John Howard Movies
A family is touched by the shadows of hatred and violence in this Australian drama adapted from a short story by Raymond Carver. Stewart (Gabriel Byrne) and Claire (Laura Linney) are a married couple in their early fourties; Stewart runs a gas station while Claire looks after their son, Tom (Sean Rees-Wemyss). Tom has been grounded for the weekend after killing a small animal with his friend Caylin (Eva Lazzaro), and Claire keeps an eye on him while Stewart goes off on a fishing trip with his pals Carl (John Howard), Rocco (Stelios Yiakmis), and Billy (Simon Stone). After arriving at their favorite fishing spot, Stewart finds the naked body of a woman floating down the river; unbeknownst to him, Gregory (Chris Haywood), an elderly man riddled with racial hatred, killed Susan (Tatea Reilly), a young woman of Aboriginal heritage, and dumped her body in the water. Believing they wouldn't be able to drive to town to report finding the body and get back to make camp before nightfall, Stewart decides to wait until morning to contact the police, and ties a line to the corpse so it won't float away. The next morning, Stewart and his friends decide not to spoil their trip and spend the day fishing; they don't contact the police until after they return home on Monday. Stewart's callous actions cast an ugly light on himself, his friends, and his family, and Claire finds herself implicated in the crime through Stewart's poor judgment. Named for an Aboriginal word for a valley, Jindabyne received its world premiere at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Laura Linney, Gabriel Byrne, (more)
- 2004
A family man and working stiff has a lucrative but illegal sideline in this comedy from Australia. Eddy (John Howard) makes his living as a fisherman in a small coastal town in New South Wales called Shellharbour -- or at least that's what his wife, Yvonne (Rebecca Frith), and his twentysomething daughter, Chantelle (Alyssa McClelland), think. Actually, Eddy and his partner, Dominic (Gyton Grantley), commit murders for hire when they aren't busy on the ocean. Eddy already has a slightly bumpy relationship with both Yvonne and Chantelle, but things become more complicated when Chantelle is given her walking papers by her Russian fiancé, and her new boyfriend turns out to be a ne'er-do-well who might be one of Eddy's upcoming targets. A Man's Gotta Do was written and directed by Chris Kennedy, who worked as a dentist before he found success as a filmmaker. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Howard, Rebecca Frith, (more)
Following their feature debut, Road to Nhill, in 1997, screenwriter Alison Tilson and director Sue Brooks team up again for the Australian drama Japanese Story. Toni Collette stars as Sandy Edwards, an ambitious geologist who is most comfortable when working alone. She also runs a software design company with a business partner, Bill Baird (Matthew Dyktynski), and she doesn't get along very well with her mother (Lynette Curran). While trying to sell their software products, Bill asks for her help in catching a prospective client. Sandy reluctantly meets the quiet and reserved Japanese businessman Hiromitsu (Gotaro Tsunashima) in order to make a sale. After he requests that she take him on a driving tour, the odd couple find themselves stranded in the Pilbara desert for a night -- one of the most remote places in the Australian outback. During this time together, their relationship quickly escalates and both parties are changed by the experience. Japanese Story premiered at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Toni Collette, Gotaro Tsunashima, (more)
- 2003
Marc Gracie's Australian comedy Take Away concerns a business rivalry between fast food entrepreneurs. Starting with a segment that shows the birth of fast food, the film quickly establishes the relationship between Tony (Vince Colosimo) and Trevor (Stephen Curry). The anal Tony runs a fish and chip stand more or less right next to the free-wheeling Trevor's more exotic stand that offers calamari burgers. The two have known each other forever, as their fathers owned a restaurant together. They had a falling out and the feud has been passed down to the sons. After they learn that a large fast food corporation, Burgies, is coming into the area, Tony and Trevor work together to stop them. John Howard portrays the head of the Burgies company. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Vince Colosimo, Stephen Curry, (more)
