Tag Archives: Australian films

Movie Reviews

The Babadook Movie Review

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BABADOOK from Umbrella Entertainment on Vimeo.

Featuring: Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman
Director: Jennifer Kent
Writer: Jennifer Kent
Movie website: www.umbrellaent.com.au/movie/babadook/
Australian release date: Thursday, May 22

Reviewers’ verdicts:
rolanstein: A creepy psycho-horror/thriller right out of the box – and it’s coming to get ya!
Karen: Disturbing psychological thriller

Story:
Widow Amelia (Essie Davis), who has lost her husband in traumatic circumstances six years earlier, is struggling to control her disturbed 6-year-old son Samuel (Noah Wiseman). The boy is prone to tantrums and anti-social behaviour, his dreams haunted by a monster he believes is real and coming to kill them. One night he chooses a book, “The Babadook”, for his mother to read to him before bed. She has not come across it before, and is alarmed by its frightening content and pop-out illustrations of the eponymous character. She cuts the reading session short and confiscates the book, but all too late – Samuel is already obsessed with the Babadook, convinced that it is the monster of his dreams. Amelia subsequently senses a presence in the house and when it manifests itself physically, begins to take Samuel’s monster warnings – and the Babadook – seriously.

Review 1: (rolanstein)
This highly original and genuinely unnerving Australian film is built around a storyline with faint echoes of de Maupassant (The Horla), Kafka and The Twilight Zone. Drawing on some classic horror tropes, writer/director Jennifer Kent has re-imagined the universal childhood figure of terror and menace, the bogeyman, in a new, truly nightmarish guise. Even its name, the Babadook (the sound of the creature knocking at the door: baba baba dook dook dook), is unsettling, sinister, vaguely demonic.

However, this is not a creature feature. Indeed, the film is not easily classifiable. Is it a psychological thriller? A supernatural horror flick? Well it’s either, depending on your interpretation. And neither. Continue reading The Babadook Movie Review →

Movie Reviews

Lygon Street: Si Parla Italiano Movie Review

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Director: Shannon Swan, Angelo Pricolo
Writer: Shannon Swan
Website: lygonstreetfilm.com.au/
Australian release date: Thursday, 6 March

Reviewer: rolanstein
Verdict: An enormously entertaining and eye-opening documentary that contrasts an Australia of not so long ago with today’s very different country.

Review:
This enthralling documentary traces the remarkable history of Lygon Street, Carlton, Melbourne’s famous – and infamous – Italian food and café strip, taking in its beginnings accommodating post-WW2 Italian migrants in cheap boarding houses, its emergence as a food and coffee epicentre that profoundly influenced the local and national cuisine, its changing demographic and eventual gentrification, and an array of other tasty titbits en route. Continue reading Lygon Street: Si Parla Italiano Movie Review →

Movie Reviews

Tracks Movie Review

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Featuring: Mia Wasikowska, Adam Driver
Director: John Curran
Writers: Marion Nelson
Movie website: www.transmissionfilms.com.au/index.php/tracks/
Australian release date: Thursday 6 March, 2014

Reviewers’ verdicts:
rolanstein: Magnificently shot, superbly performed, breathing with the timeless spirit of the desert outback – this is epic cinema at its best.
Karen: Disappointing, but worth seeing.

Story:
With her dog and four camels, solitary young misfit Robyn Davidson (Mia Wasikowska) sets off on a trek from Alice Springs through the wilderness of the central deserts to the Indian Ocean. Part-funded by National Geographic magazine, she is obligated to meet up with New York photographer Rick Smolan (Adam Driver) at various checkpoints along the way for photo sessions. She views his presence as compromising her ideal of the solo journey, but as the trek starts to wear her down physically and mentally, their professional relationship becomes personal. Although she derives sustenance from his support and her interactions with indigenous desert peoples, her journey is hers alone, pushing her to almost unendurable limits. Based on ‘Camel Lady’ Robyn Davidson’s written account of her 2700km sand-to-sea trans-Australia trek in the mid-70s.

Review 1: (rolanstein)
The movie opens with an extraordinary shot: a woman seemingly walking upside down until her shadow comes into view and restores the perspective. This creative, captivating camerawork has a poetic quality about it; that is, it works both aesthetically and as a carrier of meaning beyond the literal. And it’s a sign of things to come – cinematographically, Tracks is magnificent. Continue reading Tracks Movie Review →