Amazon.com

Earnest and well-meaning, this film also accumulates power as it goes along, despite its inability to generate any moral complexity. But then how complex can you get in a story about the Japanese imprisonment and mistreatment of an international group of women (including Glenn Close, Frances McDormand, and Julianna Margulies)? Written and directed by Bruce Beresford, it's based on a true story. Japanese brutality has been well chronicled before; the real story here is the way these women of different social and ethnic backgrounds achieve a sense of solidarity in the face of potentially deadly abuse. Strong performances and many uplifting and moving moments. --Marshall Fine ... Read more

Reviews (27)

At Best This Is a Once in a Lifetime Movie, A True Must See
This in my estimate is one of the best movies ever-made. I highly recommend it to anyone male or female. I don't watch R-rated movies... This is one of those you can't figure out why it's rated R... Other than minor war violence. As a Christian, I found that the story-line is rich, hopeful, faith building and lively. This movie will stay with you for a very long time. There are so many different facets... The missionary character is my favorite. But each person that I have recommended the movie to, relates to a different character. This is not just a movie for women... Trust me on that! Paradise Road tells the story of many different European women held prisoners of War, by the Japenese, by exploring each character in a very simple way. The symphony that is created is spectacular. Glenn Close was flawless. I'm a guy who likes truely well thought, written, produced, and acted movies... Paradise Road is all that and then some. I can't say enough... Watch it and write your own review!

Paradise Road - Song of Survival
This is one of my all-time favourite films.

The moving tale of women POWs who form a chorus and use vocal music to help cope with the harsh reality of Japanese internment.

Paradise Road is a wonderful movie, a true story wonderfully told. It never fails to move me everytime I watch it and I have watched it a few times! ;-)

AMAZING
This movie was awesome!!! At first I was reluctant to watch it but my girlfriend forced me to. If it wasn't for her I never would have seen it.

Scenes Missing
I just watched Paradise Road on DVD and was very disappointed. I didn't see scenes I remember in the VHS version. I like the movie very much, but would not have purchased a version that was shortened. There are two scenes I remember from renting the movie previously. Those being where Jennifer Ehle meets her husband while he is attempting to escape the men's camp, and also the scene where Miss Drummond is buried and Glenn Close's character begins to hum and tap the Bolero piece the orchestra did. I have no idea why Fox would delete those scenes. The cover of the DVD indicates the movie is 132 minutes long, however my counter stopped at 110 or so. So please be forwarned, if you purchase the DVD you will not get the whole movie. Other than that, I would say the movie is worth having in a home collection.

Moving, Magnificent, Mesmerizing!
Paradise Road, has got to be the most moving War Time movie I have seen (the Patriot coming in at close second).
It is of a POW camp of woman in Sumatra who undergo terrible conditions where their own friends drop - one by one from disease, or perhaps execution. In spite of all this they still manage to show the barbarious Japanese that they still had some spirit left by forming their own vocal orchestra.
Cate Blanchett's performance is to be noted as in it she faces death were it left me in tears to watch her demise in the Pacific sun. She moved me incredibly and when I watched it I was sure she was my favourite actress.
Paradise Road is a must-see! If you have to see two films in your whole life-time watch this.... then watch it again! ;-) ... Read more

Amazon.com

This is another one of those Cuckoo's Nest mental patient liberation stories, but with a clever "let's put on a show" twist. A group of melancholy Australian patients dares to pull off a theatrical version of Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte. This film adaptation of Louis Nowra's play is quite absurd and quite erratic, yet quite affecting in the second half when the patients finally commit to the quixotic project. But how to relate to Mozart's 1790 opera about true love? By identifying with the theme of infidelity as a therapeutic exercise. And how do they pull of this madcap farce? By relying on their ability to pretend, of course. This is most difficult for the unimaginative and uncaring director (Mendelsohn), who finds himself in a life-imitates-art conflict with his curt girlfriend and a damaged yet flirtatious patient. However, it is the passionate patient (Otto) who won't let Cosi die who is the film's emotional center. He's a neurotic perfectionist and a delusional addict--a sad, desperate man with a dream to show the world how to love and be loved. --Bill Desowitz ... Read more

Reviews (15)

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt!
I love this movie! I am Australian and you may think that makes me biased, but I'm not a great fan of all Australian movies. Having worked in another Psychiatric Hospital very near to the one where this was filmed, I can vouch for the characterization of the patients and staff. I saw exact replicas of patients I'd known, and yes a lot of them really do act like that. No-one gave a bad performance but the three knockout actors were Jackie Weaver( Cherry), Barry Otto (Roy) and David Wenham (Doug). We don't make many formula movies in Australia-we leave that up to Hollywood ,but if you like something different, offbeat and gritty and you're a fan of movies like Strictly Ballroom, Priscilla or Muriel's Wedding, you'll love this. I found it hilariously funny but also touching in a not-so soppy way.

A rare treasure in a sea of bad Aussie movies! ;)
Cosi is an absolutely fantastic find in the sea of Australian movies that are often total trash! A truly honest and original film, it creates several hilarious psychiatric patients including a pyromaniac to make Cosi a captivating story that really does entertain you for a couple of hours.

