Beneath Clouds is a moving tale from rural Australia

AMONG Australia's most gifted filmmaking talents is Ivan Sen, whose new film noir Mystery Road is touring national film festivals.

Dannielle Hall and Damian Pitt in Beneath Clouds.

AMONG Australia's most gifted filmmaking talents is Ivan Sen, whose new film noir Mystery Road is touring national film festivals before an October release.

Those curious to see what the buzz is about would do well to catch Sen's debut feature, the 2001 road movie Beneath Clouds (Sunday, 10pm, NITV). In it, a light-skinned Aboriginal girl and an angry young indigenous criminal team up on a road trip to Sydney to visit the latter's dying mother. As in his newer film, Sen has an instinctual feel for rural Australia and an authoritative storytelling voice. This is a contemplative film, and a moving one.

As comfortable in straight drama as in genre work, Denzel Washington jumps headfirst into the latter as the loner hero of The Book of Eli (Monday, 9.30pm, Go!). Directed by the Hughes brothers (Albert and Allen), the 2010 post-apocalyptic thriller follows Washington's Eli as he treks across the ravaged US to deliver a mysterious tome. An atmospheric film with a religious theme rare in contemporary cinema.

Another noteworthy genre foray, this time by an actor from a previous generation, British director John Schlesinger's 1976 American thriller Marathon Man (Sunday, 12.13am, ABC1) stars Dustin Hoffman as a history student and Laurence Olivier as the Nazi war criminal whose arrival in New York turns the younger man's life upside down. This is the film in which Olivier's sadistic character drills a hole in Hoffman's tooth as he asks him, "Is it safe?" over and over again, which undoubtedly imperiled the livelihood of many a dentist. Well-crafted and propulsive.

By the mid-1990s, George Clooney was looking to segue to a film career from his high-profile role on television's ER. Early starring roles were hit-and-miss. His third film, The Peacemaker (Sunday, 8.30pm, One), is a solid action thriller in which his no-nonsense special forces agent, partnered with nuclear expert Nicole Kidman, runs around Europe after some shady guys who have stolen a live warhead. Slovakia and its picturesque capital, Bratislava, fill in capably for the entire continent. The climactic chase scene is imaginatively staged by TV director Mimi Leder.

One of the better B-movies of the 50s is director and co-writer Joseph Green's The Brain that Wouldn't Die (Saturday, 1am, TVS), in which a mad scientist salvages his fiancee's head after a car accident and keeps it alive in a dish of fluid in his lab. Understandably agitated at this, the head plots against him with the aid of a mutant the doctor keeps caged up nearby. Really. Undoubtedly the inspiration for different films such as Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator and Steve Martin's The Man with Two Brains, this is one of those cheaply made horror films saved by an earnestness that elevates it to genre greatness.

BEST ON SHOW

Beneath Clouds (M)
4 stars
Sunday, 10pm, NITV

Marathon Man (M)
3.5 stars
Sunday, 12.13am, ABC1

The Brain that Wouldn't Die (MA15+)
3.5 stars
Saturday, 1am, TVS