Tag: Australia

On the Beach

Director – Stanley Kramer – 1959 – US – Cert. PG – 134m

*****

Australia is the only country yet to succumb to radiation sickness following a nuclear war – on Blu-ray from Monday, July 27th

The nuclear submarine USS Sawfish, under the command of Commander Dwight Lionel Towers (Gregory Peck), surfaces in Melbourne, Australia. Lieutenant Peter Holmes (Anthony Perkins) makes a bottle of milk for baby Jennifer and a cup of tea for his sleeping wife Mary (Donna Anderson from Inherit the Wind, Stanley Kramer, 1960; Count Yorga, Vampire, Bob Kelljan, 1976). He has to pick up the milk as it won’t be delivered any more. He’s on his way to see the admiral, who gives him a job on the Sawfish.

Reporting to the commander, he offers to take the latter for a drink, and winds up inviting his to stay at his home. He puts local woman Moira Davidson (Ava Gardner) in charge of him; at a party, where there’s a row between scientist Julian Osborn (Fred Astaire) and another man over who caused the nuclear war, she gets very drunk and comes on to Towers, but she falls asleep, so he puts her to bed.… Read the rest

Tags Abby Mann, admiral, amateur film, Anthony Perkins, apocalypse, Australia, Ava Gardner, baby, back projection, bicycles, capsize, Christianity, commander, costume, dancer, denial, deserted, Donna Anderson, Dr. Philip Davey, drink, drunk, Elissa Rose, end of the world, euthanasia, extinction, faithful, family, farm, Ferrari, Fred Astaire, Gregory Peck, hometown, horse-drawn buggy, husbands and wives, John Meillon, Karen Sharpe, Kim Newman, married, Melbourne. lieutenant, musical, Nevil Shute, nuclear submarine, nuclear war, On the Beach, party, petrol shortage, pill, post nuclear war, promiscuity, protest movement, psycholog, race, radiation sickness, romance, sailing boat race, Salvation Army, San Diego, San Francisco, scientist, Scott Harrison, Stanley Kramer, submarine, wardrobe, young mother, young mum

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Operation Hurricane

Director – Ronald Stark – 1952 – UK – Cert. U – 33m

Britain’s first A-bomb test takes place in the Monte Bello islands – included as an extra on the BFI Blu-ray of
On the Beach (Stanley Kramer, 1959)

The overly serious, half-hour British Ministry of Supply short Operation Hurricane documents the first A-bomb test in the Monte Bello islands 60 miles off the coast of Australia. There’s something terrifying about the way it presents the bomb as a good thing made to help the British people.

Those interested in soundtracks will want to know it has music composed by John Addison (from Torn Curtain, Alfred Hitchcock, 1966; The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Tony Richardson, 1962; Reach for the Sky, Lewis Gilbert, 1956) and the Musical Director was the prolific Muir Mathieson (Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock, 1958; Henry V, Laurence Olivier, 1944; Things to Come, William Cameron Menzies, 1936).

Tags A-bomb, A-bomb test, atom bomb, Atom bomb test, Australia, Britain, British, coast, John Addison, Ministry of Supply, Monte Bello islands, Muir Mathieson, mushroom cloud, Operation Hurricane, Ronald Stark, UK

Animation Features Movies

Lesbian Space Princess

Directors – Leela Varghese, Emma Hough Hobbs – 2025 – Australia – Cert. 15 – 87m

*****

A lesbian princess must travel through space to claim her inheritance and rescue her true love (who just dumped her) from straight white maliens – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, June 19th

NSFW

Princess Saira of Clitopolis (voice: Shabana Azeez) has been voted the Most Boring Royal ever – but then, her heart’s desire came along in the form of Kiki the Destroyer (voice: Bernie van Tiel) and changed all that. And then Kiki dumped her. Fuck!

Cue title song: “She’s a lesbian. She’s in space. And she’s also a princess.”

I was already won over by the silliness of the writing at this point. The animated visuals too demonstrate a unique, equally winsome style. Co-directors Varghese and Hobbs possess a real gift for humour, and have between them scripted the perfect comedy, in this critic’s opinion the hardest genre to pull off successfully. The narrative is punctuated by further, likeable indie songs which contribute to its appropriately alternate feel.

While Saira fails to summon the an ancient lesbian symbol of the labrys on her 23rd birthday, Kiki’s four in a bed sex games are disrupted by the arrival of the straight, while maliens the leader, Josh and Larry (voices: Melbourne comedy group Aunty Donna aka Mark Samual Bonanno, Broden Kelly, Zachery Luane) who suspend her over a vat of toxic home brew in the man cave where they find themselves exiled.… Read the rest

