Ab Film Review & The Last New Wave

On this episode, Andrew catches up with Academy Award winning master of stop motion animation, Adam Elliot, and Emmy award and AACTA award winning screen legend, Sarah Snook, to talk about their mollusk-motion flick, Memoir of a Snail.Memoir of a Snail is driven by the delightfully dark sense of comedy and a relatable pathos, both of which bring the off-kilter world of Grace Pudel (Sarah Snook) and her equally orphaned twin brother Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee) to life. It's a film that's resonated immensely with audiences around the world, with each person able to find a little bit of themselves in this tender tale of Grace and her obsession with snails.As always, Elliot is able to bring forth a welcome sense of groundedness to his characters, and while they may physically appear eccentric, there's something about each and every one of them that makes us feel seen. As with his previous film, Mary & Max, Elliot actively removes stigmas associated with those who live with mental illnesses, while also shining

Our second discussion is with Academy Award winning actress Kate Winslet who was recently nominated for a Golden Globe for her turn as photographer Elizabeth 'Lee' Miller in Ellen Kuras' Lee. We first meet Lee in the months before WW2 commences, where Lee worked as a fashion model before forging a path for women journalists in wartime as she became a war correspondent for Vogue magazine.Lee's photography from that era is some of the finest work you will see focused on WW2, yet after the war, she sought to hide much of the work she did, with her son eventually finding many of her photos after she had passed away. Kuras and Winslet choose to frame Lee's story with an impossible conversation that sees Josh O'Connor's Antony Penrose sitting down with Lee Miller to talk through her life and her work in a haze of cigarette smoke. There's an emotional truth here that resonates strongly throughout the film that is keenly felt by the original writing by Penrose himself, otherwise known as the son of Sir Roland Penrose

Welcome to the first episode of our summer series of chats where Andrew catches up with filmmakers and creatives who are behind some of the years best films. From Saturday Night, to Lee, to We Live in Time, and Australia's own Memoir of a Snail, we've got some great film discussions to keep you going over this festive break.First off the rank is a chat with two of the creatives behind Saturday Night, the comedy retelling of the first night of Saturday Night Live. In it, we follow a young Lorne Michaels, played by Golden Globe nominee Gabrielle LaBelle, who attempts to wrangle an unwieldly and chaotic cast of comedians from Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), to Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), to George Carlin (Matthew Rhys), to Jim Belushi (Matt Wood), and Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott), plus many more. What eventuates is a slightly manic, utterly frenetic, yet extremely captivating almost real time night of comedy and chaos leading up to that iconic opening sentence 'Live from New York...' In the following chat

Join Andrew as he gives his candid thoughts on the 2025 AACTA Award nominations. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With his feature documentary debut In the Trenches: The Making of Before Dawn, Benjamin Scotford has made a rare achievement within the Australian film industry: a behind the scenes documentary which follows the muddy and tough production of Before Dawn, Jordan Prince Wright's equally rare achievement, an indie war flick shot in the remote West Aussie landscape. Benjamin dives into the ditches of this WW1 epic, taking audiences behind the scenes for the highs, the lows, and the difficulties that the production faces with pulling off the impossible on a micro-budget.Benjamin is given unparalleled access to the production, capturing honest and open discussions from cast and crew that shows off the strength that it took to bring Before Dawn to life. From freezing cold rain to escaping sheep to earthquake level explosions, In the Trenches captures it all.In the following discussion, Benjamin talks about his entry point into documentary filmmaking, how working as a wedding videographer and on corporate gigs with l

Director Imogen McCluskey continues her exploration of suburban Australia with the comedy-drama film Nugget is Dead: A Christmas Story. This delightfully relatable Aussie Xmas tale was written by Jenna Owen and Vic Zerbst, who both act in the film alongside Aussie screen legends like Gia Carides, Damien Garvey, Ed Oxenbould, Steve Rodgers, Mandy McElhinney, Kerry Armstrong, and Tiriel Mora, and more.Steph Stool is a dermatologist in training who has her feet in two worlds. The shiny sheen of Sydney where the pull of her bougie boyf (Alec Snow) sees her drawn towards spending Christmas with his family. Early in the film we meet his mum (Tara Morice) who gives Steph the complicated and intense rundown of what's expected from their family experience. For them, Christmas will be the 'introduce the family to the girlfriend', a factor that further drives a wedge between Steph and her family who she carries a level of shame about.But, Steph's disconnection with home is short lived when she receives a call from her m

