DVD: Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese 2010)

A strange and unpleasant film that would be fun if it didn't seem to think it was about something deep and meaningful while at the same time playing on society's fears about 'mental illness'.

Diamond Dove (Adrian Hyland 2006)

This sounds a bit like Boney revisited: young Aboriginal woman from a remote community with a university education becomes a detective with a foot in both cultures.

Inception (Christopher Nolan 2010)

A bit loud, and not quite as clever as it thinks it is, but clever enough to be a very good night out.

The Yes Men Fix the World (Andy Bichlbaum, Mike Bonanno, Kurt Engfehr 2009)

Culture-jammers extraordinary. This was the first film in the Green Left Weekly Environmental Film Festival, upstairs at the Socialist Alliance's Resistance building in Chippendale. We were fed vege curry and treated to a couple of amiable political advertisements. The film deserves a theatrical release: Michael Moorish, but humbler, less sneery, more breathtakingly funny in its stunts.

STC: Long Day's Journey into Night (Eugene O'Neill)

This was a very long night in the theatre, and totally wonderful. Deeply true performances from Robyn Nevin and William Hurt, and from Todd Van Voris and Luke Mullins as the sons. The words were allowed to shine, and that's what they did.

The Adventures of Alyx (Joanna Russ 1976)

The only Joanna Russ novel I've read until now is The Female Man, and I'm curious to read what she was writing before that (even though this collection of stories was first published a year later).

Knight and Day (James Mangold 2010)

This probably adds nothing to the sum of human knowledge, but I enjoyed it more than any silly film in a long time. Cameron Diaz is wonderful. Tom Cruise is convincingly dangerous. The desecration of beautiful places too over the top to hurt.

Two plays of redemption (Subtlenuance at the TAP Gallery 2010)

Talc by Daniela Giorgi & Two Gates by Paul Gilchrist: independent theatre in which writers, directors and actors stretching their wings – and our minds and hearts.

Every Secret Thing (Marie Munkara 2009)

Knockabout Catholic, Aboriginal and, I'm told, actually funny. Good to read after The Tree of Man.

The Hedgehog (Mona Achache 2009)

So much of this didn't work: a long time before anything happened, and we were left to speculate about the motivation of far too many important actions. But There were also many moments that touched something real. On balance, worth missing Doc Martin for.

Size 10 (Sarah Gibson & Susan Lambert 1978)

A personal blast from the past, National Film and Sound Archive ID 47550, still a confronting 19 minute  look at how women's bodies actually are as opposed to how they're supposed to be.

Stalingrad (Anthony Beevor 2008)

We picked this to read aloud on a long car ride. It was a good choice: elegant prose, and subject matter that is gripping but hard to take alone unless you're sitting with a war games layout.

The Most Dangerous Man in America (Judith Ehrlich & Rick Goldsmith 2009)

Subtitle: 'Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers'. This is an excellent talking-heads documentary – its relevance to current events barely mentioned in the movie itself, but insistently there all the same.