The Travellers (2025)

When I saw The Travellers in November last year, I left the theatre underwhelmed. Whilst not marketed as autobiographical, there were whiffs of an essay I'd read by its director Bruce Beresford—published in the engaging 2017 collection The Best Film I Never Made and Other Stories about a Life in the Arts—where he reminisced about visiting his ageing father in his regional hometown. Ultimately, The Travellers—about an international opera art director returning home to care for his father after his mother's passing—felt, much like Bill Bennett's The Way My Way, like a minor, low-fi, autobiographical late work by a major Australian director.

However, The Travellers has proven stickier than anticipated, and with the passage of time I've found myself thinking less about the film's flaws—its flattish digital photography, its middling lead casting—and more about its witty grace notes, its engaging supporting turns—especially Bryan Brown, reuniting with Beresford for the first time since Breaker Morant—and the themes it chews on. It's Beresford's only feature release since 2017's excellent Ladies in Black, and a film only he could have made. Some of the conversations about Australian philistinism towards art feel as dated as they did in Richard Franklin's 1995 adaptation of Hotel Sorrento—references to Colin Farrell aside—but they're clearly the sentiments of a director who has grappled with them for over fifty years in the creative industries.

I can't say I've warmed to Luke Bracey in the lead role. I liked Bracey in the muscular Hacksaw Ridge, and he fared as well as anyone could have in the pointless Point Break remake, but was unpersuasive as a jet-setting artist of global renown. My mind drifted to the possibility of someone like Ben Mendelsohn in the role, though that might've conjured unnecessary echoes of Beautiful Kate—where he previously played Brown's offspring—and perhaps Mendelsohon has too much personality to convince as the son cut from seemingly very different cloth.

So, The Travellers ... much stickier than expected. Not quite as sticky as the snowman scene from The Naked Gun remake, but few things are ...

Ben

Six pack: Furiosa (2024), Force of Nature (2024), No Escape (1994), The New Boy (2023), Mary and Max (2009), and Sweet As (2022)

There used to be a nerdy adage—at least until contrary instalments countered the point—that even-numbered Star Trek films were better than their odd-numbered counterparts. I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar adage emerges about the Mad Max films: while the obviously odd-numbered original was a trailblazer, it’s The Road Warrior and Fury Road that have commanded universal acclaim, while Beyond Thunderdome and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) have proven divisive. There are striking moments—as expected in both a George Miller film and a Mad Max film—in Furiosa , and Miller remains the most idiosyncratic generator of sequels: Furiosa (technically a prequel) is his sixth, after a Babe sequel, a Happy Feet sequel, and three other Mad Max sequels, with none of these offshoots feeling the same. However, if you’d told me Furiosa was based on a five-part prequel comic book series, I’d believe you, based on its chapter structure and the narrative dead end it arrives at. As it stand...

Malcolm (1986)

When penning my review of Black and White , starring Robert Carlyle, I was reminded of my two theatrical viewings of The Full Monty : one in a packed theatre with patrons lapping up the film, the other a few weeks later in a large theatre with less than a dozen, far more polite punters. As a dumb teen, I took away the wrong lesson: that the film didn’t work/wasn’t successful outside a packed auditorium. As an adult, I have a more rounded appreciation of the film and its grace notes that aren't dependent on an enthused opening weekend crowd — the thoughtful, non-condescending working-class milieu it sketches (much more effective and less caricatured than the likes of Billy Elliot ), the lovely work from Lesley Sharp, and so on—but the two distinct viewings remain an instructive lesson in the role of an audience in galvanizing each other and collectively elevating a film experience [1]. Malcolm (1986) is a film I’ve also watched twice—albeit at home and with a much longer interva...

John Hargreaves double feature: Hoodwink (1981) and Sky Pirates (1986)

Published 2017 on Down Under Flix Discounting the film Blackfellas , in which he plays a minor role as a racist policeman, I’m surprised it’s taken this long to cover any John Hargreaves films on Down Under Flix. A six time AFI Award nominee (including for Hoodwink ) and triple winner, Hargreaves is one of the best leading men to emerge from the Australian New Wave, and I have particular regard for his work in Don’s Party, Long Weekend , and The Odd Angry Shot . Hargreaves was a natural performer: gifted and charismatic, but not unnecessarily flashy; handsome, but not movie star handsome, and slightly crumpled like a creased jacket. He was a quintessential Australian everyman ala Jack Thompson and Bryan Brown, though he’s less familiar to young filmgoers today, partly due to his untimely passing in 1996 at age 50. This article looks at one of Hargreaves’ best films… and one of his other films…

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