Australian movies coming in 2016 — Can we back up after our biggest box office year ever?
AFTER a record-breaking 2015, is Australian film on track for another big year at the box office? Here’s a first look at the homegrown movies of 2016.
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LAST year was the best ever for Australian movies at the box office — big hits including Mad Max: Fury Road, The Dressmaker, The Water Diviner and Paper Planes enticing local audiences back to cinemas to experience local stories and delivering a record gross of more than $88 million.
That’s a lot for the 2016 crop of Aussie releases to live up to.
Jeremy Sims, director of another 2015 hit, Last Cab to Darwin, reckons making a good Aussie film is “tough”. Making a great one, he adds, is “almost impossible”.
Yet many of our most well-known filmmakers have put their hand up to fight the good fight again in 2016 — along with a diverse crop of new talent.
“When we do it well,” says Sims, “Australians absolutely fall in love with Australian films, and hold them close to their hearts for life. That’s us saying, ‘Ah, that’s who we are!’ It is hard to quantify what that is worth to the nation, but I reckon it’s worth persevering with us, biased though I am.”
Here are the movies vying for goodness and greatness at the local box office in the year to come:
A FEW LESS MEN
When: Late 2016
Stars: Xavier Samuel, Kris Marshall, Kevin Bishop
Pedigree: A sequel to much-underrated 2012 comedy hit A Few Best Men, which grossed $5.3m. Brit Dean Craig (Death at a Funeral) again wrote the script, while Mark Lamprell (Goddess) directs.
Story: In A Few Best Men, a Brit and his three terrible groomsmen caused chaos at a Down Under wedding. This time, it’s the transporting of one groomsman’s coffin across the Outback that goes horribly wrong. Samuel, Marshall and Bishop all reprise their roles.
Watch for: The first time around, the Men managed to corrupt one of our lovely national icons — getting Olivia Newton-John to snort lines of (fake!) cocaine. No word yet what they’ve got in store for Deborah Mailman, but we’re pretty sure she can handle herself.
ALI’S WEDDING
When: Will premiere at an Adelaide Film Festival event in October, then release nationally
Stars: Don Hany, Osamah Sami, Ryan Corr, Helana Sawires
Pedigree: While working on TV movie Saved back in 2009, young writer and actor Osamah Sami — an Iranian immigrant to Australia — told director Tony Ayres the story of how his first marriage lasted less than two hours. Ayres thought it sounded like a romantic comedy. Ali’s Wedding was born. Sami co-wrote the script with Andrew Knight (The Water Diviner).
Story: Think the feel-good Aussie Muslim answer to My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Ali (Sami) is the son of a well-respected cleric (Hany), who migrated to suburban Australia from Iraq. In trying to live up to his father’s high expectations, Ali forges exam results and agrees to marry a girl he doesn’t love. Chaos ensues.
Watch for: Don Hany taking on the elder statesman role. Hany, whose father is Iraqi, hesitated before taking the part, but couldn’t resist the “energetic” script. He believes it takes familiar themes (romance, father-son) and makes them “truly original — in the way Muriel’s Wedding was, or Priscilla was, or even Romper Stomper was”.
A MONTH OF SUNDAYS
When: April 28
Stars: Anthony LaPaglia, John Clarke, Julia Blake, Justine Clarke
Pedigree: Director Matthew Saville’s films so far — Noise and Felony — have trended bleak. But his work on Josh Thomas’s TV series Please Like Me shows a lighter touch. A Month of Sundays appears to fall in a quirky groove somewhere between the two. Adelaide boy made good overseas, Anthony LaPaglia, came home to make the film.
Story: Frank (LaPaglia) is a divorced father and real estate agent who can’t even sell a house in a property boom. He’s barely holding it together, and then he gets a call from his mother. Who has been dead for a year.
Watch for: John Clarke stealing every scene he’s in.
BACKTRACK
When: Midyear
Stars: Adrien Brody, Sam Neill, Bruce Spence
Pedigree: The screenwriter of The Book Thief and The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Michael Petroni, steps behind the camera for a supernatural thriller with shades of The Sixth Sense.
Story: US Oscar winner Adrien Brody plays Peter Bower, a psychologist whose life is thrown into turmoil when he discovers his patients are ghosts, all of whom seem to have died within a day of each other. Is he going mad or could there be a link to a secret in his own past?
Watch for: Can Brody outdo Meryl Streep in the Australian accent stakes? Early signs are he’s done a pretty bonzer job.
