Rhys McConnochie Movies

Directed by Craig Lahiff, Black and White is a story about bigotry, social injustice, and a real-life murder trial that made Australian headlines in the late '50s. On a December afternoon in 1958, the body of a nine-year-old white girl is discovered in a cave off the coast of Southern Australia. Detective Paul Turner (Roy Billing) quickly arrests a half-aboriginal fair-worker named Max Stuart (David Ngoombujarra), who signs a confession. However, being that Max is illiterate, the legitimacy of the confession is contested by his legal aid representatives, David O'Sullivan (Robert Carlyle) and Helen Devaney (Kerry Fox). Despite the questionable confession, Max is found guilty by the all-white, all-male jury, and sentenced to be hanged. O'Sullivan lodges a series of appeals, but no conclusive evidence of Max's guilt or innocence has been found to this day. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide

A humble but beautiful secretary tires of her husband's eternal depression and embarks upon an affair with a dashing media magnate in this melodrama. The woman is at first dazzled by the man's wealth, charisma, and sexual prowess and pays no heed to the darker side appearing through the cracks of his charming exterior, but soon enough she comes to see that she is in love with a ruthless man when he has her husband killed, making it look like suicide. He is also blackmailing politicians and heartlessly buying up international businesses with no regard for anyone else but himself. Still the woman passionately loves him even though she refuses to become the traditionally submissive mistress. Unfortunately, for him, she refuses to be dumped and at one point crosses a line and insults him during a business dinner. He gets angry, throws her on the dinner table and rapes her in front of his clients. Finally the light dawns on the shattered woman--this entertainment mogul who piously appears the perfect philanthropist on screen is not a nice man. She then decides to get revenge and stop him for good. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Romance and adventure abound in this sequel to the popular Australian film The Man from Snowy River. The story takes up five years after the other ended. It is still the 1880s when Jim Craig returns to his humble mountain cabin after he rounds up a heard of mustangs in the hope that he will earn enough money to finally be able to marry Jessica. Unfortunately, Jessica's dad wants her to marry the banker's son. Now the two lovers must work long and hard to be together. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Australian aborigine David Kennedy marries white woman Susan Leith and settles down in Sydney. Susan's father, a wealthy businessman, ends up in prison over a botched deal. Without his father-in-law's influence to help him, Kennedy has trouble looking after his family and dealing with big-city life. He returns to his own people, leaving his wife to raise their son by himself. Seven years later Kennedy returns to Sydney, hoping for a reunion with his 12-year-old son. But first he must run the gauntlet of legal obstacles set up by the justifiably embittered Leith. Short Changed was scripted by Robert J. Merritt, himself an aborigine. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Anzacs: The War Down Under is a two-part Australian TV movie dramatizing the activities of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC). This all-volunteer outfit fought shoulder to shoulder with enlisted men during the First World War. The film concentrates on three Anzacs: An aristocrat (Andrew Clarke), his best friend (Mark Hembrow) and his friend's sister (Megan Williams). Part One details the training of the volunteers, and their first taste of true combat. Part Two details the further activities of the all-volunteer Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACS). During the first few months of World War I, aristocratic Anzac Andrew Clarke is wounded, and is urged to go home to convalesce by Megan Williams, the sister of his best friend (Mark Hembrow). Meanwhile, heavy fighting in France has thinned the ranks and battered the morale of the other Anzacs. Featured in the cast as a military man is Paul Hogan. It was Hogan's new-found international stardom in 1986's Crocodile Dundee which sparked the American distribution of Anzacs, two years after its initial 1985 Australian run. The video release is edited from the 10-hour Australian miniseries. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Director Henri Safran adapts Henrik Ibsen's stage play to an Australian setting and a turn-of-the-century ambience in this uneven presentation of an illicit love and its consequences. Harold (Jeremy Irons) is a somewhat over-the-edge photographer who has lost out at a career in the sciences. His wife Gina (Liv Ullmann) is an opposite personality type: subdued, quiet, not prone to excessive outbursts. Harold's father the Major (John Meillon) lives with the family, which includes the daughter Henrietta (Lucinda Jones) who is slowly going blind -- and all is as normal as possible until Gregory (Arthur Dignam) shows up and in a two-day period, tragedy strikes. The prig Gregory sees it as his obligation to open up his best friend Harold's eyes with some shocking news: Henrietta is not really Harold's daughter at all, but the offspring of an illicit affair between Gregory's father and Gina. Figuring into this relationship is a wild duck that was once wounded by Gregory's father, and its symbolism looms almost too large over the rest of the complex, claustrophobic household as personalities lead events to their fateful end. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide