Had the BBC Symphony Orchestra been at full stretch, rather than in the neoclassical and otherwise selective formations of last night’s concert, it might have outnumbered the live audience. Perhaps I exaggerate, but not much; this was never going to be a box-office hit. A big-name soloist might have made a difference. But just about every orchestral principal last night was a star, thanks to the cornucopia of solos in Respighi’s Trittico botticelliano and Strauss’s Suite from Le bourgeois gentilhomme.

This October lo-fi, fuzzy VHS-style footage of Kylie Minogue in a ripped tee-shirt swaying on a mattress in a messy loft apartment singing Flight Facilities’ breakthrough song, “Crave You”, popped up in internet-land. It was an unexpected move that successfully amped up expectations for the Australian duo’s debut album. Kylie’s acapella appears on the album, uncredited, as well as the original, a smooth, sleepy, longing, slothful love song and lazy dance throb which first appeared in 2010. It made clubland sit up and pay attention.

Mother love is mangled, yanked inside-out and tested almost to destruction in Australian writer-director Jennifer Kent’s heartfelt horror debut. The Babadook enthusiastically fulfils its remit to scare, but finds its fright in the secret corners of maternal instinct, where frustration, grief and violence meet.

The first time I interviewed Richard Tognetti he told me a story. Prior to touring the Australian Chamber Orchestra to Japan, the group’s leader and artistic director was discussing publicity with a local PR. Faced with disappointing ticket sales he asked for advice. The response? Remove two letters from the orchestra’s name and transform it into the Austrian Chamber Orchestra – problem solved. It was a tale told with a smile and a roll of the eyes, but one that still had a frisson of Old World/New World truth about it.

Dream Your Life Away is the debut album from Vance Joy, a pop-folkie whose style suggests Ed Sheeran without the cloying niceness. These songs of young love and of a young man spreading his wings are pretty much created out of little more than vocals and an acoustic guitar. There is occasional support from other musicians, but this is understated and the rolling groove that characterises much of Dream Your Life Away is pretty much just Joy singing and strumming along.

Returning to the small town you grew up in after a spell in the big city can often be problematic. Old friends now think you’re a big shot. The familiar is seen in a new light, and not necessarily a good one. There’s a sense that the ties which have been slackened might be irrevocably sheared. In Mystery Road, Aaron Pedersen’s Jay Swan is a cop back in outback Queensland, in north-east Australia, after training. Now a detective, he quickly finds it’s sink or swim.

Mad Max script-doctored by Dostoyevsky: that’s how David Michod sees Australia after it all goes to hell. His first film, Animal Kingdom, rewired the gangster film as a suburban family horror story, sweaty with the threat and reality of violence. Michod’s debut as writer-director heads into the Outback, to make a post-apocalyptic road movie notable for steely reserve as much as swift, frequent mayhem.

"10 years after the collapse” is our dateline. As Eric (Guy Pearce) walks into a karaoke bar in the first minute (pictured right), clues to the catastrophe are already piling up. Bottles of water are precious, and the exotic pop played oppressively loudly by the bar’s bored and armed South-east Asian staff hints at Michod’s thesis, left submerged in the film: that the West’s economy has collapsed, and Australia survives as a lawless, Gold Rush continent mined for its minerals by new Asian superpowers. Michod doesn’t need to spell this out. The point is that he has built an off-kilter world which feels real, before a word is spoken.

It feels most authentic in Eric's bearded face, with its damped-down anger, agony and impatience. He’s a model citizen of a place that’s running on empty and permanently dangerous. So when an American gang fleeing a robbery crash outside the bar and steal his car, Eric snaps. He wants that car back, and will go through anything and anyone for it. “What a thing to get worked up about, in this day and age,” murmurs Grandma (Gillian Jones), one of the fadedly colourful characters Eric meets on his picaresque way. The car represents a sliver of his old life. But getting it back shows how deadened he's become.

Michod calls The Rover a Western, and the ones it most resembles were directed by Anthony Mann in the Fifties, and generally starred Jimmy Stewart at his most hysterically neurotic. As with those films, Eric has a partner on his journey who points up what’s wrong with him: slow-witted, weak-willed Rey (Robert Pattinson, pictured above), left for dead at the scene of the crime his brother’s gang were fleeing when they took Eric’s car. With his stammering Deep South accent and ravaged good looks, Pattinson’s performance is more mannered than Pearce's. Eric exists more primally, seeming to be someone so white-hot with rage that touching him would scald you, or break a bone. As an anti-hero, he’s deep in the negative zone. Nothing he does is good. Pattinson plays the wounded weakling who slows him down and makes him think.

The action scenes and the scenario of two men tearing across an empty landscape have the streamlined feel of some ambitious, forgotten Seventies exploitation pic. Michod alternates this with dragging, short scenes, dissipating momentum, not gripping with Animal Kingdom's ruthlessness. But he's reaching for something different. There’s enough violence to maintain interest, but Eric’s quest is just a way to show you Eric. “To be a killing machine is a sad thing,” someone observes. When Eric explains something awful he once did, and what the collapse of moral consequence in his broken land then did to him, The Rover is revealed as a tragedy.  

Overleaf: Watch the trailer for The Rover