Reviews

I just love this film, everything about it carries one forward to its inevitable last battle. The casting, acting and filming is very Australian in its personality and universally excellent. The real stars to me however were the large number of wonderful horses and their individual riders, who together with the South Australian scenery, where it was shot, and which does wonderfully to replicate the Middle East bring this epic battle back to life. Sadly it has been very poorly served on video. The best release was a laser disc in the US and later a crappy DVD was released in Australia but this had the aspect ratio cut from 2.35 to 1.78 and is an insult to this great film. I have both and still watch my LD, one of my few remaining LDs that have yet to get a decent legal DVD transfer. If you can get and play the LD release do not hesitate otherwise just wait and hope.

Although this recording has yet to be restored and transferred to DVD the old LD release still looks pretty good. The production and music direction are still one of the best ever and despite many later and technically better DVDs this is still my favorite. The sets and special effects are wonderful and the costumes very original.The whole performance zips along at a good pace with English explanatory frames inserted at appropriate moments. This is a production in the old style with emphasis on more what it might have looked like when Prokofiev wrote it. No minimalist staging, dinner jackets and politically correct revisions here! Strongly recommended if you can find a copy somewhere.

I found this a delightful surprise. A bit slow to begin with but as the dry nature of the humor, much of it deadpan, kicks in it is the acting more than the story that leaves a memory. The casting is excellent throughout, aided and abetted by well thought out costumes and off beat locations. The Australians act like Australians and the rugby mob in the north of England are equally well presented. Great attention has been paid to the detail, deliberately understated and full of Kaurismäki style black humor. The events depicted in this film are portrayed in an improbable way but this adds to the almost dreamlike pace of the story. The lack of any real villains is not a shortcoming. Everyone is in their own way a hero and as everyone knows Rugby League in Australia is now a well patronized sport, particularly in the Eastern states. This little gem is currently being shown on cable TV. Catch it if you can, you will not be disappointed.

This is no easy subject to film and is still restricted in its distribution in Australia due to possible legal issues. I found it excellent. The cast is necessarily large and the acting exceptional. The gangsters really look evil and the blend of drugs, excessive sex and violence gives a chilling insight into this nether world of gangland culture. It is shot on location in Melbourne. The case is well known locally and despite it being a dramatization it runs more like a real life fly-on-the-wall documentary. For me it out Sopranoed the Sopranos and is one of the best gangster films Australia has ever produced. See it if you can. I watched all 13 episodes straight through!!

One never quite knows what to expect with a religious based drama, especially on such a current topic. This turned out to be surprisingly good. The photography and acting was very well done and despite the long timing (210 minutes rather than the 180 minutes on the box), there was little or no drag except perhaps just at the very end. I had just seen the Bob Hoskins film with a similar title and although they are rather different I would not say I preferred one over the other. This is a good story in itself and the religious aspect is almost a sideline. The general production is very good, in wide screen and the DVD I watched had subtitles. There is a large cast, mostly Italians and they do a very good job. Scenes are shot in various European locations and it all seems very authentic. Recommended.

The meat of the story is contained in the title. The charm of this 30 minute gem is in the way it addresses the funny side of the frailties of human nature in the way aboriginal people in Australia are forced to interact with their white masters. The patronizing self serving city lawyers on the one hand and the kindly country legal system, (in this case anyway), on the other. The casting and acting is good and the slow and drifting pace of life in the outback implies an idyllic existence that sadly is far removed from reality today. Australia has a long long way to go in its search for a way to bring happiness and a decent lifestyle to its aboriginal people and this film only hints at the huge cultural gap between its original and more recent inhabitants.

Some years ago now my daughters and I spent a most memorable two weeks living in a tent at an Emperor Penguin breeding site in the Antarctic spring. We even went through a mighty blizzard together! I have also visited other sites at other times. By any measure this is a remarkable documentary. The French have done it before with "The Paradox of the Emperors", but this is even better. It is an exceptionally difficult breeding cycle to capture as the weather conditions are extreme and lighting conditions frequently almost impossible. Many reviews of this film inevitably contain inaccuracies as this is not a subject that many are familiar with. Preparing a text for the narrator is also no easy task and the French and American approaches are quite different. On balance I prefer the American approach. Emperors are not of course human but have many behavioral practices that superficially are quite similar to some of ours. This can easily make them appear cute and cuddly in the cinema. A wallop from the wing of an angry bird can quickly bring one quite literally down to earth.

The photography is almost beyond criticism, bearing in mind the challenges the team faced. 10 out of 10 here. The narration is not always strictly accurate but is designed to draw the audience in. 6 out of 10 is all I would give. Too much missed out and too cloying here and there. No fault of Mr Freeman! The music was just ghastly in my opinion but that will not be everyone's judgment. The French version is said to be even worse! My biggest regret was the minimal cover given to the darker side of this most arduous of life cycles. Adult birds taken by leopard seals and killer whales, eggs and chicks, (and adult birds as well), overwhelmed by ferocious Antarctic blizzards. In some years and at some sites almost no chicks survive at all. Of course the newly born chicks are easy prey themselves when they finally go to sea in December. Human pollution is another growing threat to the Emperor's environment. It is quite a shock to find so much human garbage floating onto Antarctic shores.

I hope the DVD will give prominence to the makers of this film, they are almost as great a set of heroes as the Emperors. At least penguins are designed to survive in such weather. See this film, even better buy the DVD and watch it many times. Take a pinch of salt with the narration. See also Sir David Attenborough's "Life in the Freezer". This is one of the best wildlife documentaries you will be likely to see. With a better score, more realistic narration and less left on the cutting room floor it undoubtedly could have been even better. The photographers and the penguins however have delivered quite brilliant performances.