While its plot and thickly layered Australiana are a little clichéd, Runt, from director John Sheedy, is still a very sweet, charming family film that represents another instalment in the ‘amazing animal’ film sub-genre. The title character (played by a dog named Squid) is a stray terrier who lives in the fictitious remote Australian town of Upson Downs. Having just
Read moreThe thinly plotted but generally fun and family friendly fantasy Harold and the Purple Crayon is based on the 1955 children’s book by Crockett Johnson. The slightly meta story has the character Harold (Zachary Levi) living in the two-dimensional book world created by Crockett Johnson. There, Harold can use a magical purple crayon to create any object he needs including
Read moreAustralian drama Penguin Bloom is based on the book by Cameron Bloom about his wife Sam Bloom (Naomi Watts) an active and sporty mother of three boys who was left paralysed from the waist down after a fall from a balcony while on holiday in Thailand. Wheelchair bound, unable to continue her career as a nurse and grieving the loss
Read moreThe charming Australian film Paper Planes has many of the ingredients usually found in successful Aussie movies: a story of triumph over adversity, larrikin humour and young romance and like recent hits such as Red Dog it deserves to become a family favourite. Ed Oxenbould, who was so impressive as the conniving younger brother in the excellent TV adaptation of
Read moreMonsters University is a prequel to the highly successful 2001 film Monsters Inc. which was a clever and very endearing parody of both the corporate world and monster movies. In that film monsters entered the human world to frighten kiddies in their beds and in a fine example of renewable energy, used the children’s screams to power the monster world.
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