Muahahaha i swear i thought that was his name throughout the whole movie. damn aussie accents!

No man can cry like Hugh Jackman does.

everyone else got it.

maybe its u?

I agree. I would peg it in the A/A- range.

I think it looses a bit of uumph between acts (which there seemed to be more like 3 episodic hour-long tales than one film). I thought of ways immediately after to interject Fletcher's story into the final act a little more so that it would have upped the precieved danger level.

And I think some of the film isn't Baz *enough* for me.

Still I really enjoyed it.

10/10 -> A

This is my first perfect score for 2008. Not to say that Australia is without any flaws. It has oh so many (probably even more than the movies that were close to my perfect score). But it was such an engaging, powerful and enjoyable movie going experience that it would make me pretty arrogant to not give it the fullest grade.

I haven't felt this good in theater in months. Well, since There Will Be Blood in January actually.

I was into the movie from the start to the end. I thought he comedic entry was brilliant, and the first part of the movie was a complete masterpiece. I'm not big fan of Baz and considering his previous track record with me (I think Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet are complete rubbish, especially the latter. But Moulin Rouge is a wonderful movie and one of the best ever - certainly my top 2 musical.), I didn't know what to expect. I wanted for the movie to be good, as I tend to like these kind of movies a lot, but I was aware that he could go the sucky Baz route and I would have to sit thru 3 hours of pretentious movie making.

Fortunately from the starting narration (Brandon Walters was an awesome narrator, and awesome in the movie as well) I was sucked into the movie and it never let me go.

The weakest part for me was the transition between the first adventurous part to the second love/being together/war part, but after a while it gets as engaing as the first part.

The acting is really good if not amazing at times. I really think Kidman and Jackman (not forgetting Walters) deserved a few noms at least.

Direction is superb, and some shots classify as the best of the year from what I've seen.

As far as the score goes - any score that incorporates Over the Rainbow, especially the way Australia does it, is automatically great to me.

I really enjoyed myself.

It's definitely a deeply flawed film, and it certainly loses a lot of steam once they get the cattle to Darwin and there's still half a movie to go, but there's still a lot to like here.

The abrupt shifts from slapstick comedy to rousing adventure to sappy romance to tragic drama don't really feel that abrupt, and the film flows better than perhaps it should. The first half, with its wonderfully goofy sense of humour and high Western influence, is clearly better, but the second half doesn't sink the ship like it might've. Baz manages to (mostly) keep it afloat.

I liked its use of archetypal narratives and symbolic characters, at least until it goes too far into cliché range near the end. It gave the proceedings a sort of mythic quality that matched the theme of aboriginal magic running throughout the film. I think it's important that Jackman's character is never given a name, besides Drover, as he comes to represent the kind of dark/wild side of man tamed by civilization.

Of course, since this is Baz, there's a distinctive visual style to be found, but I liked that, instead of forging his own crazy-ass look, he formed a sort of pastiche of other old-school Hollywood epics. Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Out of Africa, Titanic, even Pearl Harbor - it's all meant to give the film a sort of meta-quality as an amalgamation of all of these traditional epics. And it works pretty well. The film is beautiful, but it's not a superficial beauty - there's something to it.

And Walters was fantastic. Kidman and Jackman were both great, but the kid steals the show. Undoubtedly.

Better than I was expecting, for the most part. With a little tweaking (or maybe a lot), it could've been something really special.

I wish Australia had made me feel like that...

**stunned**



everyone seems to like it..

weird..

I thought it was incredibly bad. Actually, I couldn't think of anything that I loved in this film. More so, not a moment in this 'emotionally dry' that I wasn't bored. I do get though (and I might get it wrong) that it wanted to be nothing but an old fashion epic. But it just didn't work for me. All I can sense is flat characters in one big messed up story with seemingly beautiful background which didn't do anything to me, nothing. C-

trixster wins the thread for his deeply fair-minded assessment of Baz's admittedly flawed exercise in sheer moviegoing pleasure.

Saw it again. Still love it.

AUSTRALIA - 7/10 (B-)

The first part of this movie I absolutely hated. It was ridiculous and incredibly hokey. Thankfully it got better, but is still extremely flawed. My biggest gripe is Brandon Walters and the character of Nullah. I could not stand him and wanted him to die. He almost single-handedly brings the whole movie down. "Mrs. Boss! We gotta get those fat cheeky bulls into that big bloody metal ship!" Shoot me now... Obviously he's supposed to be adorable comic relief, but he was neither adorable or funny. He was cringe-worthy. Why he didn't at least score a Razzie nomination is beyond me.

I'm mixed on the cinematography. At times it looked beautiful, but at other times it was too cartoonish.

I really liked Nicole Kidman in it, though not in the very beginning. The scene with Sarah and Drover in the truck in the beginning comes to mind. At this point I didn't think I was ever going to get into this movie. But eventually I was won over and found it enjoyable enough, despite the many different problems I had with it.

First third (the set-up/"I'm a spoiled english person"/here's the problem and plotline) 8
Second third (now things are happening, cattle run, we fall in love) 9
Last Third (tacked on WWII, kid gets taken, etc.) 5
Overall: 7.5, a visually magnificent film with strong performances and decent dialogue, that had to unnecessarily tack on a historical event, and create 50 minutes of nothing, making for a movie that was far too long, and tried way to hard to be an epic war romance, when it should have simply settled for epic romance.

Had a couple Karen Blixen moments there. Anyone else?

I'd completely forgotten about Australia, and it only came out seven months ago.

One of the most disappointing film of the decade for me...

Considering past things I've read of yours bradley, I'm sort of shocked you didn't like the sweeping and epic romance here. Yes, the ending was dreadful, and Baz really let go and got very....messy, but I still found a lot of it enjoyable, and even though we often disagree, I thought you would have too.

I think in years to come this might be viewed as a modern-day classic.

To be quite honest the film is fantastic, but i can agree that it is slightly over-long and a bit more editing could have tightened the whole story up. Sweeping epics do not need to have epic-runtimes to be effective. But longer runtimes here did immerse me further in the story, and I never urged for it to end as i did with other films of this sort.

An A-
and a movie i'd call one of my favourites.

I happened across this thread this morning, and it reminded me of the tragedy of Baz Lurmann's lost decade after Moulin Rouge! in which he only made the execrable Australia.


...and now all I have to look forward to from him, is The Great Gatsby remake he's supposed to start filming this year...

8.5/10

One of 2008's best.

Looks like Bradley's gonna finally get his wish...

Faraway Downs: a first look at Baz Luhrmann’s attempt to remake his biggest flop