Directed by Mark Joffe, Australia's The Man Who Sued God centers around Steve (Billy Connelly), an ex-lawyer who is unable to collect insurance money for his destroyed boat. Deeming the accident an "act of God," Steve decides to sue the man at the root of his problem -- namely, God. Anna (Judy Davis), a jaded journalist who took a particular interest in Steve's case, decides to help him out on his quest to collect from the almighty. The movie raises a host of philosophical issues, some of which include who should represent God in court, who pays up should God be convicted, and the status of Steve's eternal soul. The Man Who Sued God also features Vincent Ball and Billie Brown. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Billy Connolly, Judy Davis, (more)
Australian director Bill Bennett sets this exploration of sexual politics and cultural differences against the stunning vistas of the Trobriand Islands. In it, two anthropologists travel to a remote island in the South Pacific to study its culture in the 1930s. Evelyn (Maya Stange) is an adventurous free thinker, while her husband Phillip (Martin Donovan) is a rigid scholar bound to convention and propriety. Tension develops between the couple when Phillip fails to acknowledge what Evelyn sees as obvious: that women run this lusty culture. Tensions are upped another notch when Evelyn falls for Mick (Rufus Sewell), a macho American pearl merchant. As Evelyn's life begins to crash in around her, the Japanese army invades her island paradise and tragedy strikes her priggish husband. In a Savage Land was screened at the 1999 Vancouver Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Martin Donovan, Rufus Sewell, (more)
- 1996
A pair of disparate battling lovers get a chance to live in each other's shoes in this lively Australian sex comedy. Though they have been together over a year, Tash and Brett have reached a point where they believe that neither understands the other. Tash is a serious, highly intelligent science journalist while hunky Brett hosts a music video show on an MTV-like network. Both gain a lot more understanding when something magical happens and they find that they have switched bodies. Poor Brett finds himself having to deal with uncomfortable female fashions, monthly cycles, and a highly competitive intellectual job. Poor Tash learns that being cool and handsome isn't as easy as it looks either. Then there is that little matter of making love.... ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1990
Because he is loaded with money, "Z" (John F. Howard) is able to retain the person, if not the affections, of the woman he loves. In fact, despite the fact that neither one of them is satisfied with the relationship, Z is so in love with Juliet (Christabel Wigley) that he is grateful she's still around. That must be why he accepts it (lamely) when she brings her latest lover, a glamorous rock star, around. He is even willing to pretend to himself that he doesn't know that the two are making love in his house. Eventually, Juliet gets some money of her own, and leaves the poor rich man. This romantic drama is based on director Colin Talbot's novel Sweethearts. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Howard, Christabel Wigley, (more)
- 1990
The Australian children's adventure show The Girl From Tomorrow was the saga of Alana (Katharine Cullen), a teenaged girl from the year 3000. Through a wrinkle in time, Alana found herself hurled backward to 1990, along with a time-travelling villain named Silverthorn (John Howard), who hailed from the 26th century. With the help of her "contemporary" friends, Jenny (Melissa Marshall) and Petey (James Findlay), Alana tried to retrieve her space capsule from Silverthorn's clutches. Making its Australian Nine Network debut in 1990, The Girl From Tomorrow lasted two seasons and 24 half-hour episodes. The second season, which aired in 1992, was officially titled The Girl From Tomorrow: Tomorrow's End. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
A barely recognizable Meryl Streep plays the real-life Lindy Chamberlain, who for a long period in the early 1980s was the most hated woman in Australia. While visiting the Ayers rock monument in the Outback with her husband Michael (Sam Neill), Lindy notices a dingo creeping into the tent where her baby lies sleeping. Seconds later, the horrified woman discovers that her child is gone. Despite Lindy's anguished insistence that the dingo killed her baby, the Australian public is of the opinion that Lindy herself is the murderer. This lynch-mob atmosphere is fueled by the press, which insists upon crucifying the Chamberlains in print on a daily basis. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lewis Fitz-Gerald, Meryl Streep, (more)
