Blog Archives

Canopy (2013)

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Posted on April 13, 2014 by Yee-Yin

With its Australian premiere this week at the Gold Coast Film Festival, Canopy is an Australian-Singaporean co-production that was a passion project eight years in the making for director Aaron Wilson and producer Katrina Fleming.

Set during the days of the Battle of Singapore in 1942, the film opens with the plane of WWII RAAF pilot Jim (Khan Chittenden) being shot down over the island. He parachutes out to safety, only to find himself in the thick of a … (read more)

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Home Song Stories (2007)

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Posted on April 21, 2010 by Samson

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)

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Maximum Choppage Round 2 (2008)

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Posted on October 6, 2008 by Samson

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)

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The Man from Hong Kong (1975)

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Posted on March 11, 2007 by Mark Morrison

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)

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Japanese Story (2003)

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Posted on January 25, 2006 by Mark Morrison

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)

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Bondi Tsunami (2003)

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Posted on November 25, 2005 by Angus

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)

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