Trailer for One More Shot, a time travel comedy by Nicholas Clifford, with Emily Browning

Showing all posts about Australian film

Trailer for One More Shot, a time travel comedy by Nicholas Clifford, with Emily Browning

7 October 2025

If you’ve ever wanted to travel back in time so you can put something right, then One More Shot, trailer, the debut feature of Melbourne based Australian filmmaker Nicholas Clifford, staring Australian actor Emily Browning, might be for you.

It’s New Year’s Eve 1999, and Minnie (Browning) discovers a bottle of tequila, Time Traveling Tequila no less, is able to transport her back to the beginning of NYE party she’s at, with each swig. For some people, going that far back in time could possibly just be enough to put the world to rights.

From what I can tell, One More Shot is going to straight to streaming (the way I prefer things) in Australia on Sunday 12 October 2025.

Vale David Stratton, Australian film critic

15 August 2025

The family of the noted film critic announced his death, at age 85, yesterday, Thursday August 2025.

I used to do some film writing (I still do occasionally) but would never describe my efforts as critique. Nonetheless, I used to be invited to preview screenings and premieres, and from time to time Stratton would be present.

Stratton, together with long time collaborator Margaret Pomeranz, were recently inducted onto the Australian Film Walk of Fame, becoming the first non-actors to be accorded the honour. If that doesn’t speak volumes about the regard in which Stratton’s work was held, I don’t know what does.

Picnic at Hanging Rock, a film by Peter Weir, released fifty years ago

9 August 2025

Yesterday, Friday 8 August, marked fifty years since Picnic at Hanging Rock, trailer, premiered in Adelaide, South Australia. They story about some students of a girls’ school who go missing during a picnic, continues to captivate, and baffle, film watchers.

The Sydney born Australian filmmaker Peter Weir has made a slew of top-notch movies. These include Gallipoli, Dead Poets Society, and The Truman Show, but Picnic at Hanging Rock is by far — to my mind at least — his most enigmatic.

The screenplay was based on the 1967 novel of the same name, by late Australian author Joan Lindsay. Much of mystery enveloping the film stemmed from the belief it was based on actual events. The story is in fact fiction (thankfully).

I re-watched Picnic at Hanging Rock a few years ago, and soon after saw a lesser known Weir feature, The Plumber, which is truly bat shit mad/disturbing. Take a look at the trailer. If not already, Weir’s work should be required learning at Australian film schools.

Cast of The Castle reunite, but not for a sequel, nor a prequel

16 July 2025

Alisha Buaya, writing for Media Week:

Uber has reunited Australian film icons, stars of The Castle, Michael Caton, Stephen Curry and Anthony Simcoe, to highlight Uber Green’s transition to a fully electric rideshare product.

The Castle was made by Australian actor, comedian, and filmmaker, Rob Sitch. The 1997 film is a feel good, David versus Goliath comedy, about a working class family attempting to stop property developers taking their home, their castle, away from them.

But wait until you see where the home is located.

The Uber promotion informs riders they now have the option to hire an EV for their journey. As yet, I’m not sure just how much of The Castle — aside from the stars — comes into this.

Fifteen years ago, my interview with Claire McCarthy, Australian filmmaker

30 June 2025

In 2010, Claire McCarthy’s publicity company kindly gave me the opportunity to ask her about her then upcoming film, The Waiting City, which starred Radha Mitchell and Joel Edgerton. I published the interview on this day fifteen years ago.

I remember feeling a tad apprehensive preparing my questions as I hadn’t seen the film beforehand, and subsequently didn’t think they were particularly original. All seemed to be well (or well enough) on the night though, as they say.

Margaret Pomeranz, David Stratton, join Australian Film Walk of Fame

28 June 2025

Colloquially referred to as Margaret and David, the long time Australian film critics became, on Sunday 1 June 2025, the first non-actors to be inducted to the Australian Film Walk of Fame.

The pair are perhaps best known for the two film review television shows they co-hosted, The Movie Show, on SBS, from 1986 until 2004, and then At the Movies, on ABC, from 2004 through to 2014.

Among other roles, Stratton served as director of the Sydney Film Festival from 1966 until 1983. Pomeranz meanwhile was a prominent anti-censorship activist, and was once detained by police during a protest. Despite the warmth of their professional partnership, they often disagreed with each other as to the merits of a film. This became a distinguishing hallmark of their collaboration.