Based on the play written by Louis Nowra, Cosi is the uplifting story of how a group of psychiatric hospital tenants come together to perform an Italian opera Cosi Fan Tutte (Mozart) against the initial thoughts of the amateur director who has agreed to help the patients "come out of their shells". This is a tale of how "Jerry" (as one of the patient labels him) learns to accept these people and eventually he discovers and reveals to the audience that although these people are considered "crazy lunatics", they are, in essence, no more crazy than the people on the 'outside'.

This movie is for those looking for an original, creative film that guarantees laughs and smiles as well as entertaining characters and good ol' Aussie humour.

Enjoyable!
This is a funny and poignant story- our hero is hired to direct a play at a mental hospital as a type of therapy for the patients. Lewis is not quite sure what he is in for. He meets an vaired assortment of societal outcasts and oddballs who in the end don't appear to be all that different from the people outside the institution.

Notable performances-
Ben Mendelsohn as Lewis the director
Rachel Griffiths as Lucy his girlfriend
Toni Collette as Julie a troubled young woman whose parents have sent her to a mental institution to deal with her drug problem
David Wenham ( aka Faramir from Return of the King) plays Doug a disturbed pyromaniac who stirs up trouble for the production.

The patients do not settle for some lame variety show and push to put on an opera- Cosi Fan Tutte by Mozart. They do the opera as a play in English with singing for the finale. The play's theme is echoed by the events of the film- Lewis's friend Nick moves in with Lewis and Lucy and tells Lewis she is cheating on him. They make a bet. The play revolves around two young soldiers who make a bet that their women will be true- and then deceive them and the women fall in love with the new men they think they have met while their men are off at war.

The comedy is typical Aussie- a combo of physical slapstick and sight gags and some biting verbal barbs.

Toni Collette proves here she can sing beautifully- does an a cappella rendition of Stand By Me that steals the show.

Enjoyable overall- a gem in the rough I was pleased to stumble onto!

Haven't received it yet
After two full months after my Visa was charged, my copy of Cosi (one of my favourite movies) hasn't arrived. There's no way I can contact the company directly, so I have to use this medium. I can only hope that someone will read this and try to fix this problem. Otherwise, they've stolen my money!

the most hillarious of all time
ive loved this movie since the first day i saw it 6 yrs ago. every time i see it i still find myself laughing till im purple. you will never see a movie that has so many interesting characters doing so many different styles of comedy. if you like anything from the wedding singer to spy hard, space balls to theres something about mary, youll love this one. ... Read more

Reviews (41)

Sirens Can Come Calling to Anyone
I viewed this movie the first time in the theatre and loved it completely. Any woman, or man for that matter, who grew up in a sort of repressed world can understand the obvious fasination that this couple might experience when they come to Australia and become guests of this notorious artist and his family.

From the first momentous scene, when the couple encounters the Rasputinesque man with the missing limb, the film hints at the terrifying prospects of life beneath the lush beauty of earth's surroundings. Beware, behind all beauty lies death---but ah! the pleasure in living!!!!The elegant subtlety of Sirens lies within its ability to unmask and shyly peek at the longing we have of freely given love and the fasination of discovering the beauty of our genders. Even as the threat of death and decay peers through the trees, we crave the acknowledgement of our sensual needs and fears; we, sometimes cautiously, bend to the impossible curiousity that nags us in viewing our sexual opposites, and yes, in acknowledging our own sex.

My only critism of the VHS/DVD, is that one misses the humor and in large the major comment of what the movie seeks to share. The newspaper articles originally shown on the large screen, are unreadable on the small screen. The VHS/DVD viewers suffer from this loss because the impact of the film in the juxtaposition of these humorous and tragic observations shown through the medium of local news. They whisper to us of the uncertainty of ife, the quickness of death, the need to seize upon the gift of love and life.

The visual impact of the film is sensual and lovely; the actors are equally so. For once, Hugh Grant's bumbling bumbles aren't so irritating and the elegant Tara Fitzgerald lures you gently into her search of discovery for the sacred place where love and lust can happily survive. The cast is outstanding.

If they release a better version of the DVD in the future, I hope that the viewing of the headlines can be remedied. It makes all the difference in the perception of the film.

A little deeper into Sirens > a different interpretation
Spoiler alert: You might not want to read the following if you haven't seen the movie yet.

Most of the reviews of Sirens at Amazon focus on Elle, the nudity in the movie, and themes surrounding the Church's stance against freedom of expression. A few reviewers have touched intelligently on some of the biblical, Atlantean, and Homeric symbolism that suffuses the movie.

Only one reviewer, who happened not to like the film, touched on what I consider to be one of the most telling elements of the story: that Tara Fitzgerald's character Estella cheats on her husband, Hugh Grant. The reviewer thinks this is a problem, and it is, because Estella is a clergyman's wife. This should require some explaining, as Estella changes a great deal in a short amount of time during the film.

