DVD Review - Julie & Julia

A great cast, great performances (Streep, Adams and Stanley Tucci), some decent cooking tips and a surprising amount of laugh-out-loud moments... and you've got yourself something pretty special here.

DVD Review - Ice Age 3 : Dawn Of The Dinosaurs

While the rest of the film feels it has to deliver sappy moralising about the importance of love and family, Scrat's sideplot (which runs throughout the film) skilfully undercuts it all and is far funnier besides. 

DVD Review - Mao's Last Dancer

Mao's Last Dancer kicks off when Li Cunxin (Chi Cao) is sent to Texas as part of the Chinese ballet's cultural exchange program, he might as well be travelling to another planet.

DVD Review - Surrogates

It's a shame that the plot lets this down because a lot of the ides here are actually pretty well thought-out and there are a couple of moments where the idea of surrogates is used in a way that is both surprising and perfectly logical.

DVD Review - The Box

The year is 1976, NASA is about to land the Viking probe on Mars, and Nora (Cameron Diaz) and Arthur (James Marsden) Lewis are woken up early one morning by someone leaving a box at their front door.

DVD Review - Moon

Visually it is a throwback to the science fiction of the late 1960s and early 1970s, though the twist plotting feels more like a "future shock" short story from UK science fiction comic 2000AD.

DVD Review - The Damned United

Soccer fans will get more out of this than most, simply because once past the performances this doesn't really delve deep enough to provide much for non-soccer fans to get into.

DVD Review - District 9

Using a cast of unknowns, as well as setting the film in Johannesburg, director Neill Blomkamp somehow manages to lure the audience deep inside the realistic alternate dimension he has created - and keeps them there for the entire ride.

DVD Review - The Final Destination 3D

Death's all about the amazingly complicated chain of co-incidences that end up with a pool drain sucking out your organs, a busted escalator chewing off your legs, a hospital therapy pool crashing through a ceiling onto your head or your guts being mashed through a egg-slicer-style fence.

DVD Review - Drag Me To Hell

Ridiculously stupid, with some brilliant over the top violence, along with a talking possessed goat and some violently powerful blood noses. All classic cult moments waiting to be immortalised by the genre and somehow that was Sam Raimi's plan all along.

DVD Review - Whip It

While the comparisons to Juno are unavoidable (to an extent Whip It does feel like a less wordy sequel / prequel to the Oscar cult hit), Barrymore's uplifting tale about "finding purpose" and "understanding who you are" does manage to stand on it's own two feet.

DVD Review - Imagine That

Imagine That isn't completely unwatchable - in fact you could be forgiven for flicking over to it by accident on cable and sticking through to the very end - but at the end of the day it is simply too slow, too unsure of it's audience and just too bland.

DVD Review - The Circuit : Series 2

The Circuit is a landmark SBS Australian drama series that focuses on indigenous issues but in a way that attracts mainstream audiences. It is an entertaining series which is surprisingly addictive and yet educational at the same time.