Best friends Graeme Willy (Simon Pegg) and Clive Gollings (Nick Frost) are a pair of science-fiction geeks, travelling across America in a mobile RV. They first visit the Comic-Con convention and then move through the Nevada Desert because they are interested in the supposed alien sightings. Along the way they witness a car crash on the side of the road. Investigating the vehicle, they meet Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen), a foul mouthed and obnoxious alien. While he happens to share a lot of the same eating habits as the pair, he also has special healing powers. Paul reveals he has escaped from Area 51, after being held a prisoner. He needs the boys to help take him to an extraction point so he can return home. Along the way the group is chased by some government troops, including Agent Zoil (Jason Bateman) and a father and daughter pair of Christian extremists. The girl is Ruth (Kristen Wiig) and when she ends up on the RV Graeme takes a liking to her.

With a resounding thud, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have crashed landed together in Hollywood. This is their first reteaming since Hot Fuzz, leaving behind director Edgar Wright, to work with Greg Mottola instead. He previously made Superbad. As someone who thoroughly enjoyed Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, the disappointment with this sci-fi comedy is its distinct Americanisation and its weakened script. It's unusual considering Pegg and Frost are credited as writers and it's been developed by their regular production companies. The satire of their other two films, which cleverly took aim at specific genre films and the way they mirrored British society, is now absent. The comedy here is broader and cruder, but not necessarily funnier. It resorts to drawing American stereotypes, from hillbillies, self-serious government agents and most alarmingly, born again Christians, but with little to no purpose. There are a few laughs early on when the boys visit Comic-Con because there's no winking required. Comic-Con is what it is: geeks, some a lot older than others, dressing up in ridiculous costumes. There's also a fun cameo by Jeffrey Tambor, from Hellboy 2, as an obnoxious author.

From the point that the alien arrives though, the cracks in the setup and the screenplay come to the foray. We see that Paul has the traits of a boorish human, without any explanation and then there's really nowhere for the film to go. The blame must be shared by Mottola because the film has been cut to resemble a chase movie. And the number of times that the group find themselves escaping in the RV from various pursuers grows increasingly tiresome. If one were to watch it for the sci-fi references rather than the narrative then there's a predictable assortment of E.T. and Alien related gags. There's bound to be some that only science-fiction enthusiasts will find but the most obvious ones are not as skilfully integrated into the plot as say Hot Fuzz's take on the English murder mystery. It's more like a gallery for these sci-fi allusions than a proper film.

One of the strengths of Hot Fuzz was quality of its script, with visible changes and developments in the characters. It was also buoyed considerably by Pegg's acting chops, playing a character that was deliberately straight throughout and letting the jokes work around him. There's a lot less Pegg can do here with a surprisingly blank character, caught somewhere between an overgrown geek and a bumbling, quirky Englishman. I wanted more laughs from him because he is a genuinely funny actor. Frost again looks to be playing the typical slob but he's slightly more interesting because he's the more skeptical of the two about Paul. The gimmick of Rogen voicing an alien who smokes and swears, wears off very quickly and Kristen Wiig has such a worthless role here that it's a wonder she agreed to it. She's made to look stupid as she overplays her transformation from a Christian extremist to a foul-mouthed pot smoker. Jason Bateman, a reliable character actor, has an equally inane part and we don't care about his role. Pegg and Frost might have written this for an American audience but it's not what I'd call particularly funny or witty. Phone home gentlemen.

In Los Angeles an oily lawyer named Mick Haller (Matthew McConaughey) works to defend criminals in court. Having lost his driver's license sometime ago, he's chauffeured around by his driver Earl (Laurence Mason). Mick is assigned by bail bondsman Val (John Leguizamo) to talk to a rich, young hoodlum, Louis Roulet (Ryan Phillippe). He has been arrested and charged with breaking into the home of a prostitute and assaulting her. The case hangs in a difficult balance because although it seems certain that Roulet is guilty, he admits to carrying a knife with him that was used during the crime, his insistence of his innocence still convinces. Mick works the case with the help of his sidekick Frank (William H. Macy), an investigator and as they move in on the case the tension between himself and Roulet continues to rise. Roulet refuses to take a plea bargain and spend any time in gaol. His continuous pressure makes Mick fear that his family, including his ex-wife Maggie (Marisa Tomei), who is a prosecutor and their daughter, might be in danger.

