Alison Routledge Movies

Which is more important -- loyalty to your friends, or making your dreams come true? A young girl is forced to make that difficult choice in this comedy-drama set in the early '50s. Elizabeth Wakefield (Sally Andrews) is a 12-year-old girl growing up in the small New Zealand town of Middleton. Elizabeth is fascinated by her namesake, the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II, and when word gets out that The Queen may be visiting New Zealand, the schoolgirl sparks a letter-writing campaign to invite The Queen to Middleton, with the help of her best friend, Annabel (Anna Sheridan). The good news is that Elizabeth's plan works, and The Queen will indeed visit Middleton, but the bad news is it's not certain if Elizabeth will get to meet her. Elizabeth's father, John (Mark Clare), runs the town's biggest business, a cheese factory, and it looks like The Queen may pay the factory a visit, but Mrs. Hobson (Liddy Holloway), a pretentious sort who heads the ladies' gardening club, believes the local Rhododendron Trust might be a destination more befitting the Royal Family (it doesn't help that Mrs. Hobson has been having an affair with the mayor). Amidst all this confusion, a local eccentric makes her opinions known in a series of public rants -- Hira Mata (Vicky Haughton), a elderly woman of Maori descent who still holds a grudge against the British for the death of her grandfather at the hands of English colonials almost a century ago. Elizabeth gets to know Hira, and comes to the conclusion she's not as crazy as most folks have led her to believe, and she decides to stand by her new friend when Hira Mata is accused of vandalism, even if it might prevent the visit of her beloved Queen. Her Majesty was the first feature film for director Mark J. Gordon. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The New Zealand-produced thriller Bridge to Nowhere takes place in and around an actual unfinished bridge, abandoned in the mid-1920s. Five urban youths head into the wilderness in search of this legendary structure. They have the misfortune to cross the path of mad mountain dweller Bruno Lawrence, who considers himself lord of all he surveys. In the tradition of The Most Dangerous Game, Lawrence decides to hunt down the kids like animals. Is there any 1980s New Zealand-based film that doesn't star Bruno Lawrence? ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this unremittingly serious, undistinguished, yet well-acted tale of the supernatural, two different men are possessed by spirits of Native Americans after they separately wander into a sacred burial ground, angering the spirits enough for them to retaliate. When John (Gabriel Walsh) and Sybil (Susan Strasberg) come home with their son after a trip to the Mojave Desert, they bring an unusual stone back as a memento of the trip. The stone seems to cause strange noises and other inexplicable phenomena, and then one day their son is killed by a truck driver in a freak highway accident. As the father's mental condition deteriorates from that point onward, it is revealed that both John and the truck driver are possessed by angry spirits of Native American warriors, and unless the spirits are exorcised, the two men are destined to meet in a battle to the death. Director John Bender cuts back and forth between the truck driver and the father, which might confuse (or even irritate) some viewers since in the beginning there is no explanation of how or why the two men are connected. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi