New Empress Magazine review: Bait (Kimble Rendall, 2012)

My latest review up on New Empress Magazine's website is of Kimble Rendall's Bait. Click on the link below to see what I made of this Australian/Singaporean B-movie.

New Empress Magazine: Bait

New Empress review: Dead End Drive-In (Brian Trenchard-Smith, 1986)

As a lover of Australian cinema, and Ozploitation films especially, I jumped at the chance to finally catch up with Brian Trenchard-Smith's Dead End Drive-In (1986). The good folks at New Empress Magazine have put my review up today, so click on the link below to read my thoughts on the movie.

New Empress Magazine: Dead End Drive-In

Eye For Film Review

First time writer/director Paul China's neo-noir thriller Crawl is the subject of my latest review for Eye For Film. I was hoping this Australian genre effort would continue the country's strong output over the last few years, sadly, it doesn't. Click on the link below to see why I think it's more miss than hit.

Eye For Film: Crawl

Around the World in Eighty Movies - number 1

Country: Australia

Title: The Story of the Kelly Gang

Director: Charles Tait

Cast: Frank Mills, Nicholas Brierley, Elizabeth Tait, John Tait

Year: 1906

Running time: 60 Minutes (approx)

Genre: Crime / Drama

Notable for: Being the first feature length film

You would be forgiven for thinking that the first feature length film would have come from the US, France or Britain given their status as the three leading countries in the development of the moving image and the fledgling film industry. Surprising as it may sound though, that honour goes to Charles Tait's Australian shot bio-pic of Ned Kelly, The Story of the Kelly Gang, released in 1906 and originally running at just over an hour in length. Made just 26 years after Kelly was hanged The Story of the Kelly Gang was written and directed by Charles Tait, whose showbusiness family were the owners of the Athenaeum Hall, a Melbourne concert venue. Filmed in and around the city Tait's film, which ushered in a wave of 'bushranging' movies, was long thought to have been destroyed or lost until some remaining sections came to light in the late 70s and early 80s. Digitally restored by the Australian National Film and Sound Archive the remaining pieces of Tait's film, around 14 minutes in total, have been released on DVD and can be seen on YouTube -

Technically rudimentary they may be, with close ups, camera movement and editing not yet fully developed as stylistic techniques due to the still basic nature of the equipment available, but these remaining scenes from The Story of the Kelly Gang are vital fragments of moving image and the impact of Tait's work on the development of cinema cannot be understated and it remained in constant circulation for ten years after its initial premier in Melbourne on Boxing Day 1906.

The first of many subsequent big and small screen takes on the famous outlaw and his fellow accomplices The Story of the Kelly Gang is Australia's entry into the Around the World in 80 Movies series, showing as it does the beginnings of what we know as feature length film-making today.

Around the World in Eighty Movies

Coming soon - A new feature where I'll take a trip around the planet in 80 movies. Recognised classics, cult oddities, fictional visions and powerful documentaries from all genres and all eras will be covered. This is not intended as a project to represent individual national cinemas - Italian neo-realism, the French new wave, German expressionism - but more of a smorgasbord selection designed to give people a taste of the wonderful world of cinema. The individual films discussed will hopefully form an all encompassing whole that will make audiences look anew at films they love and broaden the interest in some lesser known entries. Classic scenes, controversial political discourse, technological advances, the uses of genre conventions, censor baiting directors, memorable location work and career making performances from the iconic and the long forgotten will be addressed in a whirlwind cinematic tour around this place we call home.

In the next couple of weeks the first entry into my 80 movies collection will make its appearance, and what better way to begin than with the first feature length movie - Charles Tait's The Story of the Kelly Gang, from 1906, the Australian entry

Rogue Cinema review - July

http://www.roguecinema.com/article2782.html - This month's review for RogueCinema.com is now up. It's a version of the Red Hill review I posted a couple of weeks ago. Well worth catching up with this genre splicing effort from down under.

Watched - No 15 - Red Hill (Patrick Hughes,2010)

http://youtu.be/M9MouXxXREA - trailer
Red Hill, directed, written, edited and produced by Patrick Hughes in his feature length debut, is the latest of many recent genre pieces to emerge from Australia. After the success of Greg McLean's Wolf Creek (2005) a wave of films reminiscent of the 70s 'Ozploitation' features have come along, including Storm Warning (Jamie Blanks,2007), Rogue (Greg McLean,2007) and The Loved Ones (Sean Byrne,2009). Hughes' movie, which grafts many of the traits of the Western genre (a local 'sheriff', outlaws, endangered townsfolk and horseriding posses) onto a modern day setting in much the same way as Tommy Lee Jones' exceptional The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005), may not break any new ground, and at times suffers from one too many cliches, but what it does do it does in a lean and entertaining fashion.

