Critics » Luke Buckmaster
Luke Buckmaster

Luke Buckmaster

"Some of my favorite movie quotes: "Upset? You've never seen me very upset." Tom Cruise, Mission: Impossible "Here's a hint: when you're telling a story, having a point! It makes it so make more interesting for the listener." Steve Martin, Trains Planes and Automobiles "You're out of your mind." "Yeah, ain't it cool?" Christian Slater talking to John Travolta in Broken Arrow "She'll be reaching for the sleeping pills within a week, and you and me will laugh about this until we're very old men." Aaron Eckhart in In the Company of Men "Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era --- the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run ... but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant...There was madness in any direction, at any hour...There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning....And that, I think, was the handle --- that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting --- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes, you can almost see the high water mark: that place where the wave finally broke, and rolled back..." Exert from Hunter S Thompson's 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'"

Agrees with the Tomatometer 66% of the time.

Biography:
I live in Melbourne, Australia, where it's sunny in the summer and unpredictable any other time of year. Film reviewing has become a great hobby for me over the last few years; it's a satisfying way for me to spend some of my time and energy. I have maintained a web site for around the last three years, and with the help of a few friends it's developed over time to something we're pretty happy with. My work can be seen on my web site, In Film Australia (http://infilmau.iah.net), as well as various popular sites such as Urban Cinefile, Movienutz, Festivale and Movies Online. I have also been published in the Melbourne print magazine 'The Big Issue.'
Publications:
Crikey , In Film Australia
Total Reviews:
514
Location:
Melbourne, Australia

