Ab Film Review & The Last New Wave

In a Violent Nature is one of the most gruesome and gory horror films of the year. It's also a film that Nadine Whitney has called a pure slasher death trip. Director Chris Nash takes audiences on the slasher ride of the year, with his camera following the gnarly Johnny (Ry Barrett) as a silent brute slaughtering an array of college kids who possibly deserve their squishy demise.In the following interview, recorded ahead of the films Australian release on 1 August 2024, Nadine discusses the film with director Chris Nash, delving into the dark delights that this horror offering has. As Nadine mentions in her review, the death trip that Nash takes his audience on shows a bevy of victims who will all face a gruesome demise.To find out more about the film, head over to TheCurb.com.au to read Nadine's review, alongside other interviews and reviews. The Curb is a listener supported platform. To keep us independent and ad-free, head over to patreon.com/thecurbau to support us from as little as $1 a month. Hosted on

Ruby O'Sullivan-Belfrage is a writer and critic who works and plays on unceded Wurundjeri land. In the wake of Afterwar’s screening at Sydney Film Festival, Ruby O’Sullivan-Belfrage spoke with director Birgitte Stærmose about the impact she hopes the film has, the nature of truth, and how truly annoying the question of genre can be. Afterwar screened at the 2024 Sydney Film Festival, with a release to come in the future.For more interviews and reviews, visit The Curb.com.au. The Curb is proudly an ad free website and relies on community support to stay active. To support The Curb, visit Patreon.com/thecurbau where you can show your support from as little as $1 a month. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Taylor Broadley's feature debut film Stubbornly Here is a welcome blast of indie filmmaking inventiveness with the Perth-based filmmaker presenting a sci-fi-adjacent story about three teens who live in an apathetic society where teenagers sometimes vanish into thin air. Stubbornly Here speaks to the anxieties of the day, focusing on a generation of kids who have grown up in a world that does not support their future and who the vitality of youth has been robbed of them.Yet, for all of its modernity, Stubbornly Here is as far from a dark, doom-laden experience as you can get, with the film joyfully embracing a trio of friends, Sunny (Cleo Meinck), PJ (Nathan Di Giovanni), and Floyd (Jonathan Maddocks), as they seek to use the vanishings as an opportune way to slink away from the routine life of this sleepy little deathtoll town and start a new existence in Sydney. Their road trip is thwarted early, leading the trio to shack up at a remote motel while they decide on what to do next. There's a sense of adult-fre

There's space in this Bluey obsessed world for two Aussie animated canine stories, with Alexs Stadermann's utterly delightful and wonderfully inventive series 100% Wolf following the exploits of one Freddy Lupin, a werewolf who turns into a puffy pink poodle when the moon comes out. Kicking off in 2019 with the bright and brilliant 100% Wolf which saw Freddy at odds with his pack as he had to prove that he had the heart of a wolf, a hugely successful TV series spawned, following the story of Freddy, his bouffant friend Batty, a slightly loopy Papillion, and Hamish, a dottery old West Highland White Terrier, and their group of misfit friends.I was able to chat with director Alexs Stadermann and star Ilai Swindells prior to the films world premiere at the Sydney Film Festival and I got to ask both of them about the delight of fart jokes in films. My chat with Alexs does touch on some slight spoilers, but it's nothing that would impact your enjoyment of the film. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more i

