I interviewed writer / director Andrew Haigh about his enormously moving drama Weekend and asked him what movie he finds genuinely romantic.

Inspired by Hugo and The Artist, I wrote about other films that wistfully look back at their own ancestors.

I talked to nomadic French filmmaker Vincent Moon about how his famous ‘Take Away Shows’ capture music in a way that regular concert documentaries can’t.

I reviewed the docos Bill Cunningham New York and Autoluminescent: Rowland S. Howard.

Something non-film: I profiled the inspirational Father Bob Maguire about 38 years of fighting the good fight.

And my favourite – because it did what all my favourite interviews do and exposed me to a world I’d never really considered before –  I was taken on a walking tour of Melbourne’s cinema graveyards:

According to Dean Brandum, the multi-storey car park next to the Forum theatre is “hallowed ground”. It was once the enormous Majestic Theatre, retooled and refurbished as The Chelsea in 1960. By the mid-70s, however, The Chelsea had become Melbourne’s home of exploitation cinema. “Lots of pornography,” says Brandum, “and lots of European horror like Giallo films. The story goes that you could always see more rats than customers.”

Check out Time Out Melbourne here.

JULIA’S EYES

Director: Guillem Morales

Starring: Belén Rueda, Lluís Homar

Country: Spain

I’m wary when I see a filmmaker “presenting” another’s film. I figure it usually just means trading a famous name on the poster for a giant-sized cheque. So far, though, Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy) has managed to get two great Spanish horror films a wider release. First there was the excellent ghost story The Orphanage, and now comes Julia’s Eyes.

Belén Rueda plays twins: one who’s killed in mysterious (and, uh, fairly terrifying) circumstances, and her sister who becomes obsessed with uncovering what happened. Both suffer from degenerative blindness that gets worse with fear-induced stress. Julia’s Eyes isn’t remotely concerned with its mystery making sense. It’s bloody fantastic, though, at setting up smart, scary setpieces. Is there someone in the house? Why can’t I see his face? Some of its stylistic gimmicks would’ve failed in lesser hands, but here they’re used to make you feel like you’re going mad.

Julia’s Eyes isn’t as tight as The Orphanage, but they’re both great, old-school rollercoasters, genuinely scary and genuinely fun.

Other reviews this month: Get Low in cinemas; Howl and Unstoppable on DVD.

Issue #51 on sale now.

I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS

Directors: Glenn Ficarra & John Requa

Starring: Jim Carrey, Ewan McGregor, Leslie Mann

Country: USA

FYI: I Love You Phillip Morris isn’t viral marketing for cigarettes.

It’s a comedy featuring major stars that’s taken two years to get a limited Australian release. Why? Maybe because it’s about a gay romance. I wanted to fall in love with this movie on principle – but despite being fast and fun, it’s missing something fundamental.

Steven Russell (Jim Carey) is a con man who’s used to living lies. When he ends up in jail for insurance fraud – because “being gay is really expensive!” – he meets the softly-spoken Phillip Morris (Ewan Macgregor). They fall in love, and Steve promises that they’ll never be apart again.

In Phillip Morris, Jim Carey acts like he’s starring in a glib, old-fashioned farce. (Like Lisa Simpson says: “He can make you laugh with no more than a frantic flailing of his limbs!”) Unfortunately, Ewan McGregor plays his role as a real human being. Their two styles completely fail to mesh, and their romance seems like it’s between different cinematic species.

Other reviews this month: Biutiful and Brighton Rock in cinemas; Megamind, Unthinkable, and Doors doco When You’re Strange on DVD.

Issue #49 on sale now.

TWILIGHT ZONE SEASON ONE

Creator: Rod Serling

Starring: Too many to name

Country: USA

Commentary tracks and deleted scenes seemed so entrancing when DVDs first appeared, huh? Man, the novelty wore off fast. Occasionally, though, pop culture archaeologists dig up something that makes it all worthwhile. The new Twilight Zone set, collecting the first season from 1959, is a time capsule: commentaries, lectures, old sponsor advertising, and creator Rod Serling’s original pitch to the TV networks. He sells his show like a pre-Mad Men Don Draper.

Unfortunately, those extras are only on the fancy blu-ray collection, but show itself is available on DVD. And it’s more than just a time capsule. It still feels alive today. Watching it will make you embarrassed for a lot of the TV we’ve made since.

