Latest news with #AmandaKramer
Sydney Morning Herald
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Killer kombucha and possessed vacuums: The weirdest films at MIFF this year
The Melbourne International Film Festival is known for showcasing the best of cinema, from lauded arthouse darlings to buzzy prestige pictures. But its most offbeat gems are usually hidden in the nooks and crannies of the program. Running between August 7 and 24, the festival is packed with cinematic oddities that aim to bewilder, provoke and surprise in a way conventional film often can't. From features about zombie kombucha to bizarre post-apocalyptic musicals, here are some of MIFF's weirdest offerings this year. A Useful Ghost In Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke's kooky supernatural film, a woman who has died of dust poisoning returns as a vacuum cleaner from her mother-in-law's factory in the hope of breathing new life (pun intended) into her marriage. However, her husband's family doesn't take kindly to relationships with household appliances, so she attempts to gain their approval by cleaning up the ghosts of former workers residing in the factory's other appliances. This horror-sex-comedy, which won the Critics' Week Grand Prix at Cannes, will pull you in with its silliness and keep you there with its genuinely thoughtful questions around class and social justice. By Design Another woman transforms into an inanimate object in Amanda Kramer's By Design. Camille (Juliette Lewis) is so enamoured with a designer chair that she swaps bodies with it, leaving her human frame stiff and motionless. While her rigid human body proves popular with friends and family, her four-legged self ends up with a heartbroken man who might be more in love with the chair's design than the woman trapped inside. The film joins a long list of body-swap films exploring female objectification and self-image. It's narrated by Melanie Griffith (Working Girl) and includes effervescent interpretative dance scenes that somehow manage to steal attention from the body-swapping hoopla. Beast of War You'd think a shark would be the least of the dangers facing soldiers during World War II, but Leo and Will have to fend off a great white predator after a Japanese warplane sinks their ship. Inspired by the true story of the sinking of HMAS Armidale in 1942, and directed by Kiah Roache-Turner of Wyrmwood fame, Beast of War combines an emotional war story with a thrilling (and ridiculous) creature feature. Think Jaws meets Dunkirk. Dead Lover Loading From Pet Sematary to Lisa Frankenstein, the resurrection of the dead is hardly new in cinema. But Canadian filmmaker Grace Glowicki's take stands out for its unapologetic bizarreness. A lonely gravedigger is desperate for love, but her smell of decay makes courtship difficult. When she finally finds a man who gets off on her odour, he dies at sea. Only his finger returns, which she uses to revive him. It's peculiar, a little scary, and somehow relatively heartfelt – even if some of the hearts in the film have stopped beating. One More Shot Imagine Groundhog Day, but replace the time-loop alarm clock with tequila. In Australian director Nick Clifford's debut feature, Minnie (Emily Browning) slips back in time every time she takes a shot to escape an awkward moment at a Y2K New Year's Eve party attended by the ex-boyfriend she still fancies. Aside from the stunning mid-century setting, the top-notch local cast includes Sean Keenan (Nitram), Aisha Dee (Sissy), Pallavi Sharda (Lion) and Ashley Zukerman (Succession). Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass Those familiar with the Quay brothers' work, such as Street of Crocodiles, may be confounded by this surreal stop-motion animation. Those who aren't will probably feel as if they've entered another pair are known for dreamlike, disorienting films that haunt you for days – and their first feature in nearly 20 years is true to form. Based on the work of Polish Jewish writer Bruno Schulz, Sanatorium follows a man visiting his father at an Eastern European sanatorium. The institution, run by a shady six-armed doctor, has entered a time warp, and depending on which dimension the man is in, his father is either dead or alive. Such ambiguity has earned the Quays praise from titans such as Christopher Nolan. The End The world has ended, so let's burst into song. This somehow seems logical in The End, a bonkers post-apocalyptic musical by Joshua Oppenheimer (The Act of Killing). Twenty-five years after environmental disaster, a former petroleum magnate is living a life of luxury in an