Tag Archives: Indigenous Australia

Movie Review – Top End Wedding

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TL;DR – Joyous, Funny, Beautiful, and Moving.     

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

Top End Wedding. Image Credit: Universal.

Review –

As a guy, it might not be kosher, but I love a good romantic comedy, one that you can sit back, laugh, but also be moved by the characters. However, this is a genre that has kind of been on the backburner in recent years with only Crazy Rich Asians being the one to come to mind when I think of good works to draw from. Today, thankfully, I get to add another film to this list with the joy that is Top End Wedding.

So to set the scene, we open in on a couple living in Adelaide who are both having very important days. Lauren (Miranda Tapsell) is having her first major client meeting and if it goes well she will get a promotion for the firm she works in under Hampton (Kerry Fox) who is often referred to a Cruella. Meanwhile, Ned (Gwilym Lee) is trying to live up to his father’s memory in the courtroom but finds the job difficult because he has no passion for it. Well, Ned decides to quit his job and proposes to Lauren, the only catch is that Hampton will only give Lauren 10 days off for the wedding, as in the next 10 days, and Lauren has always dreamed of having her wedding in Darwin where she is from. While this should be easy to put together, things take a turn when she arrives home to find her father Trevor (Huw Higginson) and mother Daffy (Ursula Yovich) had recently separated and no one knows where her mother is.

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Explore It – Brisbane’s Cultural District and Southbank

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TL;DR – Today I explore the museums along the Brisbane river as I walk from GOMA down to Southbank

Brisbane in Spring. Image Credit: Brian MacNamara

 

Article –

I had a day off this week and given it was perfect weather, warm but before the heat of summer hits us, I thought I would take some time winding down Brisbane’s Cultural District among its brutalist buildings, and lush Bougainvillea. All of this is right next to the Brisbane River so it is hard to get lost with that guideline always being there for you. So with today’s Explore-It, we will take you through all the museums, some old, some new, all full of interesting things, and best of all, every place I visited you can enter for free.

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TV Review – Mystery Road: Season One

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TL;DR – Mystery Road is a mystery ‘who done it’ where every reveal has weight and you have to watch every episode just to see what happened next.

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

Mystery Road

Review –

Australian TV is kind of going through a period of uncertainty, how does it adapt to a changing global marketplace where streaming services are the new norm, or to governments that do not feel like supporting the arts is a good thing any more. Indeed, when you look at the list of currently running drama series in Australia it is almost anaemic compared to even ten years ago. Within this world, it is an unfortunate reality that you have to make each chance count, and with today’s Mystery Road we have a show that does just that. Now before we move onto the review proper just a couple of points. Firstly, this is based off a series of films created by Ivan Sen that I have unfortunately not seen, however, if you are like me in this regard, don’t worry because anything you do need to know about them is told in the show so you are not missing out. As well as this, we will be looking at the series as a whole so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead, but we will leave discussions about the final episode to a paragraph all to itself so you can skip that if you don’t want to find out the conclusion.

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Movie Review – Cargo

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TL;DR – A beautiful, haunting, and often brutal look at what we do for those we love.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no end-credit scene

Cargo

Review –

There was a time not that long ago where zombies were this interesting subset of the horror genre. Now in a world where every second video game has them as an enemy and we have seen nearly every possible permutation of it on the big and small screen, it honestly feels like we have become saturated with the living dead. Now frankly, this is a great pity because out there in the world of media there are still very powerful works of art being made that deals with these issues, like The Last of Us and Train to Busan. Well, today we are looking at a film that is joining these lofty heights with Cargo.

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Movie Review – Gurrumul

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TL;DR – This might be one of the most important cultural touchstones of Australian cinema that I have ever seen, a beautifully honest look at the intersections that exist in Australia, and a powerful call to action.

Score – 5 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – Watch all the credits

Gurrumul

Warning – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers should be advised that the following review contains depictions, images and voices of people who have died.

