Tag: Australian film
Peter Crayford
Wednesday, November 30th, 2011 Blog, Film Reviews,For 26 years Peter Crayford wrote the weekly film column for the Australian Financial Revew, an appointment he missed on only a handful of occasions. His consistency and the quality of his work become even more remarkable when one understands the circumstances of his life. When early on Sunday morning, Peter gave up his long, […]
The Eye of the Storm
Saturday, September 17th, 2011 Film Reviews,There is a powerful nostalgia for the 1970s in Fred Schepisi’s film adaptation of The Eye of the Storm. The novel appeared in 1973, the same year that Patrick White was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. I read it when I was a teenager, but still remember the impressively awful Elizabeth Hunter – an […]
Sleeping Beauty
Wednesday, June 29th, 2011 Film Reviews,True to its title, Sleeping Beauty is a fairy tale, as bleak and perverse as something by the Brothers Grimm – if you can imagine the Grimms writing about suburban Melbourne. Lucy (Emily Browning) is a university student studying mathematics. She supports herself with part-time jobs, as a waitress and a filing clerk. In the […]
Blame
Saturday, June 25th, 2011 Film Reviews,Australian cinema has been in the doldrums for years, but with the recent success of Animal Kingdom, and two acclaimed features by new directors released within the past month, it seems we are experiencing a crime-led recovery. First there was Justin Kurzel’s Snowtown, and now Michael Henry’s Blame, which has already been screened in film […]
Snowtown
Friday, May 20th, 2011 Film Reviews,Snowtown would never be first choice for ‘a nice night’s entertainment’ – the humble goal of Barry Humphries’s character, Sandy Stone. Like Sandy and Dame Edna, the characters in Justin Kurzel’s debut feature are creatures of the Australian suburbs, but this is a very, very dark version of that working class idyll. This controversial film […]