Australia

A fairy tale about how a dog and a cat cooked up a movie. After regularly encountering the immeasurable power of passion in Into the Beat and after some time away from Moulin Rouge!, which I eventually accepted, I was expecting a lot from Australia. However, the result is... something I'm willing to close both eyes to just for the prosaic fact that Nicole looks immeasurably great after 1939. Which isn't much, but also not too little for moving pictures. (23/07/2011)

Even though I'm drunk (who would be surprised after so many drinks...), stars were popping up in front of my eyes during the film – three stars, no, I'll give it four... In the end, it turned out the way it did, because keeping me awake when I’m drunk means the movie wasn't boring after all. Yes, C2H5OH made me experience some scenes really intensely – I laughed more at some of the "absurdities", I was more "moved". I liked it mainly because it was about the mundane. About the sweet, dusty ordinariness that I’ve grown to like. I didn't wait for the movie to end; they got together pretty soon :-) I'm glad. Despite the length, I didn't feel like I necessarily needed to go to bed just yet, because I wondered what the ending would be like. And it didn't disappoint me. It's not a 100% happy ending, but I like it :-) sorry, when I suck a bit of nectar I tend to speak in tongues – and I'm still holding on here. See ya. (23/05/2009)

In the first half, Luhrmann tells the story with gusto, passionately and fully applying his almost grotesque sense of humour (which I like and which his previous film, Moulin Rouge, was packed with), but when he arrives in Darwin midway through the film, he seems to wave a magic wand, and the narrative, full of life and the enchanting atmosphere of the Australian outback, becomes a game of playing with the audience's patience, where it's as if the filmmakers are trying to see what clichés and screenwriting gimmicks they can get away with. That cheesy ending is something that not even Danielle Steele, the queen of rosy books, would dare write. Still, I sense Luhrmann's sincere effort to pay homage to his beloved native Australia throughout the work, and so I can't entirely damn it. (08/03/2009)

It begins like an unfunny, madcap comedy (all praise to those kangaroos), then it suddenly turns into rather a good adventure fantasy movie about hunters with magic and a nice amount of tongue in cheek, but then subsequently flops over into a remake of Pearl Harbor. Just even stupider and deadly serious into the bargain. At the end it becomes a politically correct appeal with at least seventeen ending acts. The cherry on the cake is the finale “gets out of boat and rifle shot" which easily wins the prize for sky-high dumbness in the movie theaters this year. Of course, you shed some tears while watching it, which certainly was the filmmakers’ aim, but I’m not so sure that they were meant to be tears of laughter. It’s all in a visual guise which, unlike Moulin Rouge!, doesn’t balance playfully on the line between kitsch and genius, but becomes puke-worthy digital kitsch of the third kind. The characters (not the actors - they do their very best to save things) are a parody of themselves, because for instance every ten minutes Sarah turns into a different character, thinking, acting and behaving completely differently to before. A movie about strength and the need to tell a story that doesn’t have a clue about how to tell a story is bound to fail. And it does. (18/12/2008)

A horrifying wannabe innovative mix of comedy and classic epic storytelling style. Luhrmann's obvious attempt to come up with something new, a new concept of an epic story, is shocking. At times, Australia appears to be an amateurish blend in terms of its plot, and without the beautiful scenery and captivating actors, it would be a complete horror. Two strong storylines clashing with each other, a ton of digital effects, an introductory half-hour of comedy, bad war sequences, and a final epic cliché. Once was enough for me. Luhrmann is an amateur who should watch Cold Mountain every other day. (28/02/2009)