The boxing film subgenre gets an esteemed new entry in the form of Paul Goldman's Kid Snow. Set in the 1970s, Kid Snow follows Billy Howle as the titular character, a washed-up fighter who has one last shot at glory. Shot in the red dirt of WA, Kid Snow also features an impressive line-up of Aussie actors including Phoebe Tonkin, Hunter Page-Lochard, Mark Coles Smith, and Nathan Phillips.Nadine Whitney spoke to Paul Goldman ahead of the World Premiere at the 2024 Sydney Film Festival, with the two talking about Paul's experience of shooting in Kalgoorlie, how he cast the roles, and the allure of the drama within a boxing story.Kid Snow has two more screenings at the Sydney Film Festival on 14 and 15 June before it heads west where it screens as the opening night film for the Revelation International Film Festival in Perth on 3 July. Tickets for all screenings are available now.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One of the finest films having its Australian premiere at the festival is Jaydon Martin's stunning feature debut film Flathead. This fiction-documentary hybrid film follows Cass Cumerford, a bloke near the end of his days who returns to Bundaberg, the region he grew up. Swaying into the town, he finds consolation and support with various religious sects that have sprung up in the land before he flows into the life of Andrew, a Chinese-Australian fish and chip shop owner who is dealing with his own understanding of mortality.Flathead follows these real figures as they're nudged along a partly-fictional narrative, and as the film plays with a sublime black and white presentation, it sways into a dreamlike state, providing a highly affecting story about modern Australia.It's that notion of what a modern Australia is that drives the following conversation with Jaydon, who took four years to make the film and had to leave Australia to realise what it was that he needed to make. Flitting into some of the scenes, an

In Vitro is the highly anticipated follow-up from Will Howarth (Bombay Beach) and Tom McKeith (Beast, SFF 2016) after their debut feature Beast was nominated for Best First Feature at Toronto International Film Festival 2015.Starring the director Will Howarth, Ashley Zukerman (Fear Street) and Talia Zucker (Lake Mungo).On an isolated cattle farm, Layla and Jack's life takes a dark turn when a storm exposes the unforeseen repercussions of Jack’s animal breeding technology.Nadine Whitney chats to Will and Tom about creating a sense of extreme isolation in In Vitro, collaborative writing processes, making grounded science fiction, and Ash Zukerman doing the washing.In Vitro screens at Sydney Film Festival on the 6th, 8th, and 9th of June. Tickets are available here: https://www.sff.org.au/program/browse/in-vitro Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The 2024 German Film Festival is currently underway across Australia with screenings taking place from 7 May to 5 June. The poster film for the festival is From Hilde, With Love, by director Andreas Dresen.In the following interview, Nadine Whitney and Andreas talk about his interest in telling the story of Hilde Coppi on screen. Hilde was a young German women who was drawn into the anti-Nazi resistance movement during World War Two.Andreas Dresen is in attendance at the festival as a festival guest, and will be participating in Q&A sessions at screenings of From Hilde, With Love, on Thursday 9 May at Sydney Palace Central, Saturday 11 May at Palace Cinema Como in Melbourne, and Saturday 18 May at Palace Barracks in Brisbane. For all screening times and to purchase tickets, visit GermanFilmFestival.com.au.Thank you for listening to this episode of The Curb podcast. To help keep the Curb independent, visit patreon.com/thecurbau to show your support from as little as $1 a month. Hosted on Acast. See acast.c

Roger Ungers is a documentarian who continually presents a new perspective on the world around us. His 2020 documentary Finding Creativity saw him explore the complex nature of creativity, and in turn, he reflects on his own creativity. That personal touch is brought to his latest documentary, Shape.This is a film about physicality and the at times exclusionary manner that the gay community can exhibit prejudice against different body types. Shape explores how a community that is often vocal about celebrating diversity can engage in body discrimination.Shape screened at the Mardi Gras Queer Film Festival in 2024. To keep track of where Shape will screen in the future, visit Roger's website: RogerThatPictures.com.au for more information.Thank you for listening to this episode of The Curb podcast. To help keep the Curb independent, visit patreon.com/thecurbau to show your support from as little as $1 a month.    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There's something in the water in Perth that leads to a creative movement from local filmmakers who push through microbudget limitations to tell engaging and inventive stories on screen. For emerging filmmakers Katherine Grace and Holly Dodd, that drive for creativity comes in the form of working together as actors and directors on a duo of short films. For Holly, it's the short horror Consumed, a story of a young woman who suffers from sleep paralysis, while for Katherine, her short film Alison & Betty sees one friend be haunted by the presence of her distant friend Betty.As Katherine details in the following interview, working together on each others films has helped create a body of work that has been able to showcase their combined and singular talents. There's a charm and devilishness to Alison & Betty that leans into a 1950s housewife modality, flipping it on its head with an off kilter kookiness that sees Katherine and Holly bounce off each other with ease. Alison & Betty shows a talent on