Welcome to a special Adelaide Film Festival round up discussion featuring myself, Virat Nehru, and Nadine Whitney. While we have known each other for years, the 2024 Adelaide Film Festival was our first opportunity to meet up in person, watch some films, and do what film critics do best: talk about them afterwards.The following discussion sees us traipse along a path of the highs and the lows of the Adelaide Film Festival, with each critic highlighting some of their favourite films for the festival, and some of the films that have left them wanting. Films discussed in the following episode include: The Correspondent, Emilia Perez, Lesbian Space Princess, Make It Look Real, Good One, The Wolves Always Come at Night, Anora, All We Imagine as Light, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, No Other Land, and more. There are few experiences which leave a mark on you and change how you experience the world, and yet, for me, the Adelaide Film Festival was one such experience. This is partly because of the festival its

In the heart of Adelaide, a movement is changing the conversations about film and film culture. That movement is called moviejuice, a ground up driven collective of artists, filmmakers, film theorists and enthusiasts, who commune to watch, experience, and talk about film and art culture together. Created by Shea Gallagher, Daniel Tune, and Louis Campbell, moviejuice was born in the backyards of Adelaide, spotlighting the sonic landscape of the city with live music and films like Tim Carlier's energetic and invigorating Paco.Over its brief existence, moviejuice has made its mark on Australian culture and cinema, showcasing films that would otherwise go unnoticed or underappreciated. Films like Gabe Bath's Ships that Bear or Tim Baretto's Bassendream, unique experiences that genuinely shift the filmic language of Australian cinema.Now, in 2024, moviejuice have teamed up with Adelaide Film Festival to present a must see experience, a cinematic double featuring Jordy Pollock's Wabi Sabi Rendezvous and Audrey Lam'

Director Samuel Van Grinsven returns to our screens with his sophomore feature film, Went Up the Hill, a powerful drama about an abandoned child, Jack (Dacre Montgomery), attending the wake of a mother he never knew, and encountering her grieving widow, Jill (Vicky Krieps). As Jack and Jill navigate the fractured existence they find themselves in, Elizabeth's spirit emerges in curious and strange ways by possessing each character, resulting in a narrative that flows into the realm of being a possession drama, while never truly immersing itself in the genre expectations that one might have when they hear that this a film with a 'grief driven possession narrative'. Like Samuel's first film, Sequin in a Blue Room, there's an unexpected nature to Went Up the Hill which comes from a foundational level, and is realised in the films sound design, its choice of location - a remote farm in Aotearoa/New Zealand - and the notion that this is a triple hander film delivered by two powerful, impactful performances fro

Kate Blackmore's feature length film debut, Make It Look Real, navigates the intricacies of utilising an intimacy coordinator on the set of a film. Kate follows intimacy coordinator Claire Warden as she embarks on the collaborative process of presenting sex on screen for Kieran Darcy-Smith's film Tightrope, which features three Australian actors who each are asked to simulate sex on screen in different ways.Throughout Make It Look Real, we see frank and open conversations between Claire, actors Sarah Roberts, Albert Mwangi, and Tom Davis, about the purpose of the sex scenes employed in Tightrope and how they play into the characters narratives. Then, we see conversations with Claire and Kieran and hear how they negotiate the progression of the narrative, leading Kieran to reflect on the third act threesome he had planned. In between these discussions, Claire and Kate take audiences on a journey through film history where we hear from actresses who have pushed themselves to unnecessary and unsafe places to wor

