From its infancy, with the paper rationing of the 1940s, to the current explosion of indie and mainstream, DIY and Internet, The Comics Show concisely captures the amazing breadth and distinctive feel of sequential art in New Zealand. In fifty-odd minutes Shirley Horrocks sketches half a dozen intriguing potraits, each of which could support their own spotlight: self-taught pulp penciller Eric Resetar, who imagined the first All Black on Mars; the sinuous brushwork of bro’Town illustrator Ant Sang and his magnum opus Dharma Punks; or NZ’s Bob Crumb, Barry Linton, whose brilliant work on counterculture comic Strips and miscellaneous epics scream out for printing. Shitty stereotypes have always plagued the funnybooks, but Horrocks never falls for all that and quickly gets past the emo/teenage years of marginalised navel-gazing and onto the social commentary. Chris Knox observes the connection between the (punk) musician’s ethos and comicbooks, while Dylan Horrocks, whose metanarrative Hicksville gave New Zealand a work with real thematic maturity and creative rigor, earns his keep as an eloquent ambassador, especially on the topic of commercial traps awaiting any future industry in Aotearoa. Such logistic considerations are never far from the Kiwi comics crew, but Horrocks always strikes a nice balance, getting the skinny on creative processes, interviewing both blokes and sheilas, and looking forward as well as back. Keep an eye out for the DVD release, and a television slot in early September, for a fascinating look into a long-overdue subject.

The remarkable genre of A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints – an adaptation of the memoirs of rookie writer-director Dito Montiel – reflects its major theme: real growth and progress can only come through re-experiencing the destructive youth Montiel left behind. Perhaps such public and audacious therapy could only come from America, but as Montiel sees his friends destroyed by the ethnic pressure cooker that is 1980s Queens, escape is the only sane way out, even if it means forsaking a family and community that can’t comprehend change. (‘If you want to go to China, go to Chinatown,’ repeats young Dito’s father tragically.) Robert Downey Jr. and Shia LaBeouf both excel as Montiel – the older redeemer and confused delinquent respectively – but Channing Tatum’s portrayal of Dito’s stubborn, brutish pal Antonio, who spirals out of control as he struggles to figure out where he belongs a world that has only shown him violence, is as terrifying and compelling as a four-car pileup. With its attention to detail – particularly the soundtrack (Lou Reed, Kiss’s ‘New York Groove’)—and infectious cynicism, at times Guide feels like an ode to a lost New York. Mistakes of the past flash quickly from all directions, like knives; the dual narratives overlap and blur; the voiceovers and title remain obscure: Guide is not an easy film but perfects the art of menace at the heart of a nuclear family about to explode.

In Pia Marais’s debut The Unpolished, Birol Ünel (Head-On) again plays a hot-headed, self-destructive boho bum as well as second fiddle to a younger woman. This time round it’s the freckled Stevie (Ceci Schmitz-Chuh), who tries to live a normal teenager’s life despite her parents’ criminal proclivities and laissez-faire approach to raising their child. With a dual life in Portugal and a life on the run, it might look on paper like The State I Am In, but in exposing the selfishness and hypocrisy that lies behind free love and moral creativity, The Unpolished shares more in common with The Edukators. Life passes woozily in an abandoned house in the country, spent hooking up deals, hiding drugs and loafing about with slackers, but Stevie makes the real journey towards maturity and independence that her parents ought to have made decades ago.—Joe Sheppard