I wish The Lincoln Lawyer was as slick as its leading character. Director Brad Furman has adapted Michael Connelly's crime fiction novel to make a pretty conventional courtroom thriller. This is the movie version of law and order, minus the tedium. Meaning that as a thriller directed to entertain us, absurd twists and turns in the case must exist to inflate the drama. And with that there are some pretty large contrivances, including a sketchy link to a case that Mick worked on previously and a brutally extreme climax too. This is also one of those crime films where the main characters have a tendency to explain the clues to each other, regardless of whether the audience can keep up. Blink and you'll miss it. Fortunately, the two conflicting stories of the case, shown in contrasting flashbacks, add some intrigue to the mystery. Furman has done a reasonable job with the production. It's relatively intense but the direction is also marred by an occasionally lazy visual styIe with some unnecessarily erratic camera creeping in.

More pleasing are the quality of the performances that Furman draws from the ensemble cast. Matthew McConaughey has found the right character to believably immerse himself into with complete assurance. His guilt brings depth to the role as he considers his failure to defend a previous client and he shows steel in trying to obtain a fair sentence, even if his clients are guilty. Some of his best scenes are in the courtroom itself, courtesy of some strong dialogue by screenwriter John Romano. Mick's words are as precise and as piercing as any weapon, seemingly able to tear people and their claims apart like a bullet from the inside. A solid, charismatic performance. William H. Macy is also very good with some funny lines but he leaves the movie too early. Similarly, Marisa Tomei is fine but her subplot has little impact on the film up until the final climax. With a difficult role Ryan Phillippe impresses. He strikes a crucial balance at times between being a sinister twerp but equally someone who is adamant of his very innocence. These performances add some weight to a decent but largely forgettable thriller.

Griff (Ryan Kwanten) is a timid officer worker, regularly bullied in the workplace by his colleague Tony (Toby Schmitz). At night, Griff sees himself as a superhero, fighting crime as a means of justice. He has a computer system set up in his tiny apartment to help him monitor street activity. Griff's brother Tim (Patrick Brammall) has moved back from Adelaide to make sure that he isn't returning to his superhero phase and warns him about staying out of trouble. When Griff is introduced to Tim's new girlfriend Melody (Maeve Dermody) there's an instant attraction between the two of them. She's an oddball herself, who works in her father's hardware store but is more interested in science and physics. She appreciates Griff for being as peculiar as she is.

At once charming and frustrating, Griff the Invisible shares the same identity crisis as its protagonist. Leon Ford is the film's novice writer and director and I don't think he has a complete hold on what sort of film he's made. It's deliberately quirky, working with a tone that moves from black, exaggerated comedy to romance and eventually into more disturbing territory. There are essentially three narratives running throughout the film too. The subplot involving the office and Griff's sabotage of his bully is the least successful. It's relatively implausible and too much time is spent on it for it to be left unresolved. The other two concerning Griff's heroics and his involvement with Melody are tiptoed around slowly and lack an overall goal. Nonetheless, I was surprised and grateful of the film's ability to subvert the tired conventions of the superhero genre. The trailer to Griff does a disservice to the material. Out of context, the dialogue seems forced and laughably corny. I cringed when first hearing the line: "I live in a bubble that no one gets into. But you Griff...You get into my bubble". But within the film itself the bizarre dialogue is fitting with its social outcasts and the concepts of imitation and imagination. I just wish the film had made us more aware of its artifice though. The early crime fighting scenes are too literal. It will be a test to see if audiences realise the film's very slight self-referencing. There are a few quiet laughs gained from its awareness but the script could have been even funnier if the audience could view Griff's antics objectively. More satisfying are the performances. Kwanten and Dermody make a likable pair of kooks and reinforce the film's sweet message that attraction is defined by transparency, rather than normality or conformity. This is thankfully not Australia's answer to Kick-Ass. It's a much more curious and interesting film.

Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) is an ageing soldier who is set for retirement. In his previous tour of Iraq he was one of the only survivors in his unit and speculation surrounds what happened to his men. When an alien invasion strikes the Earth however, he is brought back into the action to help lead a group of young and inexperienced soldiers. One of them is set to be married and another is expecting the birth of his child. As the rest of the Earth seems to be defeated, Los Angeles remains as one of the last posts. With the help of some civilians including a father and son, a veterinarian (Bridget Moynahan) and also TSgt. Elena Santos (Michelle Rodriguez), the unit works to clear out the city, moving towards an extraction point, before the area can be bombed out.

Calling Battle: Los Angeles the equivalent of a video game would be giving it too much credit. Jonathan Liebesman's irredeemable sci-fi action film is the antithesis of 2010's Monsters. This is an unoriginal, primitive and mindless recruitment video for the Call of Duty and MTV Generation. The soldiers here, armed with high powered assault weapons, don't so much act as scream grunt speak and backslap each other in a bid to look and sound cool. Take note of pop singer Ne-Yo's casting and Michelle Rodriguez as a hardened fighter. Big stretch. But video game enthusiasts would be better served sticking to the virtual battlefield because the shabbiness of this picture is one of its few surprises. Shaky cam makes an unwelcome return here, with framing so ridiculously tight in the opening stages that the camera seems to be attached to the actors' heads. Later battles are dismally over edited with rapid fire cutting that the film is indecipherable about who is being blown up. Forget about characters or development because by the first gunfight the scriptwriter already has. There is no urgency or tension as we have no one to barrack for. As a viewer you're expected to catch flies as you admire explosion after explosion, after explosion.

The entirety of the film, save for some painfully rushed and clichéd exposition, is made up of overlong battle sequences and standoffs. Moments of sacrifice and 'you go on without me' pleas, are unmoving and do little to compensate for the lack of narrative. Restricting the perspective of the film to a single military unit also means that there is little conception about the rest of the invasion. Only brief news headlines on the televisions give minimal information, like how the aliens are scavenging our water. Point being, the film seems more interested in being loud, rather than in the science, the aliens or even the human reactions. The cynic in me suggests that you see very little of the aliens up close because of how unconvincing they are. From afar they look like they're made from scrap metal. Try not to laugh as Nantz carves one up like a Christmas ham, looking for a weakness. What makes this more poisonous than other incompetent action films is the increasing transparency of the film's pro-military agenda. Along with the compassionless violence, the message seems to be that you're never too young or too old for the military. Luckily, Eckhart has a face made out of granite because it must be the only way he can keep it straight when spouting embarrassing propaganda like 'marines don't quit' and telling a little boy, 'I need you to be my little marine'. I found that and Battle: Los Angeles success at the US box office (it debuted at number one) to be scarier than any alien threat. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Adam (Ashton Kutcher) and Emma (Natalie Portman) met each other once at a school summer camp but never committed. Several years later and they meet again. Adam is now a writer and an assistant on a TV show and she's a nurse. When Adam discovers that his father Alvin (Kevin Kline), a washed-up actor, is having a relationship with his ex-girlfriend, he goes on an all-night bender. Waking up in Emma's house, he finds comfort in her and they have spontaneous sex too. They decide that they should restrict their relationship to this level as she isn't comfortable with dating. She decides to keep it a secret from her housemates Patrice (Greta Gerwig) and Shira (Mindy Kaling). Typically, Adam feels left out by this demand and tries to develop the relationship into something more with the help of his friends Wallace (Ludacris) and Eli (Jake M. Johnson).

Last year I praised a rejuvenating American comedy called Easy A for being witty, economical and charming in its outlook on sex and conformity. No Strings Attached, this year's major Valentine's Day release directed by Ivan Reitman, is not that movie. It reminded me more of a scene from Annie Hall, where Woody Allen asks a couple why they are happy. The girl responds: "I'm very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say". Her boyfriend adds: "I'm exactly the same way." The very familiar premise here of friends with benefits, covered most recently in Love and Other Drugs, leaves substantial motives by the wayside in favour of star power. The only mildly surprising element here is some of the unnaturally crude dialogue provided by first time feature writer Elizabeth Meriwether. She lends some cringing lines to scenes that are so prosaic that they are lacking in dramatic and comedic punch. Centuries on and we're still watching that moment where one person falsely believes that the other is already accounted for.

