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MONSIEUR MAYONNAISE
The Australian documentary maker Trevor Graham follows up his Make Hummus Not War with what could be the second instalment in his Condiment Trilogy, this time following Melbourne-raised cult director Philippe Mora (Howling 3: The Marsupials) on a journey across the world to learn about what became of his Jewish family during the Nazi era. In particular, the focus is on Mora's father Georges, who attended the University of Berlin only to be forced out at the same time as Albert Einstein, going on to become a member of the French Resistance and, apparently, no mean cook. This is not even a fraction as wacky as one of Mora's own films, which have often addressed related themes. But he remains extremely good company: a painter and comic-book artist as well as a filmmaker, he's above all a storyteller, with an air of clownish extravagance that counterpoints his intense emotion at rediscovering his past.
Forum, July 31, 4pm and ACMI, Aug 2, 6.30pm. Graham and Mora will be present as guests. JAKE WILSON
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CHEVALIER
Billed at the Locarno Film Festival as "a buddy movie without buddies", Athina Rachel Tsangari's scathing satire on masculinity is the latest offering from the so-called "Greek Weird Wave"; the director shares a script credit with Efthimis Filippou, who wrote The Lobster. Set almost entirely on a hired yacht, it focuses on six men off for one of their regular weekends spear-fishing, drinking and jostling for position – subtly at first, but then more viciously as they decide to compete to see who is "the best". The imprecise idea of "best" is key here; their competitive events range from assembling flat-pack furniture to comparing erections, but mostly they just scribble notes about each other, needle each other's weaknesses ("My thighs aren't fat!" whimpers one macho hero as he stares at himself in the mirror) and try to trip each other up in conversation. These guys, as portrayed by a brilliant but no doubt austerely paid cast, are the Greeks who, as the IMF chief Christina Lagarde observed, should be paying taxes but aren't; it falls up to the witty Tsangari to nail them to the mast.
Forum, Aug 4, 6.30pm and Hoyts, Aug 6, 1.30pm. STEPHANIE BUNBURY
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FEAR ITSELF
How do horror movies get under our skin – and what do they tell us about ourselves? These questions are central to the new documentary by the young British journalist turned audiovisual essayist Charlie Lyne (Beyond Clueless), an assemblage of clips which sets out to be both a study of the uncanny and an example of it. Lyne casts his net very wide, mingling classics such as James Whale's Frankenstein with forgotten B-movies and films such as Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity, which no one would immediately classify as horror. There are gory moments, but often he chooses quieter sequences that play on our dread of what might be about to come. The voiceover borrows a trick or two from the great French essay filmmaker Chris Marker: the American actress Amy E. Watson narrates in a vulnerable near-whisper, from the perspective of a fictional character who occasionally lets revelations slip about her own troubled past.
Kino, July 29, 6.45pm and ACMI, Aug 1, 6.30pm. JAKE WILSON
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CERTAIN WOMEN
A quiet American drama centring on the intersecting lives of three women in Montana, Certain Women has rich roles for three stellar actresses – Laura Dern, Michelle Williams and Kristen Stewart. Writer-director Kelly Reichardt, best known for the art-house favourites Wendy and Lucy and Meek's Cut-off, has adapted a book of stories by Maile Meloy with heart and sensitivity. Dern plays a lawyer for a man whose frustration with the legal system drives him to take a hostage. Williams is a tightly-wound woman who wants an elderly neighbour's stockpile of sandstone to build a house. And Stewart is a nervous recent law graduate who travels from a distant town to teach an evening class in school law. But the most luminous performance in the film is by newcomer Lily Gladstone, who plays a gentle ranch hand who stumbles into that class and discovers something much more tender and heartfelt than law.
Comedy, July 31 and August 11, 6.30pm. GARRY MADDOX