I found this movie boring, monotonous and quite uninteresting with a hurried, shallow "upbeat" ending that didn't ring true to the overall story. Following these characters through a weekend of awful events, unfriendly attitudes and bad news just isn't my idea of a watchable, interesting movie and I got very tired of its "one note" theme and couldn't wait for it to end--in fact I almost stopped about halfway through. The whole movie just seemed pointless and wandering, and the characters were for the most part depressing and unpleasant, though the acting was good. A small movie with small ambitions and small appeal--sorry, but it just didn't make it with me, and I love good, small films! This one just didn't jell, though I kept watching it hoping and trusting that it would. I was disappointed, especially after two local reviewers put it on their "Year's 10 Best" list. I'd strongly recommend watching "The House of Sand" instead--now there's a good, small film!

A shoot in our stomach. This movie is visceral, emotional and preserves a unique sense of humor...and also can make you feel very uncomfortable..a very human and touching story...believable. Most of all this a believable story... I watched this movie yesterday at the 30th International Movie Festival here in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and had a surprise to see such an interesting and touching Australian movie. By bonding creativity and humanity in a strong history it captivated me. The anguish is around and many lost souls try to find their way in life fighting all kinds of adversities. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Good actors too! They show us creativity in a in depth tragical and casual history. And the insertion of the girls thoughts in painting format inserted in the narrative was very clever. Great Movie!

I've just seen this movie for the first time and thought I would pen a short comment, but feel that Look Both Ways is a movie that could improve with multiple viewings...Over the space of a weekend we follow a group of ordinary Australians who are mostly connected through the tragedy of a train crash. We watch as couples and families work through their feelings, cope with their relationships, and manage health problems.In so doing Look Both Ways explores the ups and downs we all face as we lead our lives and has a relevance for each and every viewer. It's not just light entertainment, there is a serious message here as well.And yet this is not a movie that has actors preaching to the audience; in fact there is very limited dialogue. The movie is often carried by fast-moving images and an eclectic soundtrack.

Here's the latest entry in the "web-of-life, luck, and loss" film derby that has recently become either an overheated fashion among filmmakers or an emerging genre, depending upon how you look at it.Two things make this one more noteworthy than most of its ilk. The characters are nearly all distinctively etched, yet none is an oddball, someone cooked up merely for eccentricity's sake. And the writer-director, Sarah Watt, has succeeded brilliantly in one of the toughest tasks in film-making: representing the inner experience of people – their thoughts and fantasies – visually, cinematically, without resort to soliloquies, dialogue or voiceovers to convey such interior events.Ms. Watt has been making short animated films for over 15 years, and she uses her animation skills to great advantage in this, her first feature length, narrative movie. She concentrates her efforts toward interiority on the two most central characters (there are about a dozen altogether), and so will I. Meryl (Justine Clarke) is a water colorist by avocation. Her father died just two weeks ago. Then she witnesses a man struck dead by a passing freight train.In the wake of these events and another unconnected to her, a horrific train accident elsewhere in the country, Meryl begins to imagine brief catastrophic scenes at every turn, in which she herself dies a violent death. We are shown these flashes of vivid visual imagery, which always take the form of animated watercolor paintings, in a style like those she makes in her spare time (this is where Ms. Watts's animation skills come into play).Nick (William McInnes) is a photographer with the local paper who covers the accidental death caused by the freight train that Meryl witnessed. His father died about a year ago. And he has learned only today, the day of the accident, that he has testicular cancer. We witness his preoccupation with his condition, which, quite appropriately, takes the form of vivid colored still photos of his cancer, shown in rapid succession, and moving pictures of tumor proliferation and the like. He also begins to notice skin lesions and other evidence of abnormalities or illness in other people, and, again, we see in photographic images Nick's preoccupying fantasies about the decline of these people that he imagines.Meryl and Nick eventually become a couple near the end, though only through pure luck does one of them avoid probable sudden death. I won't wear you out by trying to recount the other characters and their stories. But they are absorbing, especially the angry, grieving partner of the man killed by the train, the devastated train engineer, and a hotheaded reporter colleague of Nick's and the two women in his life.The film is not without problems. In flashbacks, Nick's Dad talks directly into the camera to us a few times; these are unwise and disconcerting little scenes that should have been left on the editing floor. The photography is undistinguished, apart from the fantasy scenes, as is the soundtrack. That said, I think Ms. Watt has real promise as a narrative film director; she appears to work well with actors, and her own imagination shines. My grade: A- 9/10.