Leigh and Tim share why you should watch Rams, the Aussie drama starring Sam Neill and Michael Caton as feuding sheep-farming brothers. Plus, the Sammy Davis Jr biopic in the works, George Clooney's Calico Joe, and Harrison Ford as an unhinged sea captain.

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RAMS MOVIE REVIEW

Tim: Sam Neill has got this beautiful relationship with animals. He has so much respect and adoration and love for them – and didn't that come across in Rams? 

Leigh: Oh, absolutely. When he's talking to the sheep and he's going, “You're beautiful, and you're beautiful.” It just really set you up with the connection that he has to these animals, or his character has to these animals. Then, of course, the purge of the valley needs to happen. And it's just so heartbreaking to watch.

Tim: Now, I think we've been treated quite nicely over the last couple of weeks. Recently, we reviewed the Australian film Dirt Music. Beautiful backdrop of the Western Australian landscape.

Leigh: Yes, Western Australia is having a starring role in films at the moment.

Tim: They're the MVP of Australian films in 2020. So, let's talk about how that played such an important role, a different kind of landscape and experience. We were talking about Iceland, where the original movie was set. So that's like a visceral sort of ice and coldness. With this film, it was all about the harshness of the landscape but just in a different way, wasn't it?

Leigh: Well, definitely there's a lot of similarities. I mean, in Iceland the landscape is such a strong part of the community and how they live their lives year to year. And it’s the same thing in Western Australia in rural communities. It's such a big part of their everyday lives, the farming communities. I mean, with the bushfire… in this movie, Les and Sam and the whole community are part of the Rural Fire Service and come out to help whenever there's fires, which happened quite often. That's such a big part of Australian life, and it's connected so well, I think.

Tim: We referenced before how Rams was such a harrowing film to watch, but didn't it feel like this movie was literally replaying what 2020 has thrown at us? In the beginning of the year, for our listeners overseas, you would have seen on the news that over the summer (the December to January period) we were in this cloud of smoke from bushfires. All of the east coast – Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland – it was just a disaster. Then the Coronavirus hit us and everyone else in the world, and Rams really showcases that community devastation. It was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this film is packing a punch’. 

Leigh: And obviously when this film was made, that was not known. It wasn't intentional. Director Jeremy Sims actually made a joke when I was talking to him that he should have made a movie about Lotto numbers.

Tim: Maybe that's his follow up. Right?

Leigh: Exactly!

MOVIE NEWS

• The biopic about Rat Pack star Sammy Davis Jr in the works at MGM

• George Clooney attached to write and direct an adaptation of John Grisham’s Calico Joe

• Michael B Jordan to produce the live-action Static Shock movie for DC

• Harrison Ford and Ed Helms co-starring in a shipwreck comedy