Rating: 
Summary: a definite let down
Review: I was pretty let down by this film due to the praise it received from a friend of mine whose opinion I value. I just found it didn't really present me with anything I hadn't seen before. The story was interesting but it could have been delivered in a much more original way. This is a good film but far from great.
Rating:
Summary: a definite let down
Review: I was pretty let down by this film due to the praise it received from a friend of mine whose opinion I value. I just found it didn't really present me with anything I hadn't seen before. The story was interesting but it could have been delivered in a much more original way. This is a good film but far from great.
Rating: 
Summary: Regarding Richard Chamberlin . . .
Review: Most of the reviews have already done a good job praising this elegant, quiet and compelling film. It's also the finest thing, or maybe the only quality performance, Richard Chamberlain ever did, and probably few people ever saw it. Most people probably think of him being a TV hack, and for the most part they're right. But it shouldn't put anyone off from buying this DVD; he is not only competent in the role, his clean-cut reserve is essential.
Rating:
Summary: Toke up and fall out, your in for a strange trip.
Review: My father turned me on to this film when I was about 4. He used to play it for me when he was cooking dinner, listening to music, studying, any time he needed some time to himself and needed me to stay in one place. (Chariots of fire and The Warriors work well too. lol ) Well, I am 25 now and this film is as creepy, fascinating and hypnotic as it was then. I mean, the third wave, for christ sake. It's over. Your outa here. Done. Would you be remembered as a quality addition to the human race? Really, "Who are you?" I can add no more than my peers here, as all except one giant bozo found this film to be as good as I did.
Rating:
Summary: Eerie, evocative, and haunting
Review: Our modern, rational culture floats like a small boat on a huge, dark ocean of unguessable depth. Richard Chamberlain, in perhaps his best role ever, is a lawyer specializing in the arid technicalities of corporate taxation who is, by chance [well no, not really, as it turns out] drawn into the Shamanic world of the tribal aborigines who, unknown to most people, still inhabit Sydney, Australia. Little by little, the comfortable everyday world in which Chamberlain's character lived starts to dissolve, or at least become transparent, before the unguessably ancient and very different world around it. Meanwhile nature is acting very strange, paralleling the breakdown in Chamberlain's character. A wonderful movie, full of rich metaphors and images (including the final one) that remain in the mind long after the film is over. Even the soundtrack: some aboriginal instruments, some very nervous-sounding Australian-Irish dance music, and some spare but oh-so-telling chords, can stay with you for days. What are dreams anyway and what do we buy by living in a daylight world where we cannot see them? Weir suggests some provacative and disturbing answers.
Rating:
Summary: exploring shamanism
Review: peter weir is a fine artist and director (see also "picnic at hanging rock"). this movie is an unsettling, penetrating look at a mysterious subject. one line from the movie provides an eerie summary: "we've lost our dreams, then they return and we don't know what they mean." selection of the didgeridoo was an inspired musical choice, heightening the other-worldly nature of the film. well done again, peter!
Rating: 
Summary: Thrills and Spills
Review: Peter Weir's "The Last Wave" is perhaps best thought of as two films. One is a smartly made, imaginative horror thriller, so tightly controlled that it is likely to put your stomach in knots for its entire 100 plus minutes. The other is a rather hazy, sentimental look at aboriginal culture, with a vaporous dreaminess that sympathetically can be viewed as "mysterious," but more often seems alternately obtuse and pretentious. Of course, you can't really separate the two films. The thriller only works because of its use of aboriginal society as a black pit of exoticism into which we can project our fantasies and fears. The film's effective, slow pace, on the other hand, is justified by its pretense at having something to say about the differences between Western and native life. Weir is obviously aware of his own prejudices. In the interview with him on the DVD, he notes that the film is made from a Western perspective, and he goes to great lengths to present a sympathetic view of the aboriginal characters. His good intentions do not prevent him from exploiting aboriginal culture as horror decor, however. The aborigines in "The Last Wave" are effectively treated like Martians in a low-budget science fiction film from the 1950s. On the other hand, the horror elements *are* extremely well handled. The main character's visions of apocalypse come at you unexpectedly, sideways slivers of thrills. Weir makes abundant use of slow-motion, as water gushes out of a car radio, or people on the street are suddenly seen floating under water, to suggest the uncanny in the everyday. Even some of the more predictable moments, like the main character's deteriorating relationship with his wife, are handled effectively enough for them not to get in the way too long. If I prefer to think of "The Last Wave" as a horror film, it's because that's where it succeeds. Its puffed up thematics may make it seem like an Art Film (and thereby justify its lovely presentation from the Criterion Collection), but it really isn't much different from the kind of thing they used to show on late night television. If it is a cut above such films, it is so only because of the skill with which it is made, not because of its literary ambitions or political pretenses.
Rating:
Summary: Australia is another planet - I've been there
Review: Peter Weir's best film. SO much better than anything else (except possibly Picnic at Hanging Rock) that he did that I wonder if this was done by his evil twin. Mystic, profound, spiritual, deep deep in contradiction to the Western way of perception. For once I have no complaints about absent DVDs. The prefect double feature (and BOTH are on DVD) is Nick Roeg's Walkabout and The Last Wave. The first is aboriginal actor Gulphill's first film. I believe The Last Wave is his second and last. Want to understand the ancient heart of Australia? Here ya go. Buy and watch both films. (And if you can get them, buy Terry Dowlings science fiction novels.)
Rating:
Summary: Australia is another planet - I've been there
Review: Peter Weir's best film. SO much better than anything else (except possibly Picnic at Hanging Rock) that he did that I wonder if this was done by his evil twin. Mystic, profound, spiritual, deep deep in contradiction to the Western way of perception. For once I have no complaints about absent DVDs. The prefect double feature (and BOTH are on DVD) is Nick Roeg's Walkabout and The Last Wave. The first is aboriginal actor Gulphill's first film. I believe The Last Wave is his second and last. Want to understand the ancient heart of Australia? Here ya go. Buy and watch both films. (And if you can get them, buy Terry Dowlings science fiction novels.)
Rating:
Summary: Richard Chamberlain is a crucible for myth and mysticism.
Review: Richard Chamberlain (yes, that Richard Chamberlain) leaves behind his hackneyed mini-series characters to play a deeply troubled Australian attorney who is forced to confront his past and alter the course of his comfortable suburban life, and possibly the world, by city dwelling aborigines. As he reluctantly defends urban aborigines against murder charges, the facts of his own life and the role he was destined to play in the mythology of their culture is revealed to him. Are his visions exhaustion nightmares, stress-induced hallucinations, or shamanic gifts from the aboriginal "dream time"? An understated but very dramatic, portentous and suspenseful film, with beautifully filmed apocalyptic visions and a glimpse into aboriginal culture. Does every shot sequence have water in it?
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