Jane Ballantyne Movies

A teenaged lad tries to come to terms with the fact that he is "Selkie" -- a seal-human hybrid -- in this Australian family movie. Jamie Duncan (Shimon Moore) moves with his marine-scientist mother Iona (Celine O'Leary) to Jackson Island. Iona heads up a research center on the island, and Jamie soon encounters her dour assistant (Edmund Pegge) and an evil tuna fisherman (Michael Habib). En route to the research center, Jamie hits it off with Samantha (Chelsea Bruland). Their budding puppy love is thrown for a loop when Jamie jumps into the ocean to save Samantha -- and turns into a seal. After his grandfather explains his unusual lineage, Jamie resolves to find the secret potion that will make him all human. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

This caustic Australian comedy is meant to burn those commercial interests who sponsor artists for tax breaks. It also a sexually unresponsive wife's revenge against her cheating husband. Heiress Georgina Oliphant, the daughter of pharmaceutical magnate George Oliphant is on a mission to find a sculptor suitable of her father's sponsorship. Normally, George doesn't give a hoot about art, but tax time approaches and he needs a big deduction. Since large bronze statues are 100% deductible, that's what he wants. Georgina comes through with the lesbian sculptor Lily Carmichael who suggests a detailed male nude, sans fig leaf. For her model, lily chooses unemployed hunk Karl-Heinz Applebaum who at first doesn't realize he is to model totally nude. Fortunately, coquettish Georgina is around to convince him to shed those clothes. He soon begins looking forward to the sessions much to the dismay of his frowsy, sexually frosty wife Cecilia, a devout member of the "Center for Synchronic Awareness," an esoteric religious cult which is headed by the oily, avaricious Baba Charles whose picture Cecilia has placed throughout her home (Aussie film buffs may recognize the photo as that of director Rolf de Heer, a rival of this film's director Paul Cox). Soon enough, her husband and Georgina become lovers causing Cecilia to hatch an elaborate plot for revenge, a plot in which the financially beleaguered George Oliphant unwittingly assists by having her pose with her husband for an even larger, more tax deductible sculpture. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Danny Molloy (Rodney Harvey) is a wisecracking kid from Brooklyn who travels to the Australian outback in this light teen comedy. He searches for his long-lost father Nat (Bruno Lawrence) after the death of his mother. Kulu (Bobby Smith) is an aborigine with psychic powers who warns Danny of impending danger. The prophecy comes true when Danny's drug-running father soon is injured crashing his plane in a remote region of the outback. Anna-Maria Winchester co-stars with Miranda Otto. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Classical music DJ John Hargreaves neglects his wife Wendy Hughes, who responds by entering into an illicit romance. Upon finding out, Hargreaves leaves Hughes, but doesn't want to tell his parents; they'd never liked Hughes, and he isn't in the mood for a chorus of "I told you so"s. What is already painful for Hargreaves is amplified when his dying father, suspecting that something's wrong, lectures his son on the sanctity of marriage--even a bad one. Director Paul Cox used the Australian My First Wife as a kind of catharsis, to purge himself of ill-will concerning the bust-up of his own marriage. The film won three Australian academy awards, including one for the reluctantly revelatory Cox. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When an Italian child is forced to move to Australia, he has problems retaining his identity and culture in the foreign country. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide