MACHETE MAIDENS UNLEASHED! - Filipino genre films doc - Trailer

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1623757/

From Mark Hartley, director of "Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!" comes this new documentary about Filipino genre cinema. For all the lovers of Weng Weng, there is a trailer on Facebook here.

And to remeber why we love Filipino movies, a Weng Weng action tribute video:

Animal Kingdom - Crime thriller from Oz - Trailer

Looks good....

Bad Boy Bubby - Rolf de Heer - Australia - (1993)

 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106341/

Plot by Imdb: "Bubby's buxom mother tricked him to stay locked at home for thirty years, during which she mounts and abuses him. Buddy ends up in the streets groping random women until finding a nurse who is even more buxom than his late mother." 

As usual with Rolf de Heer ("Incident at Raven's Gate"), everything looks amazing in this picture. But, on top of that, the script is also extremely rich and enjoyable. Based on the classic story of the "special" man that make others realized themselves or create amazing things, thanks to his lack of "formatting", this one is cruel enough and bleak enough to be enjoyable, even by the more cynical of us. Some parts are clearly comical and his "career" as a post-modern singer is hilarious and touching. Religion has a central part of the movie as Bubby has to deal with his own special mysticism. His "pure" ways of relating to the others are never an excuse to watch the world in a naive way, as many abuses and sordid aspects of reality are depicted. Both shocking at time, amusing, bitter or simply funny, "Bad Boy Bubby"  reach easily a form of realistic poetry, that we don't see often.  Another little gem from Rolf de Heer, maybe his most well known movie outside of Oz.

Trailer:

Ghost of the Civil Dead - John Hillcoat - Australia - (1988)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095217/

Plot from Imdb: "The inmates and guards of a modern, clean and efficient maximum security wing are slowly and increasingly brutalised until they erupt in violence." 

Note: "In Roman law, a person convicted of a crime where the punishment included loss of their legal rights as a person was civiliter mortuus, a person without civil rights, a civil dead." (Wikipedia)

John Hillcoat ("The Proposition", "The Road") first direction is a very impressive one. Having collaborated with Nick Cave (as they did for "The proposition"), they created a bleak vision of a high security unit, doom to collapse from the inner violence of the industrial repression system that governs the place.

Extremely claustrophobic, strangely realistic (as far as we can tell), I found it highly political. From a cold point of view, the movie recreates perfectly the tension between the groups inside the prison. Even the guards seems prisoners of a dehumanized system. Highly brutal, even in the symbolic sense, this ozzie version of "OZ" (the prison tv series), is gonna hurt you and put you in front of a paradoxical question:  is Society creating more violence by trying to suppress it ?

Excellent first movie from Hillcoat, his sober but efficient style goes perfectly well with the macabre music by Nick Cave (who has a small role as a crazy inmate) and creates a real oppressive atmosphere that contaminates you. 

A impressive Ozzie gem. 

 Trailer (with french subtitles, don't ask me why):

Van Diemen's Land - Jonathan auf der Heide - Australia - (2009)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1361843/

Plot from Imdb: "The true story of Alexander Pearce, Australia's most notorious convict. In 1822, Pearce and seven fellow convicts escaped from Macquarie Harbour, a place of ultra banishment and punishment, only to find a world less forgiving.. the Australian wilderness. Abandon all hope you who enter."

Very well made and very impressive movie about this true cannibalism story. The  framing and the amazing (and actual) locations made the viewing a real trip. Once again, Australia (Tasmania in this case) is part of the cast, the location is like a ghost character. But the big problem is its ultra slow pace, that quiet fits the reality of starvation but deserves the narration. As such, it is NOT a cannibal movie, it's much more a movie about cannibalism...The limits of human resistance and the will to survive are well portrayed. It's also very realistic: the convicts speaks different languages, Gaelic mostly, from Scotland & Ireland,. and most of them have no clue why there are here. Incredibly, they were sent to one of the worst prison on earth for futile motives and from that moment on, their main goal was just to survive one more day. The cast is solid. Funny thing, one year before this movie, the director and the main character playing Alexander Pearce did a movie called "Hell's Gate" about the exact same story: some sort of rehearsal ? A slow pace story, that will leave you exhausted and wondering just how far humans are willing to go only to survive.

Trailer:

Long Weekend - Colin Eggleston - Australia - 1978

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079482/

Plot from imdb: "When a suburban couple go camping for the weekend at a remote beach, they discover that nature isn't in an accommodating mood."

From a great prolific scriptwriter Everett De Roche ("Patrick", "Harlequin", "Road games," "Razorback", "Link", "Storm Warning"...) and director Colin Eggleston at his best, comes this incredibly atmospheric Ozzie flick. For starters, Australia's nature doesn't need supernatural element to be scary, as far as the average city-dweller is concerned. Australia's nature is "supernatural". And that's the greatest thing about it, the amazing feeling you get from being really "in the wild". And we're no match to it. Something we tend to forget too easely. The all movie is really well shot and framed, all the surreal elements are implied by the camera positions and the sounds of nature. At the end of the day, the destructive actions of the couple toward nature are just a reflection of their tendency to autodestruction. And naturally, they wake up too late. Incredibly modern ecologic horror movie, another little gem from Oz.

 

Trailer: