Baz Luhrmann uses the next 10 years of Australian film finance to create a display platform for Nicole Kidman's forehead...

Finally a film has been made that tells the real story of our wide, brown land.
Not many people really know about the Australian cowboys who all carried Winchester rifles and said “crikey” all day whilst being “mates” with the local Aborigines; or about the invasion of Darwin by 16 million Japanese fighter-planes (which were also bombers); or the fact that our REAL national anthem was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” until 1988.

Thankfully, Australia’s most prolific, creative and talented cocaine snorter director has been given $140 million to set the story straight on our fair nation once and for all, by making a “romantic epic” aimed squarely at American audiences who are staying away from it in droves.

Along with the $140 million for the BRILLIANT financial black-hole film, the Australian Government (in it’s infinite cinematic wisdom) has thrown Baz an extra $40 million to make a few ads for Tourism Australia.

Surprisingly, they’re exactly as crap as all of his films have been, selling a ridiculous, stereotypical version of Australia to people who don’t want to sit on a plane for 20 hours.

16 million Mitsubishi Zeros invading Darwin Harbour during Warld War II. All of this really happened...

Sorry, we meant to say they “invested” in our countries future with a “blue chip” stock named Baz Luhrmann, whose 3 films have grossed about $360 million worldwide… Now if that’s not justification for giving him nearly $200 million, we don’t know what is.

Oh wait, yes we do… Nicole Kidman’s in the film as well.
For those of you who don’t remember Our Nicole, she was married to Tom Cruise for a while and her films used to make money (when she was still a freckly redhead). Thankfully, though, over the last 10 years she has become the LEAST BANKABLE STAR in Hollywood, adding to the massive financial risk that this steaming pile of crap has become.

But then, Australians certainly love to gamble.

What do you get when you mix a bunch of Hollywood ’stars’, a Kazakh director and the storyline from a Scottish comic book author? Apparently a steaming pile of crap.

If you enjoyed Timur Bekmambetov’s Russian blockbusters, Nightwatch and Daywatch, then this probably isn’t the film for you.

If you enjoy coherent, logical storylines and strong performances you might want to give this movie a miss too.

Actually, its probably best if you just don’t watch it at all… Especially if you’re conscious.

Bekmambetov, a native of Kazakhstan (but not related to Borat), has never directed a film in English before and, judging by the jumbled mess of a storyline in this movie, probably didn’t this time.

The plot revolves around a weasly, corporate nobody named, ironically, Wesley. Wesley is downtrodden by his domineering boss, his girlfriend’s rooting his best mate and he has no money or prospects.

But then Angelina Jolie shows up and – believe it or not – she doesn’t adopt him, but proceeds to save his life in a big, exciting, CGI-laden shootout and subsequent car-chase. She then tells him that his dad was secretly a member of a secret guild of secret assassins who call themselves ‘The Fraternity’.

The Fraternity believe that by killing specific individuals at specific times, they ‘maintain the balance’ of good-and-evil, or light-and-dark, or something equally brilliant.

The even-more-logical way that they choose their victims is by having their leader, played by a very tired-of-himself looking Morgan Freeman, read a binary code that appears in the weaving errors of cloth produced by a giant ‘Loom of Fate’. (we’re serious)

If this is all sounding lame to you, it’s because it is, and only becomes more so as the assassins train Wesley to become one of them.

There are a couple of ‘plot twists’ that make even less sense than the premise which we won’t divulge here, bust rest assured, we couldn’t spoil this movie for you more than the people who made it already have.

Some of the big digital whizz-bangery looks OK if you’re into that kind of thing, but a lot of it looks crappy and rushed. Once again, something that the Russians on the Nightwatch films pulled off more impressively with a far smaller budget.

On the whole this is a pretty tired looking film. All of the main actors look unconvinced and rather embarrassed by their parts in this mess.

If you really want to see it, probably best to wait for the DVD to get cheap…

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

Writer / Director: Christopher Nolan | Co-Writer:Jonathan Nolan
Cast: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger Keith Legend, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Cain, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman

Released in cinemas July 18, 2008

So I bet you haven’t heard anything about this new batman movie, right? Well that’s just because it’s had hardly any publicity. Especially under rocks.

As you may have noticed in recent decades, movies that have marketing and publicity budgets as large as the already frightening costs of most Hollywood blockbusters seldom live up to the sensationalist hype.

Unfortunately, The Dark Knight is definitely one of these numbers.

For those of us who haven’t been whittling our attention spans away on Facebook and Ritilin for the last few years still remember the previous Batman franchise that Hollywood had to offer. For those readers who have been using facebook, in 1989 Tim Burton made a film called Batman starring Michael Keaton as the tight-wearing crime-fighter and Jack Nicholson as the psychotic Joker.

The first film was pretty good, focusing on how Batman came to be Batman and how the Joker came to be the Joker. Unfortunately, the second film in the series, Batman Returns, was not really as well realised as the first one; storyline issues and multiple villain back-stories involving Catwoman and the Penguin made the film much campier than the first and began the slide into total farce that were the final two films in the series.

Such is the apparently the case here too. After box-office success, Hollywood is already making statements about the stars of the next Batman sequel that hasn’t even been written yet. Soon enough we’ll see Jim Carey reprise his brilliant role as the Riddler. What a surprise…

Oh, the other side of the hype that you may have heard is that OUR Keith Legend puts in a jaw-dropping performance and deserves an Oscar for it. If you decided Jeff Buckley was a genius after he died, you probably think so too.

Batman is based on a comic book.

Rating: 3 Out of 5