Here are Michael D. Reid's latest Victoria Film Festival reviews. The 10-day cinematic showcase wraps up Sunday.

SISTERS & BROTHERS

Where: Odeon

When: Today, 2: 45 p.m.

Rating: 3

After Mothers & Daughters and Fathers & Sons, Carl Bessai comes full circle with this quirky, lightweight final film in his family dynamics trilogy - a respectable and surprisingly more dramatic than humorous meditation that anyone with a brother or sister should relate to. Playfully using a comic book motif as a linking device - ostensibly to recapture our childhood obsessions? - the prolific Vancouver writer, director and cinematographer cross-cuts four contrived mini-dramas involving as many sets of siblings. In the most engaging and far-fetched, a slimy would-be film producer (Tom Scholte) persuades a sexy young Vancouver actress (Amanda Crew) to drive to L.A. with him, promising her a shot at a female action hero role, with her shrill sister (Camille Sullivan) in tow. Victoria's Cory Monteith also gamely sends up his Hollywood fame in a nod to Entourage as a movie star trying to get along with his brother (Dustin Milligan), an actorturned-humanitarian who resents him for abandoning their mother. Ben Ratner and Gabrielle Miller also show up as a schizophrenic brother and his care-giving sister, with a nice turn by Jay Brazeau as an eccentric so-called lawyer. And in the most preposterous episode, a sullen teen (Kacey Rohl) lashes out at her mother (Gabrielle Rose) even more than usual when an Indian half-sister (Leena Manro) she never knew she had suddenly moves in. While this might not be Bessai's greatest film, it's a fitfully captivating and nicely acted diversion - one that seems like a chamber piece compared to New Year's Eve and other current multicharacter pieces out there.

Article 12

Where: Empire Capitol 6

When: Today, 4: 30 p.m.

Rating: 2

Given the potency and urgency of its provocative topic - the erosion of our privacy in a chillingly Orwellian world - it's a pity Argentinian filmmaker Juan Manuel Biain's documentary is as turgid, conventional and preachy as it is. If you can make it past the yawn-inducing succession of talking heads Biain unwisely begins with, this cautionary meditation on surveillance, voyeurism and our escalating vulnerability to violations of our basic right to privacy does grow more absorbing as it gets into specifics. It's fascinating to realize, for instance - through visuals that augment what we're being told - how our "digital footprints" - our use of debit cards, transit passes, key cards and so on - can so readily be exploited. It makes it frighteningly easy for corporations or other parties to access sensitive data that can reveal our daily whereabouts, online activity, religious beliefs and spending habits, such as whether we're buying too much booze or cigarettes - valuable information for insurance companies. With our civil liberties increasingly threatened thanks to the increasing threats of global terrorism, there's a certain pleasure to be derived from hearing musician and activist Brian Eno playfully advocating the destruction of TV transmitters to stop "the monolithic thinking that media produces," or helpful counter-surveillance hints from the likes of hacker Emmanuel Goldstein, one of the most colourful contributors.

Some of these so-called solutions are questionable, perhaps, but at least they snap us back to attention amid Biain's meandering treatise that subjects us to seemingly endless input from the usual suspects - Noam Chomsky and the gang. Some of it is genuinely compelling, but too much of what we're hearing is redundant and, worse, simply states the obvious. It would take a lot more than a few flashy visuals of Times Square, shots of aerial drones and other such filler that Biain employs to make this half-baked documentary more compelling than it is. In spite of such drawbacks, however, the film succeeds in that it might compel you to learn more about your privacy settings - and tighten them - the next time you're on Facebook.

mreid@timescolonist.com