Reviews by Amber Wilkinson

Order by: Date, A–Z

• 
  Bachelorette (2012)

  Review preview for Bachelorette

  Headland revels in the comedy of discomfort and keeps the one-liners coming, while still sticking to - and sticking it to - a romance plotline.

  An imminent marriage opens old wounds for a group of friends.
• 
  Backyard Village (2021)

  Review preview for Backyard Village

  If there's one thing that the ongoing pandemic has reinforced for many people, it's the importance of human connection... which makes Marteinn Thorsson's warm-spirited and humanistic drama a timely watch

  Two lonely souls forge a connection.
• 
  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.
• 
  Bad Tales (2020)

  Review preview for Bad Tales

  The D'Innocenzos let the mood do the heavy lifting, stewing us along with the families.

  Trouble brews over a long hot summer on the outskirts of Rome.
• 
  Bad Times At The El Royale (2018)

  Review preview for Bad Times At The El Royale

  A thriller that, although it could have done with judicious editing at the beginning and end, nonetheless delivers laughs, shocks and, most importantly, that sense of satisfaction that only comes when puzzle pieces come together with a resounding click

  Seven strangers, each with a secret to bury, meet at Lake Tahoe's El Royale, a rundown hotel with a dark past. Over the course of one fateful night, everyone will have a last shot at redemption... before everything goes to hell.
• 
  Baghdad In My Shadow (2019)

  Review preview for Baghdad In My Shadow

  If things get complicated quickly, it's to director Samir's credit that he and his co-writer Furat al Jamil succeed in creating a number of well-rounded memorable characters, who anchor the less believable elements of the story.

  Trouble brews in London for the Iraqi diaspora after a young man begins to be radicalised and a woman encounters a face from the past.
• 
  Ballad Of A Small Player (2025)

  Review preview for Ballad Of A Small Player

  There is talk of “hungry ghosts” and shadows but little of substance to show as the gambling cliches stack up like bad debts and the plot twists are signposted as brightly as the casinos.

  When his past and his debts start to catch up with him, a high-stakes gambler laying low in Macau encounters a kindred spirit who might just hold the key to his salvation.
• 
  Ballad Of A White Cow (2020)

  Review preview for Ballad Of A White Cow

  There's an elegance to the filmmaking as this story unravels its themes of societal prejudice, justice and remorse that elevates every frame.

  A single mum, whose husband has been executed, struggles for justice.
• 
  The Ballad Of Suzanne Césaire (2024)

  Review preview for The Ballad Of Suzanne Césaire

  The word ballad is a good choice in the title because Hunt-Ehrlich’s film is a rhythms and muse affair.

  Hybrid biopic about the Martinican writer and activist.
• 
  Banksy Most Wanted (2020)

  Review preview for Banksy Most Wanted

  If you're looking for a primer on the life and work of guerilla (and gorilla) street artist Banksy, then you could do a lot worse than take a look at this.

  Banksy is a household name, but behind this name hides a multitude of stories, artworks, stunts, political statements and identities, leading to one of the art world’s biggest unanswered questions - who is Banksy?
• 
  The Banshees Of Inisherin (2022)

  Review preview for The Banshees Of Inisherin

  Banshees is lifted by good performances, particularly from Keoghan and Condon, whose major scene together has a delicacy of emotion that is sharply at odds with the brute force McDonagh more generally employs.

  Two lifelong friends find themselves at an impasse when one abruptly ends their relationship, with alarming consequences for both of them.
• 
  Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000)

  Review preview for Barking Dogs Never Bite

  Bong's film is a sprawling affair, taking place mainly in Yun-ju's apartment block, complete with a shadowy basement, with the jazzy score reflecting the way the action bounces forward and backward to unexpected places.

  An academic gets into trouble when he tries to get his paws on a yapping dog.
• 
  Baronesa (2017)

  Review preview for Baronesa

  The scenario building has the benefit of allowing Antunes to focus sharply in on the difficulties faced by women in the violent favelas in ways that pure documentary would not.

  Docufiction, exploring the lives of women in the favelas of Belo Horizonte.
• 
  Basic Instinct (1992)

  Review preview for Basic Instinct

  Verhoeven is definitely attempting to emulate The Master here, and is frequently successful.

  A cop has a dangerous liaison with a suspected murderess.
• 
  Bastardy (2009)

  Review preview for Bastardy

  Courtin-Wilson's approach is graceful, impressionistic and with the heart of a poet.