The life of legendary scientist Albert Einstein is re-imagined as a slapstick farce in this comic fantasy. Changing Einstein's country of origin from Germany to Tasmania, the film shows the scientist's eventful youth as he creates rock & roll and discovers the secret of splitting the beer atom. Director and star Yahoo Serious loads the film with slapstick comedy, absurd sight gags, and even sneaks in a romantic subplot in which Einstein courts Marie Curie. The film was a huge hit in its native Australia but a major box-office disappointment in the United States, where audiences largely ignored the display of nonstop silliness. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Yahoo Serious, Odile Le Clezio, (more)
- 1987
Two detectives decide to take the law into their own hands after they determine the court system has failed to serve justice. Ian Scott and James Clayden play the cops who want to permanently press the mob kingpin known as The Laundryman (Peter Green) into unemployment. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ian Scott, James Clayden, (more)
- 1986
Australian Allan Penney must not only endure the encroaching exigencies of old age, but also the indignities perpetrated by his unfeeling wife Diana Davidson and his bragadoccio ex-business partner Rob Steele. Davidson bundles Penney off to a nursing home while she embarks on an around-the-world tour. Hoping to ferret out Penney's secret bank account, his avaricious sons Philip Quast and Kelly Dingwell bring the doddering, all-but-blind old man home, feign concern for his well-being, and stage a "world cruise" in Penney's backyard! Their charade extends to a shopping mall, which stands in as both an airport and Las Vegas. Though in the early stages of senility, Penney eventually figures out he's being hoodwinked, but decides to keep mum, seeing just how far his sons are willing to go for his "benefit." Entering into the spirit of things, he demands geisha girls upon "arriving" in Japan. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Philip Quast, Allan Penney, (more)
- 1985
- R
This undistinguished "country-punk" version of teens apparently maturing into what passes for adulthood may not quite have made the transition itself, since it seems geared to a young teen audience. When Tina (Laura Hunt) from the big city of Atlanta goes to spend the summer with her grandparents in the middle of nowhere in North Carolina, she unexpectedly meets a kindred spirit (Johnson West), but is caught in a seamy underworld. The veneer of this bucolic farmland hides rapists, murderers, fetishists, voyeurs, and suicides -- it is a wonder that Tina has any chance at all of safely making it back to the streets of Atlanta. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
A woman starting a new life in a new land finds that fate has some unpleasant surprises in store in this made-for-TV drama. Ceci is a young woman in her teens who has decided to leave her home in Great Britain and strike out on her own in rugged New Zealand. While Ceci finds fortune in this unfamiliar land, a dark cloud seems to follow her on her journey, as a loveless marriage, unexpected death, and a terrible financial blunder leaves her in worse straits than when she started. Originally produced as a mini-series for British television, Heart of the High Country stars Valerie Gogan, David Letch, and Kenneth Cranham. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Valerie Gogan, Kenneth Cranham, (more)
- 1984
Before he directed the cult classic Highlander (1986), music video creator Russell Mulcahy adapted this stylish, tongue-in-cheek horror film from the novel by Peter Brennan. Gregory Harrison stars as Carl Winters, a grief-stricken American husband who has come to a remote corner of Australia to seek answers in the death of his wife, a TV journalist who was investigating a story on kangaroo poaching. Carl meets Jake Cullen (Bill Kerr), a man obsessed with hunting down what he says is an enormous razorback boar that consumed his grandson. Although he was acquitted, most of the locals believe that Jake murdered the boy himself and invented the crazy story about a giant pig. Jake tells Carl that he believes the razorback is also responsible for his wife's death. At first skeptical, Carl becomes a believer when he encounters the beast. He and Jake track it to a dog food processing plant, where the owners are illegally butchering kangaroos for industrial use. The factory operators are also feeding the dog food to the gigantic razorback, increasing its size and carnivorous appetite. Joined by farmer Sarah Cameron (Arkie Whiteley), Carl and Jake set out to kill the powerful mutant. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gregory Harrison, Arkie Whiteley, (more)
- 1984
- R
