Bob Ellis Movies

One disaster after another is all that the newly married Dave and Tina Dodd reap from their investment in a home to be built in a development outside of Sydney. The builder has almost gone bankrupt, largely due to his hiring incompetent job foremen (especially Kevin Grant) who can't follow a blueprint. The far from wealthy couple gradually twigs to the disatrous progress of their increasingly expensive dream home, and the strain on their marriage becomes acute as they discuss their options with their lawyers. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Warm Nights on a Slow Moving Train, written and directed by Bob Ellis, belongs to a genre of highbrow 1980s films which pushed the conventions of art house cinema. An unnamed fine arts teacher struggles to support her brother's drug addiction. To raise money, she moonlights as a prostitute on a midnight train. For each encounter, she dons a different identity, ala Cindy Sherman, and seeks out her john for the night. That is, until she meets the Man and falls for him which forces her to choose between her love or her lifestyle. Warm Nights does have the benefit of Ellis' characteristic fine writing, but it is generally regarded as one of the more dismal failures in this genre. ~ Brian Whitener, All Movie Guide

Based loosely on a true story, Bullseye takes place in the Australia of the mid-19th century. Disgruntled ranch hand Paul Goddard finds a ray of happiness in his relationship with maidservant Kathryn Walker. But when the maid comes into an inheritance, she takes on highfalutin' airs and breaks off their romance. Almost as an act of consolation, the ranch hand turns to cattle-rustling. Arriving safely in an outback settlement with his stolen cows and bulls, the ranch hand discovers that the maid has arrived in town ahead of him, and that she's been reduced to working in the local bordello. Gallantly, the cowboy decides to rescue the surprisingly still-virginal maid from that fabled worse-than-death fate. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Isabelle Huppert plays a French woman who travels to Australia after leaving her husband. Injured in an accident, Huppert is in danger of losing her sight. Her friends try to get her to "bond" with blind doctor Robert Menzies, who possesses a greenhouse full of cactus. In the big "Author's Statement" scene, Menzies likens his cactus to people who need special care, even though they seem to bloom only when neglected. The arrival of Isabelle's husband Jean-Pierre Mignon only serves to solidify the relationship between "human cacti" Huppert and Menzies. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In a slightly padded but well-acted and relevant drama, an Australian mining company and a group of aboriginals go to court to settle a dispute over sacred land that the company wants to mine. When the Ayers Mining Company sets out to begin construction of its mine with bulldozers and earth-movers, the Aboriginals physically block the work because the site is exactly where the green ants will gather to dream (a 40,000-year-old legend) and it cannot be disturbed. The company tries the usual means of getting their way -- through bribes and arguments -- but nothing budges the men who came to defend the land. Once in court, it is quickly apparent that tribal laws and customs and beliefs are very different than Western laws -- and how the issue will be resolved is sticky indeed. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Alex Cox's directorial debut was a wickedly funny and willfully bizarre story that became a major cult item once it began making the art-house rounds a year after its release (an initial run in a string of Southern grind houses and drive-ins, where it was billed as an action film, was a resounding failure). Having lost his job and his girlfriend, punk rocker Otto (Emilio Estevez) meets a guy named Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) who offers him $25 to drive his wife's car out of a "bad area." When a handful of angry people start chasing Otto, he realizes that something is up, and he discovers that Bud repossesses cars for a living. With few immediate prospects, Otto joins Bud at the repo yard and is soon "ripping" cars with the best of them. When an anonymous source posts a $20,000 reward for a missing 1964 Chevy Malibu, it turns out that what's valuable isn't the car itself, but what's in the trunk, which is very hot, glows brightly, and kills anyone who comes in contact with it. A vaguely surreal modern-noir science-fiction comedy with echoes of Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Repo Man is packed with more incongruous sight gags than anyone can absorb in one viewing; keep your eyes peeled for the air fresheners, the generic newspaper box, and the watches without hands. Harry Dean Stanton gives a superb comic performance as the intense but laid-back Bud, Emilio Estevez delivers perhaps the best work of his career as the petulant but goofy Otto, and Tracey Walter is hilarious as the spaced out repo-yard man Miller. Iggy Pop wrote and performed the theme song and The Circle Jerks appear as a lounge band. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The Australian Man of Flowers stars Norman Kaye in the title role. A painter, Kaye has earned his nickname from his beautifully rendered flower portraits. He uses his artistic skills as a means of channelling his repressed sexual yearnings, especially his feelings towards nude model Alyson Best. When flowers no longer quench his carnal thirsts, Kaye expresses himself on his pipe organ, hammering out impassioned songs as a sort of musical cold shower. A flashback, which is meant to explain Kaye's hang-ups (but deliberately does not) features German director Werner Herzog in an unbilled cameo as Kaye's father. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Fran (Judy Morris) is a 29-year-old university researcher whose biological clock begins to tick so loudly that no alarm is needed to wake her up -- if she does not find a suitable romantic partner soon, how in the world can she have any kind of a life at all? So she embarks on a series of false starts, one after the other, that seem to leave her worse for the wear. Her first long affair with a married man -- hardly a reasonable choice given her aspirations -- has been brought to a quick termination by the man's wife. Her next unfortunate liaison is with her boss, who has no intention of making any commitments. Another of her ill-advised suitors tries to rape her. As she goes from bad to worse, she ends up considering a plodding farmer willing to offer both marriage and commitment -- just what she wants, but not with him. The story only confirms the adage that after the age of 30 or so, all good men are always somewhere else. Fran is left to consider her options -- reset the clock or unplug it. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Set between the years 1949 and 1956, Newsfront tracks the destinies of two brothers, their adventures and misadventures placed in the context of sweeping social and political changes in their native Australia. Both of the protagonists are newsreel photographers. Frank (Gerard Maguire) is constitutionally resistant to change, while Len (Bill Kennedy) welcomes any alterations in his own life and in the world around him. The film fluctuates between black and white and color, between actual news footage and reconstructed events. Newsfront is what The Way We Were might have looked like on a tiny budget with a cast of unknowns. The film represented a laudable feature-film directorial debut for one-time documentary filmmaker Philip Noyce. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide