Unlucky numbers: 1% (2017), The Death & Life of Otto Bloom (2016)

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 (Liquid Bridge).

The Death and Life of Otto Bloom (2016), written and directed by Cris Jones, centres on the titular Bloom (played by Xavier Samuel), whose consciousness experiences time in reverse. The film unfolds in a mockumentary format utilizing, among other things, talking head interviews, archival media, videotape & home movies, and stills, depicting Bloom’s early romance with an academic psychologist (Matilda Brown and later Rachel Ward), later relationships, international celebrity, and subsequent controversies and retreat from the limelight. The potentially lumpy concept is fairly well-executed, with whiffs of its more stylized antecedents The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Zelig, the latter most notably in the talking heads interviews (themselves cribbed by Woody Allen from Reds). The film is somewhat hampered by casting the likeable but thoroughly ordinary Samuel as the extraordinary Bloom; he’s serviceable, but lacks any enigmatic quality.

Ben

The Return of Down Under Flix: Elvis (2022), Burning Man (2011), and Telegram Man (2011)

While it feels counter-intuitive, given its subject, to list Elvis (2022) as an Australian film, the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Awards (AACTA) expressed no qualms, awarding this US-Australian co-production Best Film, Director, and Actor, along with 9 other awards, a veritable sweep. AACTA also gave director Baz Luhrmann’s previous co-production, The Great Gatsby , the same top gongs and a slew of others nine years earlier. Ironically, Australia , Luhrmann’s most Antipodean-flavoured work since his breakthrough Strictly Ballroom , was nominated largely in craft categories by AACTA’s predecessor, the Australian Film Insititute Awards. Having said that, perhaps the best way to look at Luhrmann — indisputably our most successful working director and a truly internationally-minded one — is to treat him as our Sergio Leone. Much as Leone’s work is a product of both American Westerns and Italian cinema, so too is Luhrmann a filmmaker dabbling in American genres and stories ...

The Way, My Way (2024)

As someone on a perpetual two-to-three-year pop culture delay, it’s very rare I see a new film in theatrical release, let alone its first day of theatrical release, let alone a new Australian film on its first day of theatrical release. However, I had this opportunity for Bill Bennett's The Way, My Way (2024) . Bennett's film is also, by coincidence, the second film I’ve seen in as many months about someone making a pilgrimage along the famed Camino trail, the other being Emilio Estevez’s The Way . Both films, intriguingly, foreground their filmmakers in the screen story and provide onscreen surrogates for them: in The Way , Estevez appears briefly as a deceased doctor whose father—the film’s protagonist, played by Estevez’s real-life father Martin Sheen—embarks on the Camino trail to scatter his son’s ashes; in The Way, My Way , adapted from director Bennett’s autobiographical travel writing, Chris Haywood is cast as the filmmaker and follows in his director’s footsteps. ...

Season's greetings from DUF

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. ...

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