The Twilight Zone took the burbling anxieties of the time – alienation, nostalgia, war – and turned them into 20-minute nightmares, week after week, aided by some of the best science fiction writers of the day. They created little morality plays with limited budgets, gorgeous black and white photography, and narration that sounds like poetry.

Other reviews this month: The Adjustment Bureau and Never Let Me Go in cinemas; the probably-better-than-the-original Let Me In on DVD.

Issue #48 on sale now.

THE MESSENGER

Director: Oren Moverman

Starring: Ben Foster, Samantha Morton, Woody Harrelson

Do you hate your job? Well, suck it up. In The Messenger, injured soldier Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) is assigned to one of the worst jobs on earth: the Casualty Notification Team that informs the next of kin that a loved one has died in combat. They’re tough, tattooed soldiers who stick expressionlessly to a script. (Rule #1: no hugging.)

Will is taught the ropes by an eccentric mentor, played by Woody Harrelson as 50% laid-back charmer, 50% snorting bull. He’s good, but I was more amazed by Ben Foster’s jittery performance as Ben. Even when he sweetly connects with a new widow (Samantha Morton), he never seems less than dangerous. Director Oren Moverman was a writer first (including penning the Bob Dylan kinda-but-not-really biopic I’m Not There) and he doesn’t rely on battle flashbacks for instant drama. He just lets the characters tell their stories in long, painful takes.

If you skipped The Messenger because you were expecting another preachy anti-war weepy – it’s not. It’s unpredictable, moving, often mesmerising.

Other reviews this month: a rave for Aronofsky’s Black Swan, a boo for Romero’s Survival of the Dead, and a suspicious ‘huh?’ for Catfish.

Issue #47 on sale now.

BLUE VALENTINE

Directed by: Derek Cianfrance

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams

Be warned: Blue Valentine will make you want set fire to the concept of love and bury its ashes where they’ll never be found.

Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) are a young married couple struggling to keep their relationship from falling apart. These painful sequences are intercut with scenes of them first falling in love, six years earlier.

It sounds sappy, I know, but Blue Valentine makes magic by picking the exact perfect moments to cut back and forth. It also has some of the best sex scenes in years. I don’t mean the most arousing – jeez, settle down, perverts! I mean sex scenes that show you things about who the characters really are and what they really feel.

It’s a testament to Gosling and Williams’ acting that I believed every second they’re on screen. It’s always weird to praise actors for ‘honest’ performances. They’re acting! They’re pretending to be people they’re not! Blue Valentine felt true enough, though, to successfully break my heart.

Other reviews this month: Rare Exports and Somewhere in cinemas; Me and Orson Welles and Breaking Bad season three on DVD.

Issue #46 on sale now.

THE AMERICAN

Director: Anton Corbijn

Starring: George Clooney, Irina Björklund, Paolo Bonacelli

They say that that history repeats first as tragedy, then as farce. The American has it backwards. After an attempt on his life, hitman Jack (George Clooney) goes into hiding in a remote Italian village. Sound familiar? It’s almost a mirror of the black comedy In Bruges, but this time it’s deadly serious.

Anton Corbijn’s first feature was the Joy Division biopic Control and while it was very, very pretty, it was emotionally cold. This time, the iciness suits The American’s brutal antihero. He drinks wine with a local priest, prepares for an upcoming assassination, grows attached to a local prostitute – and, slowly, remembers he has a soul. Playing a man who’s almost entirely unreadable means Clooney has to fight down his usual sparkly-eyed charm, but he shines when his hitman’s shell starts to crack.

The American isn’t much of a thriller. It’s slow, thoughtful, and happily pretentious. If you pretend it’s a foreign film from the 1960s, though, you’ll be primed to enjoy its excellent slow-burn drama.

Other reviews this month: the Australian drama Summer Coda in cinemas, and Fringe season two and the baby-horror Grace on DVD.

Issue #45 on sale now.

REPO MEN

Directed by: Miguel Sapochnik

Starring: Jude Law, Forest Whitaker, Alice Braga

Country: USA

In the near future, you’ll be able to extend your life by buying artificial organs. If you can’t make the massive repayments, a repo man – like Jude Law’s Remy – will break into your home, cut you open, and take them back.

