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Men In Black 3

It’s not a sequel that needed to be made, but thanks to the charm of its leads and a tone that harks back to the wit and humour of the original, it’s a pretty enjoyable trip.

Bel Ami

The excellent female support cast saves this patchy effort, which is let down by its leading man and a flat screenplay.

The Dictator

A disappointing, often repulsive and mean-spirited mess of a film with seemingly only one real criterion on its agenda: to shock and offend.

The Woman In Black

Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.

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Toomelah (Film)

by Julian Wood | November 21, 2011 13:17 | Edited November 21, 2011 13:18

With director Ivan Sen deftly finding the poetry and humour in this harsh setting, and driven by newcomer Daniel Connors’ riveting performance, this is affecting stuff.

Australian director Ivan Sen is a poet of cinema. With his startling and haunting 2002 debut, Beneath Clouds, he showed that he could catch mood with great subtlety, and find beauty even amongst the toughest conditions. In that sense, he is part of what we may come to see as "classic" indigenous filmmaking. Sen is a pioneer and an artist, and he has helped to shape our cinematic imagination around these issues. Unfortunately, Sen's latest, Toomelah, will undoubtedly be compared to Warwick Thornton's powerful Samson And Delilah, another film focusing on a youthful love story set against a backdrop of harsh remoteness.

 

Sen briefly moved away from the barren beauty of his Moree childhood in 2009 with the daringly idiosyncratic, almost dialogue-free drama, Dreamland, which he shot in the US on a shoestring budget. He is now back on home ground with the incredibly moving Toomelah, which tells of the titular settlement, where the great dispossession of the Aboriginal people has led many of the inhabitants into a deracinated life of addiction, petty crime and welfare dependency. This is depressingly familiar territory, and Sen knows it. The focus is on young Daniel (Daniel Connors), a ten-year-old who sees little option but to try and make himself into a tiny gangster. There's something almost cute about this, but Sen undercuts our easy laughs by also showing the facts of the matter.

 

Cinematically, Sen knows where the real story is, and in Daniel Connors, he has found gold. With his poster boy good looks and his authentic touch of the little boy lost, Connors is a riveting watch. Danieka Connors, who plays Daniel's "sweetheart", Tanika, is a great counterpoint. The kids' wide eyed view of the depredations of their community, and the rough mob humour, are artfully juxtaposed, and the film as a whole is both memorable and very moving.