As a young man, Matty Hannon explored the world, sinking roots in the Southeast Asian region. Here, he made lifelong friends, became part of families, and fostered a connection with the land that was ultimately severed when he had to return home to Australia to kick off a 'career'. The towering metal structures that became the home for his monotonous office life played a major role in an emerging mental illness that saw Matty at a crossroads: continue on with this corporate career life and possibly lose a sense of himself, or seek a future where he lives with, learns from, and embraces the land that we live alongside. So begins his Road to Patagonia, the title given to Matty's documentary about his journey from Alaska to Patagonia, a 50,000km trek that sees him encountering magnificent surfing locations, wildlife of all kinds, a bond with a group of horses who help on his journey, and a romance which changes his life. The Road to Patagonia is deliberately meditative film, and as such, it becomes a s

Nainita Desai is an award-winning composer whose work has spanned creative formats, from documentaries like The Reason I Jump where she won an Emmy for Outstanding Music Composition, to TV series like Funny Women, to video games like Telling Lies and Immortality. With over 150 credits to her name, Nainita is nothing short of prolific.In the following interview, Nainita talks about her journey into becoming a composer and how Peter Gabriel impacted her career. While we don't touch on her education in mathematics, it plays a vital role in her career as a composer, guiding her interest in sound design as well as composition. From here, our discussion leads into talking about the role of nature in her work, as heard in films like The Deepest Breath, and the 2024 Sundance award-winning film Nocturnes. In both of these films, the role of the ocean and the mountains is as important as the world of the people we are following, and Nainita talks about the way that she reflects those characters journeys in her composit

Daniel Monks is an award winning theatre and film actor who hails from Perth, Western Australia. He received an AACTA nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role for the feature film Pulse, a story about a disabled teen who undergoes radical surgery to turn into a beautiful woman in a bid to be loved and embraced. Daniel wrote the script and worked with his close friend, Stevie Cruz-Martin, as a director. It's a film that helped launch his career as an actor in both Australia and London, where he has performed opposite Emilia Clarke in The Seagull, and where he won the Best Performer in a Play award at The Stage Debut Awards for his turn in Teenage Dick, Michael Lew's darkly comedic retelling of Richard III.When I first watched Pulse, I saw an actor who brought a complicated and conflicted character to life on screen with deep empathy and understanding. We open the discussion by talking about the origins of Pulse, leading Daniel to reflect on the almost ten-year journey between that film being shot and now. I

Listeners should note that the following interview contains discussions on childhood sexual abuse and trauma.Writer-director Carl Joseph Papa's The Missing follows Eric (Carlo Aquino), a young man who lives alone, maintains a crush on his coworker Carlo (Gio Gahol), and has a strong bond with his mother Rosalinda (Dolly De Leon). Rosalinda's request for Eric to check in on his uncle who they haven't heard from in some time coincides with the presence of an alien. These unexpected events cause Eric's repressed memories of trauma from his childhood to reemerge, amplifying the other aspect of his life that's causing him alarm: he's starting to lose body parts. When we first meet Eric, his mouth is missing, and then as his hold on life and reality starts to slip, other parts of his body start to go missing: an ear, a hand, and more.Narratively, The Missing is a layered and emotional experience that resonates long after the credits have rolled, but it's how Carl and his creative team use the form of rotoscope anim

