The 2010s started with Taika Waititi’s breakout movie; it ended with him being tipped for a Best Picture Oscar. But this wasn’t just the Taika Decade. Here are 10 movies that epitomised New Zealand cinema in the 2010s, as judged by Josie Adams, Sam Brooks and Alice Webb-Liddall.

Boy

It’s not the first film Taika Waititi made. It’s not even the first one he got international accolades for (that would be the Oscar-nominated Two Cars, One Night). But it is the first one the public lost its shit over. We kicked off the decade with Taika Waititi’s first smash hit, starring a young James Rolleston.

Rolleston is the titular Boy, and Waititi plays his estranged, strange father Alamein. Set in 1980s Northland, at the peak of Michael Jackson’s career and during the rule of the Crazy Horse gang (total membership: three), Boy captured a part of New Zealand that could have been grim and found the joy in it. / Josie Adams

The Dead Lands

In 2014, Toa Fraser’s The Dead Lands brought te reo Māori to the big screen. Hongi (James Rolleston, now a teenager), seeks revenge on war-bent chief Wirepu, who killed his father. Te Kohe Tuhaka plays the villainous chief perfectly: he’s larger-than-life, terrifying, charismatic, and ruthless. When Wirepu and his men cross into the Dead Lands, Hongi must face the ghosts and memories that live inside it to get the vengeance he seeks.

The Dead Lands weaves traditional storytelling with all the excitement of a modern action flick – it’s a damn good movie, and the te reo is a great educational bonus for those of us who aren’t fluent. 

A Netflix series based on the movie just got green-lit, proving it’s got appeal for audiences who aren’t so familiar with Māori storytelling and legend. /JA

What We Do in the Shadows

What We Do in the Shadows (2014) was Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s first directorial duet, and it was music to the eyes. The deadpan delivery that made Kiwi comedy famous in shows like Flight of the Conchords was translated to the screen and it made waves both here and overseas. Want proof of its huge impact? What We Do in the Shadows is currently the basis for not one but two spin-off television shows. / Alice Webb-Liddall

Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen

Merata Mita was a powerful, pioneering force behind Māori cinema and this documentary made by her son brings out the best of her work and her history. Merata Mita was the director behind the 1980s films Bastion Point and Patu! Her son Heperi Mita is an archivist and filmmaker, a skillset that works brilliantly to frame his mother’s art.

Heperi’s 2018 documentary is an ode to creativity and passion, but it’s also an in-depth, unusual family portrait. /JA

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Waititi’s third Kiwi classic of the decade was Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Not only did it rake in the awards, but it introduced the world to Ryan Reynold’s BFF Julian Dennison. Wilderpeople was an enormous, deserved hit, and it ended up overtaking Waititi’s own Boy for the title of highest-grossing New Zealand film. / AWL

Fantail

Fantail (2013) is a film that now seems ahead of its time. A thriller that engages with race and class with fierce intelligence and genuine grace, anchored by a performance by Sophie Henderson (who also wrote the film) that’s both fearless and vulnerable. The film critiqued New Zealand culture, and what it means to live in a bicultural country where the lines are increasingly blurred, particularly for those who are living on the line of being marginalised, and being othered. / Sam Brooks

Tickled

It’s not surprising that the man who brought you an interview with a guy who had sex with a dolphin and a saga about a clamp-mad yacht thief co-directed Tickled. This 2016 documentary about “competitive tickling” takes a wild turn as David Farrier and Dylan Reeve uncover what seems to be a secret fetish ring. It’s what Farrier does best – digging up the most strange, horrifying stories and bringing them to light using hard-nosed investigative chops cut through with genuine sweetness. / AWL

The Changeover

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbmeGYNVwsw

Based on the Margaret Mahy story, this 2019 fantasy/sci-fi proves New Zealand can do creepy coming-of-age horror as well as any Swede. Although this film is bursting with the combined star power of Timothy Spall, Melanie Lynskey, and Lucy Lawless, it’s young Erana James that takes the centre stage in her fight against Spall’s evil witch. / JA

The Breaker Upperers

Local comedy legends Jackie Van Beek and Madeleine Sami finally got to write, direct, and star in a film and they chose to make it about breaking up couples and getting up the duff. 

Van Beek’s character is uptight and deadpan, Sami’s is bubbly and full of questionable choices. James Rolleston is just really into rugby and after a tough few years for the actor, we were all so happy for him to play a big dumb-dumb and have a good time. / JA

The Hobbit Trilogy

You’re unlikely to find them on the critics’ choice lists. It’s debatable even whether they should qualify as “New Zealand films”. But there’s no mistaking the impact Peter Jackson’s second Middle-earth trilogy had on New Zealand: at the box office and across culture, politics and Wellington Airport. 

Around 2pm every day this week, The Spinoff counts down the 100 most iconic local television moments of the 2010s. Today, moments 40-21.

Previously: 

The 100 NZ TV moments of the decade, #100 – #81
The 100 NZ TV moments of the decade, #80 – #61
The 100 NZ TV moments of the decade, #60 – 41

40) This wonderful live cross

Blood moon. Artificial light. Up high. Back to you in the studio. / Alex Casey

39) Filthy Rich and everything about Filthy Rich, 2016 

To quote Duncan Greive’s chilled out review of the premiere. “The show becomes a caricature of New Zealand, with heartless wealth and plucky poverty and a cynical pimp and a conniving businesswoman. The show it called to mind the most was Dallas, a groundbreaking drama centred around the scions of a wealthy family. State-of-the-art in 1980. Nearly four decades on we need so much more.”