Hughes has assembled a cultish cast, featuring True Blood's Ryan Kwanten, Steve Bisley, best remembered to international audiences as Jim Goose in Mad Max (George Miller,1979), Tommy Lewis, so memorable as the lead in The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (Fred Schepisi,1978) and Kevin Harrington of Neighbours fame, for this stripped back revenge thriller. The economic plot sees Kwanten's Shane Cooper, a young police officer relocated from the city to the small town of Red Hill in Australia's high country starting his first day on the job, one that coincides with the escape from prison of convicted murderer and former resident of Red Hill Jimmy Conway (Tommy Lewis), who makes a beeline straight for the town, seemingly hellbent on murdering whoever crosses his path. With his fellow officers and townsfolk, including Bisley's no nonsense, domineering Police Chief 'Old Bill', alerted to the situation the town effectively goes into lockdown and prepares itself for Conway's arrival. What follows is a fairly predictable tale, secrets revealed, shoot-outs and the embattled Cooper caught up in events, but it's done with a fair amount of panache and romps along at a considerable pace. Hughes inserts an off kilter sub-plot into proceedings, involving an escaped Panther, and gives the facially disfigured Conway a near supernatural ability to dodge bullets. The Western genre milieu and plot points recall Ted Post's Hang 'em High (1968) and whilst the climax is no great surprise there's a lot of fun getting there.

Red Hill is an ideal Friday night B-movie with its enthusiastic performances, great use of location, head on narrative and gruesome action sequences. Hughes proves himself to be an adept director and should carve out an interesting niche as a genre film-maker.

World Film Locations:Melbourne

After wrapping up my editing duties on Intellect Books' World Film Locations:London, I've turned my attention down under to focus on Melbourne for my next edited volume in the series. With contributors drawn from the worlds of academia, journalism and film criticism the diverse film representations of this popular and richly cosmopolitan city will be addressed. Drawn from all eras, the book consists of essays and scene reviews of films covering all manner of genres and themes - from the recent highly acclaimed crime drama Animal Kingdom (David Michod,2010), via Paul Cox's studies of loneliness as seen in Man of Flowers (1983), via the 'Ocker' comedy Alvin Purple (Tim Burstall,1973) right back to the first feature length film produced anywhere in the world, the historically based bushranger movie The Story of the Kelly Gang (Charles Tait,1906).

Melbourne may not immediately spring to mind when thinking of major cities in cinema in comparison to New York, Paris, London and Rome, but this volume will shine a light on how film-makers, both indigenous and visiting, have used this historic and cinematic urban environment to create an impressive and lasting collection of films that in their specific focus on one city also inform wider views on life in 'the city' around the world.

Watched - No 11 - Oranges & Sunshine (Jim Loach,2010)

http://youtu.be/VEQMqQRc1jg - trailer
Following in the formidable and decades spanning footprint of his father Ken, Jim Loach has directed his first film,Oranges and Sunshine. After abandoning a proposed career in journalism and spending the last decade directing for television Loach junior has made the transition to the big screen to tackle a subject that wouldn't seem out of place in his illustrious father's distinguished CV. This true life tale recounts the story of Nottingham social worker Margaret Humphreys' dogged fight to reunite estranged family members after a forced relocation scheme that sent thousands of underprivileged children from the UK to live in Australia and Canada came to light in the mid 80s.

The always excellent Emily Watson takes the lead role as Humphreys, whose perserverance and sense of moral outrage led her to establish an ongoing campaign that brought the issue worldwide attention. Promised 'oranges and sunshine', many of the children, some wrongly told that their parents were dead, instead found hard labour, emotional and physical cruelty, and in the worst scenarios sexual abuse at the hands of priests. With strong supporting roles for Hugo Weaving and David Wenham, and shot on location in the UK and Australia, Oranges and Sunshine features impressive performances from the cast and needs little embellishment in terms of narrative drama, but is a solid rather than truly memorable film. Loach's direction is, however, fittingly understated, never taking the attention away from the story, but at times the script itself is too expository, somewhat diminishing the emotional power of the individual stories of the now adult victims of the morally and ethically abhorrent scheme. The film is at its strongest when the over-earnest dialogue is subjugated in favour of imagery and moments of silence. Weaving's quietly spoken and slightly unkempt Jack, with his weather-beaten, furrowed brow and Wenham's Len, stand-offish, uptight and intense, say more with their appearance about their troubled lives than words ever could. In the films most devastating and emotionally charged scene, a visit by Len and Margaret to see the priests at the heart of some of the most damning accusations of abuse, sees their mere presence leaving the men of God literally speechless, damned by their silence.

With the focus inevitably mainly on Humphreys herself (the film is based on her own written recollections of the period), and on the personal sacrifices she made along the way that threatened her own family life, the full impact of lives broken, derailed and needlessly altered doesn't carry as much weight as it could.Loach's film has its heart most definitely in the right place, but ultimately feels a little too worthy, whilst having the look of a glorified television drama rather than a fully fledged cinematic experience. There's no denying the fine work done by Humphreys and any exposure of scandalous activity is always to be encouraged and deserves to be noted in itself, but overall Oranges and Sunshine felt unsatisfactory and run of the mill .Philip Noyce's true life tale of three aboriginee girls escaping from forced servitude and traversing the inhospitable Australian landscape, Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002), another tale of shameful colonial behaviour, treads a similar path to Loach's movie but is superior in its marrying of historic incident and poetic imagery to create a lasting, powerful emotional response.