Down Under Flix

  In my review of Russell Crowe’s Poker Face , I noted my fascination with Australian actor-directors. Ed Harris is not an Australian, but he’s an actor-director, and has worked with enough Australian talent before and behind the camera: a quick survey of his filmography reveals Peter Weir, Russell Crowe, Gregor Jordan, Nicole Kidman, Sam Worthington, and Dean Semler—the DP of Appaloosa (2008) and subject of this month of DUF—among his collaborators.  Harris has directed two features: biopic  Pollock and Western  Appaloosa . It speaks to some of my ingrained prejudices about genre that if Pollock didn’t exist, I would say  Appaloosa  was tailor-made for Harris: sturdy, muscular, economical. But because Pollock exists—not a film I particularly like, but one that does an admirable job of grappling with its complicated real-life protagonist— Appaloosa felt initially like a bit of a lark, a piece of fun boy's adventure dress-up. In the days since my viewing,...

  On October 31, 1917, in the third year of the Great War, two regiments of Australian Lighthorsemen charged the Turkish defenses of Beersheba in Palestine. with bayonets in their hands, they galloped against machine guns, rifles, and artillery in an eleventh hour attempt to save the attacking British army from disaster. This is the story of some of the men and horses who rode into legend that day. Simon Wincer’s The Lighthorsemen (1987) is a wonderful film I’ve watched twice before and barely remembered, and after a third viewing its hold remains tenuous. The 1980s was a decade of big nationalistic swings in Australian cinema, some of which missed— The Lighthorsemen , Burke & Wills —while others struck a chord and remain widely liked— Gallipoli , The Man from Snowy River , and Phar Lap , also directed by Wincer. It’s hardly a radical act of film criticism to note that some films are stickier than others, and that the stickier ones tend to survive the Darwinian struggle...

  The Three Musketeers (1993) is the fourth Dean Semler-shot 1990s Hollywood flick I’ve covered on DUF in 2023 (see also The Power of One , Super Mario Bros , and The Bone Collector ) and fifth Semler-shot film overall (see also Razorback ). In the unlikely event I ever run out of actual Australian films to blog about, I’d be quite content to simply plug through the remainder of DP Semler’s 1990s Hollywood output, a credits list with big swings that worked ( Dances with Wolves ), fascinating big swings that didn’t ( Last Action Hero , Waterworld ), and assorted trash and treasure. Of all these titles, The Three Musketeers is perhaps the most 1990s of all. It casts Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen, and Chris O’Donnell—not-quite-leading men who’d become major television stars in the 2000s—in heroic lead roles. Tim Curry and Michael Wincott are villains, as they are in It , Home Alone 2 , Muppet Treasure Island , Congo , Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves , The Crow , etc. Following hi...

  Christmas gift hamper: Paul Goldman’s working-class noir Suburban Mayhem (2006) , about a femme fatale’s machinations to get her brother out of prison, starts strong but runs out of steam; despite a committed and star-making (in another film industry alas) lead turn from Emily Barclay, its diabolical streak eventually becomes tiresome. Much as Emily Barclay is the MVP of Suburban Mayhem , the wonderfully expressive Miranda Otto is the MVP of Love Serenade (1996) [1]. Shirley Barrett’s Camera d’Or winning film, about small-town sisters (Otto and Rebecca Frith) enchanted by the arrival of a new radio host (George Shevstov), is willfully offbeat and indefatigably charming. Little Australian film headlined by child star of beloved global blockbuster #1: From the star of E.T. and the director of Turkey Shoot ...  While it’s unlikely E.T. would have survived the blood sport of Turkey Shoot , his pal Henry Thomas negotiates Trenchard-Smith’s Frog Dreaming (1986) intact. ...

  Like The Giver , reviewed yesterday , Tomorrow When the War Began (2010) is a 2010s adaptation of 1990s young adult fiction. Unlike The Giver , which boasts an Australian director and star but was a Hollywood production drawn from American source material, Tomorrow is a homegrown production   utilizing Australian source material, funding, shooting locations, and a large pool of talent behind & before the camera. While I’ve read neither Lois Lowry’s nor John Marsden’s source texts, as a child of the 1990s I can attest to the Tomorrow series' popularity, and having read other Marsden works (notably So Much to Tell You and Letters from the Inside ) can attest to his uncommonly good knack for writing about and for teenage readers. The film adaptation of Tomorrow is written and directed by Stuart Beattie, whose prolific screenwriting career encompasses productions from Australia ( Australia , Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan ), America ( Pirates of the Caribbean , Col...

