Australi-ugh (**)

So far, as of December 2, this year has pretty much blown movie-wise. There have been a handful of quite good to exquisitely good movies, but they were few and far between throughout the first eleven months of 2008. I went into November expecting great things. After all, the end of last year gave us a few stellar movies like There Will Be Blood and The Orphanage (Netflix them immediately if you haven't seen them. And I don't want to hear the subtitle complaints about The Orphanage. That movie is fantastic) and on the very last day of 2006 perhaps the best movie of the past ten or so years (Children of Men) was released.

This year has been a little meh so far in the Oscar bait arena. Of the eight movies with Oscar potential listed by Entertainment Weekly, Australia is only the second one I've seen so far (I have an infant, it's difficult), and it's a heaping pile of dung. I am very disappointed in this second Baz/Kidman outing because Moulin Rouge! is one of my top five favorite movies of all time. Moulin Rouge! is a vibrant spectacle full of emotion and visual candy. Australia could've been directed by anyone for all of the lack of imagination of costume and scenery. Nicole Kidman and Hugh "Sexy Man" Jackman have negative chemistry. And voiceover is usually a poor choice in any movie, especially when your narrator is a child. On top of all that, the movie is three hours long, but should have been four because all of the emotional resonance was left on the cutting room floor.

Instead, according to my husband, go see Slumdog Millionaire (which I nearly typed as "Slumdong Millionaire. How's that for a porn title?)