Down Under Flix

Published 2019 on Down Under Flix Sunday Too Far Away Director:  Ken Hannam Stars:  Jack Thompson, Max Cullen, Robert Bruning, Jerry Thomas Sunday Too Far Away , directed by Ken Hannam ( Dawn! ), opens with one of the most iconic scenes in Australian cinema, in which a car flips and rolls off a dusty outback road and protagonist Foley (Jack Thompson) crawls out from under his crashed vehicle. It’s an introduction befitting of and analogous to Foley, a character who’s his own worst enemy, who manages to wearily scrape through life while flirting with self-destruction. 

Published 2019 on Down Under Flix Director:  Marion Pilowsky Stars:  Emily Taheny, Eddie Izzard, Luke McKenzie, Vanessa Guide Marion Pilowsky’s 2018 comedy  The Flip Side  stars comedian Eddie Izzard as Henry, a British actor on the ascent. Five years ago while shooting a film in Adelaide he had a romantic fling with set caterer Ronnie (Emily Taheny). Now a restaurateur with a struggling business and a flaky novelist boyfriend Jeff (Luke McKenzie), Ronnie is surprised to be contacted by Henry, visiting town to promote his new movie. A love quadrangle of sorts forms between Henry, Ronnie, Luke, and Henry’s French girlfriend Sophie (Vanessa Guide) as they embark on a road trip together and Henry attempts to win back Ronnie’s affections. 

Published 2018 on Down Under Flix On Sunday 11 November (Remembrance Day) at 11am, pay tribute to those who have died in military combat through a minute of silence … Director:  Mel Gibson Stars:  Andrew Garfield, Vinge Vaughan, Sam Worthington, Hugo Weaving, Rachel Griffiths, Teresa Palmer Last month I reviewed  Bruce Beresford’s  Black Robe , and it got me thinking about depictions of Christianity in Australian cinema. In Hollywood’s heyday, Biblical epics were a genre unto themselves and a commercial force not unlike today’s superhero films; indeed, adjusted for inflation,  The Ten Commandments  and  Ben-Hur  are among the most successful films of all time, far out-grossing anything from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Beyond that genre, classic Hollywood depictions of Christianity were heavily informed by the Motion Picture Production Code (colloquially known as the Hays Code) which prohibited ridicule of the clergy or de...

Published 2018 on Down Under Flix Director:  Bruce Beresford Stars:  Lothaire Bluteau, Aden Young, August Schellenberg, Tantoo Cardinal, Sandrine Holt In my mind, the past 40 years have yielded three masterful English language historical films about thwarted attempts by Jesuit missionaries to spread Christianity to new frontiers. Those three films are Roland Joffe’s 1986 film  The Mission , set in South America in the mid-1700s; Bruce Beresford’s 1991 film  Black Robe , set in Canada in the 1630s; and Martin Scorsese’s 2016 film  Silence , set in Japan around the same time. These films have experienced differing receptions: Joffe’s film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, was nominated for seven Oscars, and its Morricone score still pervades popular culture; Beresford’s film won a smattering of Canadian and Australian film awards, as well as the Golden Reel Award for highest grossing Canadian film that year, but didn’t exactly set the world alight (later G...

Published 2018 on Down Under Flix Director:  Dean Semler Stars:  Howie Long, Suzy Amis, Scott Glenn, William Forsythe Some of the best-looking films produced in Australia have had Dean Semler working behind the camera. Hoodwink ( reviewed here ),  The Road Warrior ,  Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome ,  Razorback ,  The Lighthorsemen , and  Dead Calm  all carry Semler’s imprint as cinematographer. On taking his trade to Hollywood, Semler scored an Academy Award for his stunning work on 1990’s  Dances with Wolves , and since then he’s chalked up a downright eclectic CV. Over the last three decades he’s worked on popcorn flicks ( XXX ,  2012 ,  Maleficent ), broad comedies ( The Nutty Professor 2 ,  Bruce Almighty ,  Get Smart ), period films with a smidgen of prestige ( The Power of One ,  We Were Soldiers ,  The Alamo ,  Apocalypto ,  In the Land of Blood and Honey ), pulpy thrillers ( The Bone Co...

