This post is best viewed on our website.
Earlier this year, I followed along with the Blank Check podcast as they covered the filmography of Australian filmmaker Peter Weir. Though I’ve listened to the show plenty before, it was the first time I listened every week and kept up with all of the homework. Many of their recent miniseries, about directors like John Carpenter or the Coen Brothers, covered folks I know so well, and I felt like I could keep up easily.
Weir’s work, on the other hand, was largely a blind spot for me. I mean, I had seen the heavy hitters, like The Truman Show or Dead Poets Society, because we’ve all seen those movies. Listening to Blank Check every week gave me the excuse I needed to do a full deep dive. What follows is my ranking of his 13 theatrical feature films, from the weird and wild to the Criterion-canonized classics.
13. Fearless (1993)
After surviving a plane crash that kills many others, Max Klein develops a sense of invulnerability, leading to radical, compulsive actions. Can a psychologist and a fellow guilt-ridden survivor bring him down to earth?
Unfortunately, I do not understand this movie at all. Well, that’s not true. I get it, I just think it’s incredibly hokey and saccharine. I suppose I can see what other people see in its thoughts on grief, fear, living life to the fullest, and how death comes for us all...but none of those things played for me at all. By the time it tried to seriously play U2’s “Where The Streets Have No Name,” they had lost me completely.
12. The Way Back (2010)
A small band of multicultural convicts stages a daring escape from a WWII-era Siberian gulag, and embarks on a treacherous journey across five countries in a desperate race for freedom and survival.
I like this movie less than both The Way Back (2020) and The Way Way Back (2013) because it features neither an alcoholic Ben Affleck nor a promiscuous Amanda Peet.
11. The Cars That Ate Paris (1974)
After surviving a car accident, a young man finds himself trapped in the isolated town of Paris, where the local economy depends on deliberately causing crashes and salvaging the wreckage. As he becomes entangled in the town’s routines, tensions between its residents and a rebellious group of youths begin to surface.
Listen, it’s a first movie! Debuts are weird and hard, and this one is at least interesting and bizarre and freaky deaky. It’s fun enough exploitation, even if it takes a while to get revved up. (Get it?) For some directors, this might be an interesting hidden gem, but Peter Weir made a lot of great movies.
10. The Mosquito Coast (1986)
An inventor spurns his city life and moves his family into the jungles of Central America to make a utopia.
While I appreciate the Harrison Ford/Peter Weir collaboration (this film features plenty of Ford’s signature finger-pointing), and will celebrate their other film much much higher on this list, this one didn’t do it for me. I’m not usually a fan of “guy loses his mind and destroys his family and ruins the world around him and leaves nothing in his wake” cinema because...all of those things are awful? Both the star and the director (and screenwriter Paul Schrader!) probably do that better than anyone else has, but it’s not my thing.
9. Green Card (1990)
Urban horticulturalist Brontë Mitchell has her eye on a gorgeous apartment, but the building’s board will rent it only to a married couple. Georges Fauré, a waiter from France whose visa is expiring, needs to marry an American woman to stay in the country. Their marriage of convenience turns into a burden when they must live together to allay the suspicions of the immigration service, as the polar opposites grate on each other’s nerves.
On first thought, this was a bottom-three Weir movie for me. I thought it was totally saved by Andie MacDowell, largely because all Weir has to do is cut to her face, and I would think, “Well, maybe the movie isn’t that bad.” In a career of Ozsploitation and seabound adventures, a sweet little rom-com felt out of place.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized just how weird and atypical this is, and something about these eccentricities (green cards! greenhouses! Gérard Depardieu!) helped me appreciate it as its own totally unique thing, unlike most other romantic comedies and unlike all Peter Weir movies.
8. The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)
A young Australian reporter tries to navigate the political turmoil of Indonesia during the rule of President Sukarno with the help of a diminutive photographer.
This one got the "Blank Check Bump" for me. (I know that's not exactly how that term is used, but it's how I'm using it.) I watched this movie, thought it was weird and different and thrilling (in some good ways and some not-so-good ways), and then I listened to the great Tracy Letts talk about it on Blank Check, and I still don't love it, but I do appreciate it more.
