Australia

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Desire as persistent and intense as the sunshine on a bright summer day is what teases out madness in Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock. The objects, or goals, of these desires are disparate, though they all spiral out following the 1900 disappearance of three young women and a teacher from the Appleyard School during a trip to the small titular ridge on St. Valentine’s Day. The vanishing of these women is central to the plot, but Weir’s film is never as fascinated with the reasons for this absence as it is with the characters left in its inexplicable wake. Cliff Green’s script, adapted from Joan Lindsay’s novel of the same name, never goes about teasing what could have happened to these women at Hanging Rock, instead focusing on the wild cupidity that erupts in the surrounding community in reaction to the mystery.Read More »

If you agonized through “Amadeus”, cringing at the depiction of a giggling buffoon and his featherbrained Constanze, shuddering at the underlying premise that God gave the gift to the wrong man for reasons we just can’t understand, then this film may provide you with a pleasant antidote. Filmed in 1955, probably in anticipation of the bicentenary of his birth, it gives a totally different view of the composer, and recreates the last year of his life on a more intimate anti-blockbuster scale. But though it is an engaging effort with many fine points, it doesn’t succeed in redeeming Mozart from the fictions of Milos Forman’s travesty, because it is itself a fictionalization that distorts in its own way the character of the composer.Read More »

A blood-stained cleaver, the hurried departure of a farm worker. A town with a lust for revenge…

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This Australian fox-and-hounds melodrama concerns an intensive manhunt for a suspected murderer. Polish immigrant Mark Gaweda is accused of killing a rancher’s wife. Heading the posse is police officer Wyn Roberts, who hopes that by catching Gaweda he’ll be able to live down an earlier tragedy caused by his negligence. John Waters, one of Roberts’ men, begins to believe in Gaweda’s innocence, and ends up defending the fugitive against his accusers.Read More »

‘Emma’s War’ is the turbulent tale of a young girl’s coming of age in Sydney during WW2.

From OzMovies.com:
Emma’s War is a 1987 Australian drama film starring Miranda Otto and Lee Remick. Clytie Jessop made her debut directing, producing and writing this film. It was completed in 1986, and released there in 1987-88. This was the last feature film for Lee Remick and David Cahill.Read More »

A true story of false memory.

During the 1980s, claims of satanic ritual abuse ran rife throughout the western world, uncovered by hypnotic therapists and perpetuated throughout the media, including high-rating television talk shows. In Demonic, filmmaker Pia Borg delves into this bizarre chapter of history, examining the elusive line between fact, fiction and the persuasive power of the media.

“Pia Borg’s Demonic, which investigates the mass hysteria which swept through the US in the 1980s, will have its international premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.Read More »

SYNOPSIS :
Living a life of isolation and frustration, a young man develops an unexpected friendship with a reclusive heiress. When that relationship meets its tragic end, his loneliness and anger culminates into the most nihilistic and heinous of acts.Read More »

The Tree is a French/Australian 2010 Christmas film co-produced between Australia and France. It was filmed in the small town of Boonah in Queensland, Australia and follows the lives of Dawn (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her four children after the unexpected death of her husband Peter (Aden Young). The film is an adaptation of the debut novel Our Father Who Art in The Tree by Australian writer and performer Judy Pascoe. The film closed the Cannes Film Festival on 23 May 2010 following the Awards Ceremony and received a seven-minute standing ovation] As well as this, The Tree premiered at the 2010 Sydney Film Festival.Read More »

In this wildly inventive film from director Jane Campion (THE PIANO), Kate Winslet stars as Ruth, a headstrong Australian woman determined to get back to India in time to join a group marriage to her guru. Her family, hoping to break the cult leader’s psychic grip on Ruth, hires P.J. (Harvey Keitel), a macho American deprogramming expert teetering on the brink of a nervous breakdown. A no-holds-barred battle of the psyches, cultures, and sexes ensues as P.J. and Ruth fight, connive, and eventually fall into bed together in what becomes a mutual search for individual truth. The strong performances of the two stars, a hilariously offbeat script (cowritten by Campion and her sister, Anna), and a wealth of delicious, texture-enhancing flourishes (including some surreal bits of computer animation, Pam Grier’s work in a small role as P.J.’s partner, and a wild opening sequence set to Neil Diamond’s “Holly Holy”) combine to make HOLY SMOKE! a weird, winning blend of goofy comedy and hallucinatory mysticism.Read More »

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Ex-con Eddie Cleary gets a job working on his older brother’s isolated farm. It’s not long before bizarre things start happening–dead birds falling out of the sky, family pets attacking their owners, strange apparitions beginning to appear, and people who had been “normal” suddenly going insane.Read More »