That’s the premise of the sci-fi Repo Men, from first-time feature director Miguel Sapochnik. And while it’s great to see Jude Law embracing his receding hairline, his performance is pretty dull at first. His snarky voiceover is unnecessary, and every scene with his family is dead weight.

As Remy has a crisis of conscience, though, the movie develops its black sense of humour. Remy’s co-worker (Forest Whitaker) leaves a BBQ to “get more meat”, for example, and later there’s a bloody sort-of-sex scene that’ll make your jaw drop.

Repo Men borrows its future noir aesthetics from Blade Runner, and its big fight scene from Old Boy. It’s so indebted to other films that it’s like its own characters: mostly transplanted parts, but still capable of pumping blood.

Other reviews this month: The Girl Who Played With Fire, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and the doco Food, Inc.

Issue #44 on sale now.

Case in point: I’m Still Here. Casey Affleck’s new film about his friend Joaquin Phoenix has been gestating for years – apparently, from even before Phoenix made news worldwide by announcing during a red carpet interview that he was quitting acting to pursue a career in hip hop.

It shows candid footage of the consequences of this decision: ugly early gigs, desperate attempts to work with a nonplussed Sean Combs, and endless scenes of Phoenix screaming abuse at his entourage. Drugs, girls, madness. You know: the usual.

Over nearly two hours, I’m Still Here reveals that its subject is A) a sucky rapper and B) a horrible human being.

Or is he? As I’m sure you know, almost all the buzz around the movie is of the ‘is it true or not?’ variety. Is this all a hoax? Phoenix gets angry when journalists suggest as much during the film, because the question implies his life is “a joke”.

Let’s take him at his word for a minute. What if this is an honest documentary? Well – in the words of one internet commentator featured in the film – it would be a sad story if Phoenix “wasn’t such an asshole”.

As the movie unfolds, however, it becomes more and more difficult to believe that what you’re seeing is true. And if I’m Still Here isn’t a true story, then what is it? It’s an elaborate, juvenile prank cooked up between friends to poke fun at the media. It’s not boring, exactly; it’s just empty. An astonishing amount of work for little effect.

In essence, it’s the story of an pretentious, self-obsessed actor who becomes a bad rapper. That sounds like a David Spade movie, right? (It would’ve been funnier if it was.)

Only the metafictional element, the mirrors-within-mirrors, the “oooh, are they playing a prank on Hollywood or is Joaquin just a loon?” that gives I’m Still Here any meaning at all. I think that’s why I found myself holding onto the idea that maybe, against all evidence, what I was watching could’ve been true.

It’s like Schrödinger’s Cat. A cat that’s alive isn’t much of a story, and neither is a cat that’s dead. It’s only fascinating before you open the box and the cat’s both alive and dead at once.

(I apologise for invoking the poor animal. It gets trotted out so often it must wish the waveform would just collapse and give it a 50% chance of welcome death.)

The best critique of the movie is embedded right in the middle of the movie itself: Phoenix’s infamous appearance on Letterman that unwittingly kickstarted I’m Still Here’s publicity campaign. Confronted with Phoenix’s bizarre appearance and behaviour, Letterman cracks jokes and tries not to roll his eyes.

SPLICE

Directed by: Vincenzo Natali

Starring: Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley, Delphine Chanéac

Country: Canada

Many think Frankenstein was the first science fiction story. It tapped into something so powerful we’re still seeing new twists on the story today. This year it’s Splice, from the director of the 1997 lo-fi sci-fi Cube.

Sarah Polley (always excellent) and Adrien Brody (usually terrible, though pretty okay here) play a pair of gene-splicing scientists. Bored with using animal DNA, they introduce something human into the mix and soon have a gooey ‘daughter’ born with a stinger-tipped tail – and she’s growing fast.

Splice’s weighty ethical issues let it take itself pretty seriously for a movie that’s regularly so ridiculous. I mean, there are two pink lumps of Cronenbergian flesh licking each other with monster tongues in the first five minutes, and later there’s a sex scene that’ll keep fetish websites loaded with screengrabs.

But the best thing about Splice’s science-gone-wrong is how it asks the same question that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein asked back in 1818. What’s worse: children or parents? Splice says there’s enough horror in both.

Other reviews this month: Greenberg and The Ghost Writer in cinemas; Youth In Revolt, Cop Out, and Party Down: Season One on DVD.

Issue #42 on sale now.