Snowtown

A+

Scruffy world of an irredeemable underclass which finds release in drugs, booze, prayer meetings, and rabble-rousing kitchen gatherings.

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Australian directors continue to excel at suspenseful timing, as Justin Kurzel proves with Snowtown, his debut 2010 feature that's a terrifying movie based on two books about Australia's worst serial killer, John Bunting.

He and his pals' ten victims lived in the suburban slums of Adelaide in the 1990s, in a squalor populated by fundamentalist and homophobic white trash. The docudrama, written by another newbie, Shaun Grant, focuses on Bunting's domineering relationships with a divorced woman and her three under-educated maladjusted teenage sons. He grooms the oldest (16) to become another of his murderous accomplices, pursuing the boy's soul with mesmerising empathetic stares.

Bunting is played brilliantly by the movie's sole professional actor, Daniel Henshall, who'd previously only made a few TV series episodes. Short, stocky, bearded and amiable, he smiles intensively, eyes glinting hypnotically, and it's only on the rare occasions when Bunting loses his cool that his menacing and amoral character is revealed. The rest of the time, he's exercising a quietly effective, controlling personality.

The family he moves into, and its neighbours, are easily-controlled social misfits, some mentally disturbed, some on drugs, mostly surviving on welfare benefits and petty crime. They are depressingly nasty bigots or weak-minded fools, and it becomes clear that Bunting tolerates a local cross-dressing middle-aged homosexual mainly as a source of potential victims.

Bunting's new teenage disciple (played movingly well as a tearful, passive schizophrenic by first-time actor Lucas Pittaway) is the lead to a step-brother who'd raped the boy when he was younger. There's also a palpable tension in the teenager's relationship with Bunting, in which the boy seeks a family role model while Bunting's eyes suggest the killer may be failing to acknowledge his own desires.

The opening urban scenes set the mood and style frighteningly well, as the boys' mother leaves a male neighbour to house-sit with them and he orders the blank-faced kids to strip naked for photographs. Bunting's arrival on the scene soon after begins with him showing the teenager how to cut heads, limbs and tails off newly-shot kangaroos in the back yard. The blood-stained scraps are thrown at the paedophile's bungalow.

Theirs is the muddy, scruffy world of an irredeemable underclass which finds release in drugs, booze, prayer meetings, and rabble-rousing kitchen gatherings reviewing the grisliest ways to punish perverts. This isn't the admirably brave-faced and amusingly-confused working class characters who populate the sets of Mike Leigh and sentimental neo-realists. This is the ugly reality of human failures, characters which a Bunting can feel superior to, manipulate and kill.

Most of the killings take place off-screen, between scenes, and their details and sequence will only be clear if a viewer reads about them in Wikipedia. The one motive for them - fraudulent use of victims' credit cards and benefits - is only hinted at once; Bunting and his three older associates are never shown with jobs, and Bunting guides the boy's enrolment for the dole.

The pace of the editing (and a nerve-jangling musical soundtrack of metallic banging and electronic sounds) amplify the tension, because a viewer's never sure what type of scene will appear next and how draining it will be. The only elongated murder scene, in a bath, is presented with hand-held objectivity, augmenting its almost unbearably vivid impact.

Less positively, several scenes are mysteriously non-linear non-sequitors. Bunting and the teenager shave each other's heads, but are not seen bald-headed again, except once when only Bunting is. Another time, Bunting bullies the boy into shooting Bunting's own dog, but plays with the dog in a subsequent scene. The scenes jut out of the movie, looking like a cluster of deleted scenes that got spliced in arbitrarily to create a two-hour feature.

At the end too, there's a collage of finely photographed images of urban ugliness that appears gratuitous. The ending itself is an abrupt halt, a door firmly shut, suggesting that the teenager has become a cold-hearted tear-less killer too.

End credits then note the prison terms being served by the killers, giving the audience no fairy-tale closure to a human horror show. As a debut movie, though, this is a winner for Kurzel.

Bran nue dae

The origin of a movie title that looks oddly Welsh is easily guessed if it's pronounced with an Aussie accent: Bran Nue Dae (2009), a musical comedy first staged in 2000.

"There is nothing I would rather be than an Aborigine, and watch you take my land away!", is the ironic refrain of the curtain-closing final song. A cast of scores of black Aussies sing and prance, Broadway-meets-Bollywood style, led by Geoffrey Rush in priestly robes. Occasionally, elsewhere in the red-dirt outback of north-west Australia, a line of Aborigine youths in war-paint leap and smile to the same song. Then a heart shape frames the faces of the black teenagers who have finally found true love. Cliches? No surprise: they'd been endless for almost 90 minutes.

