The best movies made in the Top End to stream right now

To mark the release of Top End Wedding, here are five more streaming plays where the mighty Northern Territory is seen to best effect.

To mark the release of Top End Wedding, here are five more streaming plays where the mighty Northern Territory is seen to best effect.

READ MORE:

TOP END WEDDING BOTTOMS OUT EARLY

LONG SHOT SNATCHES LASTING LAUGHS

AVENGERS: ENDGAME EVERYTHING YOU HOPED FOR

Guy Pearce in Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert.

THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT (1994)

Foxtel Now

****

They don’t make cross-dressing road movies like this anymore. Come to think of it, they never, ever did. This underrated, over-the-top comic gem is all about the sniping verbal interplay between three very different Sydney drag queens. The incongruous outback setting consummately seals a crowd-pleasing deal. Stars Guy Pearce, Hugo Weaving, Terence Stamp.

David Gulpilil with Gary Sweet, Damon Gameau and Grant Page in The Tracker

THE TRACKER (2002)

Amazon, Google, iTunes

****

Riveting thriller in which a seasoned indigenous tracker (David Gulpilil) is leading three whitefellas on horseback deep into the outback. They are looking for a black man alleged to have slain a white woman. The search party is led by a veteran police enforcer (Gary Sweet), who busies himself by bullying a rookie constable (Damon Gameau). Tough stuff all the way through.

Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson in Samson and Delilah.

SAMSON & DELILAH (2009)

Stan

*****

The title characters are Aboriginal teens (played to perfection by Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson) from a tiny outback community who fall in love and are forced to flee to Alice Springs. Though there is virtually no dialogue spoken, writer-director Warwick Thornton captures something indescribable here that gently provokes intense curiosity, worry, and above all else, involvement.

Nicole Kidman with Hugh Jackman in Baz Luhrmann’s Australia.

AUSTRALIA (2008)

Foxtel Now, Amazon

***

This typically scattershot affair from director Baz Luhrmann will continue to stand as the most expensive movie ever made in the NT. While this is a sweeping romantic epic, it is also a screwball comedy, an outback western and a military action flick. Nicole Kidman plays a prissy aristocrat who falls for Jackman’s maverick drover during a marathon cattle drive to Darwin in the late 1930s.

Michael Caton in Last Cab to Darwin.

LAST CAB TO DARWIN (2015)

Google, iTunes

***1/2

There is no better reason to go and get yourself a life than learning you are about to die. That is the sincere takeaway from a tender tale of a bush taxi driver facing his own demise. Michael Caton delivers a flawless portrayal of Rex, a Broken Hill cabbie whose losing battle with cancer sends him on a one-way trip to Darwin. A genuinely affecting tale with a refreshing no-bulldust candour.