Luke Buckmaster
The Guardian
Australia
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Past articles by Luke:
The New Boy review – Cate Blanchett doesn’t dazzle in Warwick Thornton’s enigmatic film
Aswan Reid delivers Australian cinema’s most impressive child performance for some time, as the titular boy taken to an outback orphanage → Read More
Gold Diggers review – Australian gold rush comedy is gleefully anarchic
Claire Lovering and Danielle Walker are very entertaining as ‘hornbag’ sisters in this energetic, if scattershot, ABC comedy → Read More
Cléo from 5 to 7: Agnès Varda’s New Wave classic is cosmopolitan to the core
Varda’s elegant film follows a sad, beautiful woman around Paris as she awaits the results of a biopsy – and the result is eternally cool → Read More
The Bear, Futurama and Tár: what’s new to streaming in Australia this July
Plus an Indigenous vampire thriller, Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers and more new Sarah Snook → Read More
Warnie review – Nine’s Shane Warne biopic is a huge swing and a miss
With subpar acting and weird commentary from Warnie beyond the grave, this very bad production feels like it has been hurried out → Read More
The Last Daughter review – one woman’s tender and uplifting search for the truth
Crafted documentary follows stolen generations member Brenda Matthews’ search for her white foster parents → Read More
Man on Earth review – a beautifully humane documentary about a dying man’s last days
Directed by Australian film-maker Amiel Courtin-Wilson, this compelling work follows Bob Rosenzweig’s decision to end his life through assisted dying → Read More
Masterpieces and oddities: Cormac McCarthy’s bleak, bold and batty films
From the exemplary adaptation of No Country for Old Men to the offbeat screenplay for The Counselor, McCarthy’s sparse style lent itself to cinema → Read More
The Betoota Advocate Presents review – satirical news website’s TV debut is fast and funny
‘Australia’s oldest and most trusted newspaper’ is now on Paramount+, taking on familiar topics like Hillsong and Murdoch – but it remains very amusing → Read More
Year Of review – Bump spin-off about teens in mourning does too much with too many
We return to Jubilee High for a new series – but with too many characters, and so many stories, it quickly loses focus → Read More
The Idol, Black Mirror and Betoota: what’s new to streaming in Australia this June
Plus new Sarah Snook, a classic Harrison Ford thriller and a grittier Bump spin-off → Read More
Deadloch review – ripsnorting whodunnit pumps new blood into old tropes
Australian comedy duo Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney are behind this dark and very funny series about a series of murders in a small Tasmanian town → Read More
Step aside David Brent and Michael Scott: why The Office Australia could be great
Given how good the US adaptation of the British comedy was, I am hopeful about the new series, starring Felicity Ward as the incompetent boss → Read More
The Clearing review – Miranda Otto is a chilling cult leader in eerie mystery drama
Guy Pearce and the excellent Teresa Palmer also star in this show based on a real Australian doomsday cult, but it lacks the atmospheric wow factor of similar series → Read More
Limbo review – Simon Baker is transcendent in another beautiful film from Ivan Sen
The cast are uniformly excellent in Sen’s latest outback noir, with Baker playing a tough, sorrowful detective investigating the murder of an Indigenous girl 20 years before → Read More
From The New Boy to Asteroid City: 10 films to see at the 2023 Sydney film festival
The festival’s June program includes climate heists, FBI whistleblowers, new Wes Anderson – and 20,000 bees → Read More
The Messenger review – surreal adaptation of Markus Zusak novel is a mysteriously good time
It took a couple of episodes, but I relished returning to this ABC show about a young man who is mysteriously tasked with helping strangers → Read More
Safe Home review – gripping drama on Australia’s domestic abuse epidemic
The statistics on family abuse are alarming. This SBS series tells the stories behind those numbers, with Aisha Dee giving a nuanced performance as a legal centre worker → Read More
The Survival of Kindness review – Rolf de Heer’s dystopia is meditative and hauntingly beautiful
The Australian auteur’s output is vast and varied. Here, he gets cryptic in an eerie study on race, industrialisation and the apocalypse, starring a first-time actor → Read More
Bridgerton, Muppets Mayhem and Ten Pound Poms: what’s new to streaming in Australia this May
Plus an adaptation of a Markus Zusak novel, a big-budget sci-fi mystery and an Australian creature feature → Read More