Reviews by Amber Wilkinson

Order by: Date, A–Z

• 
  Neptune Frost (2021)

  Review preview for Neptune Frost

  Set in a futuristic Rwanda, the themes are as old as the hills - with colonialism, identity and self-determination chief among them.

  The love story between an African intersex runaway and a coltan miner, and the virtual marvel born as a result of their union.
• 
  Mirror (2022)

  Review preview for Mirror

  The arc of the film isn't particularly defined, but this is a positive in some ways as the filmmakers aren't trying to 'force' any sort of triumph in adversity narrative.

  Documentary about the lives of a group of acid attack survivors.
• 
  Boiling Point (2020)

  Review preview for Boiling Point

  Given the state of the things, it's fair to say that some of the situations that will arise are telegraphed ahead of time, but that adds rather than detracts from the tension - after all, aren't all satisfying meals in some ways connected to anticipation?

  The shift has hardly begun for head chef Andy and he’s already behind with everything. His restaurant is overbooked, there’s a disgruntled inspector combing the kitchen and, if that weren’t enough, a culinary icon and a respected food critic have turned up for dinner.
• 
  Feature Film About Life (2021)

  Review preview for Feature Film About Life

  Generational tensions and expectations are also explored and you can feel Sarutyte's love for all of her characters, each lovingly crafted, no matter how small.

  A woman finds herself in increasingly curious situations after the death of her father.
• 
  Onoda: 10,000 Nights In The Jungle (2021)

  Review preview for Onoda: 10,000 Nights In The Jungle

  Harari and his co-writers Bernard Cendron and Vincent Poymiro, show how the war propaganda becomes internalised in these men, so that even when they are given signs that the conflict may be over, they rationalise that it must be some sort of 'fake news' designed to trick them.

  It's the end of 1944. Japan is losing the war. Hiroo Onoda is sent to an island in the Philippines just before the American landing. The handful of soldiers that he takes with him into the jungle keep fighting, not realising the war is over.
• 
  Paris, 13th District (2021)

  Review preview for Paris, 13th District

  Audiard captures the fluid nature of relationships for a younger generation navigating both on and offline opportunities and, because this is French, it also features plenty of gracefully worked sexual encounters.

  Émilie meets Camille who is attracted to Nora, who crosses paths with Amber. Three girls and a boy - They're friends, sometimes lovers and often both.
• 
  Olga (2021)

  Review preview for Olga

  The first-time director shows an adept grip when it comes to the rhythms of her craft, letting silence or specific sounds break out at unexpected moments, including a gripping scene when all we can hear is the spring and creak of the uneven bars.

  2013. A 15-year-old gymnast is torn between Switzerland - where she is training for the European Championship in preparation for the Olympics - and Ukraine, where her mother is a journalist, reporting on Euromaidan unrest.
• 
  Compartment No 6 (2021)

  Review preview for Compartment No 6

  The everyday feel is acute – you can virtually smell the pickle jar vinegar and raw spirit and imagine a slight stickiness on the seats as Jani-Petteri Passi’s camera captures the scene with a looseness that rocks along with the rhythm of the train.

  A young Finnish woman escapes an enigmatic love affair in Moscow by boarding a train to the arctic port of Murmansk, but is forced to share the long ride and a tiny sleeping car with a Russian miner.
• 
  Red Rocket (2021)

  Review preview for Red Rocket

  The grooming of Strawberry may have some moments of levity but that, in many ways, makes it all the more uncomfortable.

  A washed-up ex-porn star tries to get his life back together in his hometown, sparking trouble for those in his orbit.
• 
  Young Plato (2021)

  Review preview for Young Plato

  This isn't just about big concepts and whiteboards but the everyday positive reinforcement that helps kids get on in all senses of the phrase.

  Observational documentary about a school in Belfast's Ardoyne and its inspirational headmaster.
• 
  Casablanca Beats (2021)

  Review preview for Casablanca Beats

  Although the heartfelt nature of the film is evident, it's a shame Ayouch became so wedded to its documentary element when its more stylised moments are where it finds its real energy.

