Toomelah Director: Ivan Sen ★★★ Ivan Sen’s debut feature film was 2002’s Beneath Clouds: a road movie about two Indigenous Australian teenagers trying to escape the depressing realities of their lives by fleeing to Sydney. It’s a solid film and I was thoroughly looking forward to Sen’s third feature, Toomelah. Especially as it was the […]

Cave of Forgotten Dreams Dir: Werner Herzog ★★★★ In 1994 three French speleologists discovered a cave hidden behind an old rockslide in southern France. Inside they found a particularly beautiful cave with rock paintings eventually dated to 32 000 years before the present. They are the oldest known cave paintings, preserved so well because of […]

Surviving Life Director: Jan Švankmajer ★★★ Czech director Jan Švankmajer’s Surviving Life is a whole movie in the style of Terry Gilliam’s animations. Or, more accurately, Gilliam’s animations are in the style of Švankmajer, who was a major influence on the Monty Python member. In an amusing introduction Švankmajer explains the film is a ‘psychoanalytic […]

Armadillo Director: Janus Metz ★★★★ Janus Metz’s Armadillo takes its name from a forward operating base in Helmand province. The documentary focuses on a platoon of Danish soldiers and their deployment from February to August 2009. The impression given of the Afghanistan War during their tour is a war by inches. The Taliban are less […]

Le Quattro Volte Director: Michelangelo Frammartino ★★★★★ Le Quattro Volte means ‘the four times’ and refers to four cycles of life: human, animal, vegetable and mineral. The film tells the stories of all four through an old man, his resilient dog, a herd of goats and then, well, trees. This really is a stellar cast. […]

If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front Directors: Marshall Curry & Sam Cullman ★★★★ The Earth Liberation Front is a loose group of environmentalists variously labelled radical activists and eco-terrorists. The first ELF activity in the United States occurred in the 90s in Eugene, Oregon: a centre for environmental and anarchist […]

At 0900 hours the enemy combatant was identified squatting, camouflaged, in the undergrowth. The target was photographed and captured without incident. He is believed to be a scout from the coming invasion party. Perhaps that’s not quite how the first cane toad was reported near Noonbah Station, southwest of Longreach in Queensland last week, but […]

One apparently innocuous morning two weeks ago – 6 April, I believe – I received in my letterbox what at first glance seemed to be a small, harmless piece of white paper. Closer inspection revealed the sinister truth. It appears to be striving towards business card presentation but in reality falls into the category of […]

Nudes are in the news again. Specifically, under-age nudity has reared its terribly inappropriate head recently with the abolition of the artistic purpose defence in child pornography cases. It’s never been more exciting, or perhaps dangerous, to be doing stuff in the buff. The reforms to current child pornography laws emerged from the NSW Child […]