But for films to do that to us, do you think it should be us that changes, not the movie? Shouldn’t a film be a document of itself, the time it was made, the filmmaking technology available and the storytelling trends that prevailed?

Another round of Lucas hate has erupted after the 3D re-release of Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (and yes, I’m breaking my month long moratorium on Star Wars news a week early.

Once again Lucas has digitally rejigged scenes and even entire characters from the 1999 release. To name just two, Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd) has a harder time in the podrace, momentarily losing one of the cables that tethers the pod to the forward engines, and the creepy rubber Yoda has been replaced with the digital version from Episodes 2 and 3.

Lucas undoubtedly has the legal right to change his own work (not to mention the power), but what about the moral right? There are few discussions livelier than whether Greedo or Han shoots first (this week Lucas told The Hollywood Reporter Han never shot first, it was a framing issue. The collective online cultural consciousness web responded with ‘bullshit’).

Because we all have warm memories of the original films. Lucas always thought Bespin’s smooth white hallways in The Empire Strikes Back made the cloud city feel claustrophobic. So the first chance he got (in the 1997 special edition re-release) he replaced them with digital animations of Bespin’s outdoor scenes.

It indeed made Bespin feel different, but suddenly there was no definitive version of The Empire Strikes Back to love any more. We had to refer to it like the best year of a wine, a single version in an increasingly fragmentary collection. Something about that just doesn’t feel right.

At the other end of the scale from the world’s most famous space opera I covered the small, dramatic thriller Man on a Ledge recently. It was a shame about the movie, but it was a bit of a treat to interview stars Sam Worthington, Elizabeth Banks and Ed Burns.

There aren’t many other circumstances under which a period piece could be so overtly sexual, and if the thought of seeing Keira Knightley bent over a bedhead getting a good spanking is your cup of tea, this might be better than porn.

Not that there’s anything one-note about Knightley’s performance as the brilliant but troubled young Sabina. Her opening scenes, when she’s bought into the mental hospital where young doctor Jung (Fassbender) works, are very intense and you’ll wonder if she isn’t aggrandising the tiniest bit, but all round it’s a very naked and honest portrayal.

Sabina comes into Jung’s care and as he treats her they’re both open and frank about her tics and fits being the result of sexual abuse at the hands of her father. Sabina is soon on the road to recovery to the extent she begins working with Jung in his practice to fulfill her ambitions of being a psychiatric doctor herself.

At the same time, Jung is corresponding with the godfather of the movement he subscribes to, Sigmund Freud (a calm and elegant Mortensen, Cronenberg’s go-to guy lately). Frued is only too pragmatic about getting their theories accepted in medical circles and wants Jung to rein in his interest in the paranormal for fear it will make them too easy for their enemies to ridicule, and it’s the resulting rift that ultimately drives the two men apart.

But it’s more Jung’s story than Freud’s and it’s Jung who goes through the personal calamity of a character arc. Like many films dealing with the buttoned down civility of the period, there’s a strong emphasis on the belief that we can overcome our baser desires and our guilt when we can’t resist the temptation of them. Jung occupies a genteel world of top hats, intellectual discourse and his devoted relationship to his pretty wife and darling children.

But he can’t deny the desire Sabina’s need for sexual punishment raises in him, and no matter how many times he tells her (and himself) it’s over, he always ends up back at her apartment laying into her with a belt. As another patient of his who might just be the smartest one of the lot, Otto Gross (Cassel at his most Bohemian), tells Jung, why fight the nature to screw as much as you can God gave you? Gross’ advice prompts crises of morality and self-belief in Jung that threaten his undoing.

It’s a beautifully designed and shot drama with intense and at times exquisite acting and it shows one of the most fascinating transitions in the film industry. Once upon a time when David Cronenberg made horror films that had their fans but were still cheap and schlocky, you wouldn’t mention his name in association with the Oscars any more than you would George Romero or Roger Corman.

Although when you look deeper, Robert De Niro hasn’t given us a role worthy of his talent since Heat in 1995, Jason Statham is this century’s Arnold Schwarzenegger (he can only play Jason Statham) and Clive Owen’s always struck me as having ideas above his station when it comes to his talents. So on reflection, maybe it’s the perfect film for an automaton, a has-been and a wannabe.