Tags 24 hours, alternative, animation, Aunty Donna, Australia, bande dessinée, Bernie van Tiel, bigotry, birthday, boredom, bouncers, Broden Kelly, bus stop, chick magnet, comedy, comedy group, comic book, comic strip, crash land, drag queen, drawn animation, dumped, eggs, Emma Hough Hobbs, exiled, failure, gay space bubble, Gemma Chua-tran, goth girl, heart’s desire, hole, home brew, humour, indie, inheritance, Kween Kong, ladder, Leela Varghese, lesbian, Lesbian Space Princess, lesbian symbol, lesbians and thesbians, Lori Bell, man cave, Mark Samual Bonanno, Max Garcia-Underwood, Melbourne, Most Boring Royal, negativity, nightclub, no batteries, outer space, parental rejection, patriarch, pineapple, planet, positivity, princess, red crystal, Richard Roxburgh, role-playing card game, safe space, sci-fi, science fiction, science fiction sex comedy, sex comedy, sex games, SF, Shabana Azeez, song, space opera, space travel, spaceship, straight white maliens, subconscious, Sweden, the most dangerous place in the universe, true love, tumbleweed, ultimatum, Zachery Luane

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

The Road to Patagonia

Director – Matty Hannon – 2022 – Australia – Cert. 15 – 90m

****

A keen surfer and former ecology student from Australia sets out on a motorbike journey from Alaska down the West coast of the Americas to Patagonia – out on digital on Monday, July 28th

The family of Australian moving picture diarist Matty Hannon moved around a lot during his childhood. He left home as soon as he could, and studied ecology at university, where he became fascinated by the book Shamans of Mentawai about tribes living in Indonesia’s Sumatran Islands. A keen surfer, he went out to one of the islands, rode the incredible waves, embraced a simple lifestyle and felt he’d arrived in a utopia where people lived in harmony with nature, assigning spirit gods to rivers and mountains. He began to wonder if by concentrating on data in his studies, he’d been missing something. He stayed five years, from age 21-26.

On his return to Melbourne, he was hit by culture shock. Everything was commodified. He sat at a computer for work. He was now in a culture that referred to its people as consumers, where national success was measured in terms of how much they bought.… Read the rest

Tags 14 months, abattoir, age 21-26, Alaska, alternative lifestyle, Amazon rainforest, animism, Australia, Baja California, Baja Peninsula, bike, bike theft, biker, book, breathtaking vistas, butcher, California, Canada, ceremony, Chile, civilisation collapse, clearing the jungle, commodification, commodified, community, computer, consumer culture, consumers, corporations, culture shock, data, depression, desert, destroying the ecosystem, Developed World, ecology, environmental impact, farming, fertilise the land, First Nation Peoples, fuel, harmony with nature, Heather Hillier, home-built rig, horses as fellow spirits, Inca pyramids, Indonesia, inspiring, interconnectedness of living things, journey, landscape, leave home, letter-writing, lifestyle, living in the wild, local customers, local resistance, malaise, Matty Hannon, Melbourne, Mexico, missing something, motorbike, mountain god, mountains, Patagonia, plant medicines, population density, possessions, pre-packaged jobs, profit before environment, pulp mill, raise a family, reliance on motor fuel, respect, ride the waves, river god, rivers, robbed by cops, Shamans of Mentawai, simple lifestyle, small farm, Southbound, spirit gods, spirits in balance, student, studies, success measurement, Sumatran Islands, Suna Beach, surfboard, surfer, sustainable farm, sustainable future, symptomatic, tent, The Road to Patagonia, toxic pollution, trade bikes for horses, travel, tribe, university, unspoiled beaches, US, utopia, Vancouver, voice-over, waves, well-being, West coast of the Americas, work, work on computer

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

The Road to Patagonia

Directed by Matty Hannon
Certificate 15
90 minutes
Released 27 June

In his mid-20s, former ecology student and keen surfer Matty Hannon returns to Melbourne, Australia. For five years, from age 21 to 26, he has lived alongside one of Indonesia’s Sumatran Island tribes, a utopia where people live in harmony with nature, assigning spirit gods to rivers and mountains. And then there are the waves.

Melbourne hits him with culture shock; a culture that refers to its people as consumers, where national success is measured in terms of how much they buy. Depression is common. Hannon records his response in this documentary as he gets out, takes a tent to Alaska, then… on his motorbike… travels down the West Coast of the Americas to Patagonia… [read the rest in the Issue 4 – 2025 edition of Reform]

[Read my longer review for this site here.]

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Features Live Action Movies

Dangerous Animals

Director – Sean Byrne – 2025 – Australia – Cert. 15 – 98m

*****

A free-spirited girl surfer must outwit the shark tour operator who has kidnapped her and whose idea of looking after customers is feeding them to the sharks – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 6th

Greg (Liam Greinke) invites Brit backpacker Heather (Ella Newton) to join him on a shark swim. So, off they go to Tucker (Jai Courtney), who runs shark-seeing tours using his boat. As in Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975), you go in the cage, the cage goes in the water, the sharks are outside the cage. Heather has second thoughts, but the couple go for it, which turns out to be an amazing experience. You won’t believe what happens next. Greg certainly doesn’t. (Be advised: some online trailers give the game away. Thankfully, Vertigo’s teaser trailer, below, doesn’t.)

