Down Under Flix

  Director: Steve Jodrell Starring: Ernie Dingo, Frank Wilson, Bud Tingwell Singin’ in the Rain. Sunset Boulevard. The Bad and the Beautiful. All about Eve. A Star is Born (x 2). The Day of the Locust. The Stunt Man. Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The Player. Living in Oblivion. Barton Fink. Ed Wood. Gods and Monsters. Bowfinger. State and Main. Mulholland Drive. Adaptation. Tropic Thunder. The Artist. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The Disaster Artist. Mank. Dolemite is My Name . And many, many more. The catalogue of Hollywood films about Hollywood - some wholesale fiction, others based on true events - is a robust one, peppered with many classics, much sardonic satire, and equal parts self-congratulation and self-loathing. In contrast, the Australian film industry, with its government subsidised output and oft-transient star system, has 1987’s Tudawali , a pair of Errol Flynn biopics, and, for genre fans, Cut . A cynic would say there’s not much to commemorate. I’d disagree: ther...

  The Aviator and Hotel Mumbai are survival narratives headlined by global stars (of different generations) stretching the parameters of their screen personas. The former is a fictional two-hander set in 1928 about a mismatched duo whose aeroplane crash lands in rugged American wilderness; the latter is an ensemble drama-thriller set 80 years later based on real events – the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks – and depicts guests and staff fighting to survive at a luxury hotel under siege. Both features are directed by Australian filmmakers; the latter, though set in Mumbai, was filmed partly in Adelaide and is an Australian co-production involving Screen Australia, Screen West, and the South Australian Film Corporation. The Aviator (1985) Director: George T. Miller Starring: Christopher Reeve, Rosanna Arquette, Jack Warden, Sam Wanamaker The Aviator (not to be confused with the Martin Scorsese Howard Hughes biopic of the same name) stars Christopher Reeve as pilot Edgar Anscombe, withd...

  Director: John Stainton Starring: Steve Irwin, Terri Irwin, Magda Szubanski, David Wenham, Lachy Hulme, Aden Young, Steve Bastoni, Kate Beahan, Kenneth Ransom The phenomenon of Steve Irwin’s Crocodile Hunter largely bypassed me during his lifetime. I was in my twenties, considered myself too cool (so wrong) for Steve Irwin’s shenanigans, and was uninterested, like Tommy Lee Jones, in sanctioning buffoonery . As I potter towards middle age, I find myself increasingly in awe of people at the very apex of their profession, be it Fred Astaire dancing like a boss , Jacqueline du Pre commanding a cello , or Elvis bringing the house down . If your profession is wrestling deadly reptiles into submission with extraordinary zeal and strength, then you have my attention and at least a modicum of my admiration. In The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course , an important high-tech MacGuffin falls from outer space and lands in the Australian outback, where it is promptly snapped up by a crocodile...

  Director: Gillian Armstrong Starring: Guy Pearce, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Saoirse Ronan, Timothy Spall Since launching Down Under Flix in 2016, I’ve reviewed much of Gillian Armstrong’s wholly Australian output, covering Starstruck , High Tide , and The Last Days of Chez Nous  on Down Under Flix, and revisiting Starstruck   as well as an early documentary, Fourteen’s Good, Eighteen’s Better , for Senses of Cinema . The contemporaneity of this line-up is striking given our popular conception of Armstrong as a period film director. Certainly her feature debut, My Brilliant Career , was a period film, as were her subsequent Hollywood films ( Mrs Soffel , Little Women ) and Australian-international co-productions ( Oscar and Lucinda , Charlotte Gray ), but she was not beholden to this mould for her wholly home-grown features. This suggests Hollywood and international film financiers have been beholden to a view of Armstrong’s work that emerged largely from My Brilliant Caree...

  Director: Bill Bennett   Starring: Maya Strange, Rufus Sewell, Martin Donovan, Andrew S. Gilbert, John Howard, Max Cullen In a Savage Land is a film I’ve wanted to see for over two decades. It did not screen in my region on its theatrical release in 1999, evaded me on VHS and DVD, but is now streaming on Stan . While it’s entirely possible I’ve been looking for it in all the wrong places, the fact that a $10 million investment — chump change by Hollywood standards, but a fortune locally — can fall out of general circulation is a sorry indictment of both industry and audiences. That it found its way back into circulation where other films of the era remain in limbo — see Angst , A Little Bit of Soul , Dead Letter Office , to name a handful — is no small feat.    Anthropology student Evelyn (Maya Strange) marries her lecturer Phillip (Martin Donovan) and accompanies him on a field trip to the Trobriand Islands of Papa New Guinea. Phillip ingratiates himself with t...

Bad posters are a dime a dozen, but bad comedy posters are legion. They’re not hard to spot, typically featuring actors engaged in decontextualised mugging against bland, often plain white backgrounds, desperate to please and spread joy. And the red text … so much red text …   But a poorly-postered comedy can rise above the station of its ropey advertising. Though spared the red text and white backdrops, here are two Australian comedies with unflattering posters that rise above their middling promotions. Now Add Honey (2015) Director: Wayne Hope Starring: Robyn Butler, Portia De Rossi, Lucy Fry, Lucy Durack, Hamish Blake Now Add Honey is a film I knew next to nought about, besides it featuring a handful of familiar faces (Angus Sampson, Portia De Rossi, Hamish Blake, David Field) and being an Australian comedy with a bad poster promising young vs old, spunk vs frump, and other forms of comedic culture clash. Caroline (Robyn Butler, also responsible for the script) is a frustrat...

Director: John Cornell Starring: Paul Hogan, Linda Kozlowski, John Meillon, Ernie Dingo, Charles S. Dutton, Luiz Guzman, Gus Mercurio Crocodile Dundee needs no introduction. Its worldwide popularity and equally beloved and derided status locally are well-documented. It’s a film that does not, by most yardsticks, belong on Down Under Flix , a site dedicated to spotlighting "obscure, forgotten, neglected, and under-appreciated Australian films".  Crocodile Dundee II though … that’s a conversation worth having. Released two years later, it was a hit domestically, albeit not as big as its predecessor , and a huge deal overseas , albeit not as huge as the original . Given their close proximity, one would think that scenes and lines and moments from both instalments would blur together in the haze of nostalgia, as is often the case with popular 80s franchises. But truth be told, I think the moments that stick with audiences are entirely from the first film.  Crocodile Dundee II...