HERE'S a surprise. Just as the spring school holidays are ending, Astro Boy, rated PG and with heaps of appeal for young movie-goers, arrives in Sydney cinemas.
With previous Astro Boy movies dubbed from the original Japanese, this is the first full English-language version of the animated superhero who dates back to the 1960s.
Voiced by English teen star Freddie Highmore (The Spiderwick Chronicles and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), this version of Astro Boy begins in Metro City with his creation and then rejection by a scientist seeking a replacement for the son he lost.
In just over an hour and a half, Astro Boy will avoid military service, fight robot gladiators, and save Metro City from an alien invasion.
Also providing voices are Kristen Bell (currently appearing in Couples Retreat), Nicolas Cage, Charlize Theron, Samuel L Jackson and Bill Nighy.
Here's a movie that's definitely not a school holiday attraction: Final Destination 3D, rated MA.
That ``3'' is a little confusing because this is actually the fourth, and hopefully last, in a series of horror films in which the characters you meet at the beginning are not necessarily alive at the end!
Final Destination 3D begins at a motor racing track where, as usual, there will be a major disaster. Throughout this thankfully short film (less than 90 minutes) death will come calling for those characters who survive.
A much more gentle film about death is Departures, M, winner of the best foreign language film at the Academy Awards this year.
Departures is a moving Japanese film in which an out-of-work cellist, Masahiro, finds himself employed in a funeral parlour.
To his wife, it is an awful job, but Masahiro begins to take pride in the ``departures'' he arranges for grieving families.
Definitely worth travelling to Palace cinemas at Paddington or Leichhardt or to Orpheum Cinema at Cremorne to see Departures.
Taking time off between his European projects an un-named London project is in the works after Vicky Cristina Barcelona Woody Allen has returned to his New York roots to make Whatever Works, rated M, a comedy based on a script he first wrote in the 1970s.
For the role originally written for the late Zero Mostel, Allen has recalled former stand-up comedian, the writer/producer of the Seinfeld television series, Larry David, who had small roles in two early Allen movies.
In a film that opens with a typical Allen-style monologue that includes talking straight to the camera, David plays a lifelong New York resident, Boris Yellnikoff, whose philosophy seems to be ``whatever works''.
With perhaps references to Allen's own life, Boris becomes involved with a much younger girl played by Evan Rachel Wood, who was Mickey Rourke's daughter in The Wrestler.
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