Every week this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: you’d have to have a pretty demented sense of the word “original” to claim that Australian arch-stylist Baz Luhrmann […]

There is a very real possibility that out of the several thousand movies I’ve watched in my life, most of them in the twelve years since I was a wee film school freshman, Baz Luhrmann’s candy-colored, hyperactive post-modern musical Moulin Rouge! has had more of an impact on me than anything else. Partially this is […]

I am disappointed, but not particularly surprised, by the somewhat chilly reception that has greeted Australia. It is unmistakably a throwback: not just unashamedly old-fashioned, but altogether smug about it. And old-fashioned films aren’t really in style right now, especially from a director like Baz Luhrmann, whose career to this point has been exclusively concerned […]