Movie blog

A disillusioned son’s trip home is complicated when ten years of family secrets explode over one weekend.

John Murdoch awakens alone in a strange hotel to find that he has lost his memory and is wanted for a series of brutal and bizarre murders. While trying to piece together his past, he stumbles upon a fiendish underworld controlled by a group of beings known as The Strangers who possess the ability to put people to sleep and alter the city and its inhabitants. Now Murdoch must find a way to stop them before they take control of his mind and destroy him.

A tender story from Australia highlights the realistic ups and downs of an Australian family in the year following a parent’s emergency medical procedure.

In 1929 Arthur Upfield, Australia’s premier crime writer, plotted the perfect murder for his novel The Sands of Windee. Meanwhile, one of his friends, stock-man Snowy Rowles, put the scheme into deadly effect, even before the book was published. This true story resulted in one of Australia’s most sensational murder trials of the 1930’s and catapulted Upfield’s name onto the world stage.

Something has gone terribly wrong at research station 320, a secret research facility one mile beneath the earth’s surface. All communications are gone, all means of escape destroyed and an extremely dangerous horde of rapidly mutating ancient flesh eating creatures are consuming everything in their path. Eight survivors of the outpost, two research subjects, three mercenaries, two research technicians and a medic barricade themselves inside a remote area of the facility with little food, almost no means of defense and little hope of rescue. Their one possible escape route is through thirteen levels of terror that will lead them to the surface. And one of them is not who they seem to be, but the darkness itself which has taken human form.

‘Newcastle’ is a coming-of-age/family drama/surfing movie. 17-year old Jesse lives in the shadow of his older brother Victor’s failure to become surfing’s Next Big Thing. Even when he’s in his natural habitat of magnificent surf breaks, his blue-collar future is brought home by the coal barges that constantly line his horizon. Jesse has the natural skills to surf his way out of this reality and onto the international circuit but can he overcome his equally natural ability to sabotage himself? A momentous weekend away with his mates that includes first love and tragedy leads him to discover what’s really important, and also to the performance of a lifetime.

Could you forgive those that have hurt you the most? What if your life depended on it? This is the Train that will take you there…forgive or die!

In the near future, drive-in theatres are turned into concentration camps for the undesirable and unemployed. The prisoners don’t really care to escape because they are fed and they have a place to live which is, in most cases, probably better than the outside. Crabs and his girlfriend Carmen are put into the camp and all Crabs wants to do is escape.

James Tresswick and Mark Vincent are victims of a brutal bully Gary Parker who has maltreated both boys, marking their bodies and spoiling their young lives. In their last year of high school, James and Mark find a way to stop being victims. They’re going to kill Gary; Wandering alone around an isolated forest - the suspected site of the disappearance of a local girl - 17 year old Mark strays upon an adult male filling in a trench. It’s suspicious and tantalizing. Mark returns with his friend James and Chasley Keys and they bring shovels to exhume what will probably be rotting garbage or someone’s dead pet - or so they tell themselves. They find the ghostly white body of a woman. She’s a tourist - a Canadian backpacker. The “trench” is a grave. The “adult male” is her killer. And they’ve got him by the balls. Responding to Mark’s intimations James floats an idea to seek out “the sicko”. It’ll be a bit of fun. He’s confident the guy lives in their suburb; Mark saw his car parked on a trail; Mark knows what the car looks like; Mark knows what he looks like. It can be done. Chasely goes along with it. No surprise. James has done all her thinking since they started a relationship. Mark agrees because he’s got a thing for Chasely and he’d like to appear a bit more like her boyfriend, but mostly Mark agrees because he carries a culpable secret. They find the car and the killer 24 hours later. He’s got the same house as everyone else and a kid and a wife. Jeez, it’s anticlimactic. Then, in Chasely’s bedroom, as the girl cleans up the latest damage done to Mark’s face by an animal called Gary Parker, James floats another idea; What if the killer were contacted and told the name of a guy that they’d like to see dropped in a hole of his own? He’s their secret, isn’t he? They kind of own him, don’t they? If he thinks they might let him go he’d do anything, wouldn’t he? What could go wrong? James, Mark and Chasley are about to cross a line of no return as serial killer Ian Wright lures the vulnerable teenagers into his violent world.

Newly divorced, Achilles Pumpkinseed lives alone in the house left to him by his deceased mother. Depressed and adrift, he spends his days smoking pot and watching television, usually alone but sometimes with his equally rootless friend Patroclus. Although he owns a small business, Achilles cannot face working any more than he can muster the energy to deal with the world he used to be a part of. Then one day, an unexpected visitor named Homer shows up at Achilles’ doorstep, bearing an unusual gift: an old dilapidated camping trailer painted like a child’s image of a watermelon. Insisting that delivering this improbable gift to Achilles is his “mission”, sworn to at knife-point for the young man’s hated stepfather Creon, Homer forces Achilles to accept the bizarre object. As fate would have it, the Watermelon acts as a magnet, luring all manner of oddball humanity to Achilles’ home - a flaky artist, a pushy photo-journalist, a pedantic television reporter, and even the ghost of his beloved mother. At first, Achilles rejects the intrusions, until one day he discovers a young runaway sleeping in the trailer. Rather than chase her off as he did the others, Achilles invites the vulnerable Persephone into his home… and his life. Eleventh-hour appearances from his ex-wife and deranged step-sister ensure that Achilles’ life will never be the same. Until it is. Sort of.

Searing and luscious, “Beautiful” tells the story of Daniel, a shy and introverted 14 year old boy residing in Sunshine Hills, a suburb living in the grip of fear following the rumoured abductions of three teenage girls. Daniel’s two main obsessions are photography and Suzy, a 17 year old Lolita, a dangerous combination of youth and sexuality.

Morgana, sister of Ursula, almost steals the baby Melody from her parents, Ariel and Eric. To protect Melody, she’s told never to enter the ocean, but by her 12th birthday, she’s been swimming there for years. She discovers the magic locket that was to be her christening gift, which makes her visible to Morgana. Morgana tempts her by offering her fondest wish, to turn her into a mermaid; however, to remain a mermaid, she’ll have to steal the magic trident from King Triton (who, unknown to her, is her grandfather). Meanwhile, all the sea creatures are searching for her. Along the way, she joins up with comic relief sidekicks Tip (a penguin) and Dash (a walrus). When she returns with the trident, Morgana’s evil nature is revealed, and there is a massive battle of good and evil.

Set deep inside the icy land of Antarctica, two emperor penguins have a baby named Mumble. Hatched upon his feet, he has an amazing skill for tap-dancing. However, penguins are not supposed to tap dance. Even worse, he cannot sing. All emperor penguins are supposed to have a heart song, and he has a try at it - with awful results. Torn apart from his mom, dad, and best friend, Gloria, as a teenager who still has his adolescent feathers, his ventures off into the icy landscape. He is rescued from a leopard seal from a group of Adelie penguins, whom which the leader is Ramon. They take Mumble to their home and discover that all of their fish is being taken from an unknown ‘alien’ source. They ask Lovelace, an unwise and cocky leader of the Adelies, to help them. Unfortunately, he proves no help. Leading on an incredible adventure, they try to discover the threat of their food source and survival. Using courage and bravery, Mumble begins to teach everyone begins to learn that uniqueness isn’t a burden, but is a gift to be treasured.

The shy son (Chittenden) of an aging comedienne (Blethyn) tries to find a balance between his demanding home life, his new girlfriend (Booth), and his mother’s second chance at fame.