There's a scene in Baz Luhrmann's Australia that pretty much sums up the hilarious giddiness of this big-budget epic. In it, beefy Hugh Jackman heroically appears in a cloud of dust, driving a herd of wild horses, with his slow motion, deep-throated "Yaa!"s and Marlboro Man-style head tosses lifted straight from the cover of a pulpy paperback novel. For an film aiming at Gone with the Wind proportions, there's way too little space here to address every deep, dated flaw and moment of cinematic abandon that Australia earnestly embodies. At different times, Luhrmann's epic unintentionally cracked me up, authentically caught me up in suspense, and probably made me ovulate--not a bad time, all in all. by Marjorie Skinner