7. The Last Wave (1977)
A Sydney lawyer defends five Aboriginal people in a ritualised taboo murder and in the process learns disturbing truths about himself and premonitions.
This is such an interesting movie, partly because I know next to nothing about the politics at play here, and I became obsessed with what I didn’t know. I actually had my girlfriend call up her Australian friend so she could explain all of the societal implications and thematic consequences because I wanted to understand the movie better. We FaceTimed her in the parking lot of a Cook Out, so while she explained her country’s long and complicated history with the Aboriginal people, I explained to her what a hush puppy is. I believe we were equally fascinated.
6. Gallipoli (1981)
Two Australian sprinters face the brutal realities of war when they are sent to fight in the Gallipoli campaign in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
“How fast can you run?”
“As fast as a leopard.”
“How fast are you going to run?”
“As fast as a leopard!”
“Then let’s see you do it!”
5. The Truman Show (1998)
In a picture-perfect seaside town, an insurance salesman begins to realize that his entire existence may be staged and observed by a vast unseen audience as part of a long-running real-time reality TV show.
The Truman Show was unfortunately very prescient and ultimately completely accurate. When this came out, it was shocking to think about someone being filmed every second of every day. Now, we all are! The lines between reality and entertainment have only continued to blur.
Rewatching the film recently, I couldn’t help but think that so much of this works so well because it basically just predicted the future. The concept is brilliant, and it sticks the landing. A lot of people would do terrible things to have directed The Truman Show, and I still think it’s Peter Weir’s fifth-best movie.
4. Dead Poets Society (1989)
At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern headmaster.
My 7th grade English teacher showed us this movie (along with another teacher movie about a "great" teacher, Mr. Holland's Opus), and it basically did all of the work for him for like a week. Not only did it blow our minds, but I'm pretty sure we did the O Captain! thing one day in class. I'm a 7th grade English teacher now, and I have to resist the urge to show it to my students. Maybe they could love me just a sliver as much as Robert Sean Leonard and Ethan Hawke love Robin Williams. But I doubt it.
3. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
After an abrupt and violent encounter with a French warship inflicts severe damage upon his ship, a captain of the British Royal Navy begins a chase over two oceans to capture or destroy the enemy, though he must weigh his commitment to duty and ferocious pursuit of glory against the safety of his devoted crew, including the ship’s thoughtful surgeon, his best friend.
There will be a day when someone says to me, "Wait, Master and Commander is only your third favorite Peter Weir movie?" and I'll say, "Heavens to Betsy, no! Why would you think such a thing?" and that person will show me this ranking, and I'll remember what a fool I once was. It's not my favorite Weir film yet because I've had to control myself and not allow an obsession with this movie take over my life. But it's coming one day. I mean, two men have gay sex through the music of their string instruments. That's pure cinema.
2. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
In the early 1900s, Miranda attends a girls boarding school in Australia. One Valentine’s Day, the school’s typically strict headmistress treats the girls to a picnic field trip to an unusual but scenic volcanic formation called Hanging Rock. Despite rules against it, Miranda and several other girls venture off. It’s not until the end of the day that the faculty realizes the girls and one of the teachers have disappeared mysteriously.
Picnic at Hanging Rock is an extremely unsettling movie, one where the mystery of the film is more "Why do I feel so icky?" and less to do with the actual unsolved disappearance. Its influence is undeniable (I have to be honest, it brought The Virgin Suicides down just a tad in my estimation because Sofia Coppola was pulling a ton from this) and even then the vibes are still unmatched. For Weir to pull that off with such an early film is a sign of his steady hand. This Peter Weir guy knows how to direct movies.
1. Witness (1985)
While protecting an Amish boy—the sole witness to a brutal murder—and his mother, a detective is forced to seek refuge within their community when his own life comes under threat.
This is a movie that is never what you expect it to be. Cop thriller? Fish-out-of-water rom-com? It’s both! And it has everything: suspense, drama, romance, bad guy Danny Glover, the hottest kiss in the history of cinema, Harrison Ford dancing to Sam Cooke, and death by grain silo. The world would be a better place if more movies had more of those things.