Ivan Reitman's film also feels overlong and badly paced too. It lumbers ridiculously just under the two hour mark, slipping well into repetition before the credits start. And successful comedy is found in not just what is said but how it's said. Tone and precision are both crucial. Thus, while Ashton Kutcher is a popular performer, he's so relaxed in this film that his character lies somewhere between dope and sleepwalker. I just didn't find any of his dialogue to be particularly funny. Portman has a little more energy, particularly in the second half, but her characterisation shifts so jarringly from scene to scene. The comic timing she deftly showed in Garden State is absent because she isn't given many good lines to work with either. Considering the material and how unbalanced the film is towards her character, it surprised me to see that she backed the film herself as one of the producers. More fun is to be had with some of the side characters, like Wallace, with the little time they have on screen. Greta Gerwig (a breakthrough performance in Greenberg last year) is rarely seen and Kevin Kline is underused. Consider how much you love your date before seeing this.

This animated feature is set in the Wild West and focuses on a chameleon (voiced by Johnny Depp). This little creature considers himself an actor and tries to put on performances with inanimate objects in his glass tank. After somehow breaking out, he's left to contend with the perils of the desert. Escaping the dangers of a hawk, the chameleon takes refuge with another lizard named Beans (Isla Fisher) who is heading back to her town of Dirt. When he arrives there himself, he finds that the town is continuously suspicious of outsiders. This is primarily because the town's water supplies are so low. There's barely enough to last for the next six days. To prove himself to his sceptics, the chameleon pretends to be a fierce outlaw, telling tales about his heroics. Winning the respect of the people, the chameleon calls himself Rango and is made the sheriff of Dirt. But the ambiguity surrounding Dirt's Mayor (Ned Beatty) and his stranglehold on the remaining water supply remains.

Rango compensates for some familiar tropes and situations with a superior visual styIe and an expressive voice cast. Gore Verbinski's film is foremost a parody of the Western genre and it borrows heavily from the Chevy Chase spoof iThree Amigos! That film, a take on The Magnificent Seven itself, was also about a group of actors who entered a village and were mistaken for real gunslingers. I suspect there's a more contemporary political message running throughout Rango though. The town of Dirt lives off the idea of hope for a better future. But for a sheriff promising stability, Rango is reliably destructive and irresponsible, failing to keep order. Then there's the town's necessity for a precious resource, overshadowed by a tyrannic prospector. These political undertones are contained in a relatively foreseeable and familiar narrative, working with a common idea of so many animated pictures that the smallest person can make a difference. Nonetheless, the film rides high on an abundance of charm, provided by its inventive and textured visuals.

The tone of the film remains light and playful but the visuals distinguish themselves from highly saturated pictures like Tangled and Toy Story 3, with grittier palettes. The arid, sunburnt planes are naturally fitting for a Western and the film compliments this hardened tone with equally dark character models too. There's more of an edge to the design of these characters because many of them are halfway between being anthropomorphic and more grotesque creatures. Abigail Breslin's Priscilla is for example a walking and talking rat. But she's also dressed like a school girl, with plaits, not unlike Hailee Steinfeld's character from True Grit. It's particularly funny how they resemble token characters from the Western genre too. It gives a unique but also more unsettling feel to the town, fitting of Rango's experience as an outsider. Adults will enjoy picking up on these genre references.

Thankfully, the film is also regularly witty, courtesy of a clever script by John Logan. The slapstick action, moving from elaborate set pieces to more subtle visual gags, is equally humorous and beautiful, slickly controlled by Verbinski, working from his experience on the Pirates films. The voice cast is even more impressive, an enthusiastic line-up that gives life to even the smallest character. Johnny Depp, Abigail Breslin, Bill Nighy as a very creepy snake, Ray Winstone and many others are excellent. A lot of publicity has been given to the preparation of the voice work, specifically using the voice actors to act out the scenes themselves. Given the near-perfection of how Depp captures Rango's clumsiness, I would say that this technique has been a great success in drawing the actors closer to the scenarios and providing them with a greater understanding of their characters mannerisms.

