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Eraser Children (2009)
Who cares?
Some films are really worth the trouble, and you put up with snails pace action and cheap production values. Other films are just snails pace with cheap production values. Like this film called Eraser Children. This film is hilarious, but it's not a comedy. It's funny because it thinks it's being so smart. It tries to be dark and deep by draining everything of color and character and plot and action and everything else that makes a story worth telling. The other question is when oh when did Australia lose its sense of humor? I just don't get it. You can be funny and deep at the same time you know? There is a bit of comedy here and there, but it was like a stand-up comic dying on stage and an audience checking their watches. Polite chuckles and that's about it. But anyway, when mainstream lets you down you turn to under the radar stuff like the underground festival I saw this movie at in Melbourne. I saw three films there this year. One deserved a wider audience, one was just an exercise in parochialism and Eraser Children is an exercise in audiences don't matter. But that's only one of the many boxes it ticks in the how to make a movie in Australia handbook. So yes it's a typical Aussie film. Which is another way of saying make a film in Australia by Australians but not for Australians or anyone else for that matter. That's because no one else really cares.
Beautiful Kate (2009)
Rachel Ward debuts beautifully.....
It's easy to pick on a movie that's based on a very good book because expectations are very high, and you have an idea in your head before you even see the movie. So I'm not going to make comparisons for the sake of it. Just one criticism that I cant see anyone who read the book will argue with, and that's the change of setting from Idaho to South Australia. The big problem here is that the American wilderness is never as "dead" as the Australian wilderness. In fact just look at the title of 'Deadheart' (another Bryan Brown film by coincidence).
The impact of the change of setting is that the characters are so marooned and cut off. You never get that sense in the book, where the wilderness is their natural haven. That doesn't mean the actors aren't believable. They are and first time director Rachel Ward has done something special in relating the female experience. I felt every scene that worked, and the pacing is just right. I've read some ridiculous reviews that this is a film for women. Well it's not, it's about how women relate with their world in a universal way. That makes this a universal story and a movie worth seeing.