This painfully patronising love story with unmemorable songs was obviously an entertainment devised for white audiences in Oz, akin to B&W minstrel shows and a universe away from Porgy and Bess or the South African black version of Carmen.

Geoffrey Rush rises way above his material, eyeball-rolling and hamming wonderfully as a deeply-accented German mission school headmaster trying to guide one likely good lad (relatively handsome plump newcomer Rocky McKenzie) in the late 1960s on the path to goodness, a good girl and doing good for his people.

The rest of the cast support them with weak character props: a German hippie (who's actually the priest's son) with a van for the ensemble's road trip, a comic bearded black sage (who's going to turn out to be the hero's dad), a "Roadhouse Betty" with wobbly breasts (a cameo for Magda Babe Szubanski), a loving mum, black football team and temperance march, which is the excuse to get to a beach for the final singalong.

Director Rachel Perkins co-tweaked the stage show as a movie, and may have done the best anyone could with a concept that was cringe-worthily corny. Her first feature (Radiance, 1998) was a well-received Outback drama; her second film was a one-hour TV Outback drama (One Night The Moon, 2001) that also earned critical favour. This film's RT rating of 53% is too kind.

Cars that ate Paris

Peter Weir's first feature film, as for other young Australasian directors of his generation, was a comedy horror. The Cars That Ate Paris, severely cut and given a narrative, was eventually screened in the US as The Cars That Eat People.

Weir co-wrote the screenplay about an isolated rural Australian town, Paris, whose inhabitants survive on the loot of automobile wrecks they engineer. Any crash survivors are lobotomised into "veggies" of specified degrees of incapacity, and hospitalised or adopted by the community. It was divided into two factions: the town's pious elders, led by their autocratic pipe-smoking Mayor (John Crocodile Dundee Meillon), versus anarchic youths who re-jig wrecked cars as hot-rod stunt cars adorned with snarling shark features or porcupine quills.

When a simple-minded visitor, the surviving brother in an auto accident, stays in town, his recollection of flashing lights on the lane approaching the town worries the Mayor. Rather than have the young man lobotomised by the local hospital's eager experimental surgeon, he adopts the lad and appoints him as the town's Parking Officer. This would be credible if the anti-heroic character were played by a young actor, but the production chose an old-faced balding Maltese-Australian newcomer. He detracts from Meillon's finely-balanced portrayal of well-intentioned menace and paternalism.

Meanwhile, the town's semi-zombie scavengers are looking forward to their fancy-dress Pioneers Ball. The auto-racers plan their Car Gymkhana, but the ritual burning of one of their leader's car provokes an assault on the Ball-goers. In the resulting fracas, the simpleton regains his ability to drive, slams a car repeatedly into the young hooligan leader, and drives off into the night sky. The mayor stands alone, his townsfolk fleeing on foot.

In history as in mythology, coastal communities did lure passing ships to destruction or desert bands and village inns pillaged travellers: Weir's storyline adapted the idea as a light satire of contemporary Australian mores. It was the first Aussie movie invited to the Cannes film festival, and Weir's career later blossomed in more admirable directions.

The movie was a debut too for twin producers Hal and Jim McElroy (Hal working alone since 1992, creating, writing and producing many long-running Australian TV series). They also produced Weir's next three features (Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave, The Year of Living Dangerously). Weir's occasional artfully framed shots, wry humour, concentration on actors' features and teasingly slow editing were signs of cinematic talents that developed well; the movie itself is a slight period piece.

Newcastle Australia

It's summer in 2008 in the city of Newcastle, Australia, the world's largest coal port, and the surf's up on fine sand beaches flanked by massive coal ships and floating dockyards. Luckily, neither shades nor songs of Frankie Avalon or Cliff Richard mar the scene.

Writer-director Dan Castle revisited a genre with major appeal in Australia (and Japan, from which some production funds were obtained): surfing. His major variation on the usual scenario is the inclusion of a happily out gay teenager with purple hair streaks and fingernails, an amused mum and a not-so-accepting step-father.

The boy supplies side-plots through his hots for a tolerant surfing buddy, and his efforts to play the sport that obsesses his two straight older brothers. The oldest is a washed-out past champion, a boozer separated from a wife and kid, now an anti-social port labourer. The middle brother is 17, golden-curled, eager to be a touring pro surfie and subject to moody fits.