Best Picture: The Social Network

Best Director: David Fincher

Best Actor: Colin Firth

Best Actress: Natalie Portman

Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale

Best Supporting Actress: Hailee Steinfeld

Best Screenplay: Inception

Best Adapted Screenplay: The Social Network

Best Animated: Toy Story 3

Best Art Direction: True Grit

Best Cinematography: True Grit

Best Costume: The King's Speech

Best Documentary: Exit Through the Gift Shop

Best Film Editing: The Social Network.

Best Foreign Film: Bitiful

Best Makeup: The Wolfman

Best Score: Inception

Best Song: Tangled

Sound Editing: Inception

Sound Mixing: Inception

Visuals: Inception

This is a documentary detailing how a photographer named Nev Schulman started a relationship with a family through the social networking site Facebook. The recordings were started by Nev's brother Ariel and filmmaker Henry Joost after Nev posted a photograph on the Internet and was then contacted by the family. A little girl named Abby supposedly saw his photograph and then painted an impressive replica of the image. Through the exchange of images across the Internet, Nev grew closer to the entire family, particularly with Abby's older half-sister Megan. Nev and Megan started talking on the phone and commenced a more intimate relationship. But as Nev's belief in the authenticity of the paintings diminished, he decided to travel across state from New York to Michigan with his camera crew to see if he had for months been led astray.

On and off the screen Catfish is a disturbing documentary. This is in part because of the material but equally the motives of the filmmakers. After its release in the US, there was high speculation about the film's truthfulness. It's a valid concern. The film has been very scrappily made, shot mostly on handheld camera, with distorted angles, to give it an on the fly feel. But it also cuts corners, leaving holes in its mirror of reality. Little is known about Nev himself so his entanglement with Megan seems peculiar. As a grown man living in New York, doesn't he have any real life relations to distract him? Even when the documentary reaches its big revelation, one the press releases have urged people not to reveal, Nev's reaction is weirdly muted. He's either not a very good actor or he's suddenly stopped caring about a person he's been communicating with for months. The former is more likely. There are some minor technical gaps too. Look at the shot of Nev's trio when they are all on screen in a car ride. Who else is there filming them? And why isn't Angela more concerned about the cameras in her house when they come to visit? Listen to the language of a conversation that Nev recalls between himself and Megan too. The diction sounds intimate and polished, at odds with the fragmented dialogue shared online. The falsity of Catfish leads to deeper moral concerns. If this really is a facade, what are the filmmakers trying to accomplish other than to blatantly manipulate our emotions? It seems as though their film exists to shock and disorientate. It's effective in that sense but just as creepy and rather sickening in its exploitation. In the final quarter I really felt for Angela. She comes off as far more interesting than the laughing hyena Nev. But she also left me wondering how someone her age could become so detached from reality. Catfish touches the surface, attributing her behaviour to her domestic problems. But a set of more mature filmmakers could have explored this with deeper insights.

Dr. Martin Harris (Liam Neeson) and his wife Elizabeth (January Jones) fly into Berlin as he is going to attend a biotechnology conference with a colleague. As his wife tries checking into their hotel, Martin notices that one of his bags is missing. He takes a cab to go back and retrieve the bag. The taxi enters a crash and Martin is left unconscious, only to be saved by the driver, Gina (Diane Kruger). When Martin wakes up from a coma he sets out to find his wife. He discovers her at the bio conference but she claims that she does not know him and that another man (Aidan Quinn) is married to her and is the real Martin Harris. Martin sets out to reclaim his identity by tracking down Gina, who is now working as a waitress. He also employs the help of Ernst Jürgen (Bruno Ganz), who used to be a Stasi officer in East Germany. He specialises in tracking down people and Harris uses this skill to try and contact his friend Rodney Cole (Frank Langella) back in the USA.

