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...