Add a trio of close buddies (one rich, one cheekily comic), and two sexy girls who join them all for a weekend beach party, and you've got the expected: a pair of hetero couplings in a tent, an uneventful chat about gay things like star formations, a death at sea, and success for the wannabee surfie. Just so the movie could offer an outing for the whole family, there's also a young-at-heart grandfather-figure (veteran Barry Otto, trying to smile painlessly).

Castle then went overboard with hand-held cinematography in the waves, rollers and murky depths, lingering shoreline shots capturing brilliant blue skyscapes and shimmering dunes, and a soundtrack that adds melodramatic ham to a bland salad of sun-toasted teens obliged by the Aussie-coded screenplay to frolic (only full-dorsally) on the beach cupping their genitalia.

As with any modern Australian movie, audiences will look for a new generation of budding Crowes, Ledgers or Pearces on the screen. The country has produced many excellent directors too, but Castle needs to prove his talent on different material. His previous work comprised The Visitor, a 30-minute 2002 surfing tale with a fully homosexual theme (and Barry Otto's name on the poster), Zona Rosa, a 2005 documentary ogling male strippers in Mexico City's gay nightclub district, and other gay short films.

Casting decisions inevitably hinged on actors' surfing abilities, and 18-year-old Lachlan Buchanan (younger brother of a busy Aussie TV actor) had them as well as good looks and physique (and is now chasing the dream in Los Angeles). The choice of the actor to play his supposedly younger brother was less effective: Xavier Samuel presents the character's gaiety credibly, but close-ups reveal his 24-year-oldness.

The film was the first for Ben Milliken, who's since done work in the US and on other surfie features (including the Blue Crush sequel). The one actor with a more interesting role (the non-surfing gawky group jester) and stronger, offbeat screen presence, Israel Cannan, hasn't had another film credit since this. The bad guy (the older surfie brother) was well played by Bosnian-Australian Reshad Strik, and he may be the best name for Crowe-hunters to watch.

Legend of the guardians

Legend of the Guardians probably broke even within a couple of months of its 2010 opening, reportedly grossing close to US$140 million worldwide (against a budget of US$80 million). It's a pleasant surprise that the computer-animated feature made US$55 million in North America, where enough movie-going families were not put off by its plot's many dark moments, the lack of human characters in an owl saga, its Australian voices, and an Irish-sounding subtitle, The Owls of Ga'Hoole.

The saga is derived from a set of popular children's books written by Kathryn Lasky, under the subtitle brand name. That may have brought in much custom, as did the 3D/IMAX formats and the track record of Australia's Animal Logic animators (Babe, Happy Feet). Word of mouth among parents would have been the best advertising, for this must have an enchanting 3D movie experience.

Bursting with true flights of avian fancy and glorious colour composition, the movie is a marvelous collage of animation skills. Owls have the biggest eyes of all birds (the equivalent to humans having eyes the size of large oranges, a DVD extra notes) and they are used to good effect to convey the various characters' emotions. As saga go, however, and as Ms Lasky's books presumably did, the characters and their action adventures are standard fare.

Two young Barn Owlets, Kludd and Soren, are abducted by evil owls, the Pure Ones, led by masked Metal Beak (Joel Edgerton) and his white-feathered queen (Helen Mirren). Soren escapes, together with a small female Elf Owlet. They meet a Burrowing Owl (David Wenham) who's called Digger, naturally, and his pal, a Great Grey (Anthony LaPaglia). Soren's family nursemaid snake, Mrs P (Miriam Margolyes), goes along for the ride, and they all reach the secret home of the good Guardians, where an old Whiskered Screech (Geoffrey Rush) and a treacherous Great Grey (Sam Neill) debate the best way to meet the external threat.

Lord of the Rings performed by a typical Hollywood band of oddball creatures? It could have been, but first-time animation director Jack Snyder was wisely asked to give the saga his distinctive action-packed big-screen-filling surround-sound style (as in 300, Watchmen and the next Superman). The net result is a movie whose looks and sounds, special effects and pace deserve a storyline that's stronger. Most comic moments seem contrived, with stereotypical characters such as a pair of bumbling baddies and a poet-warrior with a lute and off-key songs.

