Richard Leathem
Richard Leathem is the producer and presenter of Film Scores on 3MBS FM. He has been the State Manager of the Australian Film Television and Radio School in Melbourne and Manager of the Australian Centre for the Moving Image Lending Library. He is a member of the Australian Film Critics Association.
German director Wim Wenders was seventy-seven when he made Perfect Days, with thirty-four feature films under his belt. Perhaps it takes a filmmaker with so much work and life experience to make something as gently meditative as his latest offering.
Perfect Days centres on Hirayama (Koji Yakusho), a man not much younger than Wenders himself. He leads a simple life, and Wenders allows us to indulg ... (read more)
The second edition of Kathryn Kalinak’s modestly titled Film Music: A very short introduction arrives thirteen years after the publication of its predecessor, extending its chronology of film music from the inception of cinema in the late nineteenth century to 2022. What makes it unique is the global reach of its documentation of significant events and developments in film music history. This of ... (read more)
A teenager’s arduous journey from a Taliban-occupied Afghanistan in 1989 to the safe haven of Denmark is given a uniquely painterly treatment in Flee. Far from diminishing the story’s impact, this animated documentary is all the more profound for the insidious way the visuals undermine our defences.
Danish filmmaker Jonas Poher Rasmussen became friends with Amin soon after the Afghan refugee ... (read more)
Truffle hunters and the pigs they bond with might be unlikely subjects for a film, yet in 2021 cinema goers have been treated to two films centring on such characters. Earlier this year, the documentary The Truffle Hunters (2020) offered a whimsical tribute to the humble foragers of northern Italy. Now Michael Sarnoski’s Pig presents a darker but no less playful portrayal of a fictionalised hunt ... (read more)
Percy vs Goliath, known simply as Percy in some territories, is based on a real-life legal case of an independent crop farmer who took on a large-scale agrochemical corporation. One can imagine a shared sentiment that the story would make a great Hollywood movie. Problematically, the reason for thinking this is because Hollywood has made this film before, repeatedly. The familiarity and predictabi ... (read more)
Supernova marks the second film released in cinemas this month to deal with dementia, following The Father (2020). While Florian Zeller’s film, based on his own stage play, employs inventive devices to place the audience inside the mind of a character afflicted with the condition, Supernova’s more traditional approach is in service of achieving maximum emotional impact.
The afflicted cha ... (read more)
The immigrant experience in America has been told on film many times, but Lee Isaac Chung’s tangibly personal Minari is as distinguished by its eschewal of the familiar as by the disarming intimacy evoked.
Set in the 1980s in Arkansas, Chung’s semi-autobiographical tale concerns a Korean family’s attempts to adapt to rural American life. It’s clear from the opening scene that Jacob ( ... (read more)
Admirers of Oliver Sacks (1933–2015) may think a documentary on the famed British neurologist and author is superfluous given the number of books published on him in recent years. Lawrence Welschler’s memoir And How Are You, Dr Sacks? (2019) is impressively comprehensive. Sacks’ own partner, Bill Hayes, provided more insight with Insomniac City (2017), and Sacks himself produced two memoirs, ... (read more)
As Victoria emerges from its long lockdown, cinemas, among the last businesses to reopen under the roadmap to recovery, are finally open to the public again. But how will they operate in a Covid-normal world? Have we learnt to live without them?
Right now there is a sudden glut of new content hitting the big screens. While people in other states have had the pleasure of going to the cinema for mo ... (read more)