The Screen Show

At the movies this week, new faces, new voices. Wadjda is the first Saudi Arabian film ever made completely in the Kingdom, the deceptively simple tale of a girl and a bike that highlights unjust attitudes towards women. Its female director Haifaa al-Mansour talks about how she made it. Meanwhile The Missing Picture is Cambodia's first ever Oscar nominee—a powerful, highly original memoir about the killing fields of Pol Pot, told using archival footage and clay figurines. Finally, the gothic action thriller I, Frankenstein that's made in Melbourne and hoping to take the multiplex by storm.

The Monuments Men and Hanna Arendt are two films dealing with World War II in very different ways, one about the American mission to recuperate stolen artwork from the Nazis and the other about the 1961 trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann. Both also tell us a lot about how the people on either side of the Atlantic see each other on screen. Dr Rodney Taveira, an American studies academic, talks with Jason Di Rosso.

This week at the cinema two very different films about travellers who go it alone. Tracks is an impressionistic adaptation of the Robyn Davidson memoir starring Mia Wasikowska as a young woman who crosses the desert with four camels and a dog, while All Is Lost is an exercise in minimalism with Robert Redford playing an old man on a solo ocean voyage. Both films’ directors discuss their very different approaches to telling stories of solitude and adventure.

Looking for love in all the wrong places. Gloria is a Chilean film about a divorced, fifty something woman who starts dating again. It’s a wry look at getting old and reconciling yourself with your past, which for a generation that came of age during  General Pinochet’s dictatorship, is often hard to do.  Actress Paulina Garcia speaks about the film’s many layers of meaning and what they say about Chile’s recent, violent history. Plus the verdict on The Wind Rises, from Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki, and guest critic Philippa Hawker discusses the contenders for best cinematography at this year's Oscars.

Of all the films in contention for the best picture Oscar this year, Nebraska is the darkest horse in the pack. Shot in black and white on a relative shoestring, it’s a road movie through a depressed small town America with an Oscar-nominated Bruce Dern as a senile man who believes he’s won the lottery. American ex-pat and Variety critic Eddie Cockerill pops in to discuss the career of its director, Nebraskan born Alexander Payne, a chronicler of bittersweet life in the Midwest. Plus, the British film about a couple who head to Paris to reignite the flame, Le Week-End.

This week, films about queer themes getting mainstream audiences excited. Cannes Palm d'Or winner Blue Is the Warmest Colour is a sexually explicit lesbian love story that’s attracted criticism for being too ‘straight’. Guest film scholar and critic Deb Verhoeven joins Jason to discuss, and disagree! Meanwhile, Dallas Buyers Club is the true story of a Texan redneck who becomes an unlikely AIDS hero, a performance that's earned Matthew McConaughey big Oscar buzz. Also this week, a Berlin Film Festival report from guest critic Tommaso Tocci.

Two months after the death of Nelson Mandela, a new film based on his autobiography celebrates the man without shying away from some contentious episodes - the two failed marriages, the use of political violence. Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom tells a complex tale set in a political era full of grey zones, but does it manage to channel any of that nuance as a work of cinema? Director Justin Chadwick discusses meeting Mandela and his family. Plus divorce, Iranian style. One of the leading lights of the Iranian new wave, Asghar Farhardi, has forged an award winning career depicting marriages in crisis (his last film A Separation won best foreign Oscar). Now, working for the first time outside his native country, he tries a different mix of characters in The Past, a story about an Iranian man who leaves his French wife and kids.

Another week, another best picture nominee. Already acclaimed as Best Picture at the Golden Globes, 12 Years A Slave is a powerful, true life historical drama about a free man kidnapped into slavery. Its British director Steve McQueen discusses why it’s a film he always wanted to make. Plus, incoming curator of the Sydney cinematheque Tim Mason discusses Robert Aldrich’s 1962 gothic horror What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, in which Bette Davis and Joan Crawford play a pair of ageing actress sisters in a protracted, sadistic battle of wits.

Two films about decadence. Martin Scorsese’s very new world, exuberant exploration of high living and decline in The Wolf of Wall Street hits screens this week as it makes its run towards the Oscars. Meanwhile a much more world weary take comes from Italy in The Great Beauty, set in a city that’s seen it all - Rome. Plus, Italian scholar Andrea Rizzi from the University of Melbourne comes in to discuss depictions of the Eternal City in Italian cinema.

Authenticity and faking it. Spike Jonze’s science fiction romance Her is about a man who falls in love with his computer. Does it matter she’s not actually real? Meanwhile the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis takes a step back in history to the early '60s New York folk scene, when being authentic was almost more important than being successful. Music and film critic Lynden Barber pops in to discuss what he says is his favourite Coens’ film.