Luke Buckmaster

Luke Buckmaster is an Australian film critic, TV critic, author and climate activist. Buckmaster began reviewing films in 1997 and is currently film critic for The Guardian Australia and international movie website Flicks. He completed a PHD in 2022, on the subject of virtual reality as a form of artist expression, and authored Miller and Max: George Miller and the Making of a Film Legend, a biography of Mad Max filmmaker George Miller.

In the memoir of Australian playwright David Williamson, Williamson described Buckmaster as "one of our best critics" . Buckmaster has written extensively about Australian cinema, including for a column about classic Australian films that ran for 112 consecutive weeks.

Buckmaster is known for outspoken commentary and opinions, described by The Sydney Morning Herald as being "adept at producing very clickable opinions." In 2008, Germaine Greer quoted his review of Baz Luhrmann's feature film Australia, writing "it takes courage to let rip like this." A writer from the Australian pop culture and news website Junkee described his review of Avengers: Infinity War as "so floridly disgusted you can only imagine it was delivered over the brim of a brandy snifter."

Buckmaster is an outspoken climate activist, whose activism includes dancing on a bridge blocked by climate actvists in 2019 and, later that year, being arrested for blocking a road outside the Brisbane office of Santos Limited. He wrote about the experience of being arrested for The Saturday Paper and expanded on the story in a longform article he published on Medium.