Apologies

Hi all,

You may have noticed that the blog hasn't been updated for a while. I was watching at a faster rate than I could write towards the end of last year and so fell a bit behind. I had fully intended to catch it back up and finish things off in the new year, but I now find myself in the final year of my PhD and that requires my full attention. I may end up coming back on to finish this up at some stage, but no promises.

If you're interested, the year finished out this way:

151. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

152. Raiders of the Lost Ark

153. Zoolander

154. Unforgiven

155. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

156. Ed Wood

157. Dr. No

158. Sin City

159. The Naked Gun

160. Due Date

161.Ghostbusters

162. Full-Tilt Boogie

163. Kung Fu Hustle

164. Harry Brown

165. Delicatessen

166. Inside Man

167. It’s a Wonderful Life

168. Sherlock Holmes

169. Scott Pilgrim vs the World

170. The King’s Speech

171. Tomorrow, When the War Began

172. The Secret Agent Club (awful, simply awful)

173. Zombieland

150) No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men (2007)

Directors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

Starring: Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, Kelly Macdonald, Woody Harrelson

I was at a trivia night a few months ago where they asked the question what was the last film to win the Best Picture Oscar which started and finished with the same letter. They gave the answer as The English Patient. Seems they hadn't updated their questions to take into account No Country for Old Men winning the award in 2008. I don't know why I have chosen to start by sharing that, but it is a little piece of trivia which, at least at the time of writing this, is still correct (though it might not be for much longer if True Grit can pull a swift one on The King's Speech and The Social Network next year).

Out hunting in rural Texas, Llewelyn Moss (Brolin) comes across the scene of what is obviously a drug deal gone violently wrong, with dead bodies strewn everywhere. Not far from the scene Moss finds another body, this one with a briefcase containing $2 million. Rather than report the incident Moss opts to take the money for himself and try and skip town with his wife. Unfortunately this decision puts a psychopathic killer, Anton Chigurh (Bardem), on his trail. Chigurh is a man who has no issue with killing anyone and everyone who stands in between him and that money. Looking for both of them is the local Sheriff Ed Tom Ball (Jones).

Javier Bardem's performance as Anton Chigurh stands alongside Heath Ledger's Joker as the greatest villainous performances of the last decade. Chigurh is simply terrifying. The calm, measured way in which he speaks and his cold, emotionally detached approach to his killing is very chilling. What makes the character interesting is the fact that we aren't presented with any real motivation. Presenting a realistic motivation for villains is a key aspect of their characterisation. It is what makes us believe they are real rather than two dimensional, pantomime villains who only do what they do because they are evil. Whether that motivation is greed, passion, revenge, bigotry, we need something in order to understand why they are doing what they are doing. In No Country for Old Men, Chigurh's motivation is not so obviously apparent. We know he has been hired to track down the money, but that explains only why he is in this particular situation, rather than how he became this cold-blooded, seemingly soul-less individual. The fact that Bardem takes this seemingly unstoppable force that is Chigurh and makes him so terrifyingly believable is a credit to him as an actor.

All of the buzz concerning No Country for Old Men when it came out was to do with Bardem, and rightly so. He was great and a worthy Oscar winner. But on a second viewing the performance which caught my attention was that of Tommy Lee Jones. Jones has this amazing face. It is beautifully weathered and says so much. He looks tired and worn down by the world (appropriate given that he is the old man for whom this is no country). He delivers his dialogue, which is very well written, perfectly. Being a sheriff he keeps his emotions in check, but as he is nearing retirement the wight of all the evil he has seen over the years and it has taken its toll on him and he is just done in. A fantastically subtle performance.

Spoiler alert time, if you haven't seen the film and you don't want it ruined, skip this paragraph. The death of Llewelyn Moss amazed me. People were shocked in Hitchcock's Psycho when the film's main character dies only a third of the way into the picture, but at least she got to die on screen. Moss dies between scenes, with Bell showing up to the hotel to find he has been killed. I don't think I've ever seen a main character killed off with so little fanfare before. I don't know why you wouldn't have that death take place on screen, it seems a strange decision, but then maybe that is the point. It catches us off guard the way that it caught him off guard.

