It’s been a while since I did a movie review, but over the past few weeks I watched a few of them and two deserve to be in the spotlight. They kept me thinking (not in a good way) so I wanted to share my opinions.

Wish You Were Here

A few weeks ago I mentioned watching the short movie Spider. It was made by Nash Edgerton who is one of the directors of Blue Tongue Films. Turns out they have done a few movies as well, Animal Kingdom is one of them. That movie got nominated for tons of awards, won a few and thus is one of the most well known movie they have done. Highly recommended too! Wish You Were Here got released earlier this year and has Joel Edgerton in one of the lead roles. So yeah… had to watch that, didn’t I?

Wish You Were Here starts off with the four leads partying in Cambodia. Once you see Joel Edgerton’s character Dave, wandering about and looking dazed and confused, you know the party didn’t end well. All too quickly Dave and his wife, Alice, have returned to Sydney we find out that Jeremy is missing after a drug fuelled night. As his girlfriend Steph returns home, questions are asked and secrets revealed as the trio try to deal with what happened.

My thoughts about the film are a little conflicted. I have re-written this paragraph a dozen times already and I just can’t seem to write my thoughts down. Wish You Were Here, although a little predictable, was a very interesting watch. On one hand, I was so eager to know if I was right (because I had my own ideas of what happened) that once the secret unfolds, you get a little disappointed. You kind of wished that your ideas weren’t true. You wanted the film to go a different route, but unfortunately it didn’t.
The acting from Joel Edgerton who plays Dave was simply amazing and frankly, he was the only reason why I kept on watching. I really didn’t care much for Alice (Dave’s wife) nor Steph, which seems a little weird considering she was the girlfriend of the missing Jeremy.

What I did like about the film is feels very real. What would happen if you went on a holiday in a not-so-safe country and the party gets a little out of hand? You do stupid things and get mixed up with the wrong people. What happened that night in Wish You Were Here could happen to anyone.

IMDB: click
Rating IMDB: 5.9
My rating: 6

The Snowtown Murders

Yep, another Australian movie. I’ve been wanting to watch this ever since I heard about it almost a year ago. Snowtown is about sixteen year-old Jamie who falls in with his mother’s new boyfriend and his crowd of self-appointed neighborhood watchmen, a relationship that leads to a spree of torture and murder.

I have a thing for gruesome movies and over the years, it seems like they don’t bother me as much as they used to. Mostly because I know it is just a movie… but Snowtown is based on true events and the movie kept reminding me of that. It left me sick to my stomach and now, almost two weeks later, I still see certain scenes in my head to the point that it scares me. Would I see it again? No. Am I “glad” that I crossed it off my to-watch list? Maybe. Partly due to the fact that films based on true events, no matter the subject, I find interesting. I never knew Australia had a serial killer that was such a crazy bastard and had the ability to get other people to help him with his gruesome acts. It makes it even more scary that the things you see in the film, isn’t even everything that he has done. Makes you question if some people are just born evil.

IMDB: click
Rating IMDB: 6.6
My rating: 7.5