AUDI FESTIVAL OF GERMAN FILMS
(goethe.de/ozfilmfest). Palace Cinema Como and Kino Cinemas, Thursday 14 to Sunday 31 May.
Daniel MacPherson stars in Infini.
Age of Cannibals (3.5 stars, 15+, 93 minutes), a cynically bracing satire of corporate culture and intertwined male fantasy, is a highlight of this German film program. A pair of highly paid business consultants – Frank (David Striesow) and Kai (Sebastian Blomberg) – hold court in one luxury hotel suite after another, mercilessly moving capital and ruining lives only to come unstuck when they fail to secure a key promotion and gain a female colleague, Bianca (Katharina Schuttler). Johannes Naber's movie is deliberately theatrical, with the outside world just background smog and noise, and that allows for flights of nostalgia, guilt and recrimination. CM
HUMAN RIGHTS ARTS & FILM FESTIVAL
(hraff.org.au). Australian Centre for the Moving Image, until Thursday, May 21.
Prominent in this year's HRAFF film program is Danish director Andreas Johnsen's compelling Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case (3.5 stars, 15+, 86 minutes), an unofficial sequel to Alison Klayman's Ai-Weiwei: Never Sorry. If the first film was about someone pushing the boundaries of a totalitarian state, the second is about the ramifications of crossing them. Intimately shot during a year of house arrest following 80 days of confinement under the Chinese security apparatus, The Fake Case finds the celebrated contemporary artist entertaining visitors and making works for abroad while under constant surveillance, his body and spirit weakened but his voice still strong. CM
INFINI
2 and a half stars
MA, 110 minutes. Streaming and VOD services.
Increasingly, a blanket digital rollout is the preferred release option for Australian genre filmmakers, and this science-fiction thriller from Shane Abbess (Gabriel) is the latest production to opt for that. The accents are generic American and the plot often is, too: a 23rd century team investigating a distant space station finds one survivor of a previous mission, Whit (Daniel MacPherson), a nightmarish alien infection, and some serious lens flare. The set-bound production is impressively designed, and MacPherson a suitably troubled protagonist, but the theme of corrupted identity is explored with a blunt vigour to match the menacing score. CM
CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA
4 stars
MA, 118 minutes. Now playing.
Maria (Juliette Binoche) is an actress who has been offered a part in the play which first made her famous, but her former lead role has gone to a young Hollywood superstar (Chloe Grace Moretz). Maria prepares with her assistant (Kristen Stewart), and it's the relationship between these two women which accounts for the film's subtle attractions. SH
COBAIN: MONTAGE OF HECK
3.5 stars
MA, 132 minutes. Opens Thursday
Brett Morgen's impressive documentary attempts to strip the mythology, both beatific and bleak, from Kurt Cobain, the frontman of epochal American rock band Nirvana who committed suicide in 1994. It's an intimate, interior work, shorn of the usual talking heads, and the movie's motherlode is access Cobain's sizable archives. CM