Seventies Cinema Revival: Walkabout (1971)

by Tony Dayoub

As I tweeted earlier this week (you may follow me on Twitter here, if you wish), Walkabout is very difficult for me to approach critically because of the personal significance it holds for me. This is the first film I remember ever seeing, a strange one to be sure. With its sexual subtext and copious nudity, it is not a film I would expect my parents would have exposed me to before, say, the typical Walt Disney cartoon. Yet, it was a different time, and my parents were liberal for even that era, the mid-seventies. How else could I explain the clear memory of Jenny Agutter's nude swim in an edenic oasis located somewhere in the Australian outback?

Movie Review: Australia - Spectacle for Those in Love with the Artifice of Cinema

by Tony Dayoub



Australia is a throwback to the WWII-era romantic melodramas from the hyperimaginative, and just plain hyper, Baz Luhrmann (Romeo + Juliet). It is clear that for the native Aussie, it is a labor of love. The movie is the most restrained effort in a series of progressively loopier films that culminated in the love-it-or-hate-it musical, Moulin Rouge! (2001). While still employing some of his trademark touches of magical realism, Luhrmann manages to incorporate it into the story organically. And much of the movie's charm lies in its casting of some beloved Aussie actors, both old and new.