  Between Patriot Games , Clear and Present Danger , The Quiet American , and Salt (2010) , director Phillip Noyce has arguably spent more time engaged in the Hollywood business of representing the American espionage business than any other Australian filmmaker. The last of this quartet, Salt was Noyce’s return to Hollywood action movie carpetbagging after abandoning his third (and in franchise terms the fourth) Jack Ryan film The Sum of All Fears (eventually directed by Phil Alden Robinson) to helm lower-budgeted, socially progressive historical dramas Rabbit-Proof Fence , The Quiet American , and To Catch a Fire . I wouldn’t say his time on those smaller-scale productions significantly altered his modus operandi on his return to big-budget action filmmaking: like Patriot Games , the villains in Salt are clearly delineated, culturally demarcated, and thoroughly unheroic and non-American. Clear and Present Danger and The Quiet American are more nuanced and complicated in grapp...

  I typically address the features in these double bill reviews separately, but there’s not a lot of point trying to parse The Hitman’s Bodyguard (2017) and The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard (2021) . Unlike, say, George Miller’s distinct accomplishments across the four Mad Max films, or Phillip Noyce’s differentiating touches across Jack Ryan sequels  Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger , The Hitman’s Bodyguard and its sequel are the same flavour of film, the latter entry distinguished by foregrounding the titular wife, a supporting character in the original. In this respect, The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard follows the rather 1990s comedy sequel stratagem of "+1", ala Addams Family Values (add a baby), Look Who’s Talking Too (add another baby), and Another Stakeout (add Rosie O’ Donnell),    The constants across both titles—the hitman and his bodyguard—are played by Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds. In the first film, Jackson’s incarcerated hitman Dar...

Sunday (2014) is an Australia/New Zealand co-production about an ex-couple at a relationship crossroads. After months of separation, Australian Charlie (Dustin Clare) and New Zealander Eve (Camille Keenan) are reunited when Eve tells Charlie she’s pregnant. Over 24 hours in Christchurch, the couple must decide about their and their unborn child’s future. Sunday is gentle, cleanly executed, and at a tight 70 minutes economically told. Director Michelle Joy Lloyd co-wrote the film with her actors, and befitting the story the production feels intimate and propelled by its time and narrative constraints. It also nicely utilises its backdrop of post-earthquake Christchurch, adding thematic heft. I have a fondness for Australian films that share titles with better-known overseas productions, among them Fair Game , Thirst , and now Disclosure (2020) . Clocking in at 80 minutes and with nary a Michael Douglas, Demi Moore, or VR machine in sight, Michael Bentham’s Disclosure  is another ec...

  Sandy Harbutt’s Stone — with its ambitious scale, impressive action set pieces, and an ensemble studded with excellent character actors—casts a fairly imposing shadow over any Australian biker films in its wake, but 1% (2017) carves its own scrappy, gnarly place at the table, with shades too of Rowan Woods’ The Boys and David Michod’s Animal Kingdom . Directed by Stephen McCallum and also known as Outlaws , it centres on the power dynamics in a motorcycle gang between its president (Matt Nable), recently released from prison, and interim leader (Ryan Corr, surprisingly adept in the role) who’s covering for his erring brother’s (Josh McConville) misdemeanors. There’s a more interesting side story to be told about fraught relations with Aaron Pedersen’s charismatic rival gang leader, but 1%  manages to tap a Shakespearean vein or two with its themes of succession and Lady Macbeth-esque wife characters, played well by Abbey Lee ( Mad Max: Fury Road ) and Simone Kessell ( Liqu...

