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