38) Miriama Kamo throws down on Hosking, 2016

Marae host Miriama Kamo calmly put Hosking in his place after he’d added his two cents to a Seven Sharp story about New Plymouth Mayor Andrew Judd. “Like most Māori, I have lived with casual and often deliberate racism my entire life,” Miriama said. “But when we use a powerful prime time television platform to dismiss and ignore racism in our community, in my view, that’s unacceptable.” / TW

37) The woman tells all, 2016

The second season of The Bachelor NZ was mostly super boring – Jordan Mauger, a sometime actor, doing a poor job of faking interest in a group of confused women. Yet one genuinely liked him: Fleur Verhoeven, who eventually ‘won’ the series. Her joy was short-lived – he broke up with her hours after shooting wrapped, and she responded in an electric and deeply affecting interview on Story. He became a pariah – but worse was to come. At the end of a lengthy interview on The Spinoff’s ‘The Real Pod’ the following year, he casually revealed to the hosts that he flipped a coin to decide the winner. The story went around the world, making it the third Three reality show of the decade (after Real Housewives of Auckland and X-Factor NZ) to acquire international ignominy. / DG

36) The Shortland Street poonami, 2018

Drew was just a doctor, standing in front of a burst septic pipe, asking it to drown him. Now this was an Emergency Defecation Situation worthy of some Hilary Barry hysterics. Pootastic. / TW

35) Wolf meets Cheryl on Westside, 2017

As I wrote in 2017, he was just a boy in a leather jacket, standing in front of a girl, asking her to let him steal a fistful of cigarettes. / AC

34) Robyn’s tumble on My First Home, 2015

Wheelbarrows are evil and must be stopped. / TW

33) Suzy Cato arrives on Dancing With the Stars NZ, 2018

Where Were You When Suzy Cato Burst Through The Crowd Wearing A Gold Lamé Top And Leather Pants? / AC

32) Justin Bieber doesn’t know German, 2010

I think it’s important to acknowledge just what an impact Justin Bieber’s whirlwind 2010 visit had on our pop culture canon. Not only did it provide this wonderful moment, it also gave us the killer L&P and the great hat heist of the decade. Chill? We don’t say that in New Zealand. / AC

31) This is the fucking news

It was an iconic exchange. “This is a fucking library”. “This is the fucking news!” It doesn’t matter that the moment was actually a scripted part of a law revue skit – it felt real and in character at that moment, coming at the peak of Paddy Gower’s eye-popping political editor fame, before he chilled out On Weed. / DG

30) The end of ULive

“For two and a bit years, the hallowed halls of TVNZ’s gleaming mothership were a playground for New Zealand’s most exciting young talent. There was the guy from Squirt and two future Billy T winners, one of whom just won the Olympics of comedy in Edinburgh. It was eccentric, electric, and then it was gone.” / AC

29) Mouse in the house on The Ridges, 2012

The Spinoff’s Hayden Donnell investigated the conspiracy of the decade: what was that mouse really doing in Sally Ridge’s kitchen? “It crept up silently. Jaime saw it first. She screamed. Sally immediately screamed in reply. The mouse just seemed to dance in the centre of the room, ignoring their distress, taunting them like a deranged shaman of the underworld.” / TW

28) Guy Williams pranks Breakfast, 2010

Crazy to think that this was definitely, definitely the last time a comedian pranked the media. / AC

27) David Seymour twerks 

Even accounting for Maz Quinn’s stone-faced, stone-bodied one episode cameo, David Seymour was easily the least competent contestant on Dancing with the Stars NZ this decade, and would be all-time if another ACT leader, Rodney Hide, hadn’t dropped his partner mid-routine last decade. Seymour was kept on by text voters as a kind of  living meme, which directly led to the splendour of a hypercoloured libertarian twerking on primetime TV. / DG

26) Naz vs the world on The Women Tell All

New Zealanders aren’t meant to make US-style reality television. We’re too shy, too self-effacing. Too damn polite most of the time. This is why Naz Khanjani was such a startling presence on the second season of The Bachelor NZ – she was a lot more than we were used to. Yet all that was just an appetiser for her command performance on The Women Tell All, when she dominated the show to the point of breaking its strict format, lying all over Mauger and delivering endless perfect lines, searing herself into the memory of anyone who watched it. / DG

25) Oriini Kaipara reads the news, 2019

“This month journalist Oriini Kaipara made history as the new face of the 1News midday bulletin and the first newsreader on a mainstream news broadcast to wear moko kauae,” Leonie Hayden wrote for The Spinoff earlier this week. “She expressed her joy in a Facebook post, saying ‘This is for US. ALL OF US.’ And it really felt like it was.”

24) National Party ‘Lose Yourself’ election campaign ad, 2014

The National Party rowed into a river of controversy when Eminem’s music publisher sued them for breaching copyright on notorious boomer anthem ‘Lose Yourself’. Steven Joyce reckoned the ad was “pretty legal”, Eight Mile was spewing, and National was later ordered to pay $600,000 for the use of Eminem’s work. The name of National’s track? ‘Eminem-esque’. / TW

23) Know what I’ve heard about you? Not a fucking thing, 2016

Fact: Gilda Kirkpatrick’s savage putdown of fellow real housewife Angela Stone was a better, more withering one-liner than almost any which came out of New Zealand’s scripted drama in the ‘00s. / DG

22) Ferndale welcomes Blue

For all the undeserved crap that Shortland Street gets heaped upon it, largely by people who don’t watch it, it’s a lot more progressive than most of our other TV media. / TW

21) Ghost Chips, 2011

Spoon. / TW