Australia (DVD)

Director: Baz Luhrmann Screenplay: Stuart Beattie & Baz Luhrmann Genre: Romance - Adventure - History - Drama Country: Australia/USA Certification: 12+ Language: English/Aboriginal MAIN CAST: Nicole Kidman [Lady Sarah Ashley] Hugh Jackman [Drover] Brandon Walters [Nullah] David Wenham [Neil Fletcher] Bryan Brown ... King Carney David Gulpilil [King George] English aristocrat Lady Sarah Ashley travels to Australia in order to retrieve her husband who was supposed to be gone only long enough to secure their financial future by selling off Faraway Downs, a cattle station ...  Read the complete review

The last time I watched an epic film that I felt was split into two parts, it was entitled 'Pearl Harbor', and it struck me first of all as an unnecessary waste of nearly 3 hours of my life. However, the further I encroached into the film, the more I was sucked in by its raw emotion and storytelling. The same is to be said here, of Baz Luhrman's epic 'Australia', which I would liken to a cross between his own 'Moulin Rouge' and the aforementioned 'Pearl Harbor'. Indeed, it starts off very much in the same ilk as 'Moulin Rouge' and I did wonder if I was going to have to endure nearly 3 hours of tongue in cheek quirky humour and Nicole Kidman's incessant ...  Read the complete review

Anyone who has visited Australia will be aware of its very strange landscapes which have been depicted in films like Peter Weir's, Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave. Baz Luhrman's (Moulin Rouge) latest film about his native country seems to express the same sentiment; Australia is a complicated continent, a land of strange powers that captivates and haunts its inhabitants and visitors. You could say that Luhrman's epic film which is ambitious and grandiose also has strange powers of its own. The time is set in the late 1930's and early 40's as World War II intrudes on Australia's northern coast. The simple story follows the life of the ...  Read the complete review

(film only review) Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) travels to Australia at the beginning of World War II to take her husband to task who spends more time on his farm Faraway Downs there than at home in England - philandering in her opinion. When she arrives she finds him dead, however, obviously murdered by an aborigine. She learns that the most powerful cattle baron of Northern Australia steals her cattle with the help of her foreman, they also plan to take over her land. She sacks her disloyal employee but then realises that the only way to avoid financial ruin is to drive her 1,500 cattle to Darwin across hundreds of miles of Outback territory and ...  Read the complete review

Australia is a huge epic film set in the 1930's. It's huge in the way that not only does it cover vast areas of panoramic scenery, but also in the scope of the historical change it covers. It's also a bit of a strange film in that it's more like two films stuck together. It seems to reach a resolution, and then things all fall apart and a new story starts. It all hangs together in the end though, to make a great, entertaining film. The film opens with the motto: 'A life lived in fear is a life half lived.' Told through the eyes of a half-white-half-Aborigine-boy, Nullah (Brandon Walters) it tells the story of the arrival of Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) ...  Read the complete review