At a time when it feels like every film released is simply joining onto the end of a line of anxious school children hoping to be picked for team “Oscars”, Role Models is like that weird kid standing alone with one finger up his nose and the other hand down his pants. Sure, he’s never going to make the team, but neither is half the other players desperately jostling for attention, so why worry about being selected when he’s already having a blast doing his own thing?

Cat lovers have certainly had it tough. While man’s best friend has been busy slobbering all over the box office this holiday season, Hollywood has left the felines out in the winter cold. If Jennifer Aniston’s and Owen Wilson’s pooch in Marley & Me isn’t the cause of much dog doting, then Walt Disney’s latest animation Bolt -a delightful story about a dog who thinks he has superpowers – most certainly is. Recapturing the energy and charm of their earlier films, Bolt marks Disney’s long awaited re-emergence as a top-dog in the world of animation.

Australian audiences have been spoilt with quality this summer as with any Oscar season, and while many of the high contenders gain later releases to create worldwide awards buzz, Frost/Nixon is a gift to Australian moviegoers with a comparatively early Boxing Day release. It comes at a time where change is imminent within political power and world affairs (Barack Obama’s inauguration among other things) and journalism has reached to a more technologically savvy state, but what Frost/Nixon and the Watergate scandal represents in history and shows some 30 years later is more than just a cover-up.

Someone please tell Mr. Smith to cheer up. His recent fondness for depicting depressed characters is becoming a bit, well, depressing.  A broke and homeless single father in The Pursuit of Happyness, the last living human in I am Legend, a lonely alcoholic superhero in Hancock and now a guilt ridden miseryguts in Seven Pounds. Is life really that gloomy for one of Hollywood’s highest paid actors?

I guess you could say genre categorisation exists to give the prospective audience an inkling in to what sort of emotions they should expect the film to evoke. Yet British director Danny Boyle asks an elementary question; why? Why limit a film to one set of emotions when it has the potential to explore so much more?

And so is the tale of one curious Benjamin Button. The story of a man who grows younger, the opposite to everyday life, and becomes more experienced with his younger appearance than those with even the most withered faces. This coming-of-age story is different to others not just because of his predicament but because of the beautiful way it is told; the wonderful interweaving stories all come back into the main story of his life – his love for Daisy.