Recently in Film Reviews Category

In the world of movie hype, certain words and phrases come up again and again. Thankfully, history has given us plenty of clues to decode the Hollywood PR machine. Therefore, I present to you your handy Hollywood / English phrase book. Print out and keep in a handy place...

When choosing movies to see, I have one rule - no 'white poster movies'. What is a white poster movie, I hear you ask? Quite simply, they are movies where the poster says absolutely nothing about what you're invited to see, opting instead for a major shot of the big drawcard celeb(s) instead. White posters betray that the prime selling point for a film is the name actor and not the abysmal script or shoddy direction.

It took a while to be released in Australia, but finally I've seen Moon (imdb) - one of my most anticipated films of this year. It's usual with highly anticipated films to feel disappointed as the final result can very rarely live up to the expectations that grow in the imagination.

Moon is not one of those films.

After all the stuff I wrote about the Watchmen film over the last few months, I guess it would only be sporting to report my eventual thoughts after seeing the nearly three hour bum-numb-er last week. But, as always, my thoughts can't simply be confined to a straight-forward review. The Watchmen movie, and recent comments from its writer, screams for a more detailed dissection of the cultural ideology of the superhero genre and can throw up some uncomfortable conclusions.

Every December, Hollywood unleashes the Christmas family films. Last year, it was Fred Claus, a desperately unfunny romp. Before that came Elf and the Santa Clause trilogy and Deck the Halls and a host of other completely forgettable films. All these  films drench the,selves in the same shallow paraphenalia of Christmas hokum, the Christmas village at the North Pole, the elves in the toy factory, every house festooned Griswald-fashion with fairy lights, schmaltzy family warmth and so on.