Girl at the Window

2022, 1080hd

Johnny's comments:

A new Australian horror movie.

Girl at the Window is a horror thriller. After the death of her father, Amy (Ella Newton) moves with her mother Barbara (Radha Mitchell) to a new house. Amy notices that her neighbour Chris (Vince Colosimo) leaves his house late at night for brief periods of time. Meanwhile, The Clockwork Killer is terrorising the town, going after young couples where he kills the boy, then three days later, the killer leaves the girl's body while taking one of her eyes. Amy becomes interested in the case and feels that Chris may be The Clockwork Killer, After a failed attempt at peering into his shed, she gets the help of her friend Lian (Karis Oka) and her boyfriend, but all that achieves is getting the attention of the detectives in charge of the case. But Amy is persistent and one day she manages to break in to the shed and hides in Chris's car and sees him dump a bloody package down a mineshaft. She's now thoroughly convinced that Chris is the killer but she's stuck in his car and calls the detectives to arrest Chris with her evidence. Meanwhile, Chris finds a secret passage in his shed and finds the latest victim of The Clockwork Killer in a cage but when he goes back to get something to free her, the detectives have arrived thinking he's The Clockwork Killer and shoot him dead. But he's not the killer and the victim is still missing and the killer knows that Amy is chasing him. Can she save the day before the bodies pile up?

OK horror movie, nothing all that original and Amy's paranoia becomes a bit grating over time. The big problem is that you know that Chris is not the killer from the outset and when he dies, things slow for a while. It gets a bit messy in the end plus the death of the killer is foreshadowed way too early to work. One thing that does work is the character of Lian who adds a bit of humour to the movie, particularly when she is taken by the killer and is disappointed that it's them. I would say it's slightly better than the director's previous movie, the 2013 remake Patrick, but that movie is a shadow of the original.

Lauren Goetz and Kaysea Hayes film clips (see below)

Goetz

Hayes

Emerald City

1988

Johnny's comments:

Emerald City is a drama about a successful TV/movie writer (John Hargreaves) and his publisher wife (Robyn Nevin) who decide to move from Melbourne to Sydney with their kids to get to where the action is. The writer meets a wannabe writer (Chris Haywood) who has shacked up with a young writer (Nicole Kidman) and they get together and make a Vietnam War theme mini-series which isn't a hit. Both the writer and his wife get caught up in the rush of Sydney entertainment scene and it begins to change them.

Yawn... movies about writers having to compromise their vision to make things commercial is the most boring shit ever and here's yet another example. Who are these movies made for?

Nicole Kidman film clip (non-nude, see below)

Warm Nights on a Slow-Moving Train

1987

Johnny's comments:

Warm Nights on a Slow Moving Train is a 1987 drama where a Catholic high school art teacher (Wendy Hughes) moonlights as a prostitute on the Sydney-to-Melbourne train one night a week. She does it because she needs extra money to help feed her disabled brother's morphine addiction. She has sex with various men including a disgraced football coach, a soldier worried about his upcoming wedding, a retired salesman and a well-known singer. Then a man (Colin Friels) piques her interest to the point that she falls for him but he is using her to set up an assassination of a prominent right wing politician (Grant Tilly), which he coaxes her into doing.

Incredibly slight movie that is basically just brief encounters until a cockamamie political assassination is added in the third act so that something exciting can happen. Feels more like rejected Paul Cox movie, a theory helped by featuring three of his regulars including the lead actress, plus it's written and directed by Bob Ellis who wrote a couple of Cox's movies.

It flopped badly and it's not hard to see why.

There's an extra on the DVD for Warm Nights on a Slow Moving Train where the director bemoans Wendy Hughes's decision not do any more nude scenes.

Wendy Hughes film clip (minimal nudity, see below)