Australia

With less than a week to go before our free movie tickets expired, we
had to see a movie quick. Wifey was keen to see "Australia", so off we
headed to the Parade to check it out. Here's my thoughts.

"Australia" is a movie about Australia and the Australians that live
there. It is set in Australia in the midst of WW2 (probably my
favourite war). The movie focuses on the story of Lady Ashley (Nicole
Kidman, in her best role since "Days of Thunder"), a British lady who
has come to Australia to see what's going on with her husband's land.
She arrives to discover her husband is dead. This devastates her but
also annoyingly means she's now gotta move over 1000 cattle. She
enlists the help of "The Drover" (Hugh Jackman, in perhaps his best
work since he played the voice of "Roddy" in "Flushed Away") to help
with this mammoth task. This begins a huge task of moving the cattle
and then having to take on and run the station. Lady Ashley soon forms
some strong relationships, most notably with The Drover and little
Nullah and when she discovers mysterious circumstances surrounding her
ex-husband's death, against all odds, Lady Ashley takes on the land and
the powerful Carney family who threaten her cattle business existence.
If that's not hard enough then the Japanese invade Darwin and threaten
the lives of all those she loves. Will Lady Ashley again overcome the
odds? See it to find out.

An OK movie, but loses points for it's ridiculous length and the amount
of CGI in a movie that's supposed to showcase the beauty of this big
brown land. The movie begins with a stunning sunset, but after this
there isn't much breathtaking scenery, which is stupid seeing as the
movie is also a little bit of a tourism showcase. The only tourists
this movie would likely capture are cattle rustlers or people who like
dirt. Kidman was OK, Jackman not totally believable as a drover (this
is the same guy who played Peter Allan on stage) but the real star was
David Wenham who was awesome and should have got more screen time.