THE DAUGHTER
When: March 17
Stars: Geoffrey Rush, Anna Torv, Miranda Otto, Sam Neill
Pedigree: Having earned a reputation as the “enfant terrible” of Australian theatre, playwright/actor/director Simon Stone turns his hand to film with a radical reinterpretation of the Henrik Ibsen play The Wild Duck.
Story: Family skeletons fall out of the cupboard when an estranged son (US actor Paul Schneider) returns to his smalltown home for his father’s (Rush) wedding to a much younger woman.
Watch for: Odessa Young, who also plays the titular role in new release Looking For Grace, had her performance in The Daughter singled out by US industry bible Variety: “Young’s sexually precocious ... Hedvig with her lightly dyed purple hair, open smile and love of a duck crippled by a blast from (a) shotgun ... leaves the greatest impression.”
DOWN UNDER
When: August 4
Stars: Lincoln Younes, Rahel Romahn, Damon Herriman, Josh McConville, David Field
Pedigree: Writer-director (and actor) Abe Forsythe knows a thing or two about infamous Aussie tales, having played Ned Kelly for comedy in his first feature, 2003’s Ned. Here, his black comedy was inspired by the Cronulla Riots.
Story: Twenty-four hours after the riots, two carloads of hotheads from opposing sides of the fence run into each other. The film’s official tag calls it a story “of ignorance, fear and kebab cravings”. Forsythe told industry magazine IF that Down Under “doesn’t let the audience off lightly” and that the humour of his movie “turns on how absurd the situations were and how they spiralled out of control”.
Watch for: Revheads will dig an epic sequence of “doughies”, while more discerning cineastes will enjoy the ironic song choices peppering Down Under’s soundtrack. Also keep an eye on Christopher Bunton in his film debut — the young first-timer is also a gymnast who won gold at the Shanghai 2007 and Athens 2011 Special Olympics.
GODS OF EGYPT
When: February 25
Stars: Gerard Butler, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Geoffrey Rush, Rufus Sewell, Abbey Lee
Pedigree: First film in seven years from director Alex Proyas, dark purveyor of The Crow, Dark City and I, Robot. Despite having gone some years without a hit, Proyas enticed an impressive international and local cast to Sydney for the fantasy.
Story: With darkness and chaos ruling ancient Egypt, a young thief (Brenton Thwaites) joins with the God of the Sky (Game of Thrones’ Coster-Waldau) to take back the throne. Unfortunately the initial reaction to Gods of Egypt’s trailer wasn’t good — the filmmakers quickly accused of “whitewashing” an African-set tale. One US film site called the cast “insultingly white”. Proyas and the studio behind the film, Lionsgate, apologised for the lack of diversity and promised to do better in future.
Watch for: Chadwick Boseman, one of the few black actors in the cast, has a super two years ahead — he’ll make his debut as Marvel superhero Black Panther in this year’s Captain America: Civil War, then headline his own Marvel movie in 2018.
GOLDSTONE
When: Second half of 2016
Stars: Aaron Pedersen, Alex Russell, Jacki Weaver, David Gulpilil, David Wenham
Pedigree:A sequel to 2013’s great Mystery Road, writer-director Ivan Sen’s slow-burn thriller about an indigenous cop trying to solve a murder in an Outback town tense with unspoken aggression. Once again Sen has attracted a top-flight Aussie cast.
Story: Detective Jay Swan (Pedersen) is sent to a frontier town named Goldstone on a missing person’s inquiry. What seemed like a throwaway case becomes a web of corruption.
Watch for: Pedersen, who was stoic perfection in Mystery Road, butting heads with a young cop played by Russell.
JASPER JONES
When: Late 2016
Stars: Levi Miller, Aaron McGrath, Toni Collette, Hugo Weaving, Angourie Rice
Pedigree: If Australian audiences take the movie adaptation of Craig Silvey’s 2009 novel to their hearts the way they did the award-winning book, we could be looking at something huge here. Though aimed at young adults, the coming of age story crossed over to grown-up readers in a big way. Rachel Perkins (Bran Nue Dae) directs.
Story: Late at night, there’s a knock on teenager Charlie’s door. It’s local outcast Jasper Jones (McGrath), asking for Charlie’s help. Though scared, Charlie (Miller) plucks up the courage to join the town troublemaker on his mysterious adventure. The setting of the story, a WA mining town, has been described as “quintessentially Australian”.