  The actor who founded Australia's first Aboriginal theatre company talks about his life, his heroin habit, and his criminal tendencies.
• 
  Bathwell In Clerkentime (2020)

  Review preview for Bathwell In Clerkentime

  The whole animation bounces with the rhythm of the soundtrack - Budovsky's birds live in a world that never stands still.

  The third in an animated trilogy about cuckoos and their world.
• 
  Bats & Bugs (2026)

  Review preview for Bats & Bugs

  This is the sort of cast of characters that deserves its own TV series.

  When a streetlamp lights up on a country road in the jungle, a group of insects goes crazy – which proves to be handy for the hungry bats in a nearby cave.
• 
  The Battle For Laikipia (2024)

  Review preview for The Battle For Laikipia

  The documentarians invested several years in the project and it pays off in this impressively balanced assessment of a conflict over land that has been exacerbated by climate change and drought.

  Unresolved historical injustices and climate change raise the stakes in a generations-old conflict between Indigenous pastoralists and white landowners in Laikipia, Kenya, a wildlife conservation haven.
• 
  BBC House Special (2003)

  Two people talk about what it means to them to be British-born Chinese.
• 
  Beans (2020)

  Review preview for Beans

  If they sometimes have trouble moving seamlessly between the smaller dramas of childhood and the bigger picture of the protests, each element of the film carries resonance in its own right.

  Twelve-year-old Beans is on the edge: torn between innocent childhood and reckless adolescence; forced to grow up fast and become the tough Mohawk warrior she needs to be during the Oka Crisis, the turbulent Indigenous uprising that tore Quebec and Canada apart for 78 tense days in the summer of 1990.
• 
  Bear With Us (2018)

  Review preview for Bear With Us

  Despite the family fall outs and relationship fallout, these characters are winningly human.

  A family has decided to sell their lovely cottage as none of them has visited it for some time. Yet it holds so many nostalgic memories that the mother suggests they all spend one last day there before the sale takes place.
• 
  Beast (2022)

  Review preview for Beast

  There's some fun to be had with the action sequences when the mayhem starts but there's quite a lot that is just plain silly.

  A man and his two daughters find themselves fighting for survival against a rogue lion.
• 
  Beasts (2020)

  Review preview for Beasts

  The director fully conveys how just being a lone woman in an all-male environment can be stressful in and of itself.

  A woman finds herself in a political and emotional power struggle as she tries to save her family farm.
• 
  Beasts Of The Southern Wild (2011)

  Review preview for Beasts Of The Southern Wild

  There's poetry, tough love and, above all, a fierce stoicism on the bayou in Benh Zeitlin's strikingly beautiful and haunting debut.

  Waters gonna rise up, wild animals gonna return from the grave, and everything south of the levee is goin’ under, in this tale of a six-year-old named Hushpuppy, who lives with her daddy at the edge of the world.
• 
  A Beast In The Mangrove (2025)

  Review preview for A Beast In The Mangrove

  Strongly elemental.

  A woman undergoes a transformation after an encounter with 'a beast'.
• 
  Beaumonde Scrapping (2020)

  Review preview for Beaumonde Scrapping

  What's not in doubt is Viktorov’s keen eye for a striking image or his ability to get close to his subjects and stay there

  Portrait of a Russian wideboy who steals dumpsters for a living, writes poetry and dreams of a better life in Moscow.
• 
  Beautiful Boy (2018)

  Review preview for Beautiful Boy

  Because he starts from a place of quite high emotion in terms of the cues, Groenigen and his collaborators have to give us increasingly bigger 'fixes' in a bid to generate additional empathy.

  A father tries to help his son break his cycle of drug addiction.
• 
  The Beautiful Summer (2023)

  Review preview for The Beautiful Summer

  In general, the film is better in terms of its physical surfaces than its emotional depths.

  1938. A young woman yields to her first great love, celebrating the courage to be truly herself.
• 
  Beautiful Things (2017)

  Review preview for Beautiful Things

  The desire to know where the documentary facet ends and the creative element from Ferrero and Biasin begins soon ebbs away in the face of bigger philosophical ideas.

  A symphony of consumerism and waste, built while detailing the lives of four men.
• 
  Beba (2021)

  Review preview for Beba

  Like the best of these sorts of essay films, Huntt is intimate without being unnecessarily introspective.

  We follow Afro-Latina filmmaker Rebeca Huntt, the titular Beba, as she takes us on the journey through her experience growing up.
• 
  Because Today Is Saturday (2025)

  Review preview for Because Today Is Saturday

  Guimarães engaging and flowing style offers a sort of stream-of-consciousness guide to the woman's day.

