Down Under Flix

  David Hemmings is a fascinating character. Though I can’t profess to know all the nooks and crannies of his filmography, I enjoy his iconic late 60s counter-culture roles ( Blow Up , Barbarella ) and more conventional mid-70s leads or co-leads ( Deep Red , the wonderful Juggernaut ) and at the opposite end of the career spectrum his prolific last act adding weathered gravitas to titles like Gladiator , Spy Game , Gangs of New York , Last Orders , and The Night We Called It a Day . He was also, like Robert Powell and Richard Chamberlain, one of those British globally exported leading men who dabbled in Australian cinema, essaying bureaucrat-in-suit roles —Martin Donovan before Martin Donovan—in late 70s Ozploitation titles Harlequin and Thirst . Hemmings also directed for film —including David Bowie vehicle Just a Gigolo —and television, including episodes of The A-Team . He also helmed two Ozploitation movies produced by Antony I. Ginnane: spooky thriller The Survivor and adv...

  Like many, I was deflated by the recent news of Sam Neill’s passing. Neill was a dependable class act: wry but reassuring, seemingly effortless but always switched on, never bad, always good. As a child of the 90s, Neill’s credits in that decade loom especially large in my mind, most obviously Jurassic Park but also The Piano , Hunt for Red October , In the Mouth of Madness , Memoirs of an Invisible Man , and so on. But there’s great work from Neill in every decade, and looking over his filmography I’m struck anew by the hefty volume of Antipodean titles he appeared in. He was the rare export star who didn’t just pay lip service to working locally, but genuinely threaded the needle and worked prolifically at home and abroad: in the 2000s, for instance, he starred in The Dish , Dirty Deeds , Perfect Strangers , Little Fish , Irresistible , Dean Spanley , and Daybreakers , among American and international assignments. Neill’s passing prompted a revisit of A Cry in the Dark , Fred ...

When I saw The Travellers in November last year, I left the theatre underwhelmed. Whilst not marketed as autobiographical, there were whiffs of an essay I'd read by its director Bruce Beresford—published in the engaging 2017 collection The Best Film I Never Made and Other Stories about a Life in the Arts —where he reminisced about visiting his ageing father in his regional hometown. Ultimately, The Travellers —about an international opera art director returning home to care for his father after his mother's passing—felt, much like Bill Bennett's The Way My Way , like a minor, low-fi, autobiographical late work by a major Australian director. However, The Travellers has proven stickier than anticipated, and with the passage of time I've found myself thinking less about the film's flaws—its flattish digital photography, its middling lead casting—and more about its witty grace notes, its engaging supporting turns—especially Bryan Brown, reuniting with Beresford for th...

  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...

  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...

  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’...