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 514
Previous | Next
Rating T-Meter Title | Year Add Date
98% Gravity (2013) " Prepare to return your jaw to its upright position." — Crikey
Posted Oct 3, 2013
63% The Best Offer (La Migliore Offerta) () " The correlation between art fakery and romantic fraudulence is a tantalising bow to draw but Tornatore's focus lies with more conventional deceptions. " — Crikey
Posted Oct 2, 2013
50% White House Down (2013) " Emmerich's dramatic build-ups are gallingly heavy-handed but the plot's addiction to one-upping itself with ever more fist-thumping spectacle eventually hits a cycle of (presumably unintended) hilarity" — Crikey
Posted Sep 3, 2013
26% Jobs (2013) " You could call this a crowd-pleasing Hollywood ending. You could also call it genocide." — Crikey
Posted Sep 1, 2013
30% Kick-Ass 2 (2013) " Kick-Ass 2 may feature the most digitally connected heroes and villains in Hollywood history, but it's also an uncomfortably amoral experience." — In Film Australia
Posted Aug 28, 2013
49% Pain & Gain (2013) " It's social commentary so slick and scathing letting it wash over you feels like getting lubed and chafed at the same time." — Crikey
Posted Aug 18, 2013
69% The Wolverine (2013) " The Wolverine is surprisingly dour and uneventful, at least by the carnage-n-claptrap standards of modern superhero movies" — Crikey
Posted Aug 5, 2013
84% This Is the End (2013) " At its best it's a film about people getting lost in the fiction of their own creations." — Crikey
Posted Jul 24, 2013
72% Pacific Rim (2013) " Heavy handed, heavy jointed, lacquered with heavy use of 3D and bulked up by long stretches of heavy machines swinging around heavy globs of concentrated CGI." — Crikey
Posted Jul 12, 2013
89% The World's End (2013) " The team behind Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz smash out another twisted gem: a boozy buddy movie with a big twist." — Crikey
Posted Jul 11, 2013
98% Mud (2013) " Mud is about the fragility of men, the craving to be loved - by a woman, by other men - and how easily that love is misplaced, taken away, cheated or lost." — Crikey
Posted Jul 1, 2013
56% Man of Steel (2013) " Good old fashioned fun is treated as something passé in Zack Snyder's Superman reboot, which is long, laborious and repetitive." — Crikey
Posted Jun 24, 2013
40% Only God Forgives (2013) " By embellishing low art in high art surrounds, Refn is challenging ideas of context and consumption, a sick twist on Warhol's placement of a soup can in an art gallery. " — Crikey
Posted Jun 18, 2013
84% Much Ado About Nothing (2013) " a modest but beautifully constructed film that feels fresh despite its age, colourful despite its muted palette and grand despite its architecture." — Crikey
Posted Jun 9, 2013
49% The Great Gatsby (2013) " Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of The Great Gatsby cements his reputation as the quasi-intellectual's Michael Bay, who destroys things with glitter instead of Transformers." — In Film Australia
Posted May 28, 2013
19% The Hangover Part III (2013) " The Hangover 3 scrambles to make sense of itself, lurching between action, sight and situational humour with the grace of a 2am drunk wolfing down a souvlaki." — Crikey
Posted May 23, 2013
87% Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) " J.J. Abrams' ability to smash set pieces and whip together high octane action sequences is up there with the best of them." — Crikey
Posted May 8, 2013
95% The Hunt (2013) " Mads Mikkelsen is perfectly cast as a man unfairly accused of child abuse in writer/director Thomas Vinterberg's cautionary tale about small town mob justice. But like the film, there is something cold and clinical about it." — Crikey
Posted May 7, 2013
79% Iron Man 3 (2013) " The most interesting thing about Iron Man 3 isn't the movie itself, but the return of legendary screenwriter Shane Black." — Crikey
Posted Apr 28, 2013
47% Olympus Has Fallen (2013) " The nerve centre of American political power is pulverised in Olympus Has Fallen. Whether it intended to or not, the movie represents a turning point for Hollywood blockbusters." — In Film Australia
Posted Apr 18, 2013
54% Oblivion (2013) " slow, heavy-handed and stiff-jointed, prone to admiring the scenery and populating it with bits and pieces plucked from a smorgasbord of post-apocalyptic interplanetary reality-bending cuisine." — Crikey
Posted Apr 11, 2013
69% Trance (2013) " A restless, furious, jittery exercise in answering one gap of logic by creating another." — Crikey
Posted Apr 11, 2013
14% A Good Day To Die Hard (2013) " When a Die Hard movie doesn't have a single well-staged action sequence, you know something went badly wrong." — Crikey
Posted Mar 27, 2013
60% Housos Vs. Authority () " Paul Fenech has been lobbing comedy grenades for eons. Whether he intended it or not, his latest movie is one of Australia's most brutal satires of lower class suburbia." — In Film Australia
Posted Mar 13, 2013
0% Blinder () " Did the cast and crew honestly think viewers would want to chant "win, rapist, win!"?" — Crikey
Posted Mar 3, 2013
38% Save Your Legs () " As a comedy that largely operates on a fish-out-of-water travelogue trajectory, predictably embracing that old chestnut about what Indian food can do to a white person's digestive system, Save Your Legs! struggles." — Crikey
Posted Feb 28, 2013
60% The Last Stand (2013) " Schwarzenegger, now 65, hasn't lost his one amazing gift for being a movie's worst actor and best asset" — Crikey
Posted Feb 27, 2013
4% Movie 43 (2013) " Movie 43 has a great deal more on its mind than poo and fart jokes. More, in fact, than most comedies that come out of Hollywood, though the mauling its received over the last couple of weeks suggest a critic isn't supposed to say that." — In Film Australia
Posted Feb 11, 2013