Published 2018 on Down Under Flix Director:  Rolf De Heer Stars:  Colin Friels, Miles Davis, Helen Buday, Joe Petruzzi This month is AUSgust, a month devoted to Australian film appreciation masterminded by  The Curb ’s Andrew Peirce. You can  read about AUGgust   here   and follow along on social media using the hashtag #AUSgust. The work of Rolf De Heer is the theme for Day 2, so here’s a review of De Heer’s 1991 film  Dingo . You can also read my take on De Heer's The Old Man Who Read Love Stories here . In a 2003 book advocating against dodgy grammar, Lynne Truss shows how an innocuous description of a panda (“Panda: eats shoots and leaves”) can be warped into something more sinister with the introduction of an extra comma: “Panda: eats, shoots and leaves”. Grammar quandaries aside, that phrase “eats, shoots and leaves” always struck me as an apt description of Australian filmmakers who shoot some features locally before leaving for int...

Published 2018 on Down Under Flix Director:  Paul Cox Stars:  Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell, Julia Blake, Terry Norris, Chris Haywood, Norman Kaye Director Paul Cox’s final work, 2015’s  Force of Destiny , opens with a title card dedicating the film to two departed collaborators: actress Wendy Hughes – star of the  superb  Lonely Hearts  as well as  Kostas ,  My First Wife ,  Lust and Revenge , and  Salvation  – and Oliver Streeton, art director on  Human Touch  and title designer on that film,  A Woman’s Tale ,  Innocence , and  The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky . This dedication, combined with the film’s subject matter – dramatising Cox’s own brush with liver cancer – and the fact its director died just a year after its release, casts a shadow of mortality over the filmmaker’s swansong effort. Having said that, Cox grappled with matters of mortality throughout his whole career. 

Published 2018 on Down Under Flix Visit A21  to find out how you can help abolish human slavery and sex trafficking Director:  Dee McLachlan Stars:  Veronica Sywak, Emma Lung, Saskia Burmeister, Sun Park, Amanda Ma, Damien Richardson, Alison Whyte, Andrew S. Gilbert Neither critics nor audiences were kind towards Kriv Stenders’ provocatively, hubristically-titled  Australia Day  last year, though  I appreciated it  as a work of didactic Oliver Stone-esque bombast on a frugal, non-Oliver Stone budget. One of the three core plot threads in that film concerned a bankrupt cattle farmer (Bryan Brown) crossing paths with a traumatised victim of sex trafficking (Jenny Wu).  The Jammed , a 2007 film from writer-director Dee McLachlan, similarly follows three different story threads, all of which converge around the theme of sex trafficking. In one thread, Australian Ashley (Veronica Sywak) reluctantly helps an older Chinese woman (Amanda Ma)...

Published 2018 on Down Under Flix Crime films are a staple of the Australian film diet: the cinematic equivalent of potato or dairy. The country’s first feature length film (and indeed the world’s) was 1906’s  The Story of the Kelly Gang , one of many film accounts of Ned and company’s anti-heroic exploits. The genre’s still going strong 110+ years later: the last twenty years especially have produced a bumper crop of Australian crime stories with  Two Hands ,  Chopper ,  The Hard Word ,  Gettin’ Square ,  The Square , and  Animal Kingdom , and that’s discounting television, where the genre’s equally fruitful. A cursory survey of films covered on Down Under Flix during its two year tenure reveals a booty of films centred on outlaws – from 1981 gem  Hoodwink   to 2013’s  Felony   via a Melbourne gangland  Macbeth , siege drama  Mr Reliable , prison drama  Ghosts…of the Civil Dead , and a  rather ornate ite...

Published 2018 on Down Under Flix Fred Schepisi was among the first Australian directors of the New Wave era to make the pilgrimage to Hollywood. Following his empathetic portraits of coming of age in a Catholic seminary in  The Devil’s Playground  and Aboriginal persecution in  The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith , Schepisi transitioned into American filmmaking in the early 1980s with such eclectic films as the Western  Barbarosa , science-fiction film  Iceman , and  Plenty , an undeservedly neglected gem in Meryl Streep’s early filmography. In doing so, he helped pave the way for other New Wave Australian directors to work across the pond in subsequent years, including Bruce Beresford with  Tender Mercies , George Miller with his segment in  Twilight Zone: The Movie , Gillian Armstrong with  Mrs Soffel , Peter Weir with  Witness , and so on. While Schepisi has made two excellent films in Australia since then – reuniting with Streep ...