The cover of the movie shows Hugh Grant and Elle McPherson in poses suggesting a light-hearted romantic comedy. The movie is actually completely about Tara Fitzgerald's character's journey. What are the clues? The movie starts with Estella both flirting with and rebuffing a sailor on an ocean liner. Hugh Grant is not in the scene at all.

The movie follows Estella much more closely than any of the other characters and at key moments we even see hallucinations as Estella sees them: when she imagines herself naked in church and most importantly, when she "dreams" that the sirens are baptizing her (with water that turns to blood, no less, at which point she "wants to wake up") toward the end of the movie. The offensive painting for which Estella and her husband travel to Sam Neill's house shows a woman crucified in Christ's place, signalling that the female lead, not the male, is the protagonist.

But is the movie about Estella's sexual awakening? Not really.

It is not until after she awakens from the dream described above that the viewer learns the ship on which Estella sailed was the Titanic (look above her head when she and Hugh Grant are on the train leaving Australia--it is the same ship shown throughout the film). What could this mean? Estella is drowning in the wreck of the Titanic. As she is dying she experiences the events in the movie, a mix of Ulysses' sailors drawn to their watery graves by the beautiful sirens, a magical trip to the island of Atlantis (Australia), and religious rumblings of the moral tension between fidelity and self-expression. The "mission" to convince Sam Neill not to exhibit his blasphemous painting represents Estella's fight to stay alive. When she and her husband accept that they will not change Sam Neill's resolve (including the fact that he has painted Estella), Estella is giving up her grip on life. Look at the expression of relief and release on her face in the movie's very last scene before fading to the sirens on the rocks.

With a seemingly slapped on ending in which Estella and husband leave some of their sexual repression behind them, voila: you have a movie that viewers enjoy but is quite a bit deeper, as well.

Check it out, it's beautiful and brilliant!

Sirens
I am not overly fond of arty movies like Sirens so I admit a bit of bias that probably colors my reaction to it. The real theme of the movie, unless I completely missed the point, is the spiritual damage, if not emotional damage, that sexual repression exerts on the individual (and society, if one takes the logic a step further).

Set in the 1930's, a catholic priest is sent to compel a famous artist from displaying an erotic painting that mixes religious with erotic themes that the church finds offensive. This repressed priest and his wife find themselves in the midst of an almost bacchanalian atmosphere, as the artist's models cavort around in a carefree, playful, sexually liberated manner. The real focus the movie really becomes the priest's wife, who starts to find herself drawn into experiences around her and frees herself of her own repressions.

The drawback to the movie is it's just not that entertaining and has no real plot. I enjoyed the imagery and the acting was top notch. But on the whole, I found it somewhat boring.

a work of art
Although I'd love to bore the readers with my thoughtful analysis of this incredible film, I will restrain myself, because the previous reviews (especially those concerning mythologies) are quite thorough and nicely stated.

What I *would* like to point out are the easter eggs throughout the film. Any art buff will have a wonderful experience as classic works of art are recreated "live" during the movie. The movie is worth watching just to see how many you can catch.

But the deeper plot of the movie is art in itself. I highly recommend.

Never Tire of Watching
"Sirens" was about a woman, a preacher's wife, who appears to be intimidated by the sexual frankness of an artist and the models. But she is sexually sealed in the presence of her husband and the people she is staying with. The artist is proud of his work despite what others think.
Tara Fitzgerald is splendid in her performance as a timid preacher's wife. She immerses herself in the roles that she has portrayed relating to what the individual is feeling. The expression shows. She stood out mostly in the movie. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Good concept but very poorly done
The plot has so much potential, it's a pity they ended up producing such a dull movie. Really the only things that kept me watching it was the hope that it would get better (hope springs eternal) and the fact that I have found so many times in the past that what starts out as a dull, slow-paced movie often ends up to be a gem. This is NOT the case with this movie. Only for a few minutes in the movie does it pick up beyond a snail's pace. It's difficult to sympathize with any of the characters when the overall feeling they give you is one of annoyance. I hope you have better luck with this movie than I did.

A unique brooding drama
Shot mostly with a filter of subdued blue, and occasional greens for trees and grass, The Well, an Australian drama, is more than anything else an exercise in mood. A middle-aged spinster, well acted by Pamela Rabe, lives with her old decrepit father and cares for him with an undercurrent of grudge. When he dies she takes into her house a much younger woman, also well played by Miranda Otto, who is the opposite of the older woman--in age and temperament both.

Rabe's Hester has lighter moments with Otto's Cathy that belie the powerful differences between them. These behavioral differences are the substance of the story, such as it is. Truth and deceit, and the subtle--and indeterminate--loss of sanity that comes with co-dependent relationships lie at the heart of what happens here. Be advised that this is not a lesbian film, but rather one about how much people need each other.

This is not a bad film, but I found it curiously lacking in resonance--i.e., it did not stay with me after viewing. The three stars are for the two principals, who are excellent, and for the unique color/light fusion that was used to shoot the film. Perhaps it could have expanded and intensified the incidents that emphasized the relationship, thus giving it more resonance. ... Read more