Watch for: An inclusiveness and diversity reflective of our modern nation — from the mixed-race Jasper to Charlie’s Vietnamese best friend.
LION
When: Late 2016
Stars: Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman, Rooney Mara, David Wenham
Pedigree:Lion couldn’t have much more going for it — not only is the movie based on Saroo Brierley’s best-selling memoir A Long Way Home, it comes to us from the Oscar-winning producers behind The King’s Speech and is directed by Garth Davis, who shared duties with Jane Campion on acclaimed miniseries Top of the Lake.
Story: A young Indian boy is separated from his family and winds up living on the streets of Calcutta. Adopted by an Australian couple, he grows up in Tasmania. Years later, he attempts to find his mother with the help of Google Earth. Wenham — who with Kidman plays parent to Patel’s Saroo — reckons the real-life tale, shot in India and Australia, is “going to be extraordinary. Everyone brought their A game”.
Watch for: Indian star Tannishtha Chatterjee, best known for British drama Brick Lane. While we lured her out to Australia to snuggle up to Brett Lee in last year’s rom-com UnIndian, her scenes in Lion take place back home in India.
RED DOG: TRUE BLUE
When: Boxing Day
Stars: Levi Miller, Jason Isaacs, Bryan Brown, John Jarratt
Pedigree: When Red Dog went barked up a bonanza at the box office back in 2011 — becoming the 10th-highest-grossing Australian movie of all time — a sequel was just a matter of when, not if. The team that steered the original, director Kriv Stenders and writer Daniel Taplitz, were quickly back on board.
Story: If Batman can get an origins movie, Red Dog can too. True Blue goes back to the early events that led to his discovery on the road to Dampier. British actor Jason Isaacs (Harry Potter) replaces Josh Lucas as the international import.
Watch for: Brisbane kid Levi Miller. The 13-year-old was plucked out of practically nowhere to play Peter Pan alongside Hugh Jackman in last year’s Pan. While that film received a tepid reaction both critically and at the box office, its young star’s rise was already assured — he’s not only the headline human here, but also leads Jasper Jones.
SHERPA
When: March 24
Stars: Nepalese Sherpas, Western Everest expeditioners, Norbu Tenzing — son of Tenzing Norgay
Pedigree: BAFTA and AACTA nominated documentary steered by the producer of Touching the Void and 127 Hours — both classics of the real-life adventure/suspense genre.
Story: Australian director Jennifer Peedom took a crew to Mt Everest during the 2014 climbing season, planning to document the declining relationship between climbers and Sherpas half a century after Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay summitted together. Instead, her cameras captured the biggest tragedy in the mountain’s history. Yes, the scenery and shots are stunning, but it’s the story that will leave you breathless.
Watch for: How unaware — or just plain clueless — some of the climbers are of the Sherpas’ skills and the risks they take so that others may conquer the mountain.
SPIN OUT
When: September 15
Stars: Xavier Samuel, Morgan Griffin, Travis Jeffery, Melissa Bergland, Lincoln Lewis
Pedigree: Tim Ferguson of Doug Anthony All Stars fame co-wrote Spin Out and makes his directing debut alongside comedy veteran Marc Gracie (Full Frontal, Jimeoin).
Story: Lucy and Billy love driving utes and they probably love each other, too, but neither will admit it. Everything spills out over one messy, muddy night at a country B&S Ball and ute muster. Ferguson promises the humour isn’t “too ocker”, but that there will be plenty of “knockabout” laughs. His co-writer Edwina Exton has a theory all the men in the film are “works in progress — the females need to get under their hoods and set ’em straight”.
Watch for: Brooke McClymont, of superstar country group The McClymonts, will make her acting debut playing a girl who chooses the wrong time to tell her boyfriend a big secret. She’ll also sing a song she wrote for the film.
WIDE OPEN SKY
When: March 24
Stars: Music teacher Michelle Leonard and kids from outback NSW
Pedigree: Winner of Best Documentary at the 2015 Sydney Film Festival, Wide Open Sky is directed by Lisa Nicol, whose work is often music-focused.
Story:In a disadvantaged part of the country where sport rules over all else, a dedicated music teacher encourages a group of children to sing in a choir. “It’s not just a choir,” says Leonard. “Part of what we’re doing here is saying, life is full of possibility ... Go. Take it.”
Watch for: The joy on the kids’ faces as they discover something they’re good at.
Originally published as Australian movies coming in 2016 — Can we back up after our biggest box office year ever?
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