  Young people from the Casablanca slum of Sidi Moumen participate in a cultural project that encourages them to express themselves through hip hop.
• 
  Benediction (2021)

  Review preview for Benediction

  Running alongside the film's more elegiac sweep is a cut-glass wit.

  Siegfried Sassoon biopic.
• 
  The Gravedigger's Wife (2021)

  Review preview for The Gravedigger's Wife

  There's a straightforwardness to the telling of this tale that adds to its accessibility.

  A gravedigger finds himself up against it as he tries to get the cash together to help his gravely ill wife get medical treatment.
• 
  Aftershock (2022)

  Review preview for Aftershock

  While all of the statistics - and Eiselt and Lee ensure they keep on coming - are brutal, the positive energy of activism is at the heart of this documentary.

  Following the preventable deaths of their partners due to childbirth complications, two bereaved fathers galvanise activists, birth-workers and physicians to reckon with one of the most pressing American crises of our time – the US maternal health crisis.
• 
  The Exiles (2022)

  Review preview for The Exiles

  Puts the past into a direct dialogue with the present.

  Documentarian Christine Choy tracks down three exiled dissidents from the Tiananmen Square massacre, in order to find closure on an abandoned film she began shooting in 1989.
• 
  Klondike (2022)

  Review preview for Klondike

  Gorbach presents war as an insidious and dangerous beast, prowling about the edges of people's lives, swiping at those who aren't directly involved just as easily as those who are.

  The story of a Ukrainian family living on the border of Russia - Ukraine during the start of war. Irka refuses to leave her house even as the village gets captured by armed forces. Shortly after, they find themselves at the center of an air crash catastrophe on July 17, 2014.
• 
  Cha Cha Real Smooth (2022)

  Review preview for Cha Cha Real Smooth

  The reason all this earnestness works is because Raiff really cares about all his characters, taking time to consider each in their own right.

  A directionless college graduate embarks on a relationship with a young mum and her teenage daughter while learning the boundaries of his new bar mitzvah party-starting gig.
• 
  A Love Song (2022)

  Review preview for A Love Song

  Walker-Silverman is in no hurry to reach that encounter and he makes slipping into the rhythms of Faye's day a thing of gentle joy.

  Two childhood sweethearts, now both widowed, share a night by a lake in the mountains. A love story for those who are alone.
• 
  Watcher (2022)

  Review preview for Watcher

  Okuno definitely has a feel for atmosphere but the look is not enough.

  A young woman moves into a new apartment with her fiancé and is tormented by the feeling that she is being stalked by an unseen watcher in an adjacent building.
• 
  Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (2022)

  Review preview for Good Luck to You, Leo Grande

  Inevitably, there is a slight air of the stage about this and an emotional gear change at the midway point doesn't quite feel fully earned but the actors so fully inhabit these roles that they carry you with them.

  Nancy Stokes, a retired school teacher, is yearning for some adventure, and some sex. Good sex. And she has a plan: she hires a young sex worker named Leo Grande.
• 
  Happening (2021)

  Review preview for Happening

  Diwan lets the cold hard facts trickle in as weeks are marked off at the bottom of the screen.

  France, 1963. Anne is a bright young student with a promising future ahead of her. But when she falls pregnant, she sees the opportunity to finish her studies and escape the constraints of her social background disappearing.
• 
  Palm Trees And Power Lines (2022)

  Review preview for Palm Trees And Power Lines

  Tucker's performance ripples like a mirage, all charm on the surface but with an air of something much less cuddly

  A bored 17-year-old falls for a man twice her age.
• 
  Jockey (2021)

  Review preview for Jockey

  Makes you realise that its not just the horses that have been ridden hard for years but their jockeys, too.

  An ageing jockey is determined to win one last championship, but his dream is complicated when a young rookie shows up claiming to be his son.
• 
  The Souvenir: Part II (2021)

  Review preview for The Souvenir: Part II

  Hogg has always had an eye for architectural as well as emotional spaces and we see it here, as she floods the large rooms of Julie's parents' home with light, so that she almost seems to be paling out of them, which, coupled with her often silent reactions as others babble around her makes it seem as though she is the one who might be the ghost.

