Bad Boy Bubby

1993 cringe-fest

Rating: 15/20

Plot: The titular bad boy lives alone with his portly mother and doesn't leave their humble apartment since the air outside is poisonous and all. He spends his time playing with his kitty and sitting absolutely still until his biological father visits one day. Consequences of that visit force Bubby outside where he makes all kinds of new friends and embarks on a career in the arts.

Challenging, oft-difficult movie featuring incest, fat naked people, cat suffocation, and Bad Boy Bubby's lil bubby--all in the first fifteen minutes. Bubby won't exactly capture your hearts, but parts of his story will make you queasy in your stomach if you're into that sort of thing. I have to give credit for Nicholas Hope's performance of the character. Mentally challenged characters are difficult to pull off, especially when an actor is delicately maneuvering back and forth between tragedy and comedy with the character, and Hope does it very well. This movie is very funny, very very darkly funny, and I always appreciate it when a filmmaker can make me laugh and disturb me at the same time. Bubby's world can't possibly be real, more of an apocalyptic wasteland or the ghost of a third world country than anywhere in wherever the hell this is supposed to take place. Australia? It's a world bathed in gray, drab and dumpy, and there are definitely shots in this movie where it actually does look like the air is poisonous. Bad Boy Bubby doesn't have much depth although I do like the possible satiric jab at rock 'n' roll, but it's a unique and, if you're a little twisted, entertaining character study.

Note: Jen watched a big chunk of this one and really seemed to like it. She missed the aforementioned cat suffocation, incest, naked fat woman, and lil bubby, however.

"Breaker" Morant

1980 war movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: During the Boer War, a war that nobody's even heard of, three Australians are put on trial for killing Boer prisoners-of-war and a missionary.

"Breaker" Morant is a movie that just seems different, and I think I finally figured out why. As I watched, the pacing seemed off. After finishing, however, I realized what is different about the pacing--there's nothing wasted here. Everything the director shows us contributes to either the flashback sequences or the courtroom stuff. Most films like this would take a different approach, I think, with superfluous character development or extraneous scenes designed to pull at our guts, but this just lays out the facts, revealing them incrementally in the flashbacks or the courtroom revelations. Of course, the way the story unfolds is a little different too. There's nothing that really dazzles in this. The performances are great from top to bottom, but none of the actors draw attention to themselves and give any of those obvious award-winning performances. Edward Woodward (The Wicker Man) is great as the title character, but Bryan Brown and Lewis Fitzgerald are also good as the other two lieutenants on trial. And Chris Haywood, providing some lighter moments as Corporal Sharp, was also really good. The war scenes are exciting, but the court room scenes are even more powerful. I really liked the flashback structure, and knowing nothing about the true story this is based on, I was surprised by how wrong I was about what actually happened or how things were going to turn out. This raises interesting questions about war, specifically the idea of "war crimes," and justice, and it's really a nice little gem of a movie.

Note: I may or may not have given this movie a bonus point for a bawdy limerick. Knowing me, I probably did since "bawdy limerick" is my favorite literary genre.

This Cory recommendation wasn't one I looked forward to watching or really expected to like. I guess I should trust him a little more.

The Road Warrior

1981 apocalyptic western

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Mad Max, following a new haircut, has gas.

Here I am enjoying Mad Max II:

The Proposition

2005 cowboy movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: A portly English guy captures half of the Burns brothers, a gang that has been terrorizing a community somewhere in Australia. That English gentleman, Captain Stanley, is going to civilize this land if it kills him! Aborigines, outlaws, and lawmen shoot at each other in hell. Nick Cave moans and fondles himself as characters show off his big big words. Stanley gives the best looking of the brothers the proposition the film is named after--he has until Christmas to capture his other two brothers or his younger brother will be hanged by the neck until dead in a festive celebration that all good Christians would surely enjoy. Charlie goes off on his horse to find the brother.

This isn't nearly as good as the films it imitates although it's entertaining, savagely violent, and bleak enough to be a serviceable western. The characters lacked character, and the plot wandered a little too pointlessly. I did appreciate the stark landscape and sets filmed beautifully and the violent effects were very well done, especially the gunfight at the very beginning and the scene with a spear going through a guy seconds before another guy gets half his head blown off. Nick Cave's screenplay is heavy stuff, but his only memorable line is probably the very last one of the movie. The score (Cave along with one of the Dirty Three) is silly. If there was one thing this movie needed a little more of, it's people urinating.

I urinated twice while watching The Proposition:

Danny Deckchair

2003 romantic comedy

Rating: 7/20

Plot: While hosting a barbie, scruffy Danny, seemingly bored with life and recently cuckolded, drifts away in a lawnchair with helium balloons tied to it. He lands in what must be the imbecile capital of Australia as the townspeople can't put two and two together to figure out that he's the missing guy they keep mentioning on the television. He falls in annoyingly unbelievable love with a woman who has almost no personality at all and inspires the imbeciles. Will Danny reveal his true identity to his new friends? Will his wife and old friends ever see him again? Will anybody watching the movie even care?

Poorly written, predictable, greasy, schmaltzy and insipid. There's an idea in this somewhere, but nothing about this was executed properly. It attempts quirk and heart and maybe even magical realism, but comes across as nothing more than stupid cheese. I'm actually a little angry at Australia after viewing this one, and all those people who would like this and use a word like "delightful" or "charming" to describe it should be urinated upon. Or they should be forced to watch City Lights. Or, better yet, they should be forced to watch City Lights while being urinated upon. It's a romantic comedy with the plastic romance you can only find in bad movies and with not one funny moment to be found.

Here I am wishing that I wasn't watching Danny Deckchair: