Tag Archives: Australia

Movie Review – Jasper Jones

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TL;DR – It is an uncomfortable snapshot of Australian society, and it is a movie I highly recommend you watch.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Jasper Jones. Image Credit: Madman.

Review –

So to set the scene, it is 1960s Australia, the war is raging on in Vietnam, and we are dropped into the town of Corrigan a small town in Western Australia. It is the end of summer and Charlie (Levi Miller) and his friend Jeffrey (Kevin Long) are debating whether or not Batman is a ‘super’ hero or not whilst eating watermelon and spitting the seeds at everything they can, this could be any street in suburban Australia at any time. However, that night Jasper Jones (Aaron L. McGrath) appears at Charlie’s window and leads him across town to find Laura Wishart, the daughter of the local Shire President hanging from a tree. Jasper is the only Indigenous person in town and fears that the police will blame him for the murder, and thus the story is propelled into motion, as Jasper has to find the killer, which is complicated by Laura’s sister Eliza (Angourie Rice) becoming friendly all of a sudden.

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How well did they create Australia in Civilization VI?

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TL;DR – So how well does Civilization 6 capture Australia with its new entry? Struth, it’s a ripper of a new Civ.

Civilization 6

Review –

Civilization is one of the pioneers of the strategy genre a series that has lasted six iterations, numerous expansions, and last year on its 25th anniversary launched the next entry into the franchise Civilization 6 (See Review). Since its release, there have been new Downloadable Content (DLC) released and this week it was announced that the next civilization to be added would be Australia. So Australia joins the large and expansive franchise as the 55th civilization¹ ² to be added, but the question remains: Is it any good? And then also is it a good representation of Australia? These are the question we will be looking at. Now there were three components of the Australia update The Australian civilisation, The Outback Tycoon scenario, and Uluru natural wonder, and we will be touching on all of these facets throughout this analysis.

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Lego Batman, John Wick, and Game of Thrones oh my: factors that lead to increased Australian Piracy

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TL;DR – Staggered release dates, lack of competition, geoblocking and the Australia Tax, and lack of government want to fix.

John Wick. Image Credit: Lionsgate.

At some point this week because of either John Wick 2 or Lego Batman there will inevitably be a news story about the high rate of piracy. It is something you hear about every year like clockwork when the next Game of Thrones season starts, or when film companies stagger release dates like they are doing here. However, why is Australia such an outlier when it comes to piracy? We are a prosperous country, with a good economy comparatively speaking, we have laws against it, and our internet is not even that good making piracy that little bit harder than it is in many other countries, but inevitably any conversation about piracy generally ends up focusing on Australia. So today we are going to look at the factors unique to Australia, or at least not as prevalent in other markets, that have led to this high statistic. Now of course just to be on the safe side and to make sure there is no confusion when we talk about piracy we are not talking about the boarding and stealing of naval vessels for commercial gain, we are talking about the acquiring of copies of digital media (movies, TV shows, music, and video games) without purchasing the product, usually through peer-to-peer torrent networks.

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Movie Review – Lion

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TL;DR – A beautiful story of loss, exploitation, grief, and trying to find out what home means, in the absence of any real information of where it could be.

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

Lion. Image Credit: Transmission Films.

Review –

It might be one of those universal experiences, you’re walking through a shopping centre, theme park, city street, etc. with your parents and then you look up and realise you don’t know where they are. That feeling of being lost as a real and palpable fear and thankfully for most of us it short lived. However, this is not the case for Saroo, indeed for Saroo it was not a momentary fear, for him it was a life changing event. Lion tells the story of Saroo Brierley (Sunny Pawar & Dev Patel) who one day after working in rural India with his brother Guddu (Abhishek Bharate), joins him on a train ride to a nearby settlement so Guddu can find some night work for them to help their mother Kamla (Priyanka Bose) who works as a labourer to make ends meet. Then Saroo ends up getting stuck on a train which is not going to the next station, but instead travelling 1500km to Calcutta, a place where no one speaks the same language, and as you are five years old as far as you know your mum’s name is ‘mum’. This is a heartbreaking tale of loss, exploitation, and the struggle to find what home means. Now due to the nature of the film, its structure and the very nature that it is based off a true story it becomes quite hard to talk about aspects of the film without discussing the second half of the film. So for this reason from here on into the end, a SPOILER warning is now in place.

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TV Review – Cleverman Season 1

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TL;DR –  Cleverman is revolutionary TV show in many ways, its freshman season was a powerful work of cinema, though not a perfect one.

Score – 4 out of 5 Stars

Review –

For those who have not seen the show yet, and you should go fix that, Cleverman is the story of Australia in the not too distant future. Where we lock people up just because they are different or because it is politically convenient for the government to shift the blame on to them, where people have to shed aspects of their cultural identity to try and protect themselves from harm just because they are perceived as being different, and where the government can use the catch-all excuse of ‘national security’ to hide things from the population and to deflect condemnation of the international system. So you know it’s clear that this is fiction because that would never happen in modern Australia…  To do my overview of the first season of the series I am probably going to spoil a couple of things, so you have been warned now to only proceed if you have watched the show.

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Movie Review – The Dressmaker

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TL;DR – Not what it seems, which is good, because it is better than it seems

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

The Dressmaker. Image Credit: Universal.

Review –

Wow, what a fascinating film. To be perfectly honest I was not going to go see The Dressmaker, but a colleague of mine challenged me to see a film I would not normally see, and boy did I end up picking a good one. The Dressmaker tells the story of Myrtle ‘Tilly’ Dunnage (Kate Winslet) who at the start of the film is arriving back in her hometown of Dungatar after leaving as a child under the cloud of scandal. She is back to see her mother Molly (Judy Davis) who has in the preceding years suffered from dementia and become a recluse in her house, garnering the nickname Mad Molly. But for Tilly, time away from Dungatar has meant learning fashion design from the greatest minds of London, Paris and Milan and maybe, just maybe she can use her talents as a dressmaker to win over the town. And in a normal film that would be that, stick a couple of scenes of a shirtless Liam Hemsworth and call it a day, but The Dressmaker is more than that, and it is so much better for it.

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Movie Review – Mad Max: Fury Road

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TL;DR – A masterpiece of action and cinema, something you should go see just for the spectacle.

Score – 5 out of 5 stars

Mad Max Fury Road. Image Credit: Warner Brothers.

Review –

Wow, just wow,  George Miller knows how to put on a visual spectacle. Now I should mention at this point that I have never seen any of the other Mad Max’s (outside of those clips you see from time to time on TV) so while I had a basic understanding of the lore, I  (for better or worse) did not come into this film with nostalgia baggage, which is good because you don’t need any of that to enjoy this film.

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