89% Lincoln (2012) " Spielberg's guarded representation of Honest Abe highlights some problems with the biopic format, especially in terms of veracity, and especially in terms of how we can (or can't) measure accuracy as the years roll by." — Crikey
Posted Feb 7, 2013
78% Flight (2012) " In Flight Zemekis and co. have achieved something braver than the familiar "drugs are bad mmmk" chestnut, creating one of Hollywood's most vivid portrayals of a functional alcoholic character, and asking us not to judge him not by his addiction." — Crikey
Posted Feb 5, 2013
88% Django Unchained (2012) " For his latest exercise in pulpy throwbacks and balls-to-the-wall homage, Quentin Tarantino once more wipes away the gunk of a zillion B movie tropes to do what he does best: apply a hyper-powered defibrillator to a tuckered out genre." — Crikey
Posted Jan 7, 2013
70% Les Misérables (2012) " Hooper has managed to suck the life out of a magnificent production, draining the blood of bread-pilfering Jean Valjean into a port-a-loo of tedium." — Crikey
Posted Dec 14, 2012
87% Life of Pi (2012) " At the peak of its power, Ang Lee's highly anticipated adaptation of Yann Martel's best-selling book feels like the cinematic equivalent of touching God." — Crikey
Posted Dec 6, 2012
92% Skyfall (2012) " James Bond's 23rd official feature film gives the iconic secret agent something to stew over: an existential crisis." — Crikey
Posted Nov 21, 2012
96% Argo (2012) " Affleck has paraded well beyond dramatic liberties into a thick confetti of parochial myth-making, and it's disconcerting to see how content he appears to be with trading fact for fiction." — Crikey
Posted Oct 30, 2012
24% Paranormal Activity 4 (2012) " The latest instalment in a franchise of cheaply made mass-marketed movies that have lined the pockets of producers who chanced upon the holy grail of license-to-print-money filmmaking." — Crikey
Posted Oct 29, 2012
87% Frankenweenie (2012) " This is McDonalds moviemaking - plonk it down, fry it up, slap on a new label, drop fresh tears in the cauldron - and the special sauce rarely tasted so bland." — Crikey
Posted Oct 25, 2012
67% Lawless (2012) " Director John Hillcoat's terrifically acted prohibition era thriller, inspired by the real-life story of the Bondurant brothers, shows how the American dream starting to go wrong - before it even existed." — Crikey
Posted Oct 15, 2012
40% Mental (2013) " Mental is mental too, temperamental and unconventional in bizarre and funny ways." — In Film Australia
Posted Oct 7, 2012
17% The Watch (2012) " the story regularly dozes off and wakes up in other places, squinting its eyes and groping in the dark for laughs." — Crikey
Posted Sep 20, 2012
26% Kath & Kimderella () " Kath and Kimderdella is not a comedy, it's a collection of humiliations, the concept of an audience paying for this stuff delivering the sickest and most potent punchline." — Crikey
Posted Sep 10, 2012
—— 10Terrorists () " A hell-for-leather send-up of reality television so fast moving it needs a sign: no pregnant women or people with heart conditions allowed." — Crikey
Posted Aug 26, 2012
35% Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012) " If The Matrix turned the humble spoon into an enduring visual motif for the cinematic dinner table, Vampire Hunter attempts to do the same with a fork." — Crikey
Posted Aug 5, 2012
64% Cosmopolis (2012) " Cosmopolis is the first great GFC art film, linked to financial and social catastrophe in tantalisingly evasive ways." — Crikey
Posted Aug 1, 2012
80% Magic Mike (2012) " Magic Mike works with a Boogie Nights-esque structure, showcasing a glowing cash-strewn catwalk empire before eventually urinating all over it." — Crikey
Posted Jul 25, 2012
88% The Dark Knight Rises (2012) " This is terrorist fiction writ large: bracing, visceral and intensely atmospheric, the loudest and most ferocious post-9/11 movie to come out of Hollywood so far." — Crikey
Posted Jul 17, 2012
100% The King Is Dead () " The King is Dead! is a deliciously dark genre mash-up, coy and explorative but tight and insular, sprayed with wry laughs and a genuinely foreboding undertone." — Crikey
Posted Jul 16, 2012
73% The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) " The Amazing Spider-Man is as much a contract as it is a movie, filled out, signed and delivered in front of our eyes." — Crikey
Posted Jul 3, 2012
52% The Three Stooges (2012) " Without actually saying it, and certainly without needing to, the Farrellys present the Three Stooges as grown men with severe intellectual disorders, blissfully ignorant of their impairments. " — Crikey
Posted Jun 26, 2012
Showing 1 - 50 of 514
Previous | Next
  • Sort by Rating:

    Sort results by this critic's rating. This option is only available for critics with a rating system (4 star, letter grade, 1-10, etc.)

  • Sort by T-meter:

    Sort results by the Tomatometer (percentage of critics recommending a certain movie)

Best to Worst Sampling

Best Reviewed

More...

Worst Reviewed

More...

Fresh Links

Halloween Movies For Wimps
Halloween Movies For Wimps External Link
 Scary movies too scary for you? Here are some alternatives for October 31st.
10 Best Superhero TV Shows
10 Best Superhero TV Shows External Link
 HitFix combs through TV history to compile a superpowered list.
Ridiculous Movie Mistakes
Ridiculous Movie Mistakes External Link
 RollingStone proves even the best movies miss a details here and there.
Deadly Movie Kids
Deadly Movie Kids External Link
 Moviefone lists 11 Movie Kids Who Could Kick Our Asses.
50 States, 50 Movies
50 States, 50 Movies External Link
 For July 4th, TimeOut has compiled 50 state-specific movie choices.
Follow RT on Twitter!
Follow RT on Twitter! External Link
 Spice up your feed with hourly Tomatometer updates!
Help | About | Jobs | Critics Submission | Press | API | Licensing | Mobile
Copyright © Flixster, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright Policy | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Ad Choices