Speaker 1: From Sports Media. I'm Daniel James and this is seven
Speaker 1: AM summer series. Every day. This week, critics from the
Speaker 1: Saturday Paper and The Monthly are bringing you their top
Speaker 1: picks of the year, and today we're talking film, from
Speaker 1: partying with Russian oligarchs to grave robbing in Italy. Taking
Speaker 1: us on this journey is film writer for The Monthly
Speaker 1: as well as the Features and Talks programmer at the
Speaker 1: Melbourne International Film Festival, Kate Jinx. It's Friday, December twenty seven. Kate,
Speaker 1: thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 2: Hey, thanks for having me. I love to talk about film,
Speaker 2: so this is a good morning for me.
Speaker 1: We've chosen the right person there, which is very very
Speaker 1: pleasing to know. You've picked four films for us. But
Speaker 1: before we get to that, what kind of year has
Speaker 1: it been in film in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: I think it's been a pretty interesting year in film.
Speaker 2: I mean, we haven't had the Barbenheimer breaking box office records,
Speaker 2: but we're in the middle of Glickered apparently that's Gladiated
Speaker 2: to and Wicked. So I think the blockbusters have been
Speaker 2: pretty major this year and of a relatively high standard,
Speaker 2: like even a film like Beetlejuice too performed really well.
Speaker 2: But then in the art house world or the kind
Speaker 2: of film festival world, there have been some real beauties,
Speaker 2: some absolute gems. Like when I was trying to pick
Speaker 2: four films for this year, it was a painful experience,
Speaker 2: a hard exercise.
Speaker 1: I would say, well, let's get to them. Okay, So
Speaker 1: what is your first pick?
Speaker 2: Okay? My first pick is a film that I did
Speaker 2: write about for the Monthly earlier this year. It's called
Speaker 2: LaCamera by Alice Rohlwalker. It's an Italian film. It did
Speaker 2: the festival rounds last year, but made it into Australia
Speaker 2: in cinemas this year, and it's just the most extraordinary
Speaker 2: film open sato for I see. It's set in the
Speaker 2: early eighties. It's set in the Italian countryside, as most
Speaker 2: of Alice Rowalker's films are, and it's the third part
Speaker 2: in this very loose trilogy about Italian folklore but also
Speaker 2: the history of kind of the Tuscan and Etruscan countryside.
Speaker 2: It's about Etruscan jewels and the engrave robbing. I mean,
Speaker 2: are you interested yet?
Speaker 1: Of course you are, of course I am.
Speaker 2: It stars Josh O'Connor, a British actor. We've seen him
Speaker 2: in a bunch of things this year, like Luca Guadnina's
Speaker 2: Challenges and Lee, the film that starred Kate Winslet. But
Speaker 2: this is him at his kind of finest. He plays
Speaker 2: this kind of relatively cranky, solitary Englishman who's living in Italy.
Speaker 2: He's fresh out of jail for grave rubbing and he's
Speaker 2: kind of lost the love of his life. And we
Speaker 2: don't know exactly where she is a witch state she
Speaker 2: is in, which world she's in, basically, but he has
Speaker 2: this preternatural ability like to work out where graves are
Speaker 2: and he uses a dowsing rod to find them. And
Speaker 2: he has this kind of incredible troupe that called the
Speaker 2: Trombaroli who help him. Breads breads, really breads, breads. It's
Speaker 2: shot on film, but it's shot on a mix of films.
Speaker 2: It's like thirty five and sixteen and eight, so the
Speaker 2: look of it changes all the time. It's it's just beautiful.
Speaker 2: It's just beautiful.
Speaker 1: Well, you've certainly piqued by in Christ It's so I've
Speaker 1: seen it described as a kind of cross between Indiana
Speaker 1: Jones meets Fellini. Would that be a fair description.
Speaker 2: That's a pretty good description. I wish i'd said it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so that was La Camira. What it is
Speaker 1: your second pick?
Speaker 2: My second film is Janet Planet. This one has played
Speaker 2: a number of festivals this year in Australia and I
Speaker 2: played My Infinite played at Adelaide. It hasn't had a
Speaker 2: big cinema release, which is such a shame, but it
Speaker 2: is available on planes. I know a lot of people
Speaker 2: who have watched it mid air and they've probably cried
Speaker 2: a lot watching it, purely because they're on a plane.
Speaker 2: But I also cried in the cinema. It's a film
Speaker 2: by Annie Baker. It's her first feature American director, but
Speaker 2: she's really known as a playwright. She won a Pulitzer
Speaker 2: for a theater work called The Flick many years ago,
Speaker 2: and Janet Planet does have kind of a theatrical energy
Speaker 2: to it. It feels like it's in It's a film
Speaker 2: in three act. Basically, it's about this woman, this mother
Speaker 2: who is played by Julia Nicholson, and she is a
Speaker 2: single mom and she's raising her eleven year old daughter
Speaker 2: who's a bit of a strange cat. Her name's Lacey.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's funny flat. Every moment of my life is Hell.
