Imagine one of those cheesy horror movies where the bogeyman's just about to get you, but you wake up and ahhh, it was only a dream. But wait: Oh no! You're still in the dream and can't get out!
That, precisely, is the experience of watching Baz Luhrmann's turgid epic "Australia." Somewhere around the 100-minute point you'll be thinking "Thank Buddha, it's over!" and reaching for your coat. But the punishment has only just begun; Luhrmann supposedly had a half-dozen endings for this film, and it sure feels like he tossed them all in.
Luhrmann films always give me anger-management problems. I want to write a reasonable critique of what's so utterly wrong about his style, but I can barely suppress the urge to just bang on the keyboard: "*#!%ing" "!#*! sucker" "#!%¥ing son of a -#*!@" "gibber, gnash, gnarl!"