Either way Jason is a mercenary for hire when his mentor and partner (De Niro) is captured by bad guys who want to blackmail him into doing that most hoary of cinematic tropes, One Final Job. He and his team of B list Australian actors (it was all shot in and around Melbourne) have to track down a gang of murderous British SAS soldiers who killed the sons of a powerful Arabic nobleman in battle or he’ll kill the old man.

Nothing about it puts a foot wrong, but for the same reason nothing about it stands out. It’s based (probably by the merest of connections) to some sort of true story set in the early 80s, and it all amounts to a lot of noise and all three doing what they do best (or just as accurately, worst). produced by Omnilab media, it’s another failed example of Australian filmmakers trying to make American movies.

Instead, it’s one of the most inventive films in ages, certainly of the camcorder footage craze Hollywood’s still in thrall to. In being about (and by) three kids, the filmmakers haven’t fallen into the trap of having either the kids or the way the movie treats itself behave any different than if it was all true.

It looks and feels like three normal kids experiencing this amazing phenomenon, and even the (occasionally jaw-dropping) special effects that would normally command beautiful wide shots are lensed with honesty and service to the set-up. The script makes the trio – particularly hero/antihero Andrew (DeHaan) – a little too teen-y at times with all his ‘likes’, ‘whatevers’ and other attempts to make it authentic, but it doesn’t stand out far enough to grate.

The premise actually makes it a close cousin to Peter berg’s Hancock even though the genres are nothing alike. If we had superpowers, it asks, what would stop us abusing them when the old consequences didn’t apply?

It’s what happens to shy Andrew, a kid who rides to school with his cooler cousin Matt (Russell) and couldn’t dream of being friends with the popular, funny Steve (Jordan). He’s recently started recording everything around him on his new videocamera, a symbolic gesture to put a barrier between himself and the world as someone suggests.

In doing so he captures his drunk father’s (Kelly) violent temper, his sick mother’s decline towards death, and the secret rave party Matt convinces him to go to. While there, Steve and Matt convince Andrew to accompany him to a mysterious hole in the ground out in the woods emitting deep booming noises. Despite Andrew’s fear he follows them to find a strange glowing object buried deep underground.

After some power overcomes them all, they wake up with apparent superpowers. Early scenes of throwing baseballs at each other, stabbing forks into hands with no effect and sliding a car across a mall parking lot have all the tearaway charm of any group of teenagers videoing themselves committing harmless pranks, but things take a nasty turn when Andrew forces a threatening driver off the road and into the lake where Matt and Steve only just pull him from his truck in time.

Amid newfound discoveries and strengthening talents (the first flying sequence is technically quite brilliant) Matt wants to establish rules about their behaviour. But Andrew, long picked on and finally with some strength to enjoy, doesn’t want to resist the lust for power. Amid menacingly crushing a car in a scrapyard and yanking teeth out of the school bully’s mouth in front of everyone, it’s a slippery slope to the final scenes of Matt and Andrew battling it out above the streets of Seattle, a fight that’s more like Superman and Zod in Superman II than two school kids.

The acting is natural and the realistic style comes fairly easy to all three leads, an element that combines with the inventive camerawork to make the whole thing believable. The co-writers and director haven’t forgotten that even special effects movies are about people.

One of the most sure-footed moves is the visual structure of the camcorder conceit, which has none of the eye-rolling plotting about just why someone’s videoing all this. You know the one – there’s always a moment in found footage movies where someone says ‘for God’s sake put the camera down’. If they did, there’d of course be no movie, a problem they usually solve by some cack handed line about somebody having to document the truth about what’s happening.

Chronicle sidesteps the cliché by having the action shift between cameras so one character isn’t given the narratively ridiciulous task of recording the whole movie. Andrew’s camera captures most of the action, but the cute girl (another camera obsessive) Matt’s trying to impress contributes, as does police and security footage when it comes to the final battle.

It’s another mark of quality in a movie that avoids a genre full of pitfalls and Chronicle is cool, entertaining, absorbing, a little thought provoking and the heart of good human sci-fi sits comfortably beside the eye-popping effects sequences we all love.

Because she’s an amazing looking (rather than beautiful) woman, but ask her to act and the edifice of quality comes tumbling down – they were smart enough to realise as much here. Aside from the timeless quality of Jones on screen, everything about this film screams ’80s’, from the fashion and hairstyles to the dialogue and special effects.

College friends Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler) share such easy chemistry the obvious scripting of it borders on painful, and after pledging to a fraternity of losers they promise to liven up the party by providing strippers for a big forthcoming frat event.

