When Australian filmmaker Robert Connolly directs a feature film, audiences pay attention. His latest is The Dry, and this thriller doesn’t disappoint. Based on Jane Harper’s novel of the same title, The Dry powerfully depicts a community in crisis. Connolly’s previous feature, Paper Planes (2014) proved a surprise hit, and there’s no reason The Dry…
– High Ground – Only in cinemas from 28 January 2021 We have 5 double in-season passes thanks to Madman Films. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Watch the trailer HERE Set against the stunning landscapes of 1930s Arnhem Land, HIGH GROUND chronicles young Aboriginal man Gutjuk, who in a bid to save the last of…
The Nightingale (2018) rewrote the rules around brutal representations of Australia’s colonial past. Now The Furnace follows in its footsteps, albeit less successfully. In remote Western Australia circa 1897, a young Afghani cameleer, Hanif (Ahmed Malek), is determined to escape the outback and return home. Hanif has witnessed a white man murder his mentor. Now…
A low-rent Australian drama in which very little happens, How Do You Know Chris? is strictly film festival fare. It is the year 2000. Nineteen year-old (nearly 20) Emi Mustafi (Tatiana Quaresma) meets Chris (Luke Cook), 28, in a laundromat. Even though they’ve just met, the older copywriter invites the commerce student to a small…
First-time documentary director Catherine Dwyer starts her career off impressively with Brazen Hussies. This highly entertaining film charts the course of the so-called “women’s liberation” (the term is pretty dated now) movement between about 1968 and 1976. Over the course of the film’s crisp 93 minutes, Dwyer explores what motivated the movement, where it went…
Cinematic exchanges between Australia and Iceland are, understandably, rare. But that hasn’t deterred director Jeremy Sims, who successfully translates Grímur Hákonarson’s 2015 Icelandic hit Rams into RAMS (note the subtle difference). The tyrannies of distance and language prove no barrier for Sims. And when you think about it, maybe Australia and Iceland have quite a…
A mind-numbing comedy for senior citizens, Never Too Late relies on fanciful nonsense to move the story forward. A voice-over by Jacqui Weaver as Norma McCarthy sets the scene. Norma once met a handsome soldier Jack Bronson (played as an elderly gent by James Cromwell) the day before he shipped out to Vietnam. If he’d…
These cousins from Melbourne, Kllo (rhymes with “flow”) return with a follow-up to their 2017 electro-pop debut, Breakthrough. As described in their bio, the two abandoned recording together late in 2018, following tours that took them around the world twice, unsure about their musical direction and focus. Drawn back together following a period of collaborations…
– RAMS – Only in cinemas from 29 October 2020 We have 5 double in-season passes thanks to Roadshow Films. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Watch the trailer HERE In remote Western Australia, two estranged brothers, Colin (Sam Neil) and Les (Michael Caton), are at war. Raising separate flocks of sheep descended from their family’s…
Slim Dusty was an Australian icon. No arguments there. He was the first Aussie to have an international number 1 hit song with A Pub with No Beer. One hundred plus albums, record sales topping eight million and an unrivalled 45 Golden Guitar awards. Impressive numbers by any measure. Born David Gordon Kirkpatrick in 1927…
