Rating: 4/5. Verdict: Four discs of rare genius punctuated by some lesser moments

Gagarin Way is about current political apathy; nonetheless it expects its audience to have a wee bit of political awareness, particularly vis-a-vis 20th century British history.

Rating: 4/5 Verdict: Surprise package

Rating: 3.5/5. Verdict: Tribute album's amusing masculine sequel

Rating: 3/5. Verdict: Past and present in musical pop collision.

Rating: 3.5/5. Verdict: Wickedly funny and original idea not quite fully realised.

Rating: 4/5 Verdict: A refreshingly smart and adult friendly teen comedy

Rating: 5/5. Verdict: Enough skulking, let's party

Set in Mumbai, Saraswati Park is a vivid portrait of intergenerational family dynamics in an ever-changing, modern day India.

Theme-based anthologies serve several purposes. They explore and represent particular subjects from a thousand vantage points and they assemble diverse voices, both familiar and unfamiliar.

This is the first full biography written since the publication of the two-volume edition of Mansfield's Notebooks (2002), transcribed by Margaret Scott, and the final (fifth) volume in 2008 of her Collected Letters.

Rating: 3.5/5

Way back in the 1980s I was addicted to Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City novels.

Graham Reid rides to the shadowlands with Bruce Springsteen.

Rating: 3.5/5. Verdict: Thriller shoots first then asks existential questions later. For quite some time.

Rating: 3/5

Rating: 3/5. Verdict: The difficult instalment from the arthouse favourite.

Rating: 4/5. Verdict: This character just don't care.

Rating: 4/5. Verdict: Barely there beauty.

Rating: 1/5. Verdict: If cream rises, this sinks like a lead samosa.

Talk about a guilty pleasure. It's nasty, nonsensical and further evidence for the case that Robert De Niro will say yes to most anything these days.

Swedish director Tomas Alfredson's macabre romance Let the Right One In was an artful, unique, deeply disturbing and yet touching vampire film. Unexpectedly, so too is director Matt Reeves' Hollywood remake Let Me In.

Nicki Greenberg loves Shakespeare, she "gets" Shakespeare, and she has done something wondrous with him, a thing I have never seen done before.

Move over Bridget, it's the blokes' turn.

David Hill reviews two new Australian novels depicting two very different sides of modern life.

It is a tricky little bugger of a book this one. Distant, confusing and perhaps a little cliched in parts, it is also compelling, subtle and maybe even brilliant.