Speaker 2: Who actually seem very happy to me. A lot of
Speaker 2: the day it's Hell.
Speaker 1: I don't think it'll last, so I'm actually pretty unhappy too.
Speaker 2: It opens on a summer camp and Lacey is calling
Speaker 2: to be picked up. She doesn't want to stay anymore,
Speaker 2: and I won't kind of reveal how she makes her
Speaker 2: mother come and get her. It's very funny. And then
Speaker 2: we follow Lacey and her mom over this period of
Speaker 2: just one summer together and they live they live in
Speaker 2: the woods of Massachusetts and they live in this beautiful
Speaker 2: old house, and she's an acupuncturist. Down at Planet is
Speaker 2: her acupuncture studio, and we see these relationships just drift
Speaker 2: in and out of her life, kind of lovers and
Speaker 2: friends coming in and leaving again, and their relationship that
Speaker 2: she has with them, and also how her daughter reacts
Speaker 2: to them and to her mum. She was in a
Speaker 2: relationship with ARV, a guy with a beer.
Speaker 1: Then she broke things off with.
Speaker 2: Him, but he.
Speaker 1: Well, I wouldn't go so far as to call it
Speaker 1: a cult, and Regina insists it isn't. And they're actually
Speaker 1: really wonderful.
Speaker 2: It's really special, particularly because I feel that these kinds
Speaker 2: of people, you know, like an acupuncture is kind of
Speaker 2: living in the woods, going to essentially a commune that's
Speaker 2: where her kind of friend lives, and to see these
Speaker 2: big kind of a performance theater shows at a commune.
Speaker 2: They're the kinds of people who are used for kind
Speaker 2: of comedy. They're the like light relief in a film.
Speaker 2: And this film takes the really seriously and there's a
Speaker 2: lot of empathy for that world and I haven't really
Speaker 2: seen that much on film before, and so yeah, it
Speaker 2: really blew me away this one.
Speaker 1: Okay, So that's Janet Planett. We'll be back after this. So, Kate,
Speaker 1: we're talking film and your favorite picks from twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Your next picks are two films that have just been
Speaker 1: released in cinemas, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Just scraping in at the end of the year Boxing
Speaker 2: Day releases. And I don't know if you're like me,
Speaker 2: but I always wait and see, like what's going to
Speaker 2: come out on Boxing Day, and it's always something really
Speaker 2: you know, massive that we're all waiting for. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: then in the last couple of years, we've seen these
Speaker 2: kind of smaller indie films kind of break into that
Speaker 2: sphere too, because there's just kind of demand for that,
Speaker 2: which is excellent. That. Yeah. One of my favorites of
Speaker 2: the year, which I also covered for the monthly, was Anora.
Speaker 2: It's Sean Baker's latest film American director. I just think
Speaker 2: he's wonderful. He makes films. He kind of burst onto
Speaker 2: the scene with his second feature, Tangerine, which was shot
Speaker 2: completely on an iPhone, A number of iPhones, I imagine. I
Speaker 2: don't think the battery could last back then.
Speaker 1: Maybe now I could, maybe, yeah.
Speaker 2: Maybe now. Yeah. He makes these films often about people
Speaker 2: kind of existing on the margins and about the kind
Speaker 2: of American dream. And the last five films he's made
Speaker 2: have actually focused on sex work or the adult entertainment industry.
Speaker 2: And this one is just so extraordinary. It's called Anora,
Speaker 2: and it won the big prize at can this year
Speaker 2: so deservedly. I will say. It's about this young woman.
Speaker 2: Her name's Anora. She goes by Annie, and she works
Speaker 2: at a strip club called Headquarters. She's a stripper and
Speaker 2: a kind of sex worker, and she is just as
Speaker 2: like tough as nails. Girl. You would not want to
Speaker 2: get into a fight with Annie. Yop yo, yo, keep
Speaker 2: begot milk? Do you see milk on the fridge? No?
Speaker 2: And ikick up the fucking milk. She played by Mikey Madison.
Speaker 2: It's such a great role for her, and in comes
Speaker 2: this Russian young Russian guy who they just have this
Speaker 2: connection with. She has a Russian background, so she's able
Speaker 2: to kind of converse with him, and he's really young,
Speaker 2: and he manages to get her to do some like
Speaker 2: offsite work and invites her to his mansion and it's
Speaker 2: a pretty intense mansion and they start seeing each other
Speaker 2: like client and worker, cash up front, deal deep, and
Speaker 2: then they kind of fall in love. Question Mark, there
Speaker 2: is definitely something there and they go on this kind
Speaker 2: of bender essentially, this very joyful week that they spend together,
Speaker 2: her paid handsomely, of course, and then they get married
Speaker 2: in Vegas and it's like the film could stop there
Speaker 2: and it would be this perfect rom com. But no,
Speaker 2: and the kind of his parents, you know, get in
Speaker 2: touch with their heavies and these kind of Armenian goons
Speaker 2: come in and wreck the whole thing and it sets
Speaker 2: off this incredible kind of mad cap caper across mostly
Speaker 2: Coney Island, and the rushing kind of areas of island,
Speaker 2: and it's has everything, like it's so funny, so deeply funny,
Speaker 2: but it's also critiquing capitalist America and it's sad and
Speaker 2: it's beautiful and there's good like there's sex in it.