The Australian Highest Honor is comparatively little-known outside its country of origin, which is a shame. Set during World War II, the film details the unusual relationship between an Australian army captain and his captor, a Japanese security officer. The war has made these kindred spirits "enemies," and we, like the protagonists, are never allowed to forget the seriousness of the world conflict. Still, we are shown how even the exigencies of war cannot completely snuff out such qualities as honor and decency. John Howard plays Captain Robert Page, while Astuo Nakamura co-stars as Winoyu Tamira. Highest Honor is based on a true story. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1984
The miners strike in the Australian coal fields during the 1930s provides a factual basis for this drama. The organized miners protest against the use of scab labor and the dreadful working conditions. But nothing is resolved and the tension climaxes with the miners, some of them members of the Communist Party, building a blockade and stranding themselves in a mine shaft. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Chris Haywood, Carol Burns, (more)
- 1983
- G
An entertaining and exciting adventure story for any age, Bush Christmas, set in the Australian outback, has three tense situations developing along parallel lines: Ben (Peter Sumner) and Kate Thompson (Vineta O'Malley) have to pay off the mortgage on their homestead by January 1st or they lose everything; manager Bill (John Ewart) and lead singer Sly (John Howard) of a struggling outback band find themselves desperately broke and decide to "borrow" the Thompson's prize racehorse to run a few races and recoup their loses; and finally, the two Thompson children, Helen (Nicole Kidman at 15) and John (Mark Spain) along with a British cousin (James Wingrove) and a ranch hand Manalpuy (Manalpuy) decide to chase after the horse rustlers and retrieve the family's beloved stallion. Most of the film shows the two inept horse thieves trying to make their comic way across an inhospitable terrain, and the children braving unexpected dangers, as when they fall into an abandoned mine shaft that starts to fill up with water. When these various adventures are resolved, the Thompson family is faced with a final, fateful chance to pay off their mortgage by entering their recaptured racehorse in a New Year's Day cross-country race. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Ewart, John Howard, (more)
- 1982
Some of the complexities involved in the murder of 5,000 Chinese in Singapore during World War II are considered in this joint Japanese-Australian film. After the British surrendered Singapore to the Japanese, the Imperial Japanese Army unit known as the kempei-tai or a kind of military police, were responsible for most of the brutality against captured Allied forces and the "ethnic cleansing" of Chinese based on the claim that their guerrilla forces were a threat. The hero of the film is Minoru Tamiya (Atsuo Nakamura) who worked as an information officer at the Japanese mission in Singapore before the outbreak of World War II. In this story, Tamiya was educated at Cambridge and argued for the humane treatment of prisoners of war against the harsh, often fatal, and degrading methods used by the kempei-tai. The difficulties of his position come to a climax in a melodramatic ending, in which the fate of a group of Allies and the fate of the Japanese themselves are symbolically bound together. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Atsuo Nakamura, Kinya Kitaoji, (more)
- 1981
- PG
Bruce Beresford directed this adaptation of David Williamson's play (Williamson also scripted) about the ever-widening gap between professional sport and its boardroom intrigues. Jack Thompson is Laurie, a once popular ball player on the Australian Rules football circuit, but now an ineffective coach who tries to spark a mediocre football team into winning the league championship. But as he struggles to motivate his players, he becomes increasingly disenchanted with the sport as he witnesses how big business interests have become the main motivation of the game that has turned the game that he has devoted his life to into a heartless and insensitive sports franchise. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jack Thompson, Graham Kennedy, (more)
- 1949
A supernatural tale based on a short story by Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, this is the portrayal of a poor Captain in the Russian army in the nineteenth Century. His comrades in arms play cards nightly, but he cannot afford to join them until one night he dreams that he has gained from a mysterious aging countess her secret for winning at faro--a secret which legend has it she has sold her soul to obtain. This story has been filmed at least a dozen times, but this is by far the best version. Eight of the versions were silent films and another version was done as recently as 1965. A period piece, the settings and costumes are superb. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anton Walbrook, Edith Evans, (more)
