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VOL. 07·ISSUE 82·OCTOBER 2026MONDAY, 26 OCT 2026
SCREENTIMES
Independent Australian film, television, and culture. Criticism with its eyes open. Reporting with its receipts shown. Six years of it, and counting.
FILED MONTHLY
01 / 04NOW SHOWING
MUSIC/ESSAYISSUE 82
Muriel's Wedding and the song about losing
P.J. Hogan's 1994 comedy is built around ABBA records, and the songs it chose are almost all about defeat. Muriel hears them as promises.
KIERAN BOUSTANY23.10.2026 · 05:00
THE MASTHEAD
Five writers. One desk.
02 / 04FEATURED
FILM№ 01
Puberty Blues and the long wait on the sand
Bruce Beresford's 1981 picture watches two girls sit on a beach for most of its running time, and the sitting is the argument.
BRONTE HAUGHEY21.10.2026
TV№ 02
Rake was never about the cases
Eight years and five seasons of Cleaver Greene taught Australian television that you can keep a man unredeemed, and that audiences will follow him anyway.
RHYS TAVITA18.10.2026
MUSIC№ 03
Gallipoli and the two pieces of music that are not Australian
Peter Weir's 1981 war film has no composed score to speak of. It has a French synthesiser record and a baroque lament, and between them they say everything the picture needs.
KIERAN BOUSTANY16.10.2026
03 / 04READING LIST
№ 01
FILM13.10.2026
Breaker Morant and the country that adopted its scapegoat
Bruce Beresford's 1980 courtroom drama made an English-born soldier into an Australian martyr, and the picture's argument about empire has outlived its historical certainties.
BRONTE HAUGHEY
№ 02
FILM11.10.2026
Walkabout is a British film about a country it never claims
Nicolas Roeg's 1971 picture is claimed as an Australian classic, though it was made by a Londoner, financed by two Americans and sold by 20th Century Fox. Its best argument is how little it pretends otherwise.
BRONTE HAUGHEY
№ 03
MUSIC04.10.2026
The Proposition was scored from motifs, and that is why it sounds like heat
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis wrote the music for John Hillcoat's western from motifs, not from frames, and the film's strange, hymn-like heat is the result.
KIERAN BOUSTANY
№ 04
ESSAYS01.10.2026
Strictly Ballroom is a film about who is allowed to teach the steps
Baz Luhrmann's 1992 comedy is sold as a story about dance. It is also a story about an Australian champion who has to be taught his own steps by a Spanish-Australian family in their own house.
MARA DENG
№ 05
FILM30.09.2026
The Last Wave and the rain Sydney could not explain
Peter Weir's 1977 film puts a corporate lawyer in a drowned city and asks what a settler place owes to the ground and weather beneath it.
BRONTE HAUGHEY
№ 06
TV20.09.2026
The Narrow Road to the Deep North won every department but the show
Justin Kurzel's Burma Railway miniseries won nine AACTAs and led the Logies on nominations, then lost best miniseries at both, and the juries were right both times.
RHYS TAVITA
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04 / 04THE INDEX
22.10.2026Mother and Son was a sitcom about care, and nobody called it thatRHYS TAVITA09.10.2026Kath & Kim mocked the suburbs, then sat down in the back yardRHYS TAVITA08.10.202684 per cent want local content. 36 per cent say it is easy to findODETTE MALOUF03.10.2026Screen Australia put $5.7 million across 47 documentaries, about $121,000 eachODETTE MALOUF27.09.2026Return to Paradise imports the cosy-crime formula and survives the flightRHYS TAVITA24.09.2026Looking for Alibrandi was the first Australian story handed to me as mineMARA DENG23.09.2026Rolf de Heer keeps handing the film to whoever gets left outBRONTE HAUGHEY18.09.2026The Devil's Playground split its prize between a boy and a BrotherBRONTE HAUGHEY15.09.2026Bluey's music was made the way the Heelers playKIERAN BOUSTANY13.09.2026Spider-Man took more in one weekend than Australian films took in six monthsODETTE MALOUF09.09.2026Together is an Australian horror film that learned to say trunkMARA DENG04.09.2026High Country trusts the mountains more than the mysteryRHYS TAVITA