Film Shapes

Screening at the German Film Festival, this is a mind-boggling tale of a 'you-tuber' dickhead who nicked a short animation film off a couple of German university students and passed it off as his own work. The thief, or the 'talented' Mr. F. of the title, is Samuel Felinton, a ubiquitous pud with a probable case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). This diagnosis has been mentioned on Reddit but his baggage is weighty so fucks knows what's wrong with him. We open with Moritz and Julius, who made a cute little robot anime, uploaded it to YouTube to see if anyone liked it, and when it gained loads of hits and positive comments, took it down. Emboldened by this public favour, they then started to enter their short,  Butty, into various film festivals. When the replies came back that it couldn't be accepted because the film was already doing the festival circuit, the lads freaked out. Turns out Butty 's brief online life was enough time for Felinton to d...

The preview film for the 2026 German Film Festival is a sombre little drama about a child's perspective of the end of WWII. Jasper Billerbeck plays Nanning, a 12 year-old doing his best to look after his pregnant mother and younger siblings in the tiny farming/fishing island of Amrum in Northern Germany. The opening scene shows German planes flying overhead, indicating that even this lonely outpost of the Reich is not untouched by war.  The story really acts as window dressing for the suppression of emotions and trepidation related to the very probable approaching end of hostilities. We find out early on, in a clever moment in the family library, that Nanning's (absent) dad is a high ranking Nazi, and his mum, Hille, is fully on board with the doctrine. Auntie Ena lives with them and is much more pragmatic, and as anti-Nazi as she can be in the circumstances. The two sisters are played by Laura Tonke and Lisa Hagmeister respectively, and they're fantastic. Diane Kruger, who...

I probably read these books as a kid (can't remember) but I certainly read them to my kids a few years ago, so the whole family took a trip to the Palace cinema to check out this new film version. It's adapted from the Enid Blyton book(s) by Simon Farnaby, the writer of Paddington 2 , Wonka and Mindhorn , and directed by Ben Gregor, a British TV journeyman. The cast is chock-full of screen dignitaries, from Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy, to Python Michael Palin, to Dame Judi Dench as a talking fridge (!). Modernising this classic kids' book series from the 30s and 40s means adding some stuff about screen (over)usage, the splintering of the family unit, and the desire to get back to the basics of life. In this case, the Thompsons go rural in a rundown barn with old tractors, and chickens living on the stove. The family is made up of Tim and Polly (Garfield and Foy), and the three children, Beth, Joe and Fran, played by Delilah Bennet-Cardy, Phoenix Laroche and Billie Gadsd...

Here's a police procedural drama from the Alliance Francais French Film Festival with a minor key change. Case 137 is based on true events from 2018 during the Gilets jaunes (Yellow Vest) protests in Paris. The case (or dossier in the version originale) involves a young lad who was shot in the head with an LBD riot gun (basically rubber bullets) and then left on the street. He survived, but with life changing injuries. The IGPN internal affairs department are brought in to investigate. Léa Drucker takes the lead as Stéphanie, a single mum dealing with resentment from her ex-husband, his new girlfriend, and most other members of the force, who believe the cops should look after their own and not 'police the police'. Her teenage son is also concerned that everyone he talks to hates 'les flics'. There's a slight hitch in the case when it's discovered that the injured guy and his family come from Saint-Dizier, also Stéphanie's home town. Director, Dominik M...

This final film at the Lotterywest Film Season for the Perth Festival is a surprising gem. It combines a great musical opening scene with a fine entrance from Matthew McConaughey. Writer/director Andrew Patterson knows who he's got on his hands here. McConaughey has fun with this role of Amziah King, his first real starring part since The Gentleman in 2019, and in fairness, the film probably wouldn't have been made without him. The story goes thus: a honey maker (or beekeeper, apiarist, professor of bees, call him what you will) is coopted into helping the police identify a stolen batch of honey barrels. After a frankly incredible (in the good sense of the word) honey heating procedure that goes off the rails, Amziah finds himself at cafe, where he bumps into Kateri, a young woman who used to foster with him when she was a kid. A star is unearthed here in Angelina LookingGlass (what a name!), in her debut film role, and the rest of the cast is fittingly grubby and grungy. Kur...

This is the first feature length film from French writer/director Ugo Bienvenu. It tells the story of futuristic kid, Arco, voiced by Juliano Crue Valdi in the English dub, and Oscar Tresanini in the French original - here I'll explain that I saw the preview of this with the English voice cast, so I'll mention them from now, unless I spy a notable Frenchy. Anyway, Arco is too young to fly to the past like his family do, but like any young ding-a-ling, he decides to chance his arm, and ends up in 2075. This is a more recognisable future for us than Arco's time, as we see climate change writ large on society. In this time-zone, Arco meets Iris (Margot Ringard Oldra) and her domestic robot, Mikki (voiced by a strange combination of Iris's parents, Natalie Portman and Mark Ruffalo). Iris wants to help Arco return to his time, but they're thwarted by a missing jewel that he needs in order to travel, as well as a trio of bumbling goons (Will Ferrell, Andy Samberg and Flea...