about how we treat people down here on Earth.

(Listen to the full review.)

Predator: Badlands (Trachtenberg, 2025)

Reader DD (temporarily of Silverstream) suggested that if was an eleven-year-old again, the new Predator movie could easily be his favourite film. The problem in for eleven-year-olds in Aotearoa, unfortunately, is that they aren’t allowed in to watch it as it has been rated R13 here (instead of PG-13 in the States).

Yes, it’s violent with lots of armed combat, destruction and severed limbs and whatnot, but there’s not a human being within light years of it, and all of the blood is green or that white fluid that keeps androids from seizing up. But there’s also a bunch of cool alien creatures, lots of Wētā Workshop designed hardware and a coming-of-age story that manages to open up the lore of the Predator-creatures themselves while also continuing to tie in to the ongoing saga of the evil Weyland-Yutani corporation.

Turns out that the Predator species is actually called the Yautja¹ and they are like the Klingons in Star Trek — obsessed with honour, domination, violence and succession-planning, to the extent that when we meet our hero, Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), he is fighting his brother for the right to not be euthanised as the weakest link in the tribe. Tragedy ensues.

In order to prove himself worthy of the Yautcha, Dek flies off to the planet Genna to claim the ultimate trophy, the head of the “unkillable” beast, the Kalisk. On arrival, he discovers that a Weyland-Yutani expedition has the same idea — to harvest valuable genetic material — but their party of Synthetics has been decimated in the attempt.

Talking torso Thia (Elle Fanning) persuades Dek to take her on the expedition and she helps him navigate some of the very fun dangers of a planet that seems to take great delight in finding innovative ways to dispose of intruders. On the way, Dek discovers that teamwork makes the dream work and that friends are the family you choose — none of which are core cultural principles for the Yautcha.

Superbly marshalled by Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane, Prey), Badlands is a hoot. You’re never very far away from an entertaining moment — the wee nod to Spielberg’s E.T. was a favourite of mine — and Schuster-Koloamatangi’s mask work is fantastic. He’s so expressive.

Made mostly in New Zealand (local casting experts Tina Cleary and Miranda Rivers deservedly get their names in the main credits along with costume designer Ngila Dickson and production designer Ra Vincent), at a time when we are once again debating the value of screen production subsidies, it’s worth mentioning that on an estimated budget of US$105m, two-thirds of that can be expected to stay in pockets here.

I saw someone online ask why we don’t subsidise all industry in Aotearoa New Zealand the same way. Well, maybe we should, but an easier answer is that Hollywood is an attention multiplier. The rebates to have 20th Century Studios build and shoot here generate a much higher profile than almost any other dollar we can spend.

Hedda (DaCosta, 2025)

Hedda is quite arch, though, not very naturalistic, and I suspect my resistance to it is either a resistance to Ibsen or that DaCosta’s script doesn’t depart enough from him. It features a heightened sensuality, or sexual tension, as if Ibsen was being filtered through Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn. (If you know how I feel about Saltburn, you’ll know that I don’t consider that to be much of a good thing.)

But Thompson carries the film with her combination of brazen self-confidence and utter desperation. Hedda, the classical character, is a complex jumble of desires, frustrations and neuroses – it’s no wonder actors are still queueing up to play her – and Thompson isn’t afraid to make her choices seem, if not unforgiveable, at least unsympathetic.

(Listen to the full review.)

Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost (Stiller, 2025)

Finally, a quick acknowledgement of another celebrity biopic (but a very good one) and another film about a celebrity told by one of their children.

If you created Apple TV’s biggest ever show², garnering 42 Emmy nominations (winning ten) and they asked you what else you wanted to do, like Ben Stiller, you might tell them that you want to make a film about your relationship with your parents and that is what he has done.

Stiller grew up with showbiz parents. When he was born, Jerry Stiller & Anne Meara were a famous nightclub comedy double-act with regular slots on the Ed Sullivan Show and were becoming a fixture of the daytime talkshow circuit. Jerry was Jewish and Anne was Irish. Neither came from a performing family but the post-war years seemed to offer opportunities that had previously been withheld to people like them and they had a workmate that was hard for anyone to beat.

Jerry was anxious and lacked confidence. Comedy did not come easy to him and he needed to work at it. For Anne, it was the opposite. She was a gifted comic and audiences warmed to her easily. She would bridle at the endless improvisation required at home to produce new routines, and the constant rehearsal required to perfect them.

How do we know this? Because Jerry taped almost every single session and then meticulously catalogued and filed them. He was a hoarder of almost everything related to their careers — and little Benjy’s and sister Amy — and when he finally passed in 2020 at the age of 92, their huge apartment on Riverside Drive was full of memorabilia as well as memories.

The centrepiece of the film is Ben and Amy (and Stiller & Meara’s assistant Dawn) going through all this stuff, preparing the apartment to be sold. To dispose of their own childhood home. It’s that process that gives the film its universality, and provides insight into a complicated family and a complicated family business.

Nothing Is Lost is a very kind film. There are no big dramatic reveals, like Mariska Hargitay’s My Mom Jayne. Jerry and Anne were very different people but they kept it together and raised a good family, all the while trying to hold on to their own individual creative missions. You can see Ben Stiller himself, wrestling with the realisation that no matter how hard he tried to be a different kind of father or a different kind of artist, how much he finally resembled Jerry and his struggles and you can see how much effort is required for him to forgive them both.

1. This may have been common knowledge prior to Badlands but I’ve only recently returned to the Predator fold thanks Prey in 2022.

2. Severance.