Reviews

A beautiful though melancholy film covering the hopes and destinies of several people in contemporary China. Marriages and parenthood are strained and sometimes broken by the tremendous pressures on ordinary people's lives. Business failure and the menace of underworld moneylenders, the burdens of importunate parents, love rivalries, divorce and not least job precarity all threaten to crush the spirit. Despite all this people are trying to behave decently towards each other and battle their way towards a worthwhile future for themselves and loved ones. The actors offer sensitive portrayals of their characters.

Loved it, but hard to explain why. I think this is the only melodrama I've ever truly enjoyed and don't understand how they did it! It was over-acted in a way that somehow works delightfully; it felt like the cast and director knew just what they were doing. Great sets and costumes and unobtrusive computer effects that brought the postwar 1940s to life. I especially enjoyed Alejandra Onieva as the red lipsticked bombshell Carolina Villanueva; Natalia Rodríguez as the