  In the aftermath of her tumultuous relationship with a charismatic and manipulative older man, Julie begins to untangle her fraught love for him in making her graduation film, sorting fact from his elaborately constructed fiction.
• 
  The Eyes Of Tammy Faye (2021)

  Review preview for The Eyes Of Tammy Faye

  The real and the performed run so close together that, by the end of the film, it's not entirely clear if even Tammy knows where one ends and the other starts.

  An intimate look at the extraordinary rise, fall and redemption of televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker.
• 
  Fire Of Love (2022)

  Review preview for Fire Of Love

  The force of nature comes to stunning, searing life thanks to the Kraffts' footage, whether it is rivers of magma or gouts of smoke, with the film gradually building the case that they knew exactly the impact of what they were committing to camera would be.

  Intrepid scientists and lovers Katia and Maurice Krafft died in a volcanic explosion doing the very thing that brought them together: unraveling the mysteries of volcanoes by capturing the most explosive imagery ever recorded. A doomed love triangle between Katia, Maurice and volcanoes, told through their archival footage.
• 
  Utama (2022)

  Review preview for Utama

  Grisi has a background in photography and though the images are moving here, there's often a stillness to them and they are no less perfectly composed.

  In the Bolivian highlands, an elderly Quechua couple has been living the same daily life for years. When an uncommon long drought threatens their entire way of life, Virginio and his wife Sisa face the dilemma of resisting or being defeated by the environment and time itself.
• 
  My Old School (2022)

  Review preview for My Old School

  McLeod teases out the tale as we see how much of this has exited the realm of fact and entered the realm of collective myth and storytelling in the years that have passed.

  The astonishing true story of Scotland's most notorious imposter. It's 1993 and 16-year-old Brandon is the new kid in school. Soon he’s top of the class, acing exams and even taking the lead in the school musical. He’s the model pupil, until he's unmasked.
• 
  Every Day In Kaimuki (2022)

  Review preview for Every Day In Kaimuki

  The slowburn nature of this won't be for everyone but there's a warm ebb and flow to Tengan's snapshot of a life in flux.

  A young man is determined to give his life meaning outside of Kaimukī, the small Hawaiian town where he grew up, even if it means leaving everything he's ever known and loved behind.
• 
  The Panola Project (2022)

  Review preview for The Panola Project

  The directors also capture the day of the inoculations, which is likely to serve a secondary purpose to jab-hesitant viewers, since it shows people receiving the vaccine in minutes with no ill-effects.

  Profile of Dorothy Oliver and her tireless work to get residents of the town of Panola vaccinated against Covid.
• 
  Three Minutes: A Lengthening (2021)

  Review preview for Three Minutes: A Lengthening

  There is a lengthening here - but also a shortening of the emotional distance between us the viewer and those caught on camera.

  The three minutes of footage explored in this film are the only moving images left of the Jewish inhabitants of Nasielsk before the Holocaust.
• 
  Nanny (2022)

  Review preview for Nanny

  The lighting used by cinematographer Rina Yang is some of the best I can recall in an American independent film since Moonlight.

  Aisha is an undocumented nanny working for a privileged couple in New York City. As she prepares for the arrival of the son she left behind in Senegal, a violent supernatural presence invades her reality, threatening the American dream she is painstakingly piecing together.
• 
  All That Breathes (2022)

  Review preview for All That Breathes

  Sen could easily just have made an observational documentary about the brothers' day-to-day work or simply focused on the kites themselves but he stretches its wings much further than that.

  Against the darkening backdrop of Delhi's apocalyptic air and escalating violence, two brothers devote their lives to protect one casualty of the turbulent times: the bird known as the black kite.
• 
  Living (2022)

  Review preview for Living

  The deliberate airlessness - which finds contrast in the likes of Miss Harris' joy at her first knickerbocker glory - works well initially, but as Nighy has less screen time and the film slips into considerations of the switch in Williams' life in the past tense, it drifts towards the stagey.