They want to go to a very hot strip club they’ve heard about and through a convenient plot contrivance they have to take an annoying/funny sidekick character along because he has the car.

Once there they’re bewitched in equal parts by the enigmatic dancer Katrina (Jones) and a former almost-girlfriend of Keiths. While AJ goes backstage to get some action with Katrina, she reveals her true colours as she transforms into a hideous beast and sinks her teeth into his neck.

The dancer and staff are vampires, you see, and the club is a front to provide food by luring in itinerants who won’t be missed. But after attacking local boys, the bloodsuckers have made a mistake, especially when Keith and the rapidly-changing AJ decide to fight back.

It might have made a minor splash when it was released, but there were way better vampire movies even back then and the trappings of the time are so obvious now it’s nearly impossible to see the core.

The answer’s somewhere in between. The comment about the insidious nature of (as it’s called in the script) stealth marketing feels like it’s as explored as deeply as it can be given the circumstances of the story, but it never feels as scathing as it could, not even when it causes a supporting character to commit suicide in one of the genuinely shocking scenes.

And the story of these four professional actor/marketers posing as the perfect family to encourage their neighbours’ take-up of new products and aspirations feels like them stakes could have been higher. I’m not sure how it would have been achieved any more than they managed here, but if both the critique and the plot had been amped up it might have been a near-perfect film.

I realise I gave away a spoiler above, but the film doesn’t waste any time setting up the premise. When the ‘daughter’ (the luscious Heard) sneaks downstairs to get into the bed the ‘father’ (Duchovny) sleeps in alone rather than with his ‘wife’ (Moore) you realise all’s not quite right with this family.

Their handler/boss (Hutton) comes in to give them regular reports on their targets, their job to use products of every possible ilk from cars to music to lawn mowers, pretending to be the perfect family and making their material goods all too visible to fool their neighbours into a cycle of never-ending consumption to – as the title suggests – keep up.

But as they reach ever-greater heights of sales success, each of the team finds himself questioning the cost to his soul. To Steve (Duchovny), he can see the trouble next door neighbour Larry (Cole) is getting into trying to buy his way to happiness, especially when he and his fake wife Kate (Moore) develop real feelings for each other.

Daughter Jenn (Heard) is a serial man-eater who mistakes sex for love and threatens to blow the whole illusion with one of her affairs, and son Mick (Hollingsworth) has to keep his true identity secret even while pretending to fall for a neighbourhood punk girl who has no idea his anti-establishment stance is just another sales pitch.

The film takes a serious approach that heightens the inherent sadness when things start to fall apart for everyone in the Jones household (and everyone around them), and despite the weaknesses it’s a strong idea and deserves to be seen.

I remember writing about how the world was in the clutches of a zombie craze way back when Danny Boyle made 28 Days Later, and 10 years later as I write these words – with The Walking Dead conquering TV, Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead box office successes and World War Z in production – it shows no signs of slowing down.

What possible new angle could there be to a zombie apocalypse? Tell the story form a zombie’s point of view of course, which is exactly what director, writer, cinematographer and editor Marc Price did for the sum of 40 quid (undoubtedly not the case but it was a clever aspect of the marketing).

We meet Colin (Kirton) not long after the attack that saw him bitten by one of the undead when the zombie virus descends. He stumbles blindly outside into urban London, gunfire peppering the suburbs around him, and his rapidly-decaying body makes its way from an inventive zombie robbery to the family desperate to see if there’s some shred of humanity left of him and more.

The singular accomplishment of this movie is by following a character with no arc or drive (other than the desire to find someone to eat) for 100 minutes and not make it boring. The very nature of the story makes it episodic, but Price wields some very imaginative narrative devices to call back to earlier events and give Colin a story even he doesn’t know about.

The lo-fi approach shows a few too many technical flaws – the film takes too long to get going as Colin slowly succumbs to his bite, and there’s an entire sequence of a man apparently keeping zombies in his basement and trying to feed a young woman to them after she comes to him for help (at least that’s what I gathered – it’s too dark to see a thing during the entire scene).

But Price has written a good script and shot it with all the verve his equipment and means afforded him, and he deserves a bigger budget and a real shot no less than Neill Blomkamp after Alive in Joburg or Duncan Jones after Moon.

The Artist is the latest film to gather a steamroller of awards buzz around itself, having garnered several wins in the 2012 awards ceremonies so far and talked up as a cert for best Picture at the 2012 Academy Awards as I write this.