Free-spirited surfer Zephyr (Hessie Harrison) lives out of her van and one night indulges in passion there with yuppie Moses (Josh Heuston) parked outside his house, swiftly driving off afterwards before he has had a chance to take their relationship further, which is a pity from his point of view since he feels some sort of deeper connection.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Babe

Director – Chris Noonan – 1995 – Australia – Cert. PG (2025), U (1995) – 92m

The story of a sheep that thinks it’s a dog – back in cinemas 30 years later on Friday, April 11th 2025, with a higher BBFC classification rating. The below is my review from What’s On in London in 1995, where I badgered my editor to make it the Film of the Week.

The very different worlds of Gloucestershire-born children’s author Dick King-Smith and Australian production company Kennedy Miller (Mad Max, George Miller, 1979; The Year My Voice Broke, John Duigan, 1987; Dead Calm, Phillip Noyce, 1989) might appear to have little in common. Then along comes Babe, a Kennedy-Miller adaptation of King-Smith’s hilarious fable The Sheep-Pig in which Farmer Hogget’s sole piglet Babe decides to become a sheepdog. Although the book is a very fine (and highly recommended) example of the children’s book, it’s hardly groundbreaking – we’ve read tales about talking animals before. For that matter, too, we’ve seen films with talking animals before – many of the better ones made by Disney.

What we haven’t seen before is this conceit pulled off flawlessly in live action.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Picnic at Hanging Rock
(Director’s Cut,
4K Restoration)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date February 14 2025
No Comments on Picnic at Hanging Rock
(Director’s Cut,
4K Restoration)

Director – Peter Weir – 1975 – Australia – Cert. 12a – 107m

*****

A group of teenage schoolgirls supervised by two teachers go on a picnic beside an isolated volcanic outcrop: three of them never return – Valentine’s Day previews on Friday & Saturday, February 14th & 15th, then is out in UK cinemas from Friday, February 21st

Two locations sear themselves into your brain when watching Picnic at Hanging Rock, whether for the first time or the umpteenth. One is the obvious one – the eponymous, towering rock formation in Victoria, Australia, at once an inescapable presence in a landscape and an invitation to come into its labyrinth and explore. The other is Appleyard College, a turn of the (nineteenth into twentieth) century boarding school for young ladies, shot in the real life 1870s-built, Georgian mansion Martindale Hall. They are two very different worlds, one natural, wild, and inexplicable, the other buttoned down and socially stratified.

The picnic, which takes place on St. Valentine’s Day, 1900, only seems to take the first third of the film’s running length. Two teachers, Miss Greta McCraw (Vivean Gray from The Last Wave, Peter Weir, 1977) and the French mistress Mlle de Poitiers (Helen Morse) are in charge of around a dozen teenage girls, all dressed very prim and properly.… Read the rest

Tags 1900, Anne Lambert, Australia, boarding school, brook, buttoned down, Christine Schuler, disappear, Dominic Guard, down to earth, doze, enigma, fee-paying school, fellow students, finance, foul play, gardener, Gheorghe Zamfir, go exploring, Helen Morse, hot weather, inexplicable, isolation, Jane Vallis, John Jarrett, Karen Robson, labyrinth, location, maid Jacki Weaver, mansion, Margaret Nelson, Martindale Hall, missing, mystery, natural, orphan, out in the heat, outcrop: Valentine’s Day, panpipe, perfect day, permission, Peter Weir, picnic, Picnic at Hanging Rock, police, prim and proper, primal, principal, Rachel Roberts, remove shoes and stockings, rock formation, Russel Boyd, school authorities, schoolgirls, search, secrets, sex, socially stratified, St. Valentine’s Day 1900, student attendance, supervision, teachers, teenage, Tony Llewellyn-Jones, trees, turn of the century, unpaid fees, vanish, Victoria, Vivean Gray, volcanic, well-off, wild, working class, young ladies

Animation Features Movies

Memoir of a Snail

Director – Adam Elliot – 2024 – Australia – Cert. 15 – 94m

*****

A young woman recounts her life story to her newly freed pet snail after her best friend dies – stop-frame animation marvel is out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 14th

Following a bravura title sequence which consists of a camera moving around (a scale model set of) detritus from a life, everything from soap on a rope to snail poison, with various objects bearing upon themselves various credits for the film, a young woman has tears in her eyes as her bedridden friend Pinky (voice: Jacki Weaver from Silver Linings Playbook, David O. Russell, 2012; Animal Kingdom, David Michod, 2010; Picnic at Hanging Rock, Peter Weir, 1975) breathes her last, briefly coming back to life to utter the legend, “potatoes”. But what can this word mean?

Taking her pet snail Sylvia (the name is painted on the back of the creature’s shell) out of a glass jar and setting her free to cross Pinky’s garden in the course of her subsequent narrative, the woman remembers her childhood down to the smallest detail, and starts to recount it to the liberated gastropod. She was born prematurely as Grace Prudence Pudel (voice: Sarah Snook from Steve Jobs, Danny Boyle, 2015; Predestination, The Spierig Brothers, 2014), shortly followed by her twin brother Gilbert (voice: Kodi Smit-McPhee from Maria, Pablo Larraín, 2024; The Power of the Dog, Jane Campion, 2021; The Congress, Ari Folman, 2013; ParaNorman, Chris Butler, Sam Fell, 2012).… Read the rest