bootlebarth The American dominated 'Rotten Tomatoes' website gives the bore and gore abomination of 'Wolf Creek' the thumbs up but doesn't like 'Romulus, my father'. Raimond Gaita's personal story is extraordinary. His broadcast reading of his book is moving, as is this film. If you see this on DVD, don't miss the interview with Gaita on the extras disc.For people who still possess hearts and emotions, 'Romulus, my father' is unmissable. Gaita, the author, is no exhibitionist. The film takes liberties with his hastily written memoir, but most of the essentials are preserved.The child acting is outstanding. The direction is unobtrusive. The transition from young son of battling Australian immigrants to professor of philosophy is mentioned only in the closing titles. If American critics and audiences turn away from this, but award Oscars to turkeys like 'American Beauty' and 'As Good as it Gets', there's not much hope for humanity.If you like car chases, explosions, tough guy grimaces and special effects, stay away. If you still have human feelings and haven't been brainwashed by what passes for popular culture, take a deep breath and witness this exceptional film.

Cihan "Sean Victorydawn" Vercan (CihanVercan) A broken family have a growing boy at his early teenage years and have no sense of responsibility to grow a child. Considering that both mother and the father is uneducated and clueless, they live in a farm before the World War II; we still have no idea upon why they ruin a child's life making a havoc of his psychology.Proved by adversity the family have nothing to distinguish their boy, nor to give anything to make him happy, nor to teach him anything precisely good. Father gets to figure out that the kid needs a college education, and sends him to a college. Then after the suicide of the mother, the boy gets closer to his father. A happy ending occurs and mops up all the pain and unpleasant situations out of the movie, and hopefully out of the boy's memory. Thus, his father taught him one thing, a very important one, how to be patient of adversity.For a tough story to put on silver screen, the actors' performances are somewhat exhilarating; and that's the mainspring to tolerate this movie. Within low-budget movies with no technical endeavors, if you like to witness a modest triumph of a child, much better than My Father Romulus, I advise you to watch "I am David".

jeffpen The book was a favorite in our house, and the locales were my childhood home area. While I thought Richard Roxburgh followed Raimond Gaita's book pretty faithfully; that the cinematography was splendid; and that there were fine acting performances by Kodi Smit-McPhee and Eric Bana, overall it came up short for me.The reason: the dialogue was simply too sparse. I could be corrected, but I can't recall any scene where more than two, perhaps three very short sentences were exchanged. Throughout, people hardly spoke - the result being that it relied too heavily on languorous, meaningful looks and pregnant silences. And I agree with a criticism voiced elsewhere on this film's site, that this is a hallmark of Australian films, an over-used indulgence.How I suffered that watching Rowan Woods's endless lingering facials of Cate Blanchett in 'Little Fish' last year. Its a great face and she's a great actress - but the treatment just drove me to distraction in that case.Boring! Returning to 'Romulus, My Father,' it's just a personal view, but I thought some selective voice-over narration by the boy Raimond would have assisted the film's sense of movement a great deal, filled some of the gaps, added depth, and assisted an uninitiated viewer's appreciation of the themes,personalities and relationships. At least it would have given some more human voice to a very human story.In summary, I felt it was not a bad film - that it came close to being very good. But it's flawed, and again in a way that so many Australian cinema releases are.

ptb-8 Arena Films in Sydney Australia have developed and produced some of the best small films made here in the last ten years. I have seen ROMULUS; I saw it at a media screening in Sydney mid April 2007. I understand the film will go into release in May 2007. Helmed by John Maynard and Robert Connolly, Arena are responsible for THE BANK, THE BOYS with David Wenham, and SWEETIE among their excellent library of films. However this time, I am delighted to say they have managed to create a film so genuinely superb, so astonishingly well cast and with a major turn as director by actor Richard Roxburgh, I find myself actually struggling for adequate superlatives as to not sound like I am overstating the quality and qualities of this profoundly satisfying and emotionally moving father/son relationship drama. Set in the early 1960s in rural Victoria Australia, it basically tells of the marriage difficulties of a migrant family from eastern Europe. It is the mother with wanderlust that causes the central emotional drama and ripples of overwhelming joy and despair as the men around her, husband his brother and her lovers, and including her 8 year old son Raimond, attempt to hold their extended family together, survive on a farm, and deal with her fracturing emotions. I was the same age as the boy in this film in 1961 and I lived in Sydney among many migrant families from Europe who had moved post WW2 to find a better life here. Many did but equally as many became bewildered in Australia, emotionally lost because they had lost the thread of their village life and European life/morality and found their freedom here created mental and moral abandon... they became lost and found the new country too huge too free and too full of emotional pitfalls: it was just too different: sunny and open yes, but no family bonds and not strong with religious ties. As a result emotional inertia and immorality and sometimes drink and violence took over; just as often was a nervous breakdown. ROMULUS charts all this with skill and motion like no other major new film in the last ten years has been able to do. David Elfick's 1993 film NO WORRIES maybe, or CAREFUL HE MIGHT HEAR YOU from 1983 are very close past emotional and critical successes; this film certainly surpasses them in the child's eye view of a marriage and a family collapse. The casting is just so perfect and I defy anyone to not to be absolutely transfixed at the young boy actor Kodi Smitt who is front and center at all times here. His performance is one of the great child acting performances in any film; period, ever. Richard Roxburgh as an actor is very good, but who knew (apart from savvy Connolly and Maynard) that he could create a visually breathtaking emotionally solid and superbly told story; so often in a dozen scenes he shows one more shot of Raimond just being, as a tail end of the scene and it caps every part of this film perfectly each time. ROMULUS sets a new standard for excellent emotional drama produced here are hopefully erases the bad credit and ill feelings of so many useless and lousy films produced here so far this century:. So many cinemas and their owners have been wringing their hands in despair at the poor results of so many terrible Oz films of late. The good ones? try these: KENNY, THE BANK, RABBIT PROOF FENCE and THE OYSTER FARMER being the only real shining lights in a very dim recent release schedule. ROMULUS MY FATHER will go into history as one of Australia's best produced films and I personally hope it is loved and applauded Internationally as I expect it to be here. On the down side: Arena have taken a serious risk in involving Arclight films in an executive production and sales partner role here; Arclight exec producers have been seen for over 10 years as being responsible for some of Australia's worst and most reviled and truly embarrassing films: often critically spewed upon and a complete waste of resources and reputation: for example: the vile cruel CUT or the disgusting WOLF CREEK or CUBBYHOUSE, or lame DECK DOGZ, or idiotic SHOTGUN WEDDING or nonevent BACK OF BEYOND or woeful EXCHANGE LIFEGUARDS are simply hated by the few viewers who wasted time on them or by cinemas who took a chance on them. The appalling WOLF CREEK is now credited with being the start of thew 'torture porn' cycle currently debasing cinemas and communities encouraged to see them (HOSTEL and HOSTEL PART 2 is a direct result of this awful movie)... so I hope Arena survive their relationship with Arclight.