While it’s undoubtedly good quality, it’s a strange movie in that I think the love is coming from movie types, not common moviegoers (most of whom will, like me, see it out of curiosity at all the fuss). It certainly has charm and what it does it does very well, but Best Picture? I think that’s just Hollywood being in love with itself, a state of mind that ends at the edge of Beverly Hills.

It’s a historical document and if there’s any subtext that justifies awards kudos it’s simply the juggernaut of technology changing the movie industry by brute force. In the late 20s, Errol Flynn-like silent movie star George Valentin (Dujardin) rules Hollywood with his suave smile, pencil thin moustache and faithful terrier.

But after crossing paths with fan Peppy (Bejo) at the studio, she’s spotted in the crowd and shepherded to stardom as the face of a new medium – talkies. While Peppy’s star rises, George descends into the life of a has-been, selling everything and unable to pay his loyal manservant Clifton (Cromwell).

But he and Peppy still share something from the one time they danced together on film, something they’ve never admitted to nor acted on, and The Artist is as much about the love between them as it is about love of a bygone era.

The look, the style and the design is near-perfect. Some audiences have been genuinely shocked at discovering it’s not only about the silent movie era, it’s a silent movie itself. Director Hazanavicius includes a few meta moments where sound emerges and George himself is surprised, apparently having lived in a world of no sound but the lilting orchestral backing, but they’re more about self-referentiality than adding to the story.

The problem I had with it is that there’s really no antagonist. If Peppy had been a brazen careerist determined to knock George off his pedestal, then turned into a snob who mistreated everyone and gave us a reason to want George to beat her at her own game, it would have had some dramatic tension.

But even as George falls from his perch everybody surrounding him seems to be his friend and wants to help him, Clifton refusing to leave his service even after George fires him. There was no real conflict and the result felt like a spirited and beautiful but empty spectacle.

It’s less a horror movie than an outright slasher from the stable that gave the world the cachet of George Romero, Greg Nicotero and Tom Savini, so it’s more interested in showing terrified women gruesomely dismembered than genuine scares. There’s little quality in performance or narrative, and if you can buy a craggy-faced sleazebag like Joe Spinell (who’s face virtually screams ‘psychopathic killer’) copping on to a gorgeous photographer, you can suspend disbelief far enough to be interested in the story.

It’s the late 70s/early 80s and New York is the place we know from Death Wish and Basket Case, an ugly, dirty cesspool where hoodlums run riot and sexual violence and murder are rampant. The latest episode to capture the attention of the gleefully bloodthirsty media is of a psycho who kills and scalps his victims.

There is some backstory to Frank’s psychosis but it’s too intangible to really get a handle on. It’s got something to do with his domineering mother and the resulting fetish for dressing store mannequins in his victim’s clothes, complete with their scalps nailed to the dummies’ heads.

The famously supernatural climax seems more of an excuse to showcase Savini and uncredited partner Rob Bottin’s grisly skills than serve the story, and the net result is one of disappointment. Even if you’re a gorehound watching it for the blood you’re better off treating it like porn and fast forwarding through all the boring plot to the good bits. If you’re not, you’ll need some sunshine and a refreshing shower to scrape away the grimy filth you can feel attaching itself.

Likewise George Clooney – a movie star who could probably take any woman in the world to bed if he fancied – was completely believable as a husband and father completely lost and out of his depth when it comes to family matters.

Matt (Clooney), the heir and executor to a vast family fortune, has been emotionally distant from his wife and felt disconnected from his kids for ages when his wife hits her head in a boating accident and lapses into a coma.

While he rallies his daughters – tearaway Alexandra (Woodley) and precocious but scared Scottie (Miller) – around him to support them, two bombshells land. First, the doctors tell Matt his wife won’t wake up and he’s better off turning the life support off mercifully. Second, Alexandra unwittingly explains the rift that’s grown between her and her mother to reveal she’s been cheating on Matt with a local real estate agent.

What should have been a time of healing becomes a family exercise in stalking and trying to sting their wife and mother’s former lover (Lillard, whom I didn’t even recognise) which brings the girls and their father closer together than they could have realised.

It’s bittersweet, has enough tears and laughs to remind you of real life and the acting kudos from Clooney and Woodley are well deserved. Rather than just plonk it down in a pretty area for set dressing, the heart and soul of Hawaii infuses the story to a refreshing degree.