opulent doomsday bunker with his friends and family. But the outside world caves in on them when a woman from 'the surface' finds her way inside. The absurdity of Michael Shannon and Tilda Swinton singing Broadway ballads against a backdrop of death and dystopia meets serious commentary on elitism and climate responsibility in this mind-boggling film. The Great History of Western Philosophy Forget narrative and logic. Mexican filmmaker Aria Covamonas' animation is made entirely of collages of cut-out public-domain images, and its dialogue is intentionally mistranslated Chinese. Everything is out of place, yet somehow exactly where it needs to be. The Central Committee of the People's Republic hires a cosmic animator to create a philosophical film for Mao Zedong. But after infuriating the Chairman, he's sentenced to death. Then the Monkey King gets involved, and all hell breaks loose. Drawing on surrealism, Lacanian theory and Monty Python, Covamonas creates a mystifying visual world in which plot and resolution need not attend. The Python Hunt Florida's Everglades has a python problem. To try to deal with the invasive species, the state launched an annual 10-day competition in which participants wade through croc-infested swamps to catch the most (and largest) pythons and win $10,000. Xander Robin's The Python Hunt introduces all kinds of oddball hunters, including 82-year-old widow Anne, who is obsessed with 'pithing' snakes. The documentary reminds us that reality is usually wackier than the made-up stories we see on-screen. Zombucha! There has always been something alien about kombucha, which is made using a scoby, a rubbery living culture that looks as if it will slither away at any moment, intent on finding an unwilling host. This fear is brought to life in Zombucha!, an outrageous sci-fi comedy directed by Claudia Dzienny. After losing their jobs on the same day, partners Maddie and Leo decide to steal the scoby of a wealthy kombucha artisan. However, the culture gains deadly sentience after they add some of their neighbour's mysterious garden herbs, beginning what could become an all-out 'zombucha' apocalypse. Starring Emma Leonard – who also wrote the screenplay – it pokes fun at hipster-wannabes and the corruption of the wellness industry ( surely the best things to make fun of). Loading
The Age
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
Killer kombucha and possessed vacuums: The weirdest films at MIFF this year
The Melbourne International Film Festival is known for showcasing the best of cinema, from lauded arthouse darlings to buzzy prestige pictures. But its most offbeat gems are usually hidden in the nooks and crannies of the program. Running between August 7 and 24, the festival is packed with cinematic oddities that aim to bewilder, provoke and surprise in a way conventional film often can't. From features about zombie kombucha to bizarre post-apocalyptic musicals, here are some of MIFF's weirdest offerings this year. A Useful Ghost In Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke's kooky supernatural film, a woman who has died of dust poisoning returns as a vacuum cleaner from her mother-in-law's factory in the hope of breathing new life (pun intended) into her marriage. However, her husband's family doesn't take kindly to relationships with household appliances, so she attempts to gain their approval by cleaning up the ghosts of former workers residing in the factory's other appliances. This horror-sex-comedy, which won the Critics' Week Grand Prix at Cannes, will pull you in with its silliness and keep you there with its genuinely thoughtful questions around class and social justice. By Design Another woman transforms into an inanimate object in Amanda Kramer's By Design. Camille (Juliette Lewis) is so enamoured with a designer chair that she swaps bodies with it, leaving her human frame stiff and motionless. While her rigid human body proves popular with friends and family, her four-legged self ends up with a heartbroken man who might be more in love with the chair's design than the woman trapped inside. The film joins a long list of body-swap films exploring female objectification and self-image. It's narrated by Melanie Griffith (Working Girl) and includes effervescent interpretative dance scenes that somehow manage to steal attention from the body-swapping hoopla. Beast of War You'd think a shark would be the least of the dangers facing soldiers during World War II, but Leo and Will have to fend off a great white predator after a Japanese warplane sinks their ship. Inspired by the true story of the sinking