Review –

I truly did not know what to expect when I walked into the cinemas today. I had heard of Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu but I honestly to my own shame while I had heard of some of his more famous songs, and the work he did in the opening song for Cleverman, it is clear that this has barely scratched the surface of his body of work. What I was not expecting was that I was about to have one of the most emotional experiences that I have ever experienced watching a work of cinema. I think I spent most of the film with tears rolling down my face. So today we will look at what I feel is one of the best cinematic touchstones to encapsulate Australia, its past, present, and future.

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Movie Review – Sweet Country

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TL;DR – Sweet Country is a film I think more people need to see because it confronts our nation’s past and helps contextualise the grief of a people.

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – No

Sweet Country

Review –
There are some films that are so perfectly timed with their release that they capture a moment in time. We saw that last year with Wonder Woman (see review) and we are likely to see it in a months’ time with Black Panther, and if there was ever a film that Australians needed to watch at the moment it is Sweet Country. It is a film that is both bleak and beautiful, fascinating and demoralising, a difficult film to watch, but also one that everyone needs to see.

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TV Review – Cleverman: Season 2

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TL;DR – A brilliant follow up from Season One

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Season Two

Review –

So Season Two of Cleverman has come, hit us hard, and it’s now over. So we have had some time to think back and contemplate on the overarching themes for the season and how it worked, which is what we are going to do today. So today with our review we will look at how Season Two improved on Season One, look at the central themes and characters, and finally conclude on the importance of Cleverman.  Before we start, just a warning that we will be talking about the season as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS]. Also, this will be looking more broadly at the season, if you what to look at individual episodes, then you can look at our reviews here: Revival, Bindawu, Dark Clouds, Muya, Skin & Borrowed Time.

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TV Review – Cleverman: Borrowed Time

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TL;DR – Indeed everyone is on Borrowed Time, as choices come to a head in the season finale

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Borrowed Time

Review –

So we’ve reached the end of Season Two with the final episode Borrowed Time, and after five weeks of everyone making mistakes, tonight it all comes to a head. At the end of last week’s Skin (review) we had that shocking moment when Charlotte (Frances O’Connor) defending herself and her baby put a scalpel right into Slade’s (Iain Glen) neck, though we didn’t see him die. Now there is one thing you need to know about TV, and that is they are not dead until we see the body, and even then everything is up for grabs. Well, first up tonight not only do we find out, yep he’s dead, but we also find out that he ended up going nowhere in the end, because (and I had forgotten this) he got caught up in the blue wave at the end of Season One. That was a really powerful opener but Borrowed Time doesn’t stop there, and a reminder as we will be talking about the episode as a whole, there are [SPOILERS] ahead.
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TV Review – Cleverman: Revival

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TL;DR – Season 2 opens with a bang, leaves you wanting more, and fearing the worst.

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

Cleverman

Review –

Wow what an opener, I mean we loved Season One of Cleverman, but I don’t think anything prepared us for how this first episode of Season Two was going to play out. So to remind everyone of where we left off last season, Koen (Hunter Page-Lochard) had rallied all the remaining residents of The Zone to fight the coming Containment Authority. His brother Waruu (Rob Collins) rejected his family and his people to stand with Jarrod Slade (Iain Glen) who is trying to unlock Hairy DNA and the power it possesses and that creep probably did something to his wife Charlotte’s (Frances O’Connor) pregnancy. Finally, Araluen (Tasma Walton) was able to escape the brothel she had been imprisoned in after killing the minister in charge. All through the season we were building up to the conflict, Koen was understanding and accepting his role as the Cleverman, and then bang season two opens and Koen is dead in a body bag, and you know nothing is safe anymore. So in our review today we are going to be covering all the aspects of the first episode of Season Two, so there will be [SPOILERS] for those who have not seen it yet. If you have not seen Revival yet, you can watch it easily on ABC IView, or SundanceTV, and you should go do that right now.
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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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