Published 2018 on Down Under Flix Down Under Flix was created to show love, shine light, and where necessary throw shade on obscure, forgotten, neglected, or under-appreciated Australian films, but I find myself increasingly struggling with the question of what constitutes an obscure, forgotten, neglected, or under-appreciated local film. Obviously some films are clearly immune from this category:  Crocodile Dundee , for instance, does not and will never need my help. However,  Breaker Morant , on the surface a critically revered and widely liked Australian classic, has by its own director’s admission barely made a dime. What, then, of films like  Bran Nue Dae  and  The Sapphires ? Both films were liked by critics and audiences.  Bran Nue Dae  scored 6 Australian Film Institute Award nominations including Best Film and scored Best Supporting Actress for Deborah Mailman, while  The Sapphires  swept the board winning 11 gongs, including B...

Published 2018 on Down Under Flix Director:  Cherie Nowlan Stars:  Richard Roxburgh, Frances O’Connor, Cate Blanchett The 1990s were a good time for Australian women filmmakers. On top of the continuing work, both here and abroad, from those who’d emerged or solidified their reputations in the 1980s (e.g. Gillian Armstrong, Nadia Tass, Jane Campion), the decade gifted audiences such films as  Proof ,  Hammers over the Anvil ,  Floating Life ,  Love and Other Catastrophes ,  Love Serenade ,  Road to Nhill ,  The Well ,  Radiance , and  Head On , all well-liked if not commercially lucrative ventures from debut or sophomore women feature directors.* Regrettably, some debut or sophomore efforts ended up being swansongs, such as Megan Simpson Huberman with  Dating the Enemy ,  as lamented previously . Cherie Nowlan made her feature debut with  Thank God He Met Lizzie  in 1997, and while she’d subsequently ...

Published 2018 on Down Under Flix Director:  Warwick Thornton Stars:  Rowan McNamara, Marissa Gibson, Mitjili Napanangka Gibson, Scott Thornton Warwick Thornton’s period Western  Sweet Country  is rolling into Australian cinemas on a wave of fairly unanimous acclaim ( not quite  Paddington 2  unanimous acclaim , but widespread nonetheless) following a successful festival streak in 2017. Thus it’s timely to revisit  Samson & Delilah , the 2009 film which saw Thornton graduate from shorts to features and announced him as a vital Indigenous Australian filmmaker of the same calibre as contemporaries Rachel Perkins and Ivan Sen. 

Published 2018 on Down Under Flix Down Under Flix took a break over December and early January while I went overseas for Christmas. But while you can take the Australian film reviewer out of the country, you can’t take the Australian film reviewer out of the Australian film reviewer, particularly when they also took Australian films to review out of the country. If that makes sense. Either way, here are some short reviews from my Christmas season viewing, all interesting films worthy of full reviews at some point. 

Published 2018 on Down Under Flix Due to a spot of travel these past few weeks I’m a bit late assembling my Best of 2017 list. But this isn’t a particularly conventional Best of 2017 list either. Instead, this piece is divided into three parts. Firstly, I list the top 10 films covered on Down Under Flix in 2017. Secondly, I list my top five new Australian releases of 2017. Finally, I list the top 15 films I watched – both old and new, Australian and non-Australian, and excluding any films I’d seen previously – in 2017. Without further ado… 

Published 2017 on Down Under Flix Director:  Henri Safran Starring:  John Ewart, John Howard, Nicole Kidman, Manalpuy, Mark Spain, James Wingrove, Peter Sumner, Vineta O’Malley Bush Christmas  is not, as its title implies, a film about how George H.W. and George W. spend their Christmas vacation. Rather, it’s another entry in Australia’s modest canon of cinematic yuletide yarns. Last year, David Swann’s Christmas comedy  Crackers  got the Down Under Flix seasonal treatment ( read our review here ), and this year Henri Safran’s family film goes under the spotlight. 

Published 2017 on Down Under Flix The Getting of Wisdom Stars:  Susannah Fowle, Sheila Helpmann, Patricia Kennedy, Candy Raymond, Hilary Ryan, Barry Humphries, John Waters, Sigrid Thornton, Kerry Armstrong, Julia Blake At the time of  The Getting of Wisdom ’s release, Bruce Beresford was best known for directing muscular, rowdy entertainments like  The Adventures of Barry McKenzie ,  Barry McKenzie Holds His Own , and  Don’s Party . The latter film, adapting to the screen a play by Australia’s premier playwright David Williamson, was a step towards respectability for Beresford after his near professional ostracization following the  Barry McKenzie  films, and he was awarded a 1977 Best Director AFI Award for his efforts.  The Getting of Wisdom  seems an even more decisive step towards respectability, courting association with the dominant commercial aesthetics of the Australian New Wave: indeed, with its period setting, girls boar...