  Animation shows a mother struggling to find personal space within the grind of family life.
• 
  Becoming Hitchcock - The Legacy Of Blackmail (2024)

  Review preview for Becoming Hitchcock - The Legacy Of Blackmail

  Using split screen, the director is able to articulate the way that the auteur grasped the opportunities that were presented to him by sound.

  A consideration of themes that run through the works of Alfred Hitchcock, focusing on the turning point of Blackmail.
• 
  Before Midnight (2013)

  Review preview for Before Midnight

  A fairytale for old romantics everywhere, who believe that the weapons of friendship and commitment are as vital in the fight for a relationship, as love.

  Jesse and Celine consider their lives together after nine years of living together.
• 
  Before The Dying Of The Light (2020)

  Review preview for Before The Dying Of The Light

  An experimental scrapbook of a film that, to an extent, makes up for what it lacks in context by its immersive evocation of an era.

  Experimental documentary considering the cultural and filmmaking landscape of mid-Seventies Morocco.
• 
  Being a Human Person (2020)

  Review preview for Being a Human Person

  Solely as an exploration of craft, Scott's film offers plenty of interest but it quickly opens out into a more psychological study of the director.

  Documentary following the director as he shoots his "last" film.
• 
  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.
• 
  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.
• 
  Belgica (2016)

  Review preview for Belgica

  Groeningen completely sells us the world of the bar, his immersive tracking and handheld camera leading us into the melee where coke and hedonism are served straight up and the music pounds to be let into your bloodstream.

  Two brothers find their hedonistic bar business heading for trouble.
• 
  The Believer (2021)

  Review preview for The Believer

  Serafin doesn't want for ideas, even if they were once someone else's

  A man struggles to hold his health and sanity together as his relationship with his wife deteriorates.
• 
  Bellum - The Daemon Of War (2021)

  Review preview for Bellum - The Daemon Of War

  Despite holding some interesting ruminations on the subject of war and its participants, is often frustratingly fragmented in its approach

  A triptych meditation on war.
• 
  Belén (2025)

  Review preview for Belén

  A largely straightforward drama that is a bit too structurally loose for its own good, Argentina’s Oscar nominee is buoyed considerably by Fonzi’s own central performance.

  An innocent woman jailed for self-inducing an abortion fights for her freedom.
• 
  Benediction (2021)

  Review preview for Benediction

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

  Siegfried Sassoon biopic.
• 
  Bestia (2021)

  Review preview for Bestia

  Emotions here are betrayed by the twitch of a knife, a violent dream, an envelope crumpled in a hand or a long toke on a cigarette.

  A trip into the psyche of a Chilean torturer.
• 
  Bestiaire (2012)

  Review preview for Bestiaire

  This is a challenging and rewarding piece that reflects your own thoughts as much as those of the filmmaker.

  Documentary meditation on man's relationship with animals.
• 
  The Best Thing You Can Do With Your Life (2018)

  Review preview for The Best Thing You Can Do With Your Life

  Erffa's willingness to scrutinise her own motivations is what lifts this documentary above the ordinary.

  Why did the director’s brother enter a conservative Roman Catholic order, causing him to sever all ties with the outside world?
• 
  The Beta Test (2021)

  Review preview for The Beta Test

  Cummings and McCabe want to have it all - and go a fairly long way towards getting it.

  A man's life starts to fracture after he receives an unusual invitation.
• 
  A Better Life (2011)

  Review preview for A Better Life

  Touching but never mawkish and with a steely point to make.

  A Mexican illegal immigrant father and his son strive to improve their lot.
• 
  Better Things (2008)

  Review preview for Better Things

  Hopkins marks himself out as a man of unique vision who isn't afraid to try something different to encourage an audience to think.

  Award-winning short filmmaker makes his feature debut with a story of fractured relationships.
• 
  Better Together: Furman's Championship Quest (2024)

  Review preview for Better Together: Furman's Championship Quest

  Maximum positivity is the name of the game and Weaver’s pacy approach means the series never drags.

  Documentary following college basketball team Furman across the 2023-24 season.
• 
  Between Heaven And Earth (2019)

  Review preview for Between Heaven And Earth

  Najjar has essentially crafted two films here, both of which carry plenty of interest but they are locked in an unhappy marriage which means neither can realise their full potential.

  When a couple try to get a divorce, they find themselves on a road trip into the past.