Film Reviews

By Michael McNulty Ed Mosberg opens Destination Unknown slowly dressing into his perfectly preserved concentration camp uniform. Its thick black stripes serve as a morbid metaphor for his continued emotional imprisonment, for although Ed and the 12 others who feature in this documentary are survivors of the horrors of the Holocaust, they are not truly free. They’re experiences in the Nazi concentration camps and on the death marches will always be with them. Producer, Llion Roberts, having collected over 14...

By Linda Marric In Whitney Can I Be Me, renowned British documentarian Nick Broomfield lift the lid on the life of one of the most famous pop stars of our time, and does his best to discover the secret behind her untimely demise at the age of 48. Broomfield uses extensive “never seen before” footage and numerous interviews with those closest to the singer to tell a truly distressing story of how the once squeaky clean princess of black pop,...

Wyndham Hacket Pain @WyndhamHP John Berger, the author of many a book I have picked up in a bookshop only to put down again, has always looked like an intriguing and interesting figure, if albeit from afar. The highly regarded author, critic, and artist – who died earlier this year – has always seemed like a charismatic and thoughtful character more than worthy of an affectionate documentary like the one that has been produced. Consisting of four short films about...

By Wyndham Hacket Pain @WyndhamHP It is hard not to admire stand-up comedians who night after night seemingly achieve the impossible and manage to hold audiences in wonder as they stand on stage and tell jokes. At the same time there are films and television programs that despite their large budgets and vast crews struggle to keep people’s attention half as effectively. It can be amazing that comedians can achieve so much with seemingly so little. Dying Laughing keeps things very...

By Michael McNulty Mark Cousins’ Stockholm My Love is an exercise in patience. A frustratingly dull film with the pretentions of a film school graduate, who has gorged on likes of filmmakers such as Terrence Malick, then picked up a camera and disappeared down a rabbit hole of contemplation, exploring themes of urbanism, love, loss and the human spirit. Alva (Neneh Cheery), an architect, has been struggling to come to terms with accidently hitting and killing an elderly man with...

Clare (Teresa Palmer) travelled to Berlin in search of an unforgettable life experience, but one suspects that such plans didn’t involve being held captive in an airless apartment by a mentally unhinged local (played here with a sinister twitch by German actor Max Riemelt). Unfortunately for her, that’s exactly the situation she finds herself in during Berlin Syndrome, Aussie director Cate Shortland’s effectively chilly psycho-thriller. When Clare first meets Andi (Riemelt), however, she can’t help but be seduced by his...

After The Storm is a moving, yet unsentimental portrayal of inter-generational relationships, fraught family dynamics, and the fragility of the human condition. Part time father Ryota (Hiroshi Abe) spends his limited income on gambling, instead of child maintenance, and longs to rekindle the love lost when his ex-wife (Yoko Make) divorced him. His tiny one-room apartment wall may be filled with post-it notes of ideas, but his glory days as a successful author are long gone, and his job as...

Setting a film in an orphanage, one expects a tale filled with suffering. My Life As A Courgette is a creative accomplishment, managing to be heartwarming and light, even when it’s touching upon the dark subject matter of childhood pain and abandonment. This beautifully animated film is based on a novel by French writer Gilles Paris, and director Claude Barras and screenwriter Céline Sciamma have skilfully managed to create a tender coming of age story, where the loss and abuse...

By Michael McNulty John Goldschmidt’s Dough, penned by first time scriptwriters Jonathon Benson and Jez Freedman, feels like an afterschool special that’s trying to take on too much. Race, religion, culture and age, the differences, the divisions, the need to look past them all and come together is what this film is all about, with a “save the shop” thread running through the middle. Nat (Jonathan Pryce), an aging Jewish baker, with a dwindling customer base runs the risk of...