Little Miss Sunshine is an apt title for such a rapturous ray of sunlit glee. The title card plays over a morose-looking Steve Carell, his face a picture of misery. The juxtaposition of optimistic words over his pessimistic outlook is filmmaker’s Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’ little clue that the light in their story is discovered in the intricacies of human dysfunction and alienation. It is possible to have a wholly satisfying tale of hopefulness and happy-endings without any semblance of saccharine sentimentality. Little Miss Sunshine is proof positive that in the realities of life’s little challenges, failure is not a cause for misery but a step on the road to living.

“Animal House” promotes promiscuous sex, anti-establishment behaviour, criminal activity, underage drinking and alcohol abuse, violence and general anarchy, little or no respect for the education system, and hand jobs wearing surgical gloves. Do I love this movie? Yes Sir! John Landis finally found his calling after fortunately breaking into (almost literally) the film business by equal parts blind luck, personal desire, and others misfortune. With the help of writers such as Harold Ramis and Chris Miller, and the production assistance of Ivan Reitman and Matty Simmons, Landis was able to delve into various experiences of college life to create an outrageous expose on the lives of America’s youth. “Animal House” quickly became a hit amongst young audiences who found the rampant anarchy was an entertaining and funny front to the many truths inherent in college life.

There’s always been that old saying: Dying is easy, comedy is hard. Of all the genres in film, it is perhaps comedy that is the most subjective: you either find something hilarious, or you don’t. Comedy films, in the main, depend on a viewer’s sense of humour, as opposed to their attention span. For everyone who finds Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch hilarious, there’s a dozen who don’t. Instead of offering some trite platitudes about what I find funny, and what turns me off, I’m just going to offer my own choices on the films I find to be the funniest, most impressive comedy films to come out of Australia. So, without further ado, my choices for the top Aussie comedy films…

Most audiences today won’t have heard of the name John Landis. They would have heard of “Coming To America” and “The Blues Brothers” but it’s unlikely they recognise the talent behind the lens. That’s because Landis has become one of Hollywood’s forgotten star directors. Legal troubles and a decade of poor work has put the director out in the wilderness. Forgettable films from a forgotten filmmaker.

Yet, you ask anyone if they’ve seen Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and most will reply “Damn right I have – best music video ever made!” Well, that was the brainchild of Jackson and John Landis.

Throughout the decade we were wowed by fantasy, thrilled by action, and frightened by horror, all the while being annoyed by remakes and endless sequels. We had everything turned on its head with numerous twist endings and welcomed new and old Superheroes. New directors entered the scene (Christopher Nolan) and others were finally recognised by mainstream audiences (Peter Jackson, Alexander Payne), while older pros continued to make great movies (Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg).

Said to be an un-filmable novel (and probably rightly so), approaching the movie adaptation of “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy” you’d be forgiven for wondering just how the hell director Michael Winterbottom pulled it off. Well, he didn’t, exactly. It isn’t that the film doesn’t look at both the ‘life’ and the ‘opinions’ of Laurence Sterne’s titular character, it’s more that it rolls it all up into a bite-size bundle of non-linear narration, film-within-a-film-within-a-film invention, and wry satirical asides which celebrate the originality, humour and post-modern techniques of the original literature.

Ratso’s hang-ups, Sumner’s ordeal, Braddock’s sexual desire: The Life and Characters of Dustin Hoffman
Everyone who interviews Dustin Hoffman leaves with the same thoughts on the man: warm, intelligent, and accommodating. His small physical stature – there’s only 5ft 6in of the man – is dismissed by a presence that fills the room. He is a complete part of the Hollywood furniture: iconic and recognisable in both looks and voice. He is Tinseltown gold and a legend of the film industry.
As a child – although I did not know it …

In the eighties, the high-concept movie was in vogue, its number increasing. Thanks largely to blockbusters “Jaws” and “Star Wars”, the eighties saw what was tried and trusted in the decade before it and simply repackaged the thrills for an audience wanting exactly the same entertainment.
The industry was drastically changing from the top down. Huge, multinational conglomerates who, quite rightly, viewed their acquisition as a profitable arm of the company bought a number of studios. United Artists merged with MGM in 1981, while 20th Century Fox was bought by oil …