Popular reviews

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  Review by chavel ★★★★★ 17

  “In Australia when an Aborigine man-child reaches sixteen, he is sent out into the land. For months he must live from it. Sleep on it. Eat of its fruit and flesh. Stay alive. Even if means killing his fellow creatures. The Aborigines call it the Walkabout. This is the story of a Walkabout.” – Prologue

  The greatest film ever made. Walkabout features two city children lost in the Outback, luckily saved by an Aborigine boy who is on his yearlong exodus to claim his manhood. It begins weirdly with abstract images of modern life that are brilliantly bookended in the conclusion. Stick around long enough and you will catch some of the most beautiful imagery ever captured. Here’s a film…

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  Review by PTAbro ★★★★½ 16

  Nicolas Roeg is fast becoming one of my favorite directors. Granted, I've only digested three of his films so far, and I understand that his quality declines quite drastically later in his career (otherwise, I would have expected him to be one of the all-time greats instead of just respected yet rarely talked about), but he has yet to take a misstep in my book. Not only are the films of his I've watched commendable, they are truly excellent. From his mastery of the thriller/horror in Don't Look Now to the daring experimental sci-fi of The Man Who Fell To Earth, I've now been lucky enough to catch the beautiful, perhaps even 'Malickian' nature odyssey of Walkabout.

  Walkabout, above all,…

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  Review by Ethan Colburn ★★★★

  Nicolas Roeg is endlessly fascinating.

  I’m realizing I like directors that are extremely dynamic, such as Altman, Hitchcock, De Palma, and recently Roeg. It’s not that I lack the ability to pick up on subtlety, I suppose I just am attracted to a person who is willing to put it all out there every step of the way.

  Roeg shows you what he’s thinking in this movie, mostly through nature cutaways. When they’re happy, the animals are happy. When they’re thriving, they’ve got plenty to eat. But when they’re struggling, death is enclosing. Blame it on my ADD, but him throwing new ideas at me through these cutaways worked really effectively for me.

  This movie can be seen as an…

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  Review by CinemaVoid 🏴‍☠️ ★★★★½ 1

  Drink every time you acknowledge colonial terrorism and its consequences on the indigenous people of Australia during their incorporation into the European-dominated capitalist world system.

  *Multiple viewings may lead to alcoholism.

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  Review by Adam Friedland 5

  Always lied about seein this. Five stars

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★

  Roeg takes a post-colonial coming-of-age novel and turns it into a genuinely hypnotic, elemental survival movie about the civilized world's biblical loss of innocence. Filled basically front-to-back with the jaw-dropping beauty and bleak harshness of conditions in the Australian outback.

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  Review by Will Menaker ★★★★★

  If you're a fan of movies with beautiful animals--both alive and dead--in virtually every scene, you gotta check this one out!

  GOD Roeg does an Aussie take on Huck Finn combined with the Book of Genesis and provides some of the most indescribably powerful images ever captured on film. The outback hums with life and death in equal measures with hallucinatory intensity.

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  Review by Edgar Cochran ✝️ ★★★★★ 8

  ***One of the best 150 films I have ever seen.***

  Immaculate perfection is rarely seen on celluloid, and even less often seen with allegorical representations of mankind's return to the Eden from which we were cast out. People refer to Roeg's extreme realism and depictions of humanism when, in fact, his sublime cinematographic skills emphasized something deeper. The characters' reactions are not natural and the first events slightly scratch the realm of the bizarre. For what purpose, you ask? Let's say that, just like Hume, Hegel and others, Roeg has hope in human's good nature, and he briefly invites us to return to that Paradise where things may actually work out better than in the asphyxiating modern civilization.

  100/100

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  Review by Scott Anderson ★★★★½ 17

  I often talk about how I cherish the rare and unique opportunity to experience a film through pure, unbiased eyes, having never seen a trailer or a clip, with no knowledge of even a basic premise to get me started before sitting down and pressing play. Such was my approach to the 1971 Australian movie Walkabout, as I literally only knew the name of the director and the fact that it was deemed worthy of inclusion to the Criterion collection.

  I wanted Nicolas Roeg to tell me a story, to paint something extraordinary with his highly regarded brush that, despite his expansive filmography, I had never witnessed in action before.

  Mission accomplished.

  The film starts with various shots of crowded,…

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  Review by Justin Peterson ★★★★ 7

  Criterion Collection Spine #10

  Stranded in the middle of the Australian outback, a sister and brother experience the stark contrast between life in the wilderness and modern civilization.

  "You must look after your blazer. It's got to last! We don't want people thinking we're a couple of tramps! ... What people?"

  While I have struggled to appreciate Director Nicolas Roeg strong stylistic use of slam edits in his films like 'Bad Timing' and 'Don't Look Now'. I thought this style of filmmaking was extremely effective in presenting the themes within this story of survival.

  Right from the beginning, we are shown how brutal the modern world can be as a father seemingly gone mad begins firing a gun at his…

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  Review by Richard Chandler ★★★★★ 35

  "I don't suppose it matters which way we go."

  (Note: when referring to specific characters I will use the first name of the actor because the roles are unnamed, and I don't much like the ring of "White Boy" and "Black Boy"; going forward it will be Jenny (Girl), Lucien (White Boy) and David (Black Boy). Furthermore, I'm undertaking this review under the assumption that the reader already has some level of familiarity with the film.)

  Not all great films are created equally. The majority of such films mobilize but a portion of the means at their disposal to succeed uniquely as films. That is to say, many supposedly great films are simply great stories that happen to be expressed…

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  Review by Larry ★★★★★ 17

  It took us more time to transition from swords to guns than it took from guns to nuclear bombs. A mammoth 4000 years compared to a brief 700, to put things into perspective.

  Human civilisation was and is destined to thrive. The evidence irrefutable, the impact undeniable and the progress unstoppable. Our species was born to nourish in the land it's given using tools, primitive and modern, to fulfill the necessary processes of life. Our survival brought along with it miracles. Culture created identity, tradition ensured our humanity and evolution made us on top of the food chain. Linguistics separated humans from the other inhabitants of Earth; the words 'apex predator' is stamped, loud and clear, across our evolutionary lineage.…