georgec-9

Before going further, it's necessary to say that there has been past climate change, there will be climate change in the future, and some of that may well be induced by the actions of humanity and of government policies. So, to the extent it raises awareness that there is an issue, it warrants the one point I have allocated to it.

Unfortunately, this film adds nothing to intelligent discussion of the issues. Rather, it does for meteorology and climatology what Jurassic Park did for biology and palaeontology.

If we then add the clichéd story line, the ham acting, and the mawkish and utterly irrelevant 'human interest' to the pseudo-scientific stupidity, the other nine points disappear like Los Angeles in a tornado. If you have about two hours to spare, find some other way to fill them.

I choose my movie-going on the basis of critical reviews: rarely am I let down. This was one of those occasions, for rarely have I sat through such an exercise in tedium.

Other viewers have outlined the paper thin story of a vacuous young lady who runs away from home after making a pass at her mother's boyfriend. But, although it has been described as "Australian incorrectness", I would suggest it is just the opposite: a feminist shot at supposed male shallowness, per medium of a few stereotypes. This is accompanied by the parallel proposition that the "masculine" types probably are closet gays.

Much has been made of the lyrical photography of the landscape around Jindabyne. The camera panning slowly through long lingering landscapes does indeed extend the movie considerably, but this is supposedly a drama, not a documentary. Let's have one or the other!

Well, that doesn't leave much. Somehow I lasted the distance, suffering from a mixture of irritation at the slightness of the story and tedium at the way it was presented. Profundity? Maybe we were given the long lingering (etc) so that we could meditate on why we were there: I know I did.

Avoid!

This is a curiously enjoyable "1950s-style B grade sci-fi thriller" set in Germany in the mid-21st century. Just to add to the 1950s effect, it's shot in glorious old-fashioned black and white.

It seems the government wishes to cut the two TV channels down to one, leading to a "ratings" battle. One station has a quiz show "gold or grave": get the big question wrong and..... The other has a Hannibal Lecter type cannibal, safely behind bars, who answers inane questions from the audience: usually by making suitably threatening displays.

Our heroine works as a market analyst for one of the TV stations, but during a meeting the head of the station is mysteriously assassinated. She flees, only to find that she is blamed for the assassination, as shown clearly on the security camera tape which is shown to the world.

In hiding, she meets the leader of a resistance group. She also meets an astrophysicist who is convinced there are aliens on the loose.

All pretty much normal, isn't it? From there, it all rattles along with various unlikely twists and turns - and no, I'm not about to give the details, suffice to say there is finally a successful resolution of the whole exercise.

Not only does the movie not take itself seriously, it parodies both the 1950s B grade sci-fi film and, through that, the values of popular television programming. All in all, curiously enjoyable if not aspiring to be one of the "greats".