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.

Judge not a book by its title.

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.

Rating: 5/5

The book that has everything, Kehua! offers murder, adultery, incest (and plenty of it), redemption and ghosts.

LOCALS: Alix Bushnell is one of a strong raft of characters in Mataraki.

The synopsis for Monsters makes it sound like a classic sci-fi flick about an alien invasion on earth, but it is far from it. Dreamy, allegorical and sparse.

Graham Reid enjoys going back over the Ardijah catalogue

The debut feature by Israeli director Maoz is a carnival ride designed by the devil. It's also a film of jaw-dropping mastery which manages, by dint of having no polemical intent at all, to be a powerful anti-war statement.

Word is that a campervan trip around NZ in 2009 and appearing at Neil Finn's 7 Worlds Collide reinvigorated Scottish singer Tunstall who leapt to fame overnight on a Jools Holland show six years ago.

Scott Kara review the reigning R'n'B queen's latest album.

Gender politics divide and rule as Celebrity Apprentice kicks off this Tuesday. By Deborah Hill Cone.

Master director David Fincher (Fight Club, The Game) mines big drama out of the origins of Facebook in this entertaining zeitgeist-grabber.

Antony Hegarty is one of the most mesmerising and electrifying artists of the past decade. The Mercury Award-winner's fourth studio offering, Swanlights, rips holes in your soul.

If you can make it through the outdated cheesy intro - presumably Cee Lo Green taking the mickey out of the smooth soul greetings of the 70s - The Lady Killer is worth listening to.

Let's cut to the chase: this conspiracy thriller, an adaptation of bestselling novel The Ghost, is a thinly-veiled attack on Tony Blair by The Observer's onetime political editor Robert Harris.

Prolific British television writer/director Stephen Poliakoff (The Lost Prince) is behind this sumptuous thriller set at the beginning of World War II.

In her new book, award-winning novelist Kelly Ana Morey has created a world out of research, imagination and a touch of personal experience that captivates and disturbs.

Rating: 2/5 Verdict: Cast tries hard, but lame script