The Best (And Most Underseen) Australian Films of 2014
Forget the kitchen-sink drama stereotype; 2014 was Australia’s year of genre films. Here's some you might have missed.
All This Mayhem, dir. Eddie Martin
A co-production between Vice and Screen Australia? Unlikely, but this oddly engaging low-budget doco unravels a classic untold story, which will surely be adapted into a full-blown Hollywood feature.
Brothers Tas and Ben Pappas were self-described “rough-as-guts little bogans” from Melbourne who scaled the international pro-skating scene to slay Tony Hawke at his own game in the 1990s, with their maniacal, dynamic style. Through home videos and skate videography, the film is set in an era when Hard Rock Café, Big Day Out and Hey Hey It’s Saturday were cool, while pro-skating was going the way of show-biz — something Tas saw as an attack on the sport’s fuck-you individualism.
Other critics have seen themes of ruined success and traumatised families in this doco, but to me the first half is a study in devotion, careless youth and bridge-burning hedonism. These guys didn’t give a fuck, nor did they see their downfall coming. And what a downfall.
Tas is a natural storyteller, a Chopper Read-style character who draws you in with that okker, no-bullshit style. It’s a one-way story, totally free of objectivity, but such is the way of male mayhem in an attempt to live forever young.
View on: iTunes (online only)
Or try: Chopper (Andrew Dominik, 2000)
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Lauren Carroll Harris is a film scholar, writer and artist.