Daniel Webber

Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan

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Sergeant Buick takes aim

A Vietnam war movie released in 2019, Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan has a couple of other potential strikes against it. It’s Australian, for one, and who even remembers that Australia lined up alongside the USA for that epic? For another, it’s not even vaguely interested in setting Vietnam in the wider political context. All good reasons to watch it, then. Long Tan was a real battle, in which 108 Australian and New Zealand troops somehow managed to hold off an enemy Vietcong force of 2,000 in a battle that took place in a rubber plantation, at a huge cost in lives on both sides. Not that this movie is really … Read more

Seriously Red

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Fake dolly with fake Kenny

“Find out who you are and then do it on purpose.” Seriously Red starts out with this pithy aphorism from Dolly Parton then dives into the story of Raylene “Red” Delaney, an Australian property valuer who really really wants to be the Tennessee country star herself. Red is a lovely woman but a terrible valuer, and director Gracie Otto and writer Krew Boylan’s film wastes no time in getting her fired from her job for being too empathetic, not quite pencil-skirted enough, and then putting Red on the road to glamour and glory as she goes all in on being a Dolly impersonator. But can you be true to yourself by being someone … Read more