Unknown was the wrong title. This is a film about identity loss and yet it includes a checklist of familiar scenarios and set pieces from a dozen other action films. The film commences intriguingly enough, mostly because of the slick, cIassical direction of Jaume Collet-Serra. He's icily photographed film on location in Berlin and the omission of the shaky camera in these opening exchanges allows for smoother control. With this isolated and grey Cold War-like feel, it is hard not to be mildly drawn in by a curious, if familiar, premise. The early intensity at least makes it interesting to see how the film will unravel. Unfortunately a lot of suspense is undone by some routine dialogue of the 'that man is pretending to be me' kind and some surprisingly flat revelations. Judging from the accent of the German doctor who aids Martin, I was expecting some crazed German mind games. But there's too much Bourne here and a silly finale owes more than a little to the superior Salt from last year. The two writers credited to the screenplay were unimaginative enough to even include a digital readout bomb that needs to be disarmed. In between, there are some tired car chases and fist fights, chaotically edited, with the shaky cam and rapid cutting rearing their ugly heads. Any subtext relating to the submissive identities of migrants runs second to clichés like black four wheel drives and trained assassins.

Liam Neeson is an experienced and decorated performer so it's problematic that he's still in Taken mode. With a gruff American accent and one expression on his face, glum, he lends himself to a tough but highly monotonous performance. Nearly sixty-years-old, what is Neeson's interest in choosing these action roles and bit parts? Even he cannot bring credibility to embarrassing lines like, 'I haven't forgotten how to kill you asshoIe'. It's Neeson's movie and yet his character is surprisingly underwritten, mostly to mask the final plot twist. More appealing support is provided by Diane Kruger (from Inglorious Basterds) and Bruno Ganz (Downfall). He has some of the best lines in the film, like when he describes his cigarette flavour as killing more Russians than Stalin and he brings some tension and ambiguity to the plot. The talents of Langella are just wasted though because he arrives very late in the film, with the sole intent of explaining the film's denouement. The film is not as primitive or as offensive as Taken, it is occasionally intense and involving, but even Dr. Martin would have trouble escaping the nostalgia.

This is based on the true story of boxer Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) and his half brother Dicky (Christian Bale), a junkie. They live in working cIass Lowell, Massachusetts, where everyone is aware of Micky's poor results. Micky is managed by Dicky and his eccentric mother Alice (Melissa Leo). Dickie is deluded by the idea that he himself is going to make a comeback and that the camera crew following him are going to make a movie about his life. Frustratingly for Micky, he has not been winning many of his fights as the opponents organised by Dicky are regularly superior. Further dominating Micky's life are his six sisters, who move together in a pack. The family ties are disrupted when Micky becomes involved with the barmaid Charlene (Amy Adams), a girl who the sisters do not trust at all. When Dicky is arrested and put in gaol Micky is given an offer by a more professional manager, who says he does not want Dicky around as he is too much trouble. Micky must decide whether he is going to turn his back on his brother who has trained him and provided him with regular knowledge.

It took me a long time to warm to Christian Bale's performance in The Fighter. He's so extreme as Dickie, having slimmed down significantly and possessing such highly wired body language. It initially seems like a caricature of a junkie. But David O. Russell's film is too smart to fall into simplicity. As the story develops, Bale's multilayered performance works to accentuate the soul of the film: pride. Dickie's showiness and exaggeration is deliberate. He's playing up to the cameras in the film, thinking they're making a movie about his life. But as he becomes aware of the reality and the shame that he has brought on himself and most significantly his young son, his star fades. Bale touchingly infuses his character with a vulnerable consciousness. O. Russell skilfully draws this notion of pride from the other performances too. Tension is built from the decay of the family structure. We learn that Alice has been preparing both of her sons to be boxers since they were small children and thus she is not a caricature either. She's extremely possessive but her position as both a mother and a manager is understandable. The best scenes in the film, some of the funniest too, are shared with Alice and the six sisters. They work extremely well to accentuate the themes of family and pride and how significant these values are in a working cIass town. Out of all the characters however, Adams is the standout. After playing a nun in Doubt she transforms herself seamlessly into a foul mouthed, hardened barmaid. What we don't know about her interests us the most. We know that she dropped out of college so is she using Mickey as an opportunity for herself? Does she have a right to interfere with such a tightly knit family? Some have felt that against these powerful performances Wahlberg is the weak link. I admired the restraint of his quiet performance. It works to show how controlling and dominant the rest of his family is around him. Largely, he's very contained. Most surprising is how very little boxing there is in the film. But like many of the cIassic boxing pictures, there are more significant and interesting things happening outside of the ring.