Carissa Lee is a Noongar actor and writer whose work spans from critical analysis, to theatre, to the new ABC Kids series, Planet Lulin, where she plays Principal Cruz. Carissa's critical work has appeared in publications like Kill Your Darlings, IndigenousX, and Witness Performance, where her writing examined culture and the arts through an Indigenous lens. In her must read piece on Kill Your Darlings, How Acting Saved My Life, she talks about the complexity that comes with navigating class barriers both off and on stage.In the following interview, I asked Carissa about her journey into acting and how her writing has informed her work as an actor. I'm lucky with the array of people I get to interview and talk about their work with, but this chat with Carissa was a particularly enjoyable one given the way we discuss her writing and acting, while ultimately asking the question about what our national cultural identity really is. As we yarn about Carissa's work, the conversation sways into talking about identit

Robert Connolly is one of Australia's great modern directors, having exploded onto the film scene some twenty years ago with The Bank, which was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director at the AFI awards, which he swiftly followed up with an impressive body of work that includes Paper Planes, The Turning, Balibo, Blueback, and the 2021 adaptation of Jane Harper's best seller, The Dry.That film, which featured Eric Bana as Detective Aaron Falk, set the box office afire in 2021 alongside High Ground and Penguin Bloom, with the trio making Australian film history as the first time that three Aussie flicks topped the local box office. Given the success of The Dry, it made sense that Connolly and Bana would return to Jane Harper's Falk series with the second novel, Force of Nature. Where The Dry focused on a murder mystery in the middle of nowhere, Force of Nature takes Detective Falk to the Grampians to try and find missing business woman Alice (Anna Torv). Alice did not return with her colleagues (Deborra-Le

For as long as I've been a devotee of cinema, I've followed the career of Patricia Clarkson. Patricia is a genuine queen of the screen, featuring in films like The Station Agent, Far From Heaven, The Green Mile, and Pieces of April, for which she received an Academy Award nomination. Her latest films is the magnificent drama film Monica, featuring Trace Lysette (Transparent, Hustlers) who plays the titular character, a trans woman who poses as a support worker to visit her dying mother, Eugenia (Patricia Clarkson). Due to Eugenia's abusive nature, Monica left the family years ago, only to be drawn back into the fold by her sister-in-law, Laura (Emily Browning), to make amends with her mother.Unresolved trauma hovers under the surface of Monica's exterior, with Trace Lysette delivering a performance that stuns with its authenticity and complexity, and when she shares the screen with Patricia Clarkson, the film truly soars. Director Andrea Pallaoro, alongside co-writer Orlando Tirado, has crafted a masterful tr

Jon Bell's unsettling 2021 short film, The Moogai, receives the feature film treatment with his 2024 horror of the same name. Making its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, The Moogai follows in the steps of other Australian horror films (Talk to Me, Relic, You Won't Be Alone) to have left their mark at the fest.It follows the story of Indigenous couple Sarah (Shari Sebbens) and Fergus (Meyne Wyatt) as they welcome their new child into the world. However, Sarah's birth is a traumatic one, with her dying on the table, leading her to be revived in a horrifying manner. Back at home and still rattled from her birthing experience, Sarah endures another torturous event in the guise of a malevolent spirit that wants to take her baby: the moogai.Jon Bell explores the traumatic history of the Stolen Generation in The Moogai, layering in Aboriginal myths and legends, alongside the complexity that comes with Aboriginal kids being raised by white parents, as we see with the character of Sarah. Her culture has b

Australian horror is experiencing something of a renaissance at the moment with the box office boom of Talk to Me, and the critical success of Godless, Monolith, You'll Never Find Me, Birdeater, and so many more. As we leave 2023 in the dust and we head into 2024, we want to start the year by continuing this celebration of ocker horror with the new short film Bad Vibrations, which makes its world premiere at Flickerfest on Saturday January 20 in the Best of Australian Shorts bunch. Writer/Director Nicole Delprado brings this one-shot horror flick to life, where one housemate (Erica Long) gifts the other housemate (Annabel Maclean) a music book for her to play on her theramine. As she plays one of the songs, she unknowingly summons a demonic force in their house.In the following interview, Nicole and Annabel talk about how they met each other and where the idea of using a theramin as a source of terror came from (shout out to Moog Synthesizers for their support to Bad Vibrations). They also explore how they pl

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