There’s something about the 70s and 80s that brought out the best in Australian cinema. Perhaps it was the way we celebrated and shared our various idiosyncrasies with the world, be it the outback in Mad Max, mateship in Gallipoli or larrikinism in Crocodile Dundee. Or perhaps it was just those unseemly short stubbies that made no effort whatsoever to conceal a man’s meat and two veg. Whatever it was, [...]

Matthew McConaughey is back playing a defence attorney, fifteen years after the John Grisham adaptation A Time to Kill. But his earnest, cleancut persona in that film has been ditched in favour of a charismatic but morally dubious sleazeball in The Lincoln Lawyer. As the numberplate on his gargantuan car/mobile office (the “Lincoln” of the title) testifies, any client who signs on with him is all but guaranteed a final [...]