My one bone to pick with this film, which I had on my first viewing and I maintain on my second, is that I find the ending a bit unsatisfying. By the ending I mean the last 30mins. The intensity of the film builds to fever pitch and then the event discussed in the previous paragraph occurs and that intensity dies straight off and the film just seems to trail off with a few slow scenes to finish the film. Obviously, this is not meant to be a blockbuster film. It is based on a Cormack McCarthy novel and as such is meant to be more brooding and contemplative, which is definitely what the last part of the film is, but it does feel like a big drop off.

No Country for Old Men is a fantastic film. It looks stunning, contains some of the best written dialogue in recent years and some great performances. It is also the fullest realisation of the Coen brothers' talent to date.

149) True Grit

True Grit (1969)

Director: Henry Hathaway

Starring: John Wayne, Kim Darby, Glen Campbell, Robert Duvall, Jeff Corey, Dennis Hopper

Even before I heard about the Coen brothers remake of True Grit (which I'm really annoyed isn't getting a Boxing Day release in Australia so I won't be able to see it before the year and thus this blog ends) I had been keen to see this Western classic. I've got a bit of a soft spot for Westerns and despite not having seen a lot of John Wayne's work, I was interested to see the film which at last won him an Oscar.

When teenager Mattie Ross's (Darby) father is gunned down by Tom Chaney (Corey), she sets off on a personal mission to get vengeance. She enlists the help of a drunken old Marshall, Rooster Cogburn (Wayne) a violent man with a reputation for having "true grit". As they prepare to go after Chaney, they cross paths with Texas Ranger La Boeuf (Campbell) who is also after Chaney because of a murder he committed in Texas. The three reluctantly join forces to pursue Chaney and the gang he is hiding out with.

John Wayne is very good as Rooster Cogburn. His presence really carries the film. Without him in that role I don't think this particular film would have been anything special. That being said I did have very high expectations which weren't quite met. I was expecting a great performance, but it was just very good. I knew it was supposed to be different to his other roles, but it wasn't that different. It isn't the best performance of his career, even of the small sample I've seen. It doesn't come close to his performance as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers. Not knowing a lot about who else was in the field that year, I kind of feel like his Oscar win was one of those Oscars which was given because he deserved to have one after the career he'd had rather than because this specific performance was his greatest ever. Although in a way it is appropriate that he should have received a pseudo-lifetime achievement Oscar for his performance in True Grit because his performance as Rooster Cogburn is very much informed his careers work, and what John Wayne had come to represent. As the fat, drunken, aging Marshall Wayne played off the persona that John Wayne had developed over 40 years of filmmaking. Audiences had developed certain expectations of the John Wayne character and as Rooster Cogburn he plays against them but there are still moments when classic John Wayne shines through. Part of the reason which this performance lacks the punch now that it had on the films initial release is that modern audiences don't have the same investment in the John Wayne character as they did then.

Glen Campbell is a bit of a dud in this one. The guy wrote and sang some good songs, but his acting isn't much to write home about. He wasn't helped by the fact that this film was all about John Wayne and Cogburn's relationship with Miss Mattie Ross which made La Boeuf feel like a third wheel in every scene he was in. He is massively outshone by Wayne, and even by young Darby who puts in a fantastic performance (it's hard to think of a better character for an early teen girl to play). From his very first scene he is belittled, first by Ross and then by Cogburn and it is clear that no one wants him there. You get the impression that we weren't supposed to like him, so at least Campbell's wooden performance didn't ruin a good character.

This film contains a line of dialogue which I love. When Rooster suggests the uptight Mattie Ross might benefit from having a shot of whisky she snaps back, "I would not put a thief in my mouth to steal my brains." I don't know why, but it made me laugh and has stuck with me. It's one of those lines that you store away in your head in the hope that one day you will have the opportunity to use it.

True Grit didn't blow me away, but that is more of a reflection of the expectations I carried into the film than the quality of it. It isn't John Wayne's best performance or his best film, but it is a really good, fun story with some great character interaction. A story which I am now even more excited to see the Coen brothers' take on.

148) Where the Wild Things Are

Where the Wild Things Are (2009)

Director: Spike Jonze

Starring: Max Records, Catherine Keener, James Gandolfini, Paul Dano, Catherine O'Hara, Forest Whitaker, Michael Berry Jr., Chris Cooper, Lauren Ambrose

The final Reel Dialogue for the year was held at Turramurra Uniting Church tonight with the film being Spike Jonze's adaptation of the beloved children's book Where the Wild Things Are. I saw this film at the cinemas late last year and was really surprised by it, not meaning that it was better or worse than I expected but just that it was different, and think that the ideas it explores and the way it chooses to explore them make it really well suited to an exercise like Reel Dialogue.

