New to VOD this week:
DON’T BE A DICK ABOUT IT
Director:
Ben Mullinkosson
World Premiere:
IDFA 2018
Select Festivals:
Sheffield, Göteborg, DocPoint Helsinki, Docs Against Gravity, Maryland, DocPoint Tallinn
About:
An affectionate portrait of a pair of bickering teenage brothers.
The duo at the center of Ben Mullinkosson’s unassuming but often very entertaining film are his cousins, Peter and Matthew, who he follows over the course of a summer vacation. Their ginger hair may be all the brothers have in common; Peter, on the autism spectrum, is outgoing, loud, and immature, while Matthew is quieter, awkward, and has an irrational fear of dogs. Obsessed with the reality competition show SURVIVOR, Peter generates frequent humor here as he “votes off” family members from his presence when they irritate him, something Matthew barely tolerates, generating universally familiar moments of sibling antagonism. Mullinkosson’s camera – often acknowledged by the boys – captures these and other mundane moments over the course of the slight, barely feature-length running time, and while the results may not be earth-shattering, they’re certainly both pleasurable and memorable.
what (not) to doc 