If you’re looking for something fun and frothy to read as you snuggle under the doona this winter, Life Moves Pretty Fast would be an ideal pick. Hadley Freeman’s personalised handbook to North American movies from the 1980s is a friendly blend of cinephilia and autobiography. As a guide, Freeman is charming with limitless enthusiasm for her topic. She’s more fangirl than critic and, in truth, Life Moves Pretty Fast is really a love letter disguised as a book – an ode to Baby’s dance montage in Dirty Dancing, to Andie Walsh’s ugly prom dress in Pretty in Pink, and to ‘uber-nerd’ Rick Moranis.

In many ways, Life Moves Pretty Fast is a product of the digital age (Freeman is already known as a fashion journalist and columnist, and runs a blog about eighties films) and has that snappy, gossipy quality I associate with the internet. The chapters close with lists of things like ‘Best Love Songs’ or ‘Steve Guttenberg Moments’, while footnotes often lead to funny remarks, or forays into scandals. I was particularly fascinated by Freeman’s analysis of Hollywood, and how it has changed over the last thirty years – her chapters on Steel Magnolias and Eddie Murphy were stand-outs.

Given Freeman’s zeal, it helps to already be a fan of eighties movies which, happily, I am. I was all too willing to be swept up by Freeman’s gusto – at least, for the most part. I was not so easily swayed by her chapter on Tim Burton’s Batman, in which she criticises Christopher Nolan’s adaptation, but I suspect this has much to do with my own personal obsession with the superhero story. And Freeman, for her part, is endearingly candid about her own obsessions and makes no apology for simply selecting the films that matter to her. She writes, ‘This is not an encyclopaedia of eighties moves. If you want that, buy an encyclopaedia (although probably the last time you saw an encyclopaedia was in the eighties).’

Bronte Coates