After throwing a tantrum because his mother (Keener) is paying more attention to her new boyfriend than to him, Max (Records) runs away from home to the land where the Wild Things roam. There he finds a childlike group of rough and tumble monsters led by the short tempered Carol (Gandolfini). Max convinces them to make him their king when he promises that he can keep all the sadness away.

I think like a lot of people, when I first heard they were making a film out of Maurice Sendak's children's book I wondered how they were going to do it. The book conjures up great images, and is in that way ideal for a film adaptation, but given it only contained nine sentences, it is very thin on narrative and character. Thus for a long time Where the Wild Things Are was among the many beloved stories which was placed in the 'too hard' pile, wearing the tag "unfilmable". If a filmmaker tried to flesh it out they'd be accused of not being true to the book and alienate it's millions of fans, but there simply weren't enough words in the book to make a direct adaptation. As a result Jonze was forced to take a few liberties with the storyline in the film to make it work as a feature length film, and also to add a bit of depth to the tale, but he has done so with great delicacy.

Jonze adds a prologue which informs everything that happens in the world of the Wild Things, giving it an extra layer of significance. Max is a boy from a broken home. His parents are divorced and his mother has a new boyfriend. Max also stands on the verge of adolescence. Thus everything which happens within the world of the Wild Things, a world within Max's imagination, helps Max explore these two issues; the nature of a family and what it means to grow up. The world of the Wild Things is an allegorical one, with each of the Wild Things representing a part of Max's personality, with the exception of KW, who obviously represents his mother.

What this leaves us with is a mood piece. While he has taken some license with his adaptation, Jonze hasn't done a great deal of fleshing out of the narrative. He hasn't given the film a driving storyline with important plot points placed throughout. In fact not a great deal happens in the film. There are different scenes and events, but to deliver it as a plot synopsis would make the film sound very dry. Where the Wild Things Are is all about the mood. It has a bittersweet mood, as you would expect from a story about the passing of childhood.

While Sendak's book is a children's favourite, Jonze's film is not really for kids. Rather than targeting the same demographic as the book, Where the Wild Things Are is more likely targeted at the generation of people who read the book when they were little. The lack of a clear plot will make be too boring for children, plus some of the thematic exploration is a bit too intense.

So much of the success of the book was its ability to conjure up images. Thankfully, the film is visually marvelous. The world of the Wild Things was shot primarily on location in Australia and diverse settings (one minute they're in bushland, then the desert, then the beach) really give the film that dreamlike quality. The Wild Things themselves, performed by actors in suits with CGI faces added, look great. They look exactly like you expect they should, slightly more 'realistic' than the cartoonish illustrations in the book, but maintaining the original look. The CGI faces are amongst the most subtle CGI work I've seen and using actors in suits meant that the Things could interact with Max and the landscape in a tangible and believable way, whereas using fully CGI characters always feels not quite right.

This is not one for the kids or those with a short attention span. Where the Wild Things Are won't have you on the edge of your seat. It will have you sitting back deep in thought. Jonze has produced a beautiful, thoughtful and touching film which while I'm sure devoted fans could still find something to complain about, for the rest of us appears to be valiant effort at a difficult adaptation.

147) The Lives of Others

Das Leben der Anderen (2006)

Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Starring: Ulrich Mühe, Sebastian Kock, Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Tukur

For the final week of the semester in Screens, Images, Ideas we watched the film that I had been most looking forward to seeing, von Donnersmarck's Oscar winning The Lives of Others.

In the East Berlin in 1984 (an appropriate year given the film's themes), Stassi Captain Gerd Wiesler (Mühe) begins a surveillance operation on playwright Georg Dreyman (Kock). Dreyman is the only playwright in East Germany who is read in the West who remains loyal to the GDR, but his artistic, intellectual lifestyle and choice of company arouse suspicion. Wiesler's surveillance finds nothing suspicious, but he grows more and more intrigued by Dreyman. When Wiesler discovers that the reason the Minister for Culture is so keen on finding something to pin on Dreyman is that he is secretly having an affair with Dreyman's partner, for the first time in his long and decorated career as a Stassi officer he becomes conflicted.

