Black Water

Directors: David Nerlich, Andrew Traucki
Writers: David Nerlich, Andrew Traucki
Released: 2007
Cast: Diana Glenn, Maeve Dermody, Andy Rodereda, Ben Oxenbould, Fiona Press

Not Quite Hollywood

Director: Mark Hartley
Writer: Mark Hartley
Released: 2008
Cast: Phillip Adams, Tom Burstall, Jamie Lee Curtis, Everett De Roche, Bob Ellis, Richard Franklin, Anthony I. Ginnane, Barry Humphries, Stacey Keach, Russell Mulcahy, Quentin Tarantino, Brian Trenchard-Smith

Unfinished Sky, dir. Peter Duncan (2007)

NIKKI says:

There's nothing I love more than a good Australian movie. There have been quite a few this year, and Unfinished Sky is definitely among them, if the not the best of the lot. It's been a long time since I've seen a film so wracked with aggression that was also as erotic and emotional as this one. I was worn out by the end, as emotionally ragged as the main characters. The film is so clever and so well-written that as inevitable as much of the story is, it still grips as each revelation is made.

So, it's a remake of a Dutch film called The Polish Bride, which also starred Monic Hendrickx from this version. A sheep farmer, John, in Queensland is going about his solemn day when a woman in a yellow raincoat stumbles towards his house and falls down in the field meters from the front verandah. She's been beaten pretty severely and so he takes her in and cleans her up, resisting an impulse to call an ambulance or the police. He discovers that the woman, Tahmeena, is an illegal Afghani worker hired as cleaner in a local hotel. Her employers are looking for her, and not all seems right. So John keeps her, fixes her up, and attempts to learn about her.

Slowly, but surely, the pair develop feelings for each other. John makes it his mission to seek out Tahmeena's family and get her back to where she needs to be without intervention from anyone else. He must hide her, which arouses suspicion, but he's so far out in the middle of nowhere, he keeps his secret well. And then Tahmeena makes a discovery of her own, and suddenly the mystery surrounding John begins to unravel. We suddenly find out why he reacted so badly when Tahmeena tried to help him finish his massive blue-sky puzzle. (The thematic underpinnings of that puzzle -- oh, makes me want to cry thinking about it.)

These two are so damaged and alone that their coming together, so well-paced and drawn out, is shattering. The writing is exemplary; it's all about looks and touches, and just feels so authentic. There's a scene in which John finds a hair clip and ties Tahmeena's hair back before dinner. He's not doing it on purpose, but the way he sweeps up her hair and clips the little silver thing on is just so sensual. This film is noteworthy especially for the smallest things, the tiniest moments and expressions saying so much.

It was just a great movie. I hope it sweeps the AFIs this year. It deserves to.

4/5

Rogue, dir. Greg McLean (2007)

STEVE says:
Kind of a Gilligan's Island meets Lake Placid thing going on here in Greg McLean's follow-up to the surprisingly good Wolf Creek.

Don't get me wrong: Rogue wasn't bad. It wasn't anywhere near as good as Wolf Creek, but it wasn't bad. It was much more of a popcorn flick than the other film, so it's already being graded on a curve. I liked it because it managed to take a pretty standard Man vs. Beast premise and had the characters deal with it in ways that didn't go along with convention. Nine times out of ten, at least.

The effects weren't bad, either. We rewound and watched frame-by-frame when one fellow got chomped by the croc, and could barely spot the CGI. Later, of course, it became more evident, but in all it was a mix of CGI and practical effects that didn't have me rolling my eyes every fifteen seconds. It receives an extra point for that alone.

3/5

NIKKI says:
I expected more -- more chomping, more slashing, more blood, more suspense. I expected Wolf Creek crocodile-style. Instead, director Greg McLean gave me a steadily-paced human drama with a big croc in it.

Well-played Greg McLean.

As Steve mentioned, this one took all our expectations and twisted them slightly. Like the scene where they suspend a rope across a river between two trees for the trapped tourists to shuffle across by hand and feet... Steve said -- so how many people will get across before one dies? I made a guess, he made a guess, and we were both so wrong it was embarrassing.

The 10 Little Indians plot device is discarded here, this is not a typical slice-and-dice. No one is here purely for the kill-factor. These characters are developed, their descents into fear are honest and compelling, and while the movie is not afraid to throw a curve-ball or two about, it doesn't rely on its twists to keep us interested.

And Michael Vartan was a good hero. That was the movie's biggest surprise for me.

I also enjoyed seeing John Jarratt, the horrible vicious killer freak from Wolf Creek as a grieving widower. The scene in which he and a small girl share a brief look of understanding is far too special for a Deadly Croc flick. But, of course, this isn't that flick.

3.5/5

The Jammed, dir. Dee McLachlan (2007)

NIKKI says:
I had minimal interest in this one until I read a snapshot review in The Age that referred to it as "the best Australian film of 2007". That same day, a reasonably decent (ie. foreign film hirer) customer at the shop told me it was superb film. My interest certainly grew.

I love a good Australian film. I used to be one of those people who turned away from local productions due to the lack of good work out there. For every Noise, there's about 10 You and Your Stupid Mates, and that takes its toll after a while.

Lately, though, there's been a lot of good stuff out there -- or at least stuff that does its best to rise above the standard. The Jammed is one of those movies. It's not excellent, but it is sincere in its efforts to tell its awful story. Technically, it's excellent. On a story level, some tightening and focus might have helped.

