The Evolving Cinema of Alice Maio Mackay
Alice Maio Mackay is the kind of filmmaker who seems incapable of sitting still. At only 22, and already with seven features under her belt, she has built a filmography that feels remarkably expansive…
Wilderness is a profoundly misguided attempt to bring environmental issues to the forefront in a film that consistently brushes them aside
Martin McKenna’s long-gestating film Wilderness very occasionally allows glimpses of a better film he chose not to make. It gives me absolutely no pleasure to write a review of a small budget Australian film and deem it incompetent on almost every level.…
Inventive and absurd, Yesterday Island is a terrific low-budget Australian black comedy
Perhaps the best thing about Sam Voutas’ inventive black comedy is that it’s near impossible to avoid thinking of people you’d willingly send to the island, proving that there’s a bit of pettiness to all of us, and certainly some malleable ethics.…
Montreal, My Beautiful: It’s Never Too Late to Find Yourself
Montreal, My Beautiful is a quiet, deeply tender film about the parts of ourselves that can disappear beneath the weight of responsibility, and the extraordinary feeling of discovering that they were…
Sophy Romvari on the unreliability of memory in Blue Heron and merging fiction and documentary
I feel very strongly that we are when you are given the opportunity to make a film, you get to build your own world around it, and you get to build the environment that you shoot in, and I think I feel that I think that because I did that, it impacted the outcome of the film.…
Paloma Schneideman on staying true to her instincts
Instinctually, you know what you know. No one really knows the film better than you. I mean, there are logistical things that people know better, and there are technical things that people know better. But there's no one who knows the chain of importance around the storytelling better than yourself.…
An update regarding our coverage guidelines...
the Curb... does not provide coverage to filmmakers or creatives who utilise generative AI or extensive AI tools in their creative process. Do not contact us requesting coverage for your AI film, AI…
Vee Shi’s family docudrama Time and Tide shows China’s Filial Piety Law as emotionally and financially complex
It is steadfast in its portrait of the family at their best and at their most exhausted and frayed. With the camera picking up not only the conversations and arguments, but also the physical dynamic of the family, Shi invites us into a world where the most casual acts are imbued with meaning.…
Arlo Cook & Ness Thornton the ten year journey to bringing Jebediah: Are We Ok? to life on screen
When I think of the sounds of Western Australia, the licks of Wide Open Road by the Triffids hits my mind, or maybe The Waifs yearning to be back in London, or occasionally it'll be a wistful memo…
The Noughts Report Part 2: 2002: From Adventures of Pluto Nash to Whale Rider
Welcome to the second instalment of the Noughts Report. A sequel to 90s All Over Me, each entry revisits a year in film from the 2000s, highlighting movies big and small and the careers and genres and…
Gregg Araki says let’s get physical in I Want Your Sex
I Want Your Sex is a comic masterpiece with Araki sparing no one. The contemporary art world is far from groundbreaking, Erika is “over the hill” by her late 30s, Apple is fragile to the point where she “just can’t” with most things. And Elliot, poor Elliot, is a puppy who still isn’t housetrained.…
Harvey Zielinski's Sweet Milk Lake instils a powerful trust with its audience
Jake has recently become the man he always was. His family has not caught up. That is the whole engine of Sweet Milk Lake, and Harvey Zielinski, who wrote it and directed it and plays both of its lead…