Me and You - 2012 *

Very slow film about a quiet boy who pretends to be going on a week long school skiing trip and instead spends the week in his mother's basement with his favourite food and books.His tranquility is disturbed by the arrival of his stepsister who is in the middle of coming off drugs and needs a place to crash.
It's not much of a film, and the lead actor is incredibly annoying and uncommunicative.

L'Atalante - 1934 ****

L'Atalante is a beautiful film, both in action and in photography. It has this weird, slightly surreal feel to it that I have only ever experienced in another masterpiece of it's time 'The Night of the Hunter'.
Jean Vigo only made a small number of films in his short life, and this is the one that defies time and stereotype. It's hard to explain how you feel after watching, but it's somewhere between deep exultation and heartbreak. It probably is a fair comment to make that it's one of the greatest films ever made.

A New Kind of Love - 1963 *** 1/2

When mannish Joanne Woodward is contracted to go with her boss to Paris to 'lift' some new ideas for the latest fashion season in New York, she becomes enamoured with a caddish playboy (Paul Newman) who is there to get a scope for a new newspaper article. After a misunderstanding and a drastic makeover, Newman mistakes Woodward for an elegant, foreign debutante and starts to pursue her.
Beautiful shots of Paris, and you can see Paul and Joanne's genuine love for each other in the scenes they inhabit together.

(HORROR) Detour - 2009 ***

'Detour' had a number of twists and turns to it, and actually it wasn't a bad film. It was fairly jumpy, had some shocks and towards the end it got rather intense. This is usually the way with foreign horror; at least it knows how to scare, unlike all the American horror that is churned out. A couple on their way back from buying an excessive amount of booze for their friend's wedding drive through a well known 'smugglers' road which many people use to get their alcohol over the border. They are stopped by a policeman who, instead of searching them, tells them that there has been an accident along the road and that they should take a detour. Once they have done this however, they realise that they are in danger for their lives.
Not a bad film, and a heck of a lot better than many others I have recently seen.

(HORROR) Missing - 2009 ** 1/2

This is a bizarre Korean horror movie. It has all the ingredients to make it scary but it just seems to make you want to wince instead. One scene involving someone's teeth is pretty uncomfortable, but apart from that we are subjected to a pervy, old man who likes making birthday cakes for the girls he kidnaps and then singing them out of tune songs in hideous multi-coloured shirts. It's a bit like a clown nightmare. 

Sweet Karma - 2009 ***

I'm not sure what I was expecting from this film, but it was actually pretty good and the story was quite a complex one. It might be worth watching more than once. It centres around a beautiful Russian girl (shown above with barely anything on of course) who wants revenge for her sister's murder. She goes about this by infiltrating a dodgy underworld strip club and becoming one of the dancers in an effort to get near to the perpetrators of the crime. Now I know what you are thinking, and no, it's not cheesy, or even particularly sexy. It actually shows a pretty realistic picture of the sex trade and how girls end up in this horrible situation that they cannot escape. Added to which as it's not American it doesn't try and rely on bimbos who can't act and instead focuses on proper talent.  

(HORROR) The Suicide Club - 2001 ***

I have wanted to watch this for years and finally got the chance to see this and the sequel this weekend. Absolutely bizarre is all I can say. Japan really has surreal and disturbing horror down to a T. Some parts of the film really stick in your head for hours afterwards, such as the very first scene where 54 female students jump in front of a train set to strange Scottish music. Very weird. From then on the whole film tries to work out why suicides are happening all around Tokyo and what could lead such a large group of girls to commit suicide in happy unison. There isn't really an answer to this film, and it's more about what goes on beneath the surface than the exterior.
I actually quite enjoyed it. (Sick or what?)

The Soft Skin - 1964 *****

Francois Truffaut yet again serves up a sumptuous visual delight for us with this story of a famous writer who starts an affair with a woman he meets on his plane to a conference and continues the affair once back in Paris, despite being married with a small child.

You feel everything with this film. The uncertainty, the worry, the awkward moments (i.e where he has to pretend not to acknowledge her when she runs up to greet him in front of his work collegue) and they all appear true to life, as it appears this story was based upon Truffaut's own accounts of leaving his own wife for the actress Fanny Ardant.

Jean Desailly is not an attractive man, in fact his character is very unsympathetic and very shallow which makes it even more pathetic to see him throw away a good marriage with a wife who clearly loves him for someone he meets on a whim.

I have so far seen four Truffaut films that I know of: This one, The Girl Next Door, The 400 Blows, and Jules and Jim. Each one has been superb and I enjoy Truffaut's 'New Wave' approach to his film directing each time I see more.