Regular readers of The Curb will know that I have a particular soft spot for the work of Sally Aitken. Through her expansive filmography that tells stories that span the globe, from David Stratton, to Valerie Taylor, to The Wiggles, and now to Every Little Thing, a film about Terry, a wildlife carer in California who runs a rehab facility for hummingbirds, Sally has managed to provide a generous, kind, and considerate perspective of the world and how we interact with it.Every Little Thing is a sonic and visual delight of a film that wonders the senses with cinematography that fully immerses us in the world of the hummingbird, all the while presenting the dedication and care that Terry Masear gives to these tiny, fragile creatures who flit about the world, acting as harmonious pollinators who enrich the ever-increasingly human dominated nature that they live within.I've seen plenty of films about animals being cared for, or about the communities that spring up in a fight for animal activism, and yet, I've neve

Director Silje Evensmo Jacobsen's documentary A New Kind of Wilderness won the 2024 Sundance Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema – Documentary and will be screening at the Adelaide Film Festival on Saturday 26 October and Tuesday 29 October.This serene and moving film follows a young family in the midst of transition. Parents Maria and Nik are raising their four children on a remote farm in Norway, teaching them a self-sustainable way of life and learning how to live alongside the land they call home. With Maria's photography helping provide a steady income for the family, all seems to be moving along comfortably, that is, until Maria passes away leaving Nik to raise their children. With no means of financially supporting the family, Nik is faced with the difficult decision of shifting his family to a new home and possibly moving away from Norway back to his home country of England where he has stronger familial support.While this sounds like a heavy experience, Silje reflects on Maria's life perspective, her p

Documentarian Ian Darling's filmography includes a myriad of films that explore the fabric of Australian society. With Paul Kelly - Stories of Me, Darling immersed viewers into the poetry of one of Australia's greatest lyricists. In The Final Quarter, the excoriating and cruel racism inflicted upon footy legend Adam Goodes is explored through the media's coverage of the event. Then, working as a producer on a film like The Department, Darling shines a light on the people who keep the child protection system moving in NSW.Each of these stories paints a picture of the kind of Australia that we live in - a complicated and multifaceted community that stretches from Western Australia to the shores of Bondi Beach in NSW. It's near those Bondi shores that Darling takes audiences with his latest film, The Pool, a mood driven documentary that presents a year in the life of the iconic Bondi Icebergs Club, a varied group of individuals who call the stunning seaside pool home.The Pool sways through different styles of do

The AFLW was established in 2016, expanding from an initial eight teams to eighteen in 2022. In the years since it launched, the league has grown to showcase the different styles of football that each corner of Australia has to offer. In Sal Balharrie and Danielle MacLean's essential documentary Like My Brother, we follow four AFLW hopefuls from the Tiwi Islands, Rina, Freda, Juliana and Jess, as they follow their dream to become league players. But, dreams aren't always meant to happen overnight, with the film following their journey away from their home in Tiwi to Victoria where they have to train and try out for consideration with the major teams. On this journey, we see the difficulties that the AFLW hopefuls face, especially those from communities like the Tiwi Islands where the same kind of opportunities that come easily for male players are simply not afforded to the women players. In the following interview with Sal and Danielle, the co-directors talk about their journey of bringing this sto

Over the span of eleven minutes, the impressive short film Yeah the Boys sways and swerves through a boozy night with the lads in nondescript backyard Australia. Drinking culture, Aussie larrikinism, and the masculinity that finds fertile ground in these areas is brought to life with a pulsing score by The Avalanches. Oh, and all of this is presented with an the organic dance movements choreographed by Vanessa Marin. Yeah the Boys is written by Vanessa, with her partner Stefan Hunt taking directing duties. The titular boys are Neven Connolly, Kieran Crowe, Hadley Davidson, Jackson Garcia, Jordan Hill, Rob McLean, with Bailey Spalding appearing at the shorts start. It is, quite simply, one of the most unique and invigorating slices of Aussie cinema you'll see this year, and after winning the Best Australian Short award at the Oscar qualifying Flickerfest in 2024, and winning the Innovation Award at the St Kilda Film Festival, where it was also nominated for Best Cinematography, and receiving nominati