of HMAS Armidale in 1942, and directed by Kiah Roache-Turner of Wyrmwood fame, Beast of War combines an emotional war story with a thrilling (and ridiculous) creature feature. Think Jaws meets Dunkirk. Dead Lover Loading From Pet Sematary to Lisa Frankenstein, the resurrection of the dead is hardly new in cinema. But Canadian filmmaker Grace Glowicki's take stands out for its unapologetic bizarreness. A lonely gravedigger is desperate for love, but her smell of decay makes courtship difficult. When she finally finds a man who gets off on her odour, he dies at sea. Only his finger returns, which she uses to revive him. It's peculiar, a little scary, and somehow relatively heartfelt – even if some of the hearts in the film have stopped beating. One More Shot Imagine Groundhog Day, but replace the time-loop alarm clock with tequila. In Australian director Nick Clifford's debut feature, Minnie (Emily Browning) slips back in time every time she takes a shot to escape an awkward moment at a Y2K New Year's Eve party attended by the ex-boyfriend she still fancies. Aside from the stunning mid-century setting, the top-notch local cast includes Sean Keenan (Nitram), Aisha Dee (Sissy), Pallavi Sharda (Lion) and Ashley Zukerman (Succession). Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass Those familiar with the Quay brothers' work, such as Street of Crocodiles, may be confounded by this surreal stop-motion animation. Those who aren't will probably feel as if they've entered another pair are known for dreamlike, disorienting films that haunt you for days – and their first feature in nearly 20 years is true to form. Based on the work of Polish Jewish writer Bruno Schulz, Sanatorium follows a man visiting his father at an Eastern European sanatorium. The institution, run by a shady six-armed doctor, has entered a time warp, and depending on which dimension the man is in, his father is either dead or alive. Such ambiguity has earned the Quays praise from titans such as Christopher Nolan. The End The world has ended, so let's burst into song. This somehow seems logical in The End, a bonkers post-apocalyptic musical by Joshua Oppenheimer (The Act of Killing). Twenty-five years after environmental disaster, a former petroleum magnate is living a life of luxury in an opulent doomsday bunker with his friends and family. But the outside world caves in on them when a woman from 'the surface' finds her way inside. The absurdity of Michael Shannon and Tilda Swinton singing Broadway ballads against a backdrop of death and dystopia meets serious commentary on elitism and climate responsibility in this mind-boggling film. The Great History of Western Philosophy Forget narrative and logic. Mexican filmmaker Aria Covamonas' animation is made entirely of collages of cut-out public-domain images, and its dialogue is intentionally mistranslated Chinese. Everything is out of place, yet somehow exactly where it needs to be. The Central Committee of the People's Republic hires a cosmic animator to create a philosophical film for Mao Zedong. But after infuriating the Chairman, he's sentenced to death. Then the Monkey King gets involved, and all hell breaks loose. Drawing on surrealism, Lacanian theory and Monty Python, Covamonas creates a mystifying visual world in which plot and resolution need not attend. The Python Hunt Florida's Everglades has a python problem. To try to deal with the invasive species, the state launched an annual 10-day competition in which participants wade through croc-infested swamps to catch the most (and largest) pythons and win $10,000. Xander Robin's The Python Hunt introduces all kinds of oddball hunters, including 82-year-old widow Anne, who is obsessed with 'pithing' snakes. The documentary reminds us that reality is usually wackier than the made-up stories we see on-screen. Zombucha! There has always been something alien about kombucha, which is made using a scoby, a rubbery living culture that looks as if it will slither away at any moment, intent on finding an unwilling host. This fear is brought to life in Zombucha!, an outrageous sci-fi comedy directed by Claudia Dzienny. After losing their jobs on the same day, partners Maddie and Leo decide to steal the scoby of a wealthy kombucha artisan. However, the culture gains deadly sentience after they add some of their neighbour's mysterious garden herbs, beginning what could become an all-out 'zombucha' apocalypse. Starring Emma Leonard – who also wrote the screenplay – it pokes fun at hipster-wannabes and the corruption of the wellness industry ( surely the best things to make fun of). Loading