In the earlier days of disassociated I wrote a fair bit about film, and often saw Pomeranz and Stratton at various previews screenings and other events. Stratton hosted a conversation with Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, of 2001: A Space Odyssey, in 2006.

One evening, while waiting to go into a preview screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Sydney in 2012, Pomeranz walked right passed me, as she was leaving the earlier screening. “Any good?” I asked her. She nodded politely in response.

The Australian Film Walk of Fame plague awarded to Pomeranz and Stratton earlier this month, is the second one presented this year. In recent years, the Walk, located outside the Ritz Cinema, in the Sydney suburb of Randwick, has been a little quiet. Is this something of a Film Walk of Fame revival?

David Wenham inducted into the Australian Film Walk of Fame

7 June 2025

Talking of the erstwhile Australian Film Festival, as I was earlier this week, word has reached me that Brisbane based Australian actor David Wenham was admitted to the Australian Film Walk of Fame in February 2025. The induction coincided with a screening of Spit, Wenham’s then most recent work, at the Ritz Cinema, in Randwick, Sydney.

Anyone who has seen Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films, 300: Rise of an Empire, or Elvis by Baz Luhrmann, will have seen some of Wenham’s work. Oranges and Sunshine, directed by Jim Loach, was one I particularly liked. The pavement outside the Ritz is adorned with the plagues of the twelve Australian actors who have so far been inducted to the Walk.

(Thanks Stef AKA Coffee Girl)

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All My Friends Are Back in Brisbane, a film by Louise Alston

2 June 2025

All My Friends Are Back in Brisbane is the sequel to rom-com All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane, made in 2007, also directed by Australian filmmaker Louise Alston. The story to Leaving Brisbane, which was also Alston’s debut feature, goes something like this:

Anthea is 25, single and hates her job — and all her friends are leaving Brisbane. Should she follow the herd to the big city? Is there anything worth staying for now that her best friend Michael finally has a girlfriend?

All My Friends Are Back in Brisbane, however, is not a linear sequel. Alston refers to it as a “spiritual” sequel, which tells the story of a woman, Cris, who returns to Brisbane after ten years in London:

Cris returns to Brisbane after being in London for a decade, having just been dumped by her fiancé. She finds herself working alongside her ex who refused to leave Brisbane to be with her ten years ago, and is now married with a child.

I’m yet to see Leaving Brisbane, though I did catch Alston’s 2010 feature, Jucy, at the sadly defunct Australian Film Festival in 2011.

There’s also a few crossovers between Jucy and Back in Brisbane in Nelle Lee, who co-starred in the former, and Stephen Vagg, Alston’s husband, who wrote the screenplays for both, plus of course Leaving Brisbane. No word yet as to when it will screen in cinemas, Back in Brisbane is presently in post-production, but I’ve read sometime in 2025.

Floodland, a documentary about the Lismore floods, by Jordan Giusti

15 May 2025

Lismore, a city located in northern NSW, Australia, suffered catastrophic flooding in 2017, and again in 2022. During the latter event, flood waters reached unprecedented levels, almost completely submerging some buildings in the process.

Floodlands, trailer, a documentary directed by Melbourne based filmmaker Jordan Giusti (Instagram page), is a up close look at the devastation caused by the flooding, and the impact on the residents of the local community.

Floodlands will premier at this year’s Sydney Film Festival, where it will screen on the evening of Saturday 14 June 2025. The film is also a finalist in the festival’s Documentary Australia Award.

The grim reality of filmmaking in Australia: the glam of Hollywood it is not

7 April 2025

Tangentially related to last Thursday’s post… Australian actor and filmmaker Matthew Holmes (The Biscuit Effect, Twin Rivers, The Legend of Ben Hall, and The Cost), speaks out in an open letter about the lamentable state of the Australian film industry:

All my films have won awards at film festivals and received fair to excellent critical praise. They have been sold and distributed worldwide to Showtime, HBO, Stan, Prime Video, Apple TV+, SBS, Vudu, Tubi, Peacock, 9GEM, and Foxtel and they’ve been released on DVD and Blu-Ray. Yet, the financial return I’ve seen personally from all four films combined would barely amount to $6,000.

Certainly there are successful, well-off, Australian filmmakers.

Yet it is defies belief that a director like Holmes, who’s made a number of award winning, and well received features, is in the predicament he finds himself in. Holmes isn’t alone. Other Australian directors, with quality work to their names, struggle to obtain funding, while other, far inferior offerings (names not being named) get the green light.

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