The Eclipse, written and directed by Conor McPherson, to put it briefly, is a beautiful low key drama of a man dealing with loss and grief. It’s also the scariest movie I’ve seen in some time. And not just scary in some thematic intellectual sense. Quite literally it’s the jump-in-your seat, screaming-in-the-audience kind of scary.

And it has ghosts in it. Really freaking scary ghosts.

The fans of Gotham City’s most famous vigilante prefer different incarnations of the dark knight for different reasons. Some people like to be ironic, and claim that the 1960′s Batman TV series and film (starring Adam West) were their favourite, despite it being universally ridiculed for its’ high dose of camp. Other people relish the dark and gritty Tim Burton films, Batman and Batman Returns, for their unique style. Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever catered to a more colourful 90′s culture, while his sequel Batman and Robin found fans in people who like cheesy one-liners. Then, of course, Christopher Nolan’s addition to Batman’s on-screen saga garnered incredible enthusiasm from fans and initiates alike for removing the cheesiness and replacing it with drama in a more realistic tale: Batman Begins. His sequel, The Dark Knight is favoured by many as the best Batman movie for its’ complex plot and thematic significance. However, there is another deserving candidate for the best depiction of Batman on screen in the television show Batman: The Animated Series. Volume one of this outstanding series has been released on DVD in Australia for some time, bringing with it the one of the strongest senses of style I have seen in a western cartoon. The problem is volume two hasn’t been released in the years since.

It seems that ‘cougars’ are now the hottest fashion – if you’re an older single woman, flaunt what you’ve got and the young boys will come running. While for the majority it’s a ‘score’ of sorts (women landing the younger man and the man landing a woman who’s, shall we say, experienced), when family gets involved drama ensues. And that’s the premise of The Rebound, where age difference may not be the overriding focus but the most underlying one.

After weeks and weeks of sordid speculation by all major celebrity glossies, gossipists the world over can now contain themselves with the knowledge that any steamy romance between Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston was either non existent or just not at all hot. I say this to you now in review of the couple’s efforts in their new film The Bounty Hunter, the latest rom-com to fall off the Hollywood production line and be shot into the air by marketing cannons that promised hilarity and hot action. Unfortunately for Aniston and Butler, their onscreen chemistry together is about as romantically inciting and as charismatic as the last two slices of white bread, falling over each other at the bottom of the plastic bag – stale, tasteless and definitely worse for you than it looks. On first thought, their star power seems like a big enough draw-card for a trip to the movies but proves to be the only bankable aspect of this production.

Following the short series The Kids of Degrassi Street (1982), Degrassi Junior High (DJH) truly established the franchise centring on a bunch of young teens from Toronto that come together from all walks of life at their local school. But the difference between Degrassi and everything else is what hadn’t been explored before on television, perhaps anywhere in the world – the true issues facing teenagers. As testament, Australian public broadcaster ABC issued warnings of adult themes before screening each episode, and would continue to do so decades later on Degrassi: The Next Generation.

While George W. Bush was prematurely touting “Mission Accomplished” from the deck of the USS Lincoln back in May 2003, super soldier Roy Miller (Matt Damon) was going Rambo through the streets of Baghdad, determined to uncover the truth as to why US intelligence was so incredibly wrong about Iraq harbouring weapons of mass destruction.

Something unexpected happened around the half hour mark of the ho-hum romantic drama Remember Me. No, the film didn’t start to improve. Don’t be silly. Rather, I realised that leading man Robert Pattinson – or RPattz as his legions of adoring Twilight fans call him – was in the middle of doing something many critics said he wasn’t capable of. Yes, he was acting. And doing a pretty darn good job of it too.

Magic is a fascinating art form because it plays with our need to discover the illusion, whilst feeding our desire for it to be real supernatural power. Neil Burger’s The Illusionist takes this desire and runs with it, constructing a world where the audience is asked to question whether events in the film are mystical or trickery. The same technique was used in Christopher Nolan’s thriller The Prestige with great success. Unfortunately, The Illusionist provides a less stimulating experience, falling short of the rewarding turn of events in Nolan’s film. However, Burger’s movie still executes an intriguing plot with a decent cast and a strong visual and aural atmosphere.