In my experience Australian films are either very good or extremely bad. This film fell towards the later category.

A bastard in action…well in this scene it was

Careless Love was all in all a bad remake of the french television film Student Services with a quasi-feminist diatribe thrown in your face throughout. Evidence I suppose that Australia still only has soap-opera script writers who can’t change their approach when writing films.

The film drew heavily on the tragic legacy of Jane Champion: the only good men are father-figures every other man is an evil-in-some-way-complete-bastard. Of course in fairness it is hard to find too many redeeming men in a film about Asian prostitutes being exploited and maybe redeeming men would have been inconsistent with the sordid little world they were trying to paint.

The film lacked all the emotion and psychology of the original and its sex scenes were quite unbelievable due to the contrived feminist discourse in play (but then you only have to watch Underbelly to see the same problem). In its sordidness the sex scenes in the original film found a beauty and some artistic interplay, Careless Love was far too busy applying middle class feminist values to what is commonplace in Vietnam today and Vietmanese culture, to try and be artistic or ask questions about sexuality in such a situation. The central character represented as a hardcore working prostitute throughout, a far cry from the French film in which the central character is an awkward, wary amateur forced as a last resort by circumstances.

Student Services left the viewer feeling nothing but sadness for the central character and even somewhat for her protagonists, Careless Love left me feeling completely indifferent toward pretty much all of the characters.

If like me you are a big fan of Asian horror ghost stories this is one for you. The film is not Asian, but American and to an extent independent.

I say it is Asian-Horror-like because it is made in much the same style as films like Ringu or other greats with sudden twists, shakes and violet scares. It might be a bit of a stretch to compare it to Ringu as I guess most films tend to borrow from everything good that has gone before it but I could see elements in there.

The only thing I probably didn’t like about the film was the ghost getting around in a sheet at times (spoiler alert) which bordered on comedic. One is also left with the feeling the young couple sort of deserved what they got after carelessly inviting harm on themselves at the films beginning.

Still all in all a great ghost flick with lots of seat-leaping screams.

From the beginning I was tending to think R.I.P.D. was a bit of a remake of the Men in Black franchise with a slight twist to stave off the law suits.. Well yes there were some definite similarities (except of course Men in Black was about aliens, R.I.P.D. is about ghosts), but more than anything it reminded me of the Ghost busters films.

R.I.P.D. was essentially a religious comedy assuming your agreement with American Jesus fervour in the spirit of so many films of the fifties. Once you get over this (if like me you tend to switch off when it pops up in films..) it was a quite entertaining film with 5/10 cgi effects.

Without wanting to give the whole film away, a cop dies goes to heaven and gets the option to return as part of the R.I.P.D. to police the ghosts of dead people who refuse to leave the earth after they die.

The twists and turns kept you guessing until the end. Not one I’d watch again or put in the top 50 movies but some mild entertainment to kill a few hours.

As a visual fan of Amanda Seyfried as I am sure are many, many red blooded male film goers I watched this movie with few expectations other than the above.

I was delightfully surprised by a very enjoyable film about finding lost love after many years. You could sort of pick the plot as it went along and there were some distinctly fairy-tale elements at work, much in the style of Hollywood Musicals of years gone by.

If like me you believe that films should not always be about super serious, reality, but rather make you feel a bit better than your own miserable life, this is the film for you. After having just seen Seyfried in Lovelace this was a very different film, but then I remember her almost on key singing from Mama Mia which had a lot of the same sparkly glazed view of love.

Of course if you are a woman, you will absolutely adore this film and rave about it to your friends for days afterwards…Guys watch it with your girlfriend and she will love you for it and its ok if you enjoy it a bit too (the film I mean..).

After a massive media build up I was looking forward to finally seeing World War Z. If I was to summarize the film in a few words I’d say it was an average Zombie Flick with some interesting ideas.

Brad Pitt just didn’t seem to suit the role very well and the family scenes that dominate the earlier part of the film were frankly fairly unconvincing. Unless of course this is how American families really are, in which case I was kinda glad when the Zombies started chasing them…

The middle of the film broke some new and interesting ground in the Zombie genre and its quite a shame that the film had a poor beginning (and ending as it turned out), almost like two different people wrote those sections of the script.

Frankly if you want to watch this film I would suggest you get the DVD of the 2002 film 28 days later (or even its not as good American money 2007 sequel 28 Weeks later..) and enjoy a good Zombie flick.