Category Archives: Australian crime film

Snowtown

Posted on May 29, 2011 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

Snowtown SnowtownFirst time director Justin Kurzel’s Snowtown is the latest instalment in the burgeoning genre of what can be called, for want of a better term, ‘underclass cinema’.

Animal Kingdom (2010), Samson and Delilah (2009), Boxing Day (2007), Candy (2006), The Boys (1998), and Idiot Box (1996) are all Australian examples of underclass cinema, as are US films like Winter’s Bone (2010) and Frozen River (2008), to name a few.

What they share is their almost forensic depiction of the criminal, sexual and psychological dysfunction of the underclass in Western post-industrial society. I don’t want to argue about whether these films are accurate or a stereotype. The answer is that most of the have elements of both.

Snowtown is set in the bleak housing estates of Adelaide’s northern suburbs. There’s lots of beige brick public housing, kids play with stolen supermarket trollies, and spent looking women fag on in front of poker machines.

Lest this needs further sign posting, within minutes of the film’s opening ground-down mother Elizabeth (Louise Harris) has let her boyfriend from across the road mind her three boys while she goes to Centrelink. He feeds them, then tells them to strip and photographs them. Their passive acquiesce to this abuse sets the tone for the rest of the film.… Read more

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Posted in Australian crime film, Snowtown, True crime

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Heatwave

Posted on March 14, 2011 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

For years the 1982 movie Heatwave has languished in the shadow of director Phillip Noyce’s more recent and successful films.

It’s a great pity. Not only is Heatwave a dark, well-made thriller that can legitimately stake a place among the small group of Australian films with genuine noir sensibility, it is politically sharp-edged without coming across as either preachy or didactic.

Heatwave is one of two Australian films based loosely on the real life disappearance in 1975 of Juanita Nielson, a prominent local activist against mass development in the colourful vice quarter of inner Sydney known as Kings Cross. The other, Donald Crombie’s The Killing of Angel of Street, appeared the previous year. So close together were the two films that at one point they were reportedly both shooting at the different ends of the same inner Sydney street.

Heatwave takes place in the lead-up to Christmas and, as the title suggests, Sydney is sweltering after successive days of high temperatures. A group of Kings Cross residents are fighting attempts to demolish their houses to make way for a giant development named Eden, financed by businessman Peter Houseman (Chris Haywood).

For three years, young firebrand Kate Dean (Judy Davis) and Mary Ford, editor of the community newspaper, have led local opposition to Eden.… Read more

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Posted in Australian crime film, Australian noir, Crime film, Film Noir

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Snowtown: the first review

Posted on March 10, 2011 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

Since my post earlier this year on Snowtown, the much anticipated cinematic take on Australia’s worst serial killing spree, I’ve been on the look-out for the first reviews. Well, I’ve found one.

Snowtown premiered at the Adelaide Film Festival in late February. You can read the review, from the website Cut Print Review, here.

The review, by Anders Wotzke, is not particularly positive. Wotzke writes that “the unrelentingly grisly first-time feature from Australian director Justin Kurzel that struggles to build an emotional rapport with its audience”.

His take corresponds with what I’ve heard from others who attended the Adelaide Festival, that Snowtown tries but fails to emulate the look and feel of the 1998 Australian film, The Boys.

Regardless, I expect I’ll be heading to the cinema to check out Snowtown for myself, if for no other reason than to support a crime film from a first time Australian director.

Snowtown is in cinemas nationally in May.… Read more

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Snowtown

Posted on January 24, 2011 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

2010 was a great year for Australian crime film. In addition to the excellent Animal Kingdom, last year saw the release of the neo-noir Western,  Red Hill, and the gritty revenge flick, The Horseman.

While one can argue the merits and otherwise of aspects of these films, all three were highly original, energetic attempts to put an Australian face on some of key sub-genres of crime film.

Interestingly, all three were also made by first time directors.

This trend appears set to continue in 2011 with the yet to be released Snowtown, first time director Justin Kurzel’s take on one of Australia’s worst serial killing sprees, the ‘Snowtown murders’.

For those who need to be brought up to speed, the Snowtown murders, also known as the ‘bodies in the barrels murders’, involved the killing of 12 people between August 1992 and May 1999. The crimes were discovered when the remains of  8 of the victims were found in barrels of acid in a disused bank building in Snowtown, South Australia, a small economically depressed area 145 kilometres north of Adelaide.

Four people were eventually arrested for the murders. The ringleader, John Bunting, was a white trash suburban psychopath with neo-Nazi leanings who hated gays, pedophiles, very fat people and drug users.… Read more

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Animal Kingdom

Posted on December 19, 2010 by Andrew Nette| 7 Comments

There’ll come a day when the Australian film and television industry will have to create a special award for Melbourne’s crime families in recognition of their services in providing so much rich material for screenwriters. Present to accept the award will be whatever members of the Pettingill family who are not dead or incarcerated.

For those readers not familiar with the name, the Pettingill family were Melbourne’s most notorious crime family. They were involved in drug dealing, murder and armed robbery. Two of the sons stood trial in 1998 for the shooting of a couple of Victorian police officers. They were acquitted but are still widely suspected of committing the killings.

Their exploits have also formed the basis for some of the country’s best crime television, including the ABC series Janus and Phoenix, and more recently the film, Animal Kingdom.

Animal Kingdom is the best known of the three Australian crime films released in 2010. Unusually for an Australian film, not only has it received international critical acclaim (including a Golden Globes nomination for actress Jacki Weaver),  it was a success locally.

Most interestingly, Animal Kingdom, along with Red Hill and The Horseman, the two other local crime releases in 2010, were all made by first time film directors, a big improvement on the lackluster Australian crime cinema scene in 2009.… Read more

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Posted in Australian crime film, Joel Edgerton

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