KIRK DOUGLAS

BOOK STEVEN ESPINOZA, KATHLEEN KILLIAN FERNANDEZ AND CHRIS VANDER KAAY | LAURENCE KING

RIP the last star of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Sporting the sub-sub-title Why We All Love Hollywood Clichés, Spoiler Alert! is a graphic celebration/skewering of 38 of the best-worn movie genres, from Animal Attack Horror to Zombie Film. It seeks to highlight cinema’s most familiar tropes through an illustrated style that reads like an emoji comic-book.

The format is extremely easy to dip into: each cinematic genre is broken down into three acts, replete with a mock poster and indispensable ingredients (key characters, locations, soundbites…). While more hardcore film buffs won’t find anything too enlightening or earth-shattering inside, they’ll also struggle not to smirk through some of the pithier observations. What’s more, the tone is affectionate enough that it never feels too snarky.

The 1950s Melodrama and Disaster Movie entries lay their genre trappings particularly bare; when assembling your melodrama, you’re asked to ‘Choose Your Dream That Will Change Everything’, while the disaster stock characters are spot-on. Others more obviously lampoon just one film: the Young Adult Dystopian Romance is simply The Hunger Games with all trademarked elements removed, and the Alien Invasion Film is a beat-forbeat Independence Day retread.

Reading too closely might raise some eyebrows (is Star Wars really a Spaceship Thriller in the vein of Alien and 2001?), so this is better enjoyed in small doses. Keep it in proximity of the toilet or refer to it specifically after watching an extremely generic flick to make the most of its fun but limited charms. Matt Maytum