Home By Christmas

Writer-director Gaylene Preston used her father's war stories – taped in the months before his death in 1990 – to construct this sympathetic but unengaging docudrama. Tony Barry takes over the role of Preston Sr, whose recollections of war, capture in the desert and internment in Italy, illustrated with reenactments and archive footage, are admittedly fascinating. But his daughter's decision to puncture the mood by continually cutting back to soft focus, pastel-hued scenes of her worrying, wayward mother back in New Zealand make the entire film feel glossy, shallow and rather bland.