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Luke Buckmaster

Tomatometer-approved critic
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.'

Location:

Melbourne, Australia

Official Website:

http://infilmau.iah.net

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Imagine (2025) 3/5 EDIT “I appreciated Imagine’s chaotic energy, but watching it felt a bit like sitting in a car that’s whizzing through all sorts of amazing environments, rarely slowing down so you can have a proper look. ” – Guardian Nov 26, 2025 Full Review Kangaroo Island (2024) 3/5 EDIT “Sometimes I thought Kangaroo Island was about to devolve into Hallmarkian slosh and lose me completely, only for David (a first-time feature film-maker) to get me back on side, more or less, by creating small moments that really resonate.” – Guardian Nov 26, 2025 Full Review Train Dreams (2025) 95% EDIT “This is a beautiful film, emotionally and aesthetically—a complex, melancholic kind of beauty. ” – Flicks (AU, NZ, UK) Nov 17, 2025 Full Review Beast of War (2025) 89% EDIT “Roache-Turner borrows from various genre playbooks but conjures a distinctive, gung-ho, atmosphere-oozing work that’s all his own. ” – Guardian Oct 8, 2025 Full Review Play Dirty (2025) 42% EDIT “Play Dirty has pluck, sass, and grunt; it’s exactly what you want from a Shane Black movie. ” – Flicks (AU, NZ, UK) Oct 3, 2025 Full Review Bring Her Back (2025) 89% 4/5 EDIT “There’s no doubting this film’s art, craft and impact, although I did leave the cinema wondering whether I was a richer person for having experienced it, or in some way irrevocably tarnished.” – Guardian May 30, 2025 Full Review Spit (2025) 3/5 EDIT “The film-makers insist a little too much that he’s a fundamentally decent person. Spit still feels like a real character, however, largely thanks to Wenham’s superb performance.” – Guardian Mar 19, 2025 Full Review Mickey 17 (2025) 78% EDIT “I like some aspects of it, and appreciated more, but it’s a long and lumbering affair, bloated as all get-out.” – Flicks (AU, NZ, UK) Mar 7, 2025 Full Review Presence (2024) 88% EDIT “Soderbergh has made a genuinely different kind of horror movie that trembles with nervous energy, alive to new storytelling possibilities.” – Flicks (AU, NZ, UK) Feb 7, 2025 Full Review Masked and Anonymous (2003) 26% EDIT “I love those long, windy speeches—not the kind of dialogue one’s accustomed to hearing in movies, and, while they contain noticably Dylanesque flourishes, not the kind we’re accostomed to from his writing either.” – Flicks (AU, NZ, UK) Jan 25, 2025 Full Review Wolf Man (2025) 48% EDIT “This is the second time Whannell has taken potentially schlocky material and sucked all the fun out, creating an air of terrible choking heaviness. ” – Flicks (AU, NZ, UK) Jan 20, 2025 Full Review Magic Beach (2024) 4/5 EDIT “This is a film about nature and creation; the amazing world around us and the art we use to reflect its awesomeness.” – Guardian Jan 18, 2025 Full Review How to Make Gravy (2024) 2/5 EDIT “This is not a subtle film -- some scenes made my face react not like I’d consumed a delicious, nourishing sauce but like I’d wolfed down a brick-sized block of artery-clogging cheese.” – Guardian Nov 30, 2024 Full Review Gladiator II (2024) 70% EDIT “You can’t take it seriously, but you can’t have fun with it either.” – Flicks (AU, NZ, UK) Nov 14, 2024 Full Review Here (2024) 36% EDIT “Flecks of mawkishness snowball into full-blown cheese.” – Flicks (AU, NZ, UK) Nov 7, 2024 Full Review The Moogai (2024) 50% 3/5 EDIT “The horror works on multiple levels, with the scariest moments informed by the lived experience of Aboriginal people.” – Guardian Oct 30, 2024 Full Review My Freaky Family (2024) 2/5 EDIT “It’s a shame the first act’s energy dissipates as it progresses, let down by a frustratingly fickle plot populated by characters (several drawn from Colin Thompson’s popular children’s books The Floods) that are quite blandly developed.” – Guardian Oct 30, 2024 Full Review Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) 31% EDIT “Behind the veneer of batshit crazy spectacle lies a deceptively complex and deep thinking film, obsessed with its own outréness but also intellectually daring and unquestionably original. ” – Flicks (AU, NZ, UK) Oct 2, 2024 Full Review Runt (2024) 4/5 EDIT “Despite being steeped in familiar elements, this is a very charming, heartwarming film. Throughout the runtime I could feel my mouth forming a big silly grin.” – Guardian Sep 23, 2024 Full Review Uglies (2024) 14% EDIT “The film is drably staged and the drama dithers.” – Flicks (AU, NZ, UK) Sep 18, 2024 Full Review Kid Snow (2024) 2/5 EDIT “The dialogue also feels very finessed, borderline laboured. Pace and energy-wise there are issues too: the structure drifts and you don’t get a strong sense the drama is escalating and the stakes increasing.” – Guardian Sep 16, 2024 Full Review AfrAId (2024) 25% EDIT “a lean and mean genre film that plays like a greatest hits record of cautionary messages about overreaching artificial intelligence” – Flicks (AU, NZ, UK) Aug 30, 2024 Full Review Audrey  (2024) 81% 4/5 EDIT “It continues to be funny -- partly because of the drollery of Lou Sanz’s script, which is filled with gallows humour; partly because of the pacing, which hits a good rhythm, feeling quick but never rushed.” – Guardian Aug 19, 2024 Full Review Ellis Park (2024) 100% EDIT “Ellis Park moves to a strange and interesting melody, its motions circular and circuitous. ” – Guardian Aug 15, 2024 Full Review Alien: Romulus (2024) 80% EDIT “It unfolds like a bad case of déjà vu, conjuring familiar sets and circumstances but draining them of psychological energy and the thrill of the new.” – Flicks (AU, NZ, UK) Aug 15, 2024 Full Review
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