Salt

What is it with Hollywood and remakes? Aussie director Phillip Noyce met rave reviews with his last local production Rabbit Proof Fence. But America being America, and Hollywood being Hollywood he was tapped to remake it for an American audience. After many re-writes the journey of government abducted indigenous girls back to their family became the journey of Angelina Jolie in search of a new hair style (from long and blonde to black and long and then black and short for those of you keeping tally).

I did however like how they managed to express the pain of losing your family to a racist government through the complex allegory of jumping from truck to car to truck to motor bike to police car. It was truly moving. Smartly the studio also insisted the title was changed to avoid any negative connotations against current US Secretary of Defence Bugs Bunny. Either way both Noyce, Jolie and the entire cast provide an interesting enough journey to keep you from resorting to mutual masturbation in the darkened safety of the cinema.

Predators

I have thankfully missed out on all of the recent Alien vs Predator, Predator vs Predator and Predator vs Erkle films. In fact my sole knowledge of the Predator is Arnie fighting them on VHS. But when I heard that Robert Rodriguez had produced the film and it was staring art house muser Adrien Brody I thought it could be interesting, like maybe Brody falls in love with a Predator, only to have it break his heart, leave his con gang and cause him to go on an enchanted train journey across the indianesque subcontinent of the Predator home world. I thought he may even play the piano, while on the run from the space Nazis.

Sadly Hollywood again missed a trick, with none of the above taking place. What you get instead is a fairly intelligent genre film with an unnervingly gruff talking Brody. Perhaps it wasn't intentional, maybe he was just hungover the whole shoot? I know I would be.

Either way I would've given this film 5 stars if it had 100% more Arnie.