Luke Buckmaster

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The Guardian
For 63 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 57% higher than the average critic
  • 6% same as the average critic
  • 37% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 3.1 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Luke Buckmaster's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 69
Highest review score: 100 You'll Never Find Me
Lowest review score: 20 True Spirit
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 35 out of 63
  2. Mixed: 27 out of 63
  3. Negative: 1 out of 63
63 movie reviews
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    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Luke Buckmaster
    Apex
    The whole affair feels slick but soulless, with no personality or – despite the lush settings – any real sense of place.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Luke Buckmaster
    Went Up the Hill
    Things eventually escalate, the pressure valve of pent-up emotions building and releasing. But it’s a long and demanding ride to get there, full of solemn looks and thousand-yard stares.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Luke Buckmaster
    The Convert
    Tamahori builds a largely credible aura, supported by uniformly strong performances and Gin Loane’s classy cinematography. But The Convert is one of those films with occasional moments that make you go “huh?”
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Luke Buckmaster
    The Way, My Way
    The Way, My Way is hardly riveting viewing – but its softly inquisitive, life-affirming spirit is hard to hate.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Luke Buckmaster
    Force of Nature: The Dry 2
    This film drips with pot boiler-ish twists and turns, and is saturated with genre machinations – engaged, like many mystery scripts, in surprising and one-upping the viewer. But developments in the last act especially – and there are no spoilers here – contain some tough pills to swallow.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Luke Buckmaster
    The New Boy
    There are many provocative images: a winking statue of Jesus crucified, for instance, and occasions in which the “new boy” experiences stigmata. But Thornton revels in ambiguity and has no desire to provide viewers a clear pathway to understanding.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Luke Buckmaster
    Ocean Boy
    Atkins uses these settings as pretty scaffolding for otherwise ordinary scenes.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Luke Buckmaster
    Expired
    This unquestionably ambitious film works best as a mood piece: it’s big, bold, cerebral and intensely unsubtle.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Luke Buckmaster
    Wyrmwood: Apocalypse
    Kiah Roache-Turner keeps the camera moving and the cuts regular, setting a cracking energy that’s particularly important for midnight movies like this, concerned more with relishing carnage than telling a story.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Luke Buckmaster
    Gold
    Gold is a minimalistic production, story and setting wise, with an interesting kind of contextual ambiguity: we know there is a wider world beyond the frame, though we don’t know what it looks like. Sparseness is intriguing, but this film is so damn sparse.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Luke Buckmaster
    Back to the Outback
    The aesthetic of the animation is, like the script, rather nondescript, with boilerplate-looking gloss and shine – like any number of less memorable DreamWorks or Pixar productions
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Luke Buckmaster
    Penguin Bloom
    There is a great, moving story to tell about the real Sam Bloom – but this film only gets part of the way there.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 40 Luke Buckmaster
    Music
    The autistic characters feel more like dramatic tools to improve the circumstances of neurotypical people, rather than fully-fledged humans who think, feel and act on their own terms.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 40 Luke Buckmaster
    The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee
    You wouldn’t want to overstate the film’s achievements, given that a lot of it comes across as weird, self-pitying flapdoodle. But this is, as they say, progress of a kind.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Luke Buckmaster
    Hearts and Bones
    It is a human-oriented drama that builds a thoughtful and contemplative space, empathising with characters grappling with difficult circumstances outside the common experience. It is also the kind of drama you sometimes want to grab and shake to life.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 40 Luke Buckmaster
    2067
    If all the money in the world is no guarantee of a good story, all the technical innovations – the dressing of sets, the creation of effects, the careful management of what is in and out of the frame – is of course no guarantee of one either.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Luke Buckmaster
    Dirt Music
    Dirt Music eventually arrives at a deep, thought-provoking moment – but it takes the entire film to get there.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Luke Buckmaster
    I Am Woman
    It is a lean and likeable, if slight and a little trite, celebration of the legendary Australian-American singer, feminist and anthem-creator Helen Reddy, shot with a rich neo-noirish texture by Oscar-winning cinematographer Dion Beebe.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Luke Buckmaster
    Ride Like a Girl
    Clearly marketed as inoffensive feel-good pap, I didn’t go into the film expecting a nuanced commentary on the racing industry. But nor did I expect what often felt like a thinly veiled 98-minute advertisement, interspersed with occasional moments of warmth and humanity.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Luke Buckmaster
    Mystify: Michael Hutchence
    Frustratingly, Lowenstein doesn’t let the musician’s talent speak for itself.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Luke Buckmaster
    Angel of Mine
    If some elements of Angel of Mine are simplistic, Rapace’s magnetic performance is anything but.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Luke Buckmaster
    I Am Mother
    The way it subverts (to say the least) traditional concepts around a parent/child relationship gives it uniqueness and value.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Luke Buckmaster
    Palm Beach
    After a lax first half, Palm Beach slowly settles into a groove, growing in complexity and nuance. However, Ward’s laidback approach is not remotely cinematic (this feels more like a filmed play), and never is there a sense of urgency or stakes.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Luke Buckmaster
    Black Coal, Thin Ice
    The final reel is visually interesting in ways nobody could anticipate; it is also smugly perplexing, as if the filmmaker took joy from the knowledge virtually nobody would understand it.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Luke Buckmaster
    Storm Boy
    In the new film, by literally creating a bust of the bird – as if a clump of stone or plaster could compare with the natural majesty of wings and feathers – the meaning has been accidentally inverted: a story about how something can never die becomes about how it will never live again.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Luke Buckmaster
    The Breaker Upperers
    The Breaker Upperers is Sami and Van Beek’s show through and through. The film coasts off the energy and rapport of this affable pair, whose smart-mouthed performances are full of pep and fizz. What they lack in wit they compensate for with sheer likability.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Luke Buckmaster
    Ali's Wedding
    This is a film in which you will hear a letter read aloud, with a voice-over saying the words “you dared to dream”, delivered without irony. It is, as they say, what it is. Perhaps most interesting is Walker’s depiction of the mosque congregation. With its politics and divided factions, this part of the film feels utterly authentic and is dramatically interesting.

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