The Dressmaker (2015) - Movie Review

I hate the term ‘chick flick’. Like, really hate the term. Not only does it bank on the idea that women only want a very select number of elements in their entertainment, which is pretty damn regressive, but it is also primarily used as a put-down by critics, as if what women presumably want to watch is something to inherently be ashamed of. I’ve discussed films that fit into this category before, specifically romantic shlock like The Best Of Me, but it seems like the term really doesn’t have much reason to be used nowadays. I’ll wait until the release of the Expendabelles before I feel the need for any official eulogy for the term, but gender shouldn’t qualify as a defining factor when it comes to what film is meant to interest a person. Or maybe this is just my fence-sitting naivety shining through once again, I don’t know. Anyway, I bring this all up because this film supposedly counts as a chick flick. I say "supposedly" because I’m still not entirely sure who this film is meant to appeal to, if anyone at all.

Blinky Bill: The Movie (2015) - Movie Review

In the canon of iconic Australian children’s television, there’s a lot more to us than Skippy the Kangaroo; hell, I still haven’t seen an episode of that show and I’ve lived here all my life. You’ve got the surreal and boundary-pushing morality tales of Round The Twist, the endlessly imitated artistry of Mr. Squiggle and the latest addition to the CGI hostile takeover Bananas In Pyjamas, just to name a few. Amongst this collection of oddities is the hallmark animation franchise Blinky Bill, a series of adaptations of the Dorothy Wall book series about a mischievous koala bear and his friends; yeah, it turns some stereotypes surrounding Australia ended up being true.

Brought to the big and small screens by the Aussie Don Bluth Yoram Gross, it made for a very environmentally-vivid part of many a childhood including my own. I still remember a competition at my primary school where I won a stuffed kangaroo because I knew one of the character’s names off-by-heart. Of course, considering the aforementioned decline of the dressed bananas, is this character capable of surviving in today’s Cartoon Network-influenced market? Time to find out with this latest cinematic iteration of the series.