Category Archive: Comedy Film
The Dressmaker
(Directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse) (2015) What Australian film with an eccentric and not entirely lovable female lead goes from grim merriment undercut by angst, to misery heightened by ruthless self-regard and then back again? If you said Muriel’s Wedding, you’d be right. If you said The Dressmaker you’d also be right. The Dressmaker takes us from a jolly football game and a dance, to adultery, tendon-cutting, drowning, stroke and arson. It begins with Myrtle “Tilly” Dunnage (Kate Winslet) returning to the town from which she was ostracised, 25 years before, having been suspected of murdering a school-mate. This being a Australian…
Continue Reading →Wiener Dog
(Directed by Todd Solondz) (2015) A film of many dog day afternoons, with a docile, uncomplaining dachshund the trope for hope and the lifting of spirits, this beautifully shot but slurpily-cadenced film is a poignant dance through a series of sad-funny lives and circumstances. From his first rejection (taken in the back of a ute from a farm to the shopping mart featuring a Chuck E Cheese, a 99c Store, an Armed Forces Career Center, ‘My Urgent Care Walk-in Medical’, ‘Vitamin World’, ‘Shoes etc’, AT&T, Liquor and, relevantly, a “Shake A Paw”), wiener dog is shuttled around. First there is a messy, disastrous stay…
Continue Reading →Eating Raoul
Paul Bartel (born 6 August, 1938) was a classic example of an alternative film director (think Ed Wood), but in his case, with real talent. His time to shine was in Eating Raoul (1982), which he also co-wrote and directed, as Paul Bland, who with wife Mary (Mary Woronov), happen upon a scheme to lure ‘swingers’ to their apartment and dispatch them with a trusty saucepan (not one they will use when they open the gourmet restaurant it is helping to finance – as Mary justly observes, “I’m a bit squeamish about cooking with the one we use to kill people.”)…
Continue Reading →Glenne Headly
Glenne Headley (March 13, 1955 – June 8, 2017) did not appear in many distinguished films – she had a small role in The Purple Rose of Cairo – but she was delightful as allegedly dopey American Soap Queen, Janet Colgate in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988). And she kept the money. Was that wrong? Farewell, Glenne.
Continue Reading →The Castle
(Dir. Rob Sitch) (1997) Darryl Kerrigan (Michael Caton) has lived with his family at 3 Highview Crescent Cooloroo from time immemorial (15 years). It’s so handy being next to the airport, in case they ever have to fly anywhere. So when the Barlow Group seeks to compulsorily acquire all homes in the street for an airport expansion, Daryl takes them on. This delightful Australian comedy is not perfect (i.e., it’s not Love Serenade) and is rough-and-ready at times, but it works due to a winning cast and a robustly funny script. Some of our favourite moments: The hilariously awful submission to…
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