Australian
Tomorrow, When the War Began
dir: Stuart Beattie
Yesterday When We Weren't Stereotypes, but people, with thoughts and feelings
An Aussie version of Red Dawn? Sign me up right now! I'd watch the shit out of such a movie. And I did, I guess...
Red Dawn, that brilliantly stupid 80s flick about American teenagers leading a guerrilla war against their Communist oppressors, deserves to be a template worth replicating. Of course, I’ve heard that they’re making a new Red Dawn, which I think is completely redundant now, with this flick having been made.
Of course, though cheesier than a three-cheese pizza, this flick doesn’t have a scene where Harry Dean Stanton yells with a demented gleam in his eye: “AVENGE ME, BOYS, AVENGE ME!”
And for that alone there need to be multiple competing versions of this meme out there.
I don’t personally know John Marsden, but I feel like he’s one of Australia’s living treasures, and that his efforts in the fields of writing aimed at ‘young adults’ and in education make him someone worthy of awards, showers of wealth and the attentions of hot people with skills to pay bills. I remember that I read some of his books back in the day, including this one, but I’d be lying if I said I actually remembered this book from when I was twelve. I vaguely remember it, and remember how shocking the idea was, and how confronting the idea of Australian teenagers killing to survive was, but little more than that.
There are two contradictory ideas that the flick has to balance in order to work, and it does fairly well with both of them. The first is one that’s contradictory all on its own, which is that these are ‘kids’ thrust unwillingly into the role of soldiers or insurgents, depending on how you look at it, who have to stand up and put away childish things to become freedom fighters.
The second idea is that these clueless but resourceful kids could ever be a threat to an army, and that’s far less convincing, unless you depict the action in a cartoonish and overamped manner, which the flick delivers in spades. So even if we can’t believe it, we’re supposed to be able to relate to it in our own local context.
It’s a somewhat precious idea when you consider that there are kid soldiers in other countries, especially certain African countries, that are hopped up on goofballs and running around raping and killing under orders before they’ve even hit puberty. Also, actual soldiers in actual Western armies are often eighteen anyway. They’re the ones who expect and demand to die on the front lines, being the tattooed cannon fodder by definition that they are.
- Read more
- 153 reads
Beautiful Kate
dir: Rachel Ward
Don't let her in, she'll ruin your life
It’s a good thing Rachel Ward directed this film. Not only because she brings a deft and empathetic eye to a ‘difficult’ story, and renders it both meaningful and Australian despite its American origins. It’s also because if a guy had directed this, you’d accuse them of being a dirty, dirty old man, instead of being a sensitive and accomplished filmmaker.
She also, in a clear instance of welfare handouts, gives a plum role to her husband Bryan Brown, who plays a dying patriarch. Do you reckon he had to earn his spot in the film on the casting couch, by sucking and fucking his way to fame and stardom? I wouldn’t put it past her.
This is a good film, but the subject matter is rough, more than a bit rough. It’s downright discomfiting. Any story with elements of incest in it by default is going to be hard watching. And the elephant in this room is so large and so grey that it practically squishes every single other element. Almost.
There’s death, there’s very wrong sex, there’s suicide, and there’s the rage you can only feel towards parents, all here up on the screen for our delectation. Enjoy!
Based on a novel by Newton Thornburg, Beautiful Kate’s setting is transformed from being set just outside of Chicago, Illinois, to the exactly identical setting of the South Australian Flinders Ranges. Ned (Ben Mendelsohn) is a writer summoned back to the family property (called Wallimbi or Gumby or Mallulabimbi) where his saintly father Bruce (Bryan Brown) is loudly dying. Wait a second, maybe Bruce isn’t that much of a saint. In fact, like all of the male characters in this, maybe he’s a bit of a prick.
- Read more
- 188 reads
Samson and Delilah
dir: Warwick Thornton
Samson and Delilah - true love
Samson and Delilah is unlike any other film, Australian or otherwise, in its depiction of Aboriginal characters or an Australian story. It is unflinching, and brutal, and beautiful. It might take its name from the biblical story, but this tale is far more real, current, tragic and yet hopeful in its ultimate realisation.
