Goebbels and the Fuhrer
Directed by Joachim Lang
★★★★

HE was the most successful PR man in history. He transformed a mediocre, small-town rabble-rouser into a revered national leader and together they brought devastation to much of Europe and were responsible for the deaths of millions.

The film focuses chillingly and claustrophobically on the relationship between Hitler and his minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, using direct quotes and cleverly intercutting the drama with documentary footage of the period.

Director Joachim Lang says of his film: “The question of how this could happen is not part of our past but our present. We are living in a time where far-right populists are on the rise and anti-semitic crimes and the Third Reich are trivialised.”

The film is exceptionally well made. The editing is incisive and the performances riveting, particularly Robert Stadlober as the sinister and manipulative sorcerer Goebbels. It picks Goebbels’ propaganda machine apart, revealing how it twisted truth and manipulated emotions, orchestrating a whole people.

Although the aim of the film is to alert the German nation to the dangers of the far-right Alternative for Germany, it is just as applicable to Chancellor Merz and our own Keir Starmer. The people don’t want war, so how can they be persuaded? We just pretend we’re under attack and a whole nation can be mobilised, Goebbels says at one point.

At the end it mentions the US liberating Dachau, but not the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army.

In my view it concentrates overmuch on the anti-Jewish aspect of Nazi propaganda, while totally ignoring other persecuted groups like communists, socialists and trade unionists, as well as the political and economic forces behind the Nazi machine.

“The greatest failure of this film,” Der Spiegel wrote perceptively, “is that it largely excludes the seduced.”
JG
In cinemas June 6.

From the World of John Wick: Ballerina (15)
Directed by Len Wiseman
★★

SET during the events of John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum the good news is: Keanu Reeves can return as Wick as he is still alive. The bad news is: only in a supporting role as this is all about Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas), a ballerina-turned-assassin trained by the Ruska Roma (under Angelica Houston), who sets out to avenge her father’s death. 

The problem is that you do not really care about Eve as the film concentrates on the elaborate action/fight scenes and ingenious kills rather than character development. So there is death by ice skates, dinner plates and flame throwers but there is no emotional investment in her or her quest, unlike with John Wick. While de Armas showcases her fighting prowess she isn’t as mesmerising as she was in No Time To Die. 

As soon as Keanu appears the film takes on a new lease of life and energy, while Ian McShane and the late Lance Reddick, in his last-ever performance, provide the class. 

Directed by Len Wiseman (Underworld films) this is a disappointing foray into the world of John Wick and there’s not a tutu in sight.  
MD
In cinemas June 6.

Dangerous Animals (15)
Directed by Sean Byrne
★★

SET on Australia’s east coast, this truly disturbing horror film centres on a shark-obsessed serial killer who preys on young, vulnerable women.  

He meets his match when he abducts Zephyr (Hassie Harrison), a savvy but loner US surfer, and holds her captive on his boat. It soon turns into a fight for survival and a race against time before he feeds her to the sharks. 

Shot on location on Queensland’s Gold Coast, director Sean Byrne delivers an intense and graphically violent 1970s-style exploitation thriller which is hard to stomach. Watching the female characters being painstakingly tortured and beaten for horror kicks is unbearable. 

That said, Harrison gives a formidable turn while Jai Courtney (Suicide Squad, Divergent) gives the performance of his career. He is frankly terrifying as this psycho killer in this nasty and sadly predictable shark fest. 
MD
In cinemas June 6.

Falling into place
Directed by Aylin Tezel
★★★

THERE’s one stunning scene in writer/director/lead actress Aylin Tezel’s love-in-the-age-of-woke auto-biopic, where she pleads with a former boyfriend to take her back. We know it’s a no-hoper, as does he and as does she, but she persists, making an excruciatingly manipulative exhibition of faltering self-control and tears. It’s an exercise in delusional control-freak behaviour and it’s fascinating to watch.

But it’s only when this unmoored and impressionistic film has waded through a mountain of romantic, and Scottish, and mental health cliche — it’s all a bit like struggling through heather — that it finds its true target in the display of the masochistic demand for an emotional pound of flesh, whatever the cost to oneself and others.

There’s something in it for gen X audiences: unattractive and egocentric characters squirming in the consequences of their own narcissism, trying to seduce one another.

Telling, but Casablanca it ain’t.
AR
In cinemas June 6.