The Lives of Others is not an anti-communist film. A less restrained film, and ultimately less interesting film, would have had our heroes being noble East Germans fighting against the oppressiveness of socialism with victory coming through the falling of the Berlin Wall. However in von Donnersmarck's film the two characters who we empathise with the most, the Stasi officer Wiesler and the playwright Dreyman, are in fact the two most devoted socialists in the film, and remain that way to the end. Their character evolution does not see them changing their perspective on socialism. In both cases their dissatisfaction is with the way that socialism has been executed in the GDR and it is this devotion to socialism which inspires both of them to rebel against the state in their different ways.

The restraint of this film can also be seen in the fact that the Berlin Wall barely features. This is a film about the GDR. It is not a film about the Berlin Wall and thus we never see footage of the wall, with the exception of some footage of it falling which is largely to establish where we now find ourselves in the chronology of the story, and there is only one short scene in which a mock plot to cross the wall is discussed. The film is about life in East Germany, largely dealing with characters who feel they belong there. So it is not about life in East Germany in relation to life in West Germany. It is not life in East Germany longingly looking to the West, dreaming of a better life, so the Berlin Wall as a barrier, both physical and symbolic, need not feature with any prominence.

What really makes the film is the recreation of the GDR. Through their cinematography, use of location and set design, von Donnersmarck and his team do an amazing job of establishing the sense of stifling oppression in the country. Von Donnersmarck and his design team looked at hours of footage and photographs of the old GDR. Through this they came up with a colour palate for the film. They identified that in this material the colour green appeared more than the colour blue, and orange appeared more than red. So von Donnersmarck and his set designer Silke Buhr chose to completely remove reds and blues from their set design. What resulted was a hyper-reality, a look which was realer than real. When we remember things, the prominent details become more prominent and those details which were insignificant disappear completely. Thus this hyper-real colour design created a GDR which really clicked with a lot of people's memory of that era.

Ulrich Mühe, who sadly died only a year after the film came out, puts in a great performance as Wiesler. He truly believes in his calling as a Stassi officer to be "the sword and shield" of the GDR. There are a great deal of similarities between him and another famous cinematic surveillance expert, Gene Hackman's Harry Caul in The Conversation. Not only do they look amazingly similar, the lack of visible emotion and the overwhelming lack of trust in those around them is also similar.

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who has to have the longest name I've ever come across for a director, has just released his second feature film and has gone in a rather different direction. He has backed up his Oscar winning debut (it won Best Foreign Film) by directing The Tourist with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. It's the one which looks like roughly the same premise as Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz's Knight and Day but a bit less corny and a bit classier. Like I said, a slightly different direction, but when someone has only made two films you can't really say that something is in or out of character. He could just be a diverse guy.

The Lives of Others is a fascinating and brilliantly executed film about an amazing period of history, a period that is all the more amazing considering how recent it was. It is a bit slow at times, but never enough for you to lose interest, and has a very touching and satisfying conclusion.

146) Rain Man

Rain Man (1988)

Director: Barry Levinson

Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, Valeria Golino

There was recently a stage production of Rain Man at Glen St Theatre in Belrose which my dad and brother went to see. I wouldn't have minded going myself but had a prior engagement on the night that they were going, but it did put the film in my mind and made me want to watch it again.

When selfish yuppie Charlie Babbitt (Cruise) finds out that his wealthy father, to whom he has not spoken for a number of years, has died. Glad that he will finally get his hands on his father's $3 million fortune, Charlie is floored when he finds that all he has been left in the will are his father's prized 1948 Buick convertible and his rose bushes. The remainder of the estate is to into a trust. When he goes to collect his car he discovers that trust is for a brother that he never knew he had, Raymond (Hoffman). Raymond is an autistic savant who lives at the Walbrook Institute. Charlie kidnaps Raymond, intending to use him to get what he sees as his rightful share of the estate. As the two travel across the country together Charlie's anger that his father should leave all his wealth to a man who has no need for money is replaced with anger that his father had kept his brother secret from him, as he struggles to establish a connection with his new found brother.

So much of this film's success is down to Dustin Hoffman, but it is not just because of his performance. Hoffman is very much responsible for the shaping of the final film. Initially Rain Man looked very different. It was to be a Martin Brest picture starring Hoffman as Charlie Babbitt and Bill Murray as his lovable retarded brother Raymond (kind of halfway between Forrest Gump and Sam from I Am Sam). Murray would pull out of the project when he discovered that Hoffman was more interested in playing the Raymond character, and Hoffman's determination that Raymond should be autistic rather than retarded, which transformed him from an overly affectionate man to an emotional blank canvas, led to the resignation of Brest. The film bounced around between a couple of directors including Steven Spielberg and Sydney Pollack, finally landing with Barry Levinson. The changes obviously worked as the film ended up winning four Oscars, including gongs for Hoffman and Levinson and Best Picture.

