The title gives a good indication of what to expect from this. Hector and the Search for Happiness is the story of Hector (Pegg) leaving his sheltered life as a well-to-do psychiatrist to travel the world in search of the meaning of happiness.

The "decoding" refers to the work done at UC Berkeley by renowned geneticist Mary-Claire King, whose accomplishments included developing genomic sequencing to identify the stolen children in Argentina's "dirty war".

If you're a Foo Fighters fan, there are many good reasons to be very, very excited right about now.

NZTrio play their final concert for the year at Q Theatre in Auckland on Sunday, and the opportunity of a Wellington preview proved irresistible.

The Dead Lands might start in a graveyard, and it sure creates quite a body count along the way. But among all that death it also feels more like the birth of something.

You've seen this story before - a curmudgeon reluctantly takes a lost kid under his wing and reveals he's not such a bad guy after all. But with Bill Murray playing the curmudgeon it's a story worth watching again.

A big part of Taylor Swift's enduring appeal is that she seems like a supposedly perfect being, all willowy, blonde, cookie-baking, and stage-dominating, and yet, she knows all about being sad, lonely, jealous, angry, and frustrated.

"If these boring hippies make it past the first week, I'm not watching anymore," I wrote.

Whiplash is a riveting, thrilling film that gets away with an ending that's perhaps just a little too clean, writes Russell Baillie.

This romantic comedy, based on Irish author Cecelia Ahern's novel Where Rainbows End, begins promisingly, writes Francesca Rudkin.

Fury is a reminder that war movies should be a guilty pleasure. You shouldn't enjoy the carnage, but that's what movies were invented for.

Welcome to the world of The Evil Within, the new psychological-horror game from Resident Evil's scare guru Shinji Mikami that doesn't hold back.

When the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra brought its Bold Worlds concert to town last year, the accent was on percussion.

Chris Brown's new album has taught me a valuable life lesson: never listen too closely to the lyrics of an R&B song. You will be grossed out.

With two new Prince albums, the reissue of two Hendrix albums (Cry of Love, Rainbow Bridge) and the next instalment of Hunger Games pending.

There is no complacent sitting back comfortably to watch Alexa Wilson's explosive and challenging choreography The Status of Being, made on the company's very new quintet of five impressive young dancers.

There's a grating irony about a game that's all about getting to the finish line quickly and cleanly having taken so long to actually make it into the shops, all banged-up on arrival.

Will Wood defies any normal categorisation. The Aucklander grew up playing classical violin and piano, and singing in choirs, before he got stuck into the drums and guitar.

New Zealand band [shift]’s debut album The Traveller is one that you’ll want to turn the volume up for.

Among the many things you can accuse Flying Lotus of being, boring is not one of them.

The Royal Shakespeare Company's project to stage all the plays over six years (the centrepiece of which will be the 400th anniversary, in 2016, of the playwright's death) continues with an energetic and good-natured production.

When British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher set about closing coal mines in 1984, it sparked a year-long strike by members of the National Union of Mineworkers, the memories of which still reverberate in the provinces.

Prime programme of 2014 with a distinct flavour.

Vector Arena was treated to some impressive southern hospitality last night, with Tennessee kid Justin Timberlake playing his first Auckland show of three.

Canadian-born director Mehta shows a keen eye for the mean streets of his ancestral homeland in this small, heartfelt story of a man's search for his missing son.