Speaker 2: Like it truly it is a movie for adults, and
Speaker 2: I feel like we don't get that too often.
Speaker 1: It's true. It was kind of sounding like Pretty Woman
Speaker 1: if Ji was the son of a Russian oligarch there
Speaker 1: for a bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's a pretty Woman. And it's also like
Speaker 2: Martin Scorsese's After Hours, a little bit like this kind
Speaker 2: of nighttime odyssey that sort of with a lot of
Speaker 2: you know, comical fast to it. It's just it's just
Speaker 2: such a great film. I've seen it a couple of
Speaker 2: times at this point, and yeah, high, high recommendation.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that was Anora. What is your fourth and
Speaker 1: final pick?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is hard, isn't it having a final pick?
Speaker 2: Because I've got so many.
Speaker 1: Sounds, so it sounds so permanent, I know, right.
Speaker 2: Don't put it on my tombstone. My fourth one is
Speaker 2: All We Imagine as Light, which is also just out now.
Speaker 2: It came out on Boxing Day. We began Cistern routine
Speaker 2: ed it and this is a film that is so
Speaker 2: on the opposite end of Anora like it's this one's
Speaker 2: really quiet and meditative and sort of just light filled
Speaker 2: and luscious. It's real luminous film. It is by Payo Carpatia,
Speaker 2: an Indian filmmaker. This is her first feature and she
Speaker 2: won the second big prize, the Grand Prix at Can
Speaker 2: for this and she was recently named as the first
Speaker 2: Indian woman ever to be nominated for a feature at
Speaker 2: the Golden Globe. So she's kind of adding a pretty
Speaker 2: incredible path here with this film. It's about these two roommates.
Speaker 2: They're Indian nurses. One's a bit older than the other.
Speaker 2: They live in Mumbai and they work at the same hospital,
Speaker 2: but they're constantly having kind of issues come up with
Speaker 2: their work or their love lives. One of them, Praba,
Speaker 2: her husband lives in Germany and he hasn't contacted her
Speaker 2: in many many years. She can't get in touch with him,
Speaker 2: and then out of the blue, she receives this rice
Speaker 2: cooker in the mail and the scene with her receiving
Speaker 2: the rice cooker is just it's really it's really beautiful
Speaker 2: and really sad and lovely in London, England, made in Germany.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen the film, but I saw some of
Speaker 1: the shorts and the film had me at Rice Cooker.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean Boxing Day sales are on right now.
Speaker 2: It's it's a good ad for it. And then her
Speaker 2: younger roommate has fallen in love with a young Muslim boy,
Speaker 2: which is very not allowed in her family, and she
Speaker 2: has these kind of clandestine sort of trysts with him
Speaker 2: in the city. But they're just they're very lovely, and
Speaker 2: they're very fun, and it's fun to see kind of
Speaker 2: these young people falling in love. It's a really lovely film.
Speaker 2: To lovely film, to kind of just let wash over you.
Speaker 2: I think it will really stay with people.
Speaker 1: Well, they sound like four fine films. Kate, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for your time.
Speaker 2: Oh, thanks so much. I had so many others to
Speaker 2: give a little recommendation.
Speaker 1: Coming up in just a moment. Kate can't help but
Speaker 1: recommend a couple more gems, including a film set in Bunderberg.
Speaker 2: I just wanted to mention an Australian film my favorite
Speaker 2: of the year. It was Flatheaded by Jaden Martin. It's
Speaker 2: been in cinemas, but I'm sure it's streaming at this point.
Speaker 2: It's set in Bunderberg, and it's a kind of a
Speaker 2: part documentary, part fiction and it's a really fambulous film.
Speaker 2: And my favorite cake was another big one, big favor
Speaker 2: of mine. But also if you're just looking for something
Speaker 2: a little maybe not as highbrow as the ones that
Speaker 2: I've talked about, my favorite time at the movie was
Speaker 2: m Night Shyamalan's Trap this year. So there you.
Speaker 1: Go, something for everyone.
Speaker 2: Thank you, kay, thanks so much.
Speaker 1: Seven Am is a daily show from Schwartz Media and
Speaker 1: The Saturday Paper. It's made by Atticus Basto, Shane Anderson,
Speaker 1: Chris Danegate, Eric Jensen, Ruby Jones, Sarah mcv Travis Evans,
Speaker 1: Sultan Fecho, and myself Daniel James. We'll be back next
Speaker 1: week with our favorite episodes of our sister podcast, Read This,
Speaker 1: hosted by Michael Williams.
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