It is not an enjoyable flick. There isn’t much dialogue. It’s as meticulously crafted as any work of art you’re likely to ever see, but its purpose isn’t to entertain. Though there is occasional humour to leaven the grim circumstances of these lives, it remains true to the characters and the reality of their situation. A situation not exclusive to the characters in this film.
It’s not easy going, not by any stretch. But then, why should it be?
In an isolated community in the Northern Territory, Samson (Rowan McNamara) wakes up, sniffs petrol for a while, rubs his head then gets up and wanders around. He has nothing to do all day. The isolated community is so small that it probably consists of about 5 shacks, a shack church and a shop. Heat vibrates off everything. A communal phone rings and rings, but no-one answers it.
Music is what wakes Samson up each morning. His brother (Matthew Gibson) and his terrible band play the same song all day long. They play it all day long every goddamn day. The repetition, like the oppressive heat, is maddening but reassuring in its permanence. The phone keeps ringing unanswered.
- Read more
- 320 reads
Proposition, The
dir: John Hillcoat
Spare some change, buddy?
I still have the soundtrack by Warren Ellis and Nick Cave ringing in my ears. For in truth that is probably the most successful part of the film.
This so-called Australian “Western” has little going for it except lovely postcard visuals, a melancholy tension, people with bad teeth giving good performances and a hell of a lot of brutality.
Let’s face it, the starting point of British colonialism in this country was anything but auspicious or pleasant for any of the people involved. The town of Banyon serves as the “hell” in the line uttered by one of the film’s many characters, “What fresh hell is this…”, though he is in fact talking about all of Australia.
Though the land has its empty natural beauty, it looks like what much of it is: hostile and inhospitable. Of course the film plays this up and makes it look like the first whities here must have been insane to stay. As well as being very dirty all of the time.
Many people star in this flick, many people were involved, and so it comes with many expectations. Maybe a stack of people are going to think it’s the bee’s knees. For me it was more like the flea’s disease.
It looks authentic, despite its clear lack of authenticity; it has a melancholy, tense feel to it throughout; the script and dialogue are rich in language, the performances are decent and the music adds to the story instead of being distracting. But there are still issues which make me less than happy about it.
- Read more
- 165 reads
Ten Canoes
dir: Rolf de Heer & David Djigirr
Ten Canoes
For the first Australian film made entirely in an indigenous language, Ten Canoes has quite modest ambitions. There’s nothing political or activist going on, it’s not representing anything that deep or significant about indigenous culture, contemporary problems or earnest, well-meaning social commentary. So you can breathe a collective sigh of relief. Ah, that’s better.
It’s just a story within a story about a bunch of people living at the top end of Australia before colonisation. Pretty simple. They make fart jokes, they believe superstitious nonsense about sorcerers and people doing bad stuff to them by putting spells on their shit, and they sometimes covet each other’s wives. Simple people living simple lives.
We are introduced to the storyteller, voiced by David Gulpilil, who pretends he’s going to start the story with ‘a long time ago, in a land far, far away’, then takes that back after laughing. He then tells us gradually of the Dreamtime process of birth for his ancestors, and the way of all births, being the soul waiting at their individual waterholes until it becomes time for them to be put in their mother’s womb before being born.
- Read more
- 237 reads
Last Train to Freo
dir: Jeremy Sims
Trapped on a train with some fearsome feral bogans
Well, this week’s a real bogan fest here at movie-reviews.com.au, because we have another Australian flick that is utterly dependant on criminal bogans as two of its main characters. Hooray!
Last Train to Freo, surprisingly enough, is about some people travelling on the last train (for that night) to Fremantle, the West Australian port city south of Perth. Two of the people on the train are clearly dangerous criminal thugs. And, as often happens on public transport, thugs can often be overcome with the delusion that they are charismatic and special, and that everyone on the train wants to hear from them.
It’s a delightful circumstance to be trapped in. It’s happened to me a few dozen times, so I assume it’s happened to you, gentle reader. These characters are at the mercy not of the private companies that now run most of the trains in Australia, but of the tyranny of distance and these two thugs.
The thugs (Steve Le Marquand and Tom Budge) clearly have no problem with jail time, with personal space or human dignity. One is tall, hideous and grandiose (Marquand), the other is a nervy and crazy junkie (Budge), but in a seemingly less dangerous way. They discuss various moronic topics on their journey before they are joined by the other passengers.
- Read more
- 352 reads
