Blog Archives

After my recent venture into World Cinema territory, I thought I might bring you a review of something closer to home. So here is my review of Home Song Stories, a wonderful Australian drama. However, unlike the French action flick that I reviewed for you recently, I do not think I really need to justify the existence of my review of Home Song Stories on Heroic Cinema, because it is very much an Asian film. Its cast consists of … (read more)

I recently attended the launch of ‘Australia’s first urban martial arts action adventure’, Maximum Choppage Round 2, at the Fairfield School of Arts in Sydney. When introducing his film, producer, director, screenwriter and main actor, Timothy Ly, said that he was trying to make a Hollywood film, in Sydney’s West, with no money. Big ambition indeed, but looking at cinema’s history, it is not hard to find examples of films that were made with extremely limited budgets, which were … (read more)

Piss off Picnic at Hanging Rock, stuff Strictly Ballroom, bugger Breaker Morant — this is the Aussie film that you were born to watch!

Two-fisted and way groovy, The Man from Hong Kong is a lost Australian/Hong Kong kung fu classic. ScreenSound have wonderfully restored both the Technicolour (TM) print and the funkadelic audio. It hasn’t looked this good since 1975 (come to think of it, neither have I…)

See Sammo Hung and an Ocker cop go at … (read more)

Japanese Story has been frustrating critics from one end of Australia to the other; not because it’s a bad film, indeed, quite the reverse, but because it is almost impossible to actually discuss what the film is about without opening up a whole billabong of spoilers. This will be one such review.

I caught the film on the opening night of MIFF on a very rainy night in Melbourne in July; being transported to the red heat of Western Australia … (read more)

Billed as “the first Japanese surfing road movie in Australia”, it’s obvious this film is trying very hard to be cool. Maybe I just didn’t get it, or I’ve become old and boring before my time, but this film didn’t grab me at all, frankly I found it boring.

How can it fail, it’s a hybrid genre movie, a good first step on the way to cult classic status (just think of the recent yakuza, zombie, samurai movie Versus). … (read more)