The Screen Show

Ahead of the release of the Laotian-shot Australian film The Rocket, writer-director Kim Mourdaunt talks about the legacy of war and the trauma of industrialisation in the most bombed country on Earth. Oh, and the real life inspiration behind the film's ex-CIA James Brown impersonator. Plus, reviews of the much hyped Upstream Color and What Maisie Knew, a film that takes Henry James’s 1897 novel about the effect of a divorce on a young girl and updates it to contemporary New York.

Every now and then a film comes along that speaks about the joys and anxieties of being young in a way that sums up the particular mood of a generation. Frances Ha is this kind of movie – a highly idiosyncratic urban tale brimming with the neuroses and hopes of its young New Yorker characters. Its star and co-writer Greta Gerwig reflects on her filmmaking journey, discussing everything from gender politics to white hipster privilege. Plus, the verdict on the Matt Damon sci-fi thriller Elysium, another allegory about border politics from the South African director of District 9, Neill Blomkamp.

The true story of a gang of Californian teens who burgled the houses of their favourite celebrities gets the big screen treatment in Sophia Coppola’s The Bling Ring. It’s a story so bizarre that it almost demands a sociological analysis: why did they do it? But cinema works best when it’s expressing emotion, not solving the world’s problems, and Coppola’s handsome film falls into a common trap of trying to explain the inexplicable. Meanwhile – teenage witches. Guest critic Stephanie Van Schilt revisits the 1996 film The Craft  and reflects on the link between supernatural horror and teenage hormones. And finally, the verdict on Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu's film about forbidden love and an exorcism inside an Orthodox convent, Beyond the Hills.

In an age where the genres of crime drama and vampires are at saturation levels, guest critic Sarinah Masukor discusses a film from the 90s that mixes both. Abel Ferrara's King of New York shocked and repulsed audiences for its deadpan performance from Christopher Walken as a ruthless New York gangster with a social conscience. But were they missing the Nosferatu metaphor? Plus, a new coming of age drama The Way Way Back hits all the predictable notes, but rises above the sum of its parts to be one of the best films of the year. How does it do it? Casting funny man Steve Carell as a villain is a good start. And finally, an interview with Matt Weston, director of the forthcoming Australian rock doco Cosmic Psychos: Blokes You Can Trust.

The glitter of Liberace &  the darkness of the Aussie battler: This week three very different films where nothing is what it seems.  In Steven Soderbergh’s tribute to the late piano showman Liberace, Behind the Candelabra,  Michael Douglas is in career top form as the ageing superstar who is as deft at tinkling the ivories as manipulating his young lover, played by Matt Damon. Then there’s What’s In a Name, a French farce about a dinner party that turns sour as politics and gender come between friends and family. And the directing duo behind a new Australian slasher comedy, 100 Bloody Acres, talk about the dark side of the little Aussie battler.

With the Melbourne International Film Festival around the corner, artistic director Michelle Carey picks a favourite from the program she describes as cinematic heavy metal gone fishing! It's a documentary set on a North Atlantic trawler directed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel of the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University, filmed with small cameras and reality TV techniques to create abstract, intensely evocative sound and images that pummel the senses. Plus, the verdict on Nicholas Winding Refn's Sydney Film Festival prize winner, Only God Forgives, a violent movie that polarised audiences and Richard Linklater's Before Midnight.

Writer director Thom Fitzgerald talks queer politics and road movie metaphors ahead of the release of Cloudburst, his romantic comedy starring Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker as ageing lesbians driving to Canada to get married. Plus the cop buddie movie gets a makeover in The Heat - a comedy starring Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock, and the world comes under attack in Pacific Rim, a blockbuster where monsters rise up from the oceans and humans fight back with giant robots.

This week three unusual heroes, or perhaps wannabes. All of them men, all with dreams of becoming symbols for the world, for their nation, for the television audience even. One is Julian Assange, the subject of a new documentary called We Steal Secrets: The WikiLeaks Story which tracks the peculiar cult of personality that's developed around the whistleblower advocate. Then there's the Italian film Reality, Matteo Garrone's follow-up to his critically acclaimed Neapolitan mob film Gomorra. The director explains how he cast a real life convicted hitman as a would be Big Brother contestant. And finally, there’s The Lone Ranger, by the team that brought you all those Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Not a good thing, perhaps.

This week two opposite ends of the American filmmaking spectrum. The Superman reboot Man of Steel is big and bold, and director Zack Snyder explains how he’s attempted to reinvent the caped crusader for our times. Meanwhile American indie White Reindeer is a Christmas movie about death, and Jack Sargeant from the Perth International Revelation Film Festival discusses why he thinks it’s a perfect marriage of underground cinema and old fashioned melodrama. Also this week Michael Winterbottom’s film about the king of Soho and porn pioneer Paul Raymond, The Look of Love.

When Zombies are serious business:  This week, Brad Pitt fights the undead in World War Z, reported to be one of the most troubled Hollywood productions of recent times. It’s said to have been massively over budget, with a significant portion re-shot. But have Brad and his team managed to pull the movie out of the flames of critical and box office disaster? Plus French auteur Francois Ozon chats about his new film In The House, about a teacher who becomes obsessed with the writing of one of his students and a review of the new Australian film Satellite Boy.