Hoffman's performance is amazing. He is a famously dedicated method actor and spent a year observing a number of autistic men to see how they interacted with people and to pick up mannerisms and quirks. I actually have two autistic cousins and while autism is a condition which differs from case to case, depending on its severity, I definitely recognised different aspects of his behaviour. The real challenge with this character is that usually films are all about change. Characters have a character arc, a journey they undertake which changes them in some way. Raymond is incapable of that change, and remains exactly the same man at the end as he was at the beginning. Despite that, Hoffman makes Raymond compelling to watch. He doesn't try and play him as cute or pathetic or lovable, he just delivers a very true and honest portrayal.

Obviously most of the credit goes to Hoffman for his amazing performance, but the achievement of Tom Cruise should not be ignored. With Raymond being such an emotion free character, the entire weight of the audiences engagement falls on Charlie, who is in pretty much every scene in the film. It is his frustration we feel as Raymond is incapable of interacting and engaging, as we are unable to get into his head. Hollywood conventions have us believing that if this odd-couple go on the road together, over time they will connect, but Raymond's condition doesn't allow for that to happen. Levinson doesn't bow to sentimentality. It was also a very bold move for Cruise to take the part on a couple of fronts. Firstly, Charlie is quite an unlikeable character, particularly early on in the film, which was a change for Cruise who usually plays romantic heroes. Secondly, with the film being dominated by just the two characters it required Cruise to back himself not to get blown off the screen by Hoffman. This was really Cruise's first big step from being a movie star to being an actor.

Rain Man also marked the Hollywood debut for then unknown composer Hans Zimmer. Zimmer has gone on to become one of the big guns in the film score business, and having listened to his score for Rain Man I can just say I'm glad he left his synthesizer in the 1980s.

It was with an ironic smile that I watched the famous scene at the airport in which Raymond refuses to board a plane out of fear that they would crash, citing the fact that Qantas is the only airline to have not had a crash. That may still be the case but in the few weeks leading up to watching it Qantas have had their fair share of time in the news with various mid-air mishaps. That scene is a great scene of product endorsement for Qantas which they will be hoping to keep relevant.

Rain Man is a beautiful film. For a film which is set on the road and is constantly moving it is very theatrical (you can see how it would easily make the transition to the stage), centred almost entirely around these two characters. It is a thoughtful film which is at times uplifting, heart-breaking and funny. It's a real classic, and Hoffman's is one of the great screen performances.

145) Animal Kingdom

Animal Kingdom (2010)

Director: David Michôd

Starring: James Frecheville, Ben Mendelsohn, Jacki Weaver, Joel Edgerton, Guy Pearce, Sullivan Stapleton, Luke Ford, Laura Wheelwright

As an Australian who watches a lot of movies I am well aware that I probably don't do enough to support my local industry. Australian films make up a small percentage of my overall viewing. What is sadder is the fact that having already seen three Australian films this year (Bran Nue Dae, Wake in Fright and Mary & Max) probably puts me well and truly above average. When Animal Kingdom hit the cinemas it was getting big reviews. The critics were raving about it, and not just in Australia. I had the best of intentions to see it at the cinemas, but despite the fact that didn't end up happening I was still determined to see what all the fuss was about.

When Joshua 'J' Cody's (Frecheville) mother dies of a drug overdose, he is forced to get in contact with his grandmother Janine 'Smurf' Cody (Weaver) for a place to live. When he moves in with the matriarch he is introduced to a part of the family that his mother had worked very hard to keep him separate from. J's uncles; 'Pope' (Mendelsohn), Craig (Stapleton) and Darren (Ford) along with their friend Barry Brown (Edgerton) are involved in various criminal activities, primarily armed robbery. The Melbourne Armed Robbery Squad is after Pope, who is in hiding. The standoff between the Armed Robbery Squad and the Cody family escalates, with casualties on both sides, and J stuck in the middle.