  Backroads (1977) and Last Ride (2009) are two Australian road movies with downbeat denouements, both headlined by Australian character actors playing criminals: the former (Bill Hunter) at the outset of his lengthy career, the latter (Hugo Weaving) several decades into his meaty filmography. Backroads , clocking in at an economical 60 minutes, is ostensibly Phillip Noyce’s feature debut, but in tone and style contrasts sharply with his better-known sophomore feature, 1978’s elegantly-made Newsfront . The plot sees vagrants Jack and Gary (Hunter and Gary Foley, a prominent Aboriginal activist of the era) stealing a Pontiac and hitting the open road, collecting other passengers (Zac Martin, Terry Cammileri, Julie McGregor) along the way and running afoul of the law. Performances are naturalistic, and Hunter’s work as a scum-bum criminal also contrasts with his dignified work in Newsfront and later Gallipoli , not to mention his cantankerous men of influence in Strictly Ballroo...

Watching Abe Forsythe’s Ned prompted a revisit of Reckless Kelly , one of three truly singular oddball works—along with Young Einstein and Mr. Accident —from director-writer-producer-star-composer Yahoo Serious. At the risk of punching down on Forsythe—who, as mentioned in my review, proved an adroit filmmaker with Down Under —or You Can’t Stop the Murders director Anthony Mir, Reckless Kelly ’s scope and throwaway inventiveness shine a harsh light on the meagre achievements of those and most Australian comedies. Where his previous breakout hit Young Einstein —from which Serious emerged with a look and comic persona as fully-formed as another star of 1988, Roger Rabbit—put an Antipodean spin on a figure of global import, Reckless Kelly puts a Young Einstein -ean spin on a figure of local import, exporting said figure globally within the narrative. Serious stars as Ned Kelly, descendant of the infamous Ned Kelly who, in the film’s alternate history, spawned multiple generations of...

    It’s been a fruitful season on Down Under Flix after some fallow years. In 2016, the first year of the site, 30 articles were published, followed by 32 articles in 2017. That decreased to 13 articles in 2018, two in 2019, one in 2020, eight in 2021, and three in 2022. With this, the 27th article of 2023, I’ve now matched the total number of articles from 2018–2022. In the spirit of celebration — and as a documented armchair Oscar commentator and loyal This Had Oscar Buzz listener — let’s hand out some awards.   While I’ve published year-end best-of lists previously—see here  and here —the Duffies will award films and creators across seven categories. All 42 films reviewed on Down Under Flix since May were considered. Winners are listed in bold, and nominees/runner-ups are listed alphabetically below. Best Picture: Dark City Elvis Flirting Looking for Alibrandi Malcolm Puberty Blues Three vital coming-of-age films, two big and bold directorial ...

  When I listed Australian sequels in my recent review of Wog Boy 2 , I neglected to mention Flirting (1991) , John Duigan’s follow-up to The Year My Voice Broke . Of its predecessor, I wrote in 2017:   Duigan’s film shares DNA with earlier Australian coming of age precursors like  The Devil’s Playground  and  Puberty Blues , and casts a shadow over later period-set depictions of small town youth malaise like  The Crossing ,  The Delinquents , and more recently  Jasper Jones . There’s also a touch of Peter Bogdanovich’s  The Last Picture Show  in its portrait of a slowly dying town (situated off the highway and left to erode) with a cinema as its social hub. It’s a somewhat melancholic portrait of small town life and the people politics therein, but the natural environment surrounding the town is impressive and beautifully filmed by Geoff Burton … Noah Taylor and Loene Carmen, who would co-star again in  The Nostradamus Kid ...

As the self-loathing streak (rightfully or otherwise) in Australian cinema has grown in recent decades, the place at the table for the daggy, overlit, low-budget theatrically-released Australian comedies pervasive in the 1990s and early 2000s (apex: The Castle , d-pex: The Wannabes ) has shrunk. Its descendants in more recent years are either much more polished ( A Few Best Men , Swinging Safari ,  Top End Wedding ), micro-budget ( Hot Mess ), or crass and obnoxious (Paul Fenech’s work).    You Can’t Stop the Murders (2003) , directed by Anthony Mir, is a product of the genre’s twilight years, in which two cops in a sleepy small town (Gary Eck, Akmal Saleh) are teamed with a city slicker supercop (Mir) to investigate the Village People-themed killings of a biker (Jason Clarke), a construction worker (Gary Sweet), and so on [1]. Whilst the plot is akin to a three-minute sketch — see, for example, Hale & Pace's Spice Killer sketch — the film sustains its one-joke pr...