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Six pack: Furiosa (2024), Force of Nature (2024), No Escape (1994), The New Boy (2023), Mary and Max (2009), and Sweet As (2022)

  There used to be a nerdy adage—at least until contrary instalments countered the point—that even-numbered Star Trek films were better than their odd-numbered counterparts. I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar adage emerges about the Mad Max films: while the obviously odd-numbered original was a trailblazer, it’s The Road Warrior and Fury Road that have commanded universal acclaim, while Beyond Thunderdome and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) have proven divisive. There are striking moments—as expected in both a George Miller film and a Mad Max film—in Furiosa , and Miller remains the most idiosyncratic generator of sequels: Furiosa (technically a prequel) is his sixth, after a Babe sequel, a Happy Feet sequel, and three other Mad Max sequels, with none of these offshoots feeling the same. However, if you’d told me Furiosa was based on a five-part prequel comic book series, I’d believe you, based on its chapter structure and the narrative dead end it arrives at. As it stand...
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Season's greetings: A Sunburnt Christmas (2020), Storm Boy (1976), and High Ground (2020)

  It’s been a while since I reviewed a Christmas movie on Down Under Flix. Though billed a Stan ‘Original’, Christiaan Van Vuuren’s A Sunburnt Christmas (2020)— about an escaped convict who poses as Santa Clause and takes refuge on a farm teetering on foreclosure—is pretty boilerplate, sharing DNA with Christmas movies previously discussed here on DUF. Like Bush Christmas , it partners crooks and kids with both vested and mutual interests in an outback setting; like Crackers , characterization and performance are delivered in broad, splashy brush strokes. While the film isn’t a slog, and features likeable work from the talented Daniel Henshall and Tatiana Goode, there’s nothing special about this seasonal offering.  While I suspect A Sunburnt Christmas will contract on repeat viewings, Henri Safran’s Storm Boy (1976) —for this viewer at least—only expands with each subsequent watch. With age, Greg Rowe’s deceptively simple performance becomes richer, Peter Cummins’ deceptiv...
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The Fall Guy (2024) and The 2024 Duffies

  The Fall Guy (2024) caps a trio of recent American productions with Antipodean elements. Like Anyone But You , it’s set in Australia, milks Sydney’s considerable production value, is headlined by two attractive actors, and prompted think pieces about the tenuous state of movie stardom. Like Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F , its direction—there Mark Molloy, here David Leitch—feels rather anonymous, despite The Fall Guy throwing an awful lot at the screen and wearing its designer eccentricities on its sleeve. I don’t doubt Leitch’s talent and ability to stage action, and admire his work on the original John Wick (uncredited) and Atomic Blonde , but of his subsequent films— Deadpool 2 , Hobbs & Shaw , Bullet Train —I struggle to remember any of the action beats delivered by one of our purported leading action directors. The Fall Guy features Ryan Gosling as a retired stuntman who returns to the fold when the movie star he previously doubled (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) goes AWOL. He’...
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Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024)

  A couple of months after watching Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F , I learned the film’s director was Australian. My earlier lack of inquisitiveness about the film’s director reflects a) the anonymity of its direction and b) Eddie Murphy’s default status as overriding auteur of the production. While Murphy has directed only one feature ( Harlem Nights ) and did not care for the experience, he's written numerous vehicles for himself and been the dominant authorial voice on many of his own projects. Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is clearly a personal reclamation project, making up for the disappointment of Beverly Hills Cop III —largely of his own making—and of a piece with his other recent streaming-only releases (including fellow sequel Coming 2 America ), a stratagem—much like Adam Sandler—for maintaining the veneer of superstardom without testing box office pull in the marketplace. Lest I sound cynical, there’s a degree of thoughtfulness and pathos to the character etching in  Be...
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Anyone but You (2024)

  Going into Anyone but You (2024) , I expected to either be delighted by or despise the film. Thankfully, I was delighted. However, this apprehension reflects the baggage this film has accumulated, baggage well in excess of its dainty frame. For a movie as lightweight as Anyone but You , it’s become heavily and conspicuously entangled in ‘da discourse’ about 21st century movie stardom and romantic comedies, both routinely pronounced dead. The title of its Shakespearean source material, Much Ado About Nothing , proves apt to describe said discourse. Directed by Will Gluck ( Easy A , Annie , AACTA Award winner Peter Rabbit ) and scripted by Gluck and Ilana Wolpert, the film pits Ben (Glen Powell) and Bea (Sydney Sweeney) against each other as modern-day spins on Much Ado About Nothing ’s Benedick and Beatrice. Following mixed signals and miscommunications after a one-night stand, Ben and Bea are awkwardly reunited when Ben’s childhood friend (Alexandra Shipp) and Bea’s siste...
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Purple Pain: Emily (2022) and The Phantom (1996)

  Most major starlets — or actresses groomed for stardom — of the 1990s and early 2000s headlined a period film or two during their career ascent, whether suited to the milieu or not (see Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jodie Foster, Nicole Kidman, Demi Moore, Winona Ryder, Reese Witherspoon, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow, and so on). Frances O’Connor was no exception, and did nice work in films like Mansfield Park and The Importance of Being Earnest , though for this reviewer O’Connor impressed most indelibly in Emma-Kate Croghan’s Love and Other Catastrophes and Bill Bennett’s Kiss or Kill , both very spiky, spunky contemporary works. That mix of the classical and contemporary is at the core of O’Connor’s directorial debut, Emily (2022) , a dramatization of the life of the Brontë sister of the same name. I use the term dramatization rather than biopic, as O’Connor herself rejects the latter descriptor in a Guardian interview promoting the film ; one could venture ev...
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Elephant Men: Operation Dumbo Drop (1994)

  Operation Dumbo Drop (1994) , which celebrates – albeit with muted fanfare – its 30 th anniversary this year, is based on the true story of American soldiers who helped transport an elephant across enemy territory to a small village during the Vietnam War. Because the film is a live-action Disney product of the 1990s, it brushes only very faintly against the darker realities of the Vietnam War – as might be expected from the writers of Police Academy 3 and 4 and Snow Dogs , among other credits – and stars Danny Glover, Ray Liotta and Dennis Leary, all headliners in more corrosive entertainments, are amiable but sedated, all rough edges sanded down.  Of films from recent memory, George Clooney’s The Monuments Men  – about military personnel in World War Two retrieving stolen art back from the Nazis – is Operation Dumbo Drop ’s closest companion. But  Operation Dumbo Drop is the better film and Australian director Simon Wincer a less heralded but far...
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