Animal Kingdom looks and sounds like an Australian film. You have a respectable cast of talented Aussie actors headlined by Mendelsohn, Weaver, Edgerton and Pearce, in that grungy suburban setting which has replaced the outback as Australian cinemas location of choice over the last decade or so. Everyone speaks with Australian accents and you even have Australian TV shows on in the background. The film even starts with a heroine overdose death (to all those whose response is "Oh great, another morbid, drug-centred Australian film", you just have to persevere through the first 5 minutes). Animal Kingdom looks and sounds like an Australian film, but it is also absolutely brilliant. This film demonstrates that the name of the game is not necessarily to make Australian films that look as Hollywood as possible so audiences don't realise they're watching an Australian film. Animal Kingdom shows through the way that it has been turning heads all over the world that in the international film landscape there is a place for a well made, recognisably Australian film.

It is a really intense film. Early in the movie one of the Cody boys (I won't say which one) is gunned down by police in a scene which really takes you by surprise, partly because you figured that character was going to play a bigger part in the unfolding story and partly because there was just no warning that it was coming. That moment kicks off a sense of unease and unsettlement which continues through the rest of the film. The characters are unpredictable and unreadable which means you rarely have the comfort of being able to predict what comes next.

In looking like an Australian film, Animal Kingdom lacks the slickness and visual stylisation that you expect from more typically Hollywood ventures into the crime and punishment genre. Visually, Animal Kingdom looks like an everyday, suburban drama. This nail-biting tension that runs through the film is created by an excellent screenplay full of rich characters who are brought to life by a quality cast. I usually hate Ben Mendelsohn. There is something about him which has always given me the irrits. He looks smug and arrogant. But even I am willing to concede he is very good in this film, a real menacing, intimidating presence. Joel Edgerton is strong as Barry Brown. He is our initial way in to the Cody family. He is the relatable character, the one we identify with as we are finding our feet. Newcomer James Frecheville does well in his first film not to get overshadowed by his co-stars, at least not more so than the part calls for, but the real buzz is around Jackie Weaver's performance.

I'll admit, I don't actually know a lot about Jackie Weaver. She's one of those actresses who I know is quite well respected, but I don't really know on what basis. She's won AFI awards for her roles in Caddie and Stork and was in Picnic at Hanging Rock, Alvin Purple and Cosi. She has only made 13 films in an almost 40 year career, with most of her work being television based, but boy does her performance pack a punch in this one. She is present for the majority of the film, spending most of the time in the background, appearing to be simply a sweet and supportive mother to her boys, with her affection for them seeming to verge on incestuous. It is only towards the film's climax that she asserts herself as the matriarch of this crime family and we realise what a controlling and chilling character she is. It's a great performance. She has won the AFI award for Best Actress and the USA National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress, as well as getting nominations from the IF awards, the Satellite Awards (in Los Angeles) and the Washington DC Film Critics Association Awards. She is seen as an outside chance of scoring an Oscar nomination, which would make her the first Australian actor since Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge! to earn an Oscar nomination for a performance in an Australian film (although I'd be tempted to look further back to Geoffrey Rush in Shine as Moulin Rouge! had a fair bit of Hollywood weight behind it).

2010 has actually been a pretty good year for Australian film. We've had a legitimate box office success, by Australian standards that is, in Tomorrow When the War Began which took $13.5 million, supported by films from a variety of genres which have performed more modestly but have still had a recognisable presence at th box office in Bran Nue Dae, Daybreakers, Red Hill, I Love You Too, Beneath Hill 60 and The Wog Boy 2: Kings of Mykanos. In 2008 no Australian film took more than $3 million at the box office but in 2010 more than five films crossed that mark. Things are looking up. Even a film like The Loved Ones which tanked horribly still looked quite interesting, so the tanking was an unfortunate surprise rather than an assumed outcome. But no doubt Animal Kingdom was the jewel in the Australian cinema's crown in 2010. It got brilliant reviews across the board, and is building award momentum having won the a swag of AFI awards as well as the Grand Jury Prize for a world cinema drama at the Sundance Film Festival.

Animal Kingdom is the best film to come out of Australia for years. In fact it probably already warrants a mention in conversations about the best Australian film ever. It is that good. It has a sense of polish that you just don't usually see in Australian films. Usually they may have isolated elements which are really impressive and garner attention, but are let down in other places. Animal Kingdom sets and maintains a high standard from start to finish. It is an absolute cracker and puts a mountain of pressure on its debut director David Michôd to prove that it wasn't a fluke.