To call Parish Malfitano's sophomore feature, Salt Along the Tongue, a straight up horror film feels like a disservice to the experience of watching this magnificent melodrama-adjacent film. Yes, there are most certainly horrific elements - blood features heavily throughout the film, upsetting tales about the symbiotic relationship between wasps and figs are told, bodies float in the air in unsettling ways, boils and scars emerge in haunting ways on the legs of characters, and of course, the thematic backbone of Italian witches that feature within the film - but Salt Along the Tongue instead feels more like a familial, motherly drama in the vein of Pedro Almodovar's work.Yet, even calling Salt Along the Tongue an homage to Alomdovar feels like it's doing a disservice to Parish's work here. This is, much like his first film, a distinct work syphoned from the mind of Parish Malfitano, and in the realm of Australian cinema, that is a blessing.Salt Along the Tongue follows Laneikka Denne's Mattia, a teen girl who

Finnish-Australian filmmaker Saara Lamberg has crafted a filmography which features genre-defying, boundary pushing films like 2017's Innuendo, 2022's Westermarck Effect, and the docu-fiction film The Lies We Tell Ourselves, which received screenings at Perth's Revelation International Film Festival and the Sydney Underground Film Festival. Screenings of The Lies We Tell Ourselves at these festivals became an event that spilled out of the cinema and into the foyer, with Saara dramatically collapsing on the festival red carpet, adding an extra layer to the films themes.On the horizon for Saara are two more films. Coma is a feature length film told from the perspective of a patient in a coma whose friends, family, and the hospitals employees spill their own truths onto this unconscious person, and Saara's other film being Conversations with Spithead, a short-long film about a physicist who engages in complicated and wild conversations with his cat, Spithead, about the nature of living.In the following discussio

The Koalas is a documentary that follows in the footsteps of the McIntyre's Kangaroo: A Love-Hate Story and Jane Hammonds's Black Cockatoo Crisis, in that it essays the plight of an Australian icon - the koala - alongside the stories of the activists, ecologists, politicians, and wildlife carers who are putting themselves on the line to save the iconic creature.Directed and produced by Gregory Miller and Georgia Wallace-Crabbe, The Koalas is a powerful, if at times devastating, documentary that speaks to a crisis occurring right in front of us. Whether it's bushfires or landscape clearing or road strikes, the life of the koala is always in danger.Georgia speaks to me ahead of The Koalas screenings at the Berlin Down Under Film Festival on 29 September, Adelaide on 29 September, the Darwin Deckchair Cinema on the 30th of September, and in Copenhagen on October 3rd and 6th. In the following extensive conversation, Georgia talks about her journey into filmmaking, her path from winning awards the Melbourne Film F

The upcoming 18th Annual Sydney Underground Film Festival kicks off in Newtown, NSW, on Thursday 12 September with a Smell-O-Rama screening of John Waters cult classic Female Trouble, celebrating its 50th anniversary. The festival runs until Sunday 15 September with a huge array of films and features ranging from the truly bonkers Vulcanizadora to the superbly surreal Can't Stop the Music extravaganza, alongside frightfully great features like the Aussie dark comedy The Organist to the latest work of the provocative filmmaker Bruce LaBruce, The Visitor.There will also be a book launch from myself on Friday evening at Better Read Than Dead, where I'll be joined by Jack Sargeant and Platon Theodoris to kick off my new book, Lonely Spirits and the King.Tickets for all of these films, and more, are available via SUFF.com.au.Ahead of the festivals launch, I caught up with Festival Director Nathan Senn to chat about what makes an underground film festival an underground film festival, how important it is to showcas

Law Chen's familial documentary Starring Jerry as Himself follows retired Florida man Jerry C. Hsu as he's recruited by Chinese police to become an undercover agent. The documentary follows Jerry as he retells his story about how he was recruited, what actions he needed to take to help inform the agents, and, most importantly, the lengths he goes to to hide his recruitment from his family.Starring Jerry as Himself features Jerry and his family re-enacting Jerry's story, which is frequently tense, but thanks to the optimism and positive outlook of the world that Jerry has, the film is also rather endearing.In the following interview with Jerry and his son (and the films producer) Jonathan, we delve into the spoilers of the film, and as Jonathan mentions at the start, the two would hope that audiences go into the film knowing as little as possible.Starring Jerry As Himself was the Grand Jury Prize Winner at the 2023 Slamdance Film Festival, where it also received the award for Best Actor for Jerry, and it was t