Published 2017 on Down Under Flix    Director:  Carl Schultz Stars:  Wendy Hughes, Robyn Nevin, Nicholas Gledhill, John Hargreaves, Peter Whitford Last week one of the weaker Australian films of 1983, Phillipe Mora’s  The Return of Captain Invincible , was  spotlighted  here on Down Under Flix . This week’s spotlight falls on one of the best local releases of 1983, Carl Schultz’s  Careful, He Might Hear You , based on a novel by Sumner Locke Elliott. The film’s critical status is evidenced by its sweeping of that year’s Australian Film Institute Awards, where it won 8 gongs out of 13 nominations, including awards for Best Film, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Actress for Wendy Hughes (one year after her nominated work in  the superb  Lonely Hearts ), and Supporting Actor for John Hargreaves (two years after his nominated work in  Hoodwink ), against impressive competition from  The Year of Living Dangerously ,  M...

Published 2017 on Down Under Flix Director:  Phillipe Mora Stars:  Alan Arkin, Christopher Lee, Michael Pate, Bill Hunter, Kate Fitzpatrick Last year marked the end of my long infatuation with superhero films. For almost two decades I regularly made the pilgrimage to the multiplex to see the latest superhero joints, and while I retain some anthropological curiosity about the genre, 2016’s unfortunate double whammy of  X-Men: Apocalypse  and  Suicide Squad  killed most of my affection for and investment in it. Even so, as a former genre apologist and a writer on Australian film, I’ve long had a hankering to see Phillipe Mora’s 1983 film  The Return of Captain Invincible , one of Australia’s very few attempts at a superhero movie, albeit a parody. Oof… 

Published 2017 on Down Under Flix Last month I reviewed  two films headlined by the late, great John Hargreaves . Today’s piece spotlights two films from another great Australian actor of similar vintage. To say Jack Thompson is iconic is an understatement. He was one of the brightest new stars of the Australian New Wave, appearing in both lead and supporting roles in stone cold classics like  Wake in Fright ,  Sunday Too Far Away ,  The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith , and  Breaker Morant  as well as interesting flicks like  Petersen ,  Caddie ,  Mad Dog Morgan ,  The Club , and  The Journalist . He was the first male centerfold in Australia’s  Cleo  magazine, was awarded the first Best Supporting Actor gong at the Cannes Film Festival for  Breaker Morant , was the only logical choice to embody Clancy of the Overflow in  The Man from Snowy River , hosted a travel program called  Jack Thompson Down Un...

Published 2017 on Down Under Flix This latest installment of Down Under Flix’s Aussiewood series chronicling the adventures and misadventures of Australian filmmakers abroad deals with Russell Mulcahy. This isn’t the first time I’ve written about Mulcahy on this website – see  my review  of his 2003 sports biopic  Swimming Upstream  – but it’s my first time writing about the director’s signature action fare. Following his inventive creature feature debut  Razorback  (1984) and the cult success of  Highlander  (1986), the stalwart music video director looked to be on an upward trajectory as a filmmaker. However, Mulcahy was fired two weeks into production on the Sylvester Stallone vehicle  Rambo III  (1988) because he wasn’t shooting enough close-ups of its hubristic star, and the subsequent production and release of the much-maligned (and deservedly so)  Highlander II: The Quickening  (1991) was a ghastly, pained proces...

Published 2017 on Down Under Flix Director:  Kriv Stenders Starring:  Bryan Brown, Jenny Wu, Shari Sebbens, Miah Madden, Elias Anton, Sean Keenan Typically Down Under Flix eschews films currently in cinemas, but I thought I’d make an exception for Kriv Stenders’  Australia Day , which is in limited release and has simultaneously made its video-on-demand debut via Dendy Direct and the Foxtel Store. Stenders’ film has divided both viewers and critics, with  Luke Buckmaster in  The Guardian  and  Blake Howard in  Daily Review  nicely encapsulating some of the key criticisms leveled at the film.