  In 1952 London, veteran civil servant Williams has become a small cog in the bureaucracy of rebuilding England post-WWII. As endless paperwork piles up on his desk, he learns he has a fatal illness. Thus begins his quest to find some meaning in his life before it slips away.
• 
  Memory Box (2021)

  Review preview for Memory Box

  The memories have the vibrant immediacy of teenage energy and are treated by Hadjithomas and her co-director Khalil Joreige in the same spirited fashion.

  Three generations of women in Canada, deal with memories of their homeland of Lebanon.
• 
  Tantura (2022)

  Review preview for Tantura

  Meticulously detailed.

  Documentary examining events surrounding the depopulation of a Palestinian village in 1948 and the implications for the way the state of Israel records its own history.
• 
  Deerwoods Deathtrap (2022)

  Review preview for Deerwoods Deathtrap

  The use of that Super 8 is crucial to the feel of the film, already giving it the emotional quality of something that is remembered, even though we know on an intellectual level it is a contemporary item.

  The director's parents recollect the day they nearly died.
• 
  Belfast (2021)

  Review preview for Belfast

  Branagh has an easy way with a camera and isn't afraid of sentiment, but he offsets this with a good line in comedy that cuts through the softer stuff like an astringent.

  The tale of a young boy living in Belfast in the late 1960s.
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  A Cop Movie (2021)

  Review preview for A Cop Movie

  For all its intricacy and cleverness, this is a film that never loses its central focus.

  A docufiction dive into the Mexican police force.
• 
  Huella (2021)

  Review preview for Huella

  Ortega uses the power of suggestion to stoke the mood - the whispers of prayer, a sudden wind blowing up where it shouldn't, an unexpected voice at the end of the line.

  The death of her grandmother sees a woman take an unexpected dance with grief.
• 
  Eagles (2021)

  Review preview for Eagles

  This is a straightforward observational film, which captures the searchers as they go about their business

  A snapshot documentary of the work of volunteers who search for missing migrants near the Arizona border.
• 
  Luca (2021)

  Review preview for Luca

  This sweet animation - firmly aimed towards the younger end of the market - is warm and nostalgic as its Fifties Italian setting implies.

  A young sea monster finds new friends on dry land - but can he keep his secret?
• 
  Being The Ricardos (2021)

  Review preview for Being The Ricardos

  Not only does she get the tone of Ball right, Kidman also captures the comedy star's forthright energy, an essential fearlessness and truthfulness about herself that Sorkin also evidently admires.

  Lucille Ball biopic set across a single week of crisis.
• 
  A Broken House (2020)

  Review preview for A Broken House

  It's because Goldblum is so ambitious in his attempts to capture multiple ideas that this feels a bit scattered

  A profile of Syrian emigre to the US Mohamed Hafez, the miniature models he creates and the refugee experience.
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  Like The Ones I Used To Know (2021)

  Review preview for Like The Ones I Used To Know

  St-Pierre and cinematographer Étienne Roussy pay attention to detail in ways that the adults in this house do not.

  A divorced dad struggles with his emotions as he picks up his kids for Christmas.
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  Camp Confidential: America's Secret Nazis (2021)

  Review preview for Camp Confidential: America's Secret Nazis

  Moral questions hang heavy in the air about whether ends can justify means and Loushy and Sivan ensure the soldiers' experience is kept front and centre.

  Jewish soldiers recount their roles at a top-secret military camp for Nazi scientists.
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  Us Again (2021)

  Review preview for Us Again

  No matter who exactly this is aimed at, the animation is beautiful to look at.

  An elderly couple find the rain washing away the years.
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  Bad Seeds (2021)

  Review preview for Bad Seeds

  The intricately detailed ink-drawn artwork here has the quality of an 1800s Punch cartoon or something cooked up by Alice In Wonderland illustrator Sir John Tenniel about it and a hint of Terry Gilliam.

  Carnivorous plants square up for a duel.
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  Flowing Home (2021)

  Review preview for Flowing Home

  The rippling nature of the animation makes it perfect for depicting those things on the edge of the real.

  Two sisters who are split up by the Vietnam War swap letters about their experiences.
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  The Musician (2020)

  Review preview for The Musician

  Though it is dialogue-free, memories whisper through the story like the wind we see rustling a weeping willow at key moments.

  A tale of lost love plays out against a Mongol feast