Down Under Flix

  Most major starlets — or actresses groomed for stardom — of the 1990s and early 2000s headlined a period film or two during their career ascent, whether suited to the milieu or not (see Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jodie Foster, Nicole Kidman, Demi Moore, Winona Ryder, Reese Witherspoon, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow, and so on). Frances O’Connor was no exception, and did nice work in films like Mansfield Park and The Importance of Being Earnest , though for this reviewer O’Connor impressed most indelibly in Emma-Kate Croghan’s Love and Other Catastrophes and Bill Bennett’s Kiss or Kill , both very spiky, spunky contemporary works. That mix of the classical and contemporary is at the core of O’Connor’s directorial debut, Emily (2022) , a dramatization of the life of the Brontë sister of the same name. I use the term dramatization rather than biopic, as O’Connor herself rejects the latter descriptor in a Guardian interview promoting the film ; one could venture ev...

  Operation Dumbo Drop (1994) , which celebrates – albeit with muted fanfare – its 30 th anniversary this year, is based on the true story of American soldiers who helped transport an elephant across enemy territory to a small village during the Vietnam War. Because the film is a live-action Disney product of the 1990s, it brushes only very faintly against the darker realities of the Vietnam War – as might be expected from the writers of Police Academy 3 and 4 and Snow Dogs , among other credits – and stars Danny Glover, Ray Liotta and Dennis Leary, all headliners in more corrosive entertainments, are amiable but sedated, all rough edges sanded down.  Of films from recent memory, George Clooney’s The Monuments Men  – about military personnel in World War Two retrieving stolen art back from the Nazis – is Operation Dumbo Drop ’s closest companion. But  Operation Dumbo Drop is the better film and Australian director Simon Wincer a less heralded but far...