Holiday Weekend Movie Forecast: Milk, Four Christmases

Set in northern Australia before World War II, Australia stars Nicole Kidman as an English aristocrat who inherits a sprawling ranch and joins forces with a cattle driver (Hugh Jackman) to protect her new property from a takeover plot. As you might imagine, by the end Jackman isn't just driving cattle, heh heh. Andrew Sarris at The Observer is generous: Australia is clearly a labor of love, and a matter of national pride. It is also a bit of a mess, and the product of many last-minute decisions on the plot, as described in Peter Sanders’s fascinating article on the making and marketing of the film in The Wall Street Journal. Finally, I must confess that I might have been harder on Mr. Luhrmann’s film if I had not remained entranced by Ms. Kidman ever since I first saw her in Phillip Noyce’s Dead Calm in 1989; in my opinion, she has lost none of her luster in the 20 years since."