My main problem had to do with a lack of understanding on behalf of the exploited women. The film is about a Melbourne woman, Ashley, roped into helping a Chinese mother find her missing daughter, Rubi. Rubi has fallen victim to human trafficking that sees young immigrant women forced to work in brothels to "pay debts" incurred by the securing (actually false) of immigration papers. The trick is, the women believe they owe these traffickers money, and if they try to get help they will be deported or held in detention. So, that's their catch-22 -- which is the better of two evils, as presumably the situation they leave is worse than the one they're now in.

Or is that in fact the case? The film doesn't really go into that. Is Vanya, the Russian immigrant, better off working as a prostitute in Australia? What was her situation back home? There's never an opportunity to understand these women. They never really even comment on what they are forced to go through, why they came out here. Because they don't speak English, we never hear from them, and just shake our heads in shame as they get repeatedly raped and tortured. But what do they feel? Horrible imagery -- Vanya getting urinated upon, for instance -- is one thing, but I wanted to know these women, not just see them abused. Violence and abuse of this magnitude would no doubt go on in regular brothels, exploiting Aussie women, so how is this different?

I think the film failed to give insight into the lives of these women. The film's dealing with them felt very surface to me. As far as Ashley's crusade, perhaps that needed to be the film's focus. The bureaucracy, and politics. Instead, we have two halves of a story that culminate in a poor ending that sees one dead (no police visited that death scene?), one locked up, and the other free to wander the Melbourne streets. Then Ashley rings her mum and is reminded that she doesn't have it so bad.

To what end? The message rings loud and clear -- this happens and there's nothing you can do about it and you should be thankful you don't have it so bad. It almost trivializes the situation rather than offering solutions, or even daring to leave Ashley hopeless, which is essentially what we are in these circumstances.

A good effort that falls short.

2.5/5

Murder in the Outback: The Joanne Lees Story, dir. Tony Tilse (2007)

STEVE says:
At best Murder in the Outback is a scrapbook, taking the major facts of the case and arranging them in an order that approximates the actual events. At worst, it's an under-written Movie of the Week with top-notch actors playing one-dimensional characters in a 95-minute story that deserved at least that again in order to tell it properly.

Like a scrapbook, all we get here are blurry snapshots that bare further scrutiny or beg explanation. The hair-tie: when he was apprehended, Bradley John Murdoch had Joanne Lees hair-tie on his person. Much is made of this at first; it seems like solid evidence - if not of Peter Falconio's murder, then at least of Joanne's abduction by Murdoch - but we find later, in a throw-away statement by Bryan Brown's Rex Wild (who really needs his own show, by the way) - that it was ruled inadmissible by the court. Why? We never find out. It's never mentioned again. And while it all makes sense when presented in context, much of the detail seems like it's from some kind of checklist - Hair-tie, got it. Secret emails to an ex-lover, that's in there. Joanne's 'Cheeky Monkey' t-shirt, ditto.

I think the movie's biggest flaw, though, is in showing the actual abduction because it gives us the advantage of knowing what's true and what's not when Joanne's story is eventually called into question. While this is handy as far as making us feel Joanne's frustration as the trial descends into a media circus - literally, as Joanne has to "escape" from a pair of handcuffs in court to show how she did it on the night - it's also preposterous because it's a truth drawn from details that are sketchy at best.

2.5/5

NIKKI says:
The opening here was exceptional. It was well-directed, incredibly suspenseful, and really took us deep into the soul of this case. It happened quickly, it was punishingly tense, and if you blinked for a split second, you lost all sense of where you were and how you got there.

In minutes, Joanne Lees' central predicament is highlighted. She experienced these torturesome moments, and how could she possibly know every detail of every quick second that passed? It's no wonder her statements were confused. And it's no wonder she acted as coldly as she did to the Australian media, and to an extent, the population at large, who chose to forget the sorry way they treated Lindy Chamberlain so many years ago. Here's this woman going trhoguh this horrible thing, and all we can do is cast suspicion without knowing the facts.

Joanne Lees was similarly tried by the people before she ever went to court, and that is just one element of the story this film tries to portray. How Lees was fooled by the media and betrayed by the Australian public who denigrated the stupid no-nothing backpackers who apparently deserve what they get for their lack of knowledge about the treacherous Aussie terrain. Or something close to that.

But the problem with this film was that it tried to outline this and so much more about the Falconio case in 90 minutes. It was never going to work. There are great moments -- Joanne Froggatt is really quite something as Lees, for instance, and there was that opening -- but much of it descends into TV-movie stuff and we become bored with the same old points being raised, and so much left out that was pertinent to the case.

It was certainly watchable, and is a good introduction to this case. That's really about it, though.

2.5/5

The Bet, dir. Mark Lee (2006)

NIKKI says:
I was in he mood for something different -- no horror, no comedy, no serious documentaries. So, I chose The Bet, an Aussie film set in the world of high-flying bankers and stockbrokers. It stars Matthew Newton and is directed by Mark Lee -- two definite selling points. And it wasn't too bad.

It was awesome, though. A few things bothered me -- I felt like I didn't know the true reasons behind both the bet and Aden Young's character's Machiavellian shenanigans. I felt like I should have been let in a little bit more to just what Young's character wanted and why he went to these specific lengths to get it. At the end, when Young's deception is revealed, it felt like a let down because of the major event preceding it. A major event I didn't think needed to happen.

It was an interesting watch. I enjoyed Mark Lee's direction -- the solitude and steeliness of the broker offices contrasted with the colour and magnificence of the Sydney skyline. I thought Matt Newton was really good, and the twists and turns in the story kept me watching. I don't think it came together in the end, though.

2.5/5