More credibly, the wayward brother is allowed to die (after trying to trick his sibling once more) and the moral lessons can be easily explained to their youngsters by human parents. They won't need to explain why the evil queen is allowed to flee with some survivors, and the newly qualified Guardian Owl utters warnings. A sequel was hoped for, but I suspect we'll see Happy Feet 2 first.

Animal kingdom

Melbourne, the capital city of Australia's Victoria state, long had a middle-class image. Although it held the world's biggest Greek community outside Athens, it was often perceived by outsiders as a pseudo-English arty-farty place, if not quite so pretentious as Adelaide, the capital city that prided itself as being the only one in Oz not settled by convicts. Sydney, by comparison, was Irish, rougher and more fun.

Animal Kingdom is a sharply edgy reminder that Melbourne experienced one of modern Australia's toughest and most vicious gangland wars, for a decade from the mid-1990s to 2004. Events from its Carlton gang's bloodbath are portrayed loosely as the biography of the criminal Cody family.

The ever-smiling matriarch loves her three sons (bank robbers, drug dealer) effusively, addicted to French-kissing them. When her estranged single-mother daughter dies of a heroin overdose, she takes in 17-year-old grandson J. His uncles introduce him to the family business and their best friend and partner.

A good script, ensemble acting, pace and editing, but this version of reality feels sanitised. The inter-gang viciousness is understated, as is the local police corruption. In this scenario there's a good cop (Guy Pearce) trying to extricate the family's new boy. For once, a TV version of the same material (Underbelly) was reportedly a more disturbing portrait of a sick family and society. It was banned in Victoria (supposedly for legal reasons); the movie wasn't.

Balibo

Every country has local stories that become major myths, fables in which there are no surviving witnesses to separate fact and fiction. In Balibo, an East Timorese village near the Indonesian border, five Australian journalists went missing, presumed killed, in 1975 during the invasion of the former Portuguese colony by Jakarta's military forces.

The 2009 docudrama chronicles their last few days in tandem with the story of the Australian foreign correspondent, Roger East, who followed their jungle tracks four weeks later. Based on a damning expose, the screenplay (co-written by playwright David Williamson) depicts East (Anthony Lapaglia) as a surprisingly emotional veteran who accepted an offer to head up the self-proclaimed independent republic's official news agency. The offer was made, in Darwin, by the new nation's young foreign minister (and eventual president) Jose Ramos-Horta, portrayed as a shrewdly pragmatic Che lookalike by Oscar Isaac (between other starring roles as Agora's Orestes and Robin Hood's King John).

In this version of the tragic fable, Horta gained East's acceptance by revealing the journalists' disappearance and then helping the paunchy middle-aged reporter investigate it. Soon after, when Indonesia fully invaded and occupied East Timor, the country's former independence fighters, Fretelin, sent Horta abroad to be their international spokesman (for 24 years). East stayed in the capital, Dili, and was killed, supposedly during an army round-up of civilians.

Director Robert Connolly builds tensions well in the two time frames. The quintet of TV newsmen, all in their mid-20s, are naively ambitious front-liners. A generation older, East is equally out if his depth. The youngsters sketch the Aussie flag on a wall, and East insistently cries out "I'm Australian" as if it were a mantra capable of lowering Indonesian rifles.

Connolly may have amplified geopolitical details in his commentary. I hope so, because there are only brief, though pointed, references to the secret support provided for Indonesia by both the USA and Australia. PM Whitlam, President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger are named, but the movie fails to explain why Jakarta and Washington, and Canberra, feared an independent East Timor.

All concerned, outside East Timor, were alarmed that its example might encourage other separatist movements in Indonesia. Neither does the movie explore the religious divide that had long created mutual antagonisms between the Catholic Portuguese colony and its Muslim neighbours on Timor island. Inevitably, there's no time either to note that the colony had two separate enclaves, or that neighbouring and divided Papua island was a very big political elephant in Australia's living room.

Fables, especially those about young men working in the media, have to be simple, and there is just one hint at the complexity of media competition in Australia that indirectly led to the journalists' deaths. They worked for two commercial channels; it's indicated that the national public broadcaster, ABC, pulled its news team out of Timor ahead of the expected invasion. Media nabob Packer is the only name named. The full stories of Balibo and Roger East (and Fretelin and Horta) will probably never be known. Funded by a slew of official Australian film commissions and produced with official East Timor government support, Balibo is the official fable. The dvd with a full package of background documentaries will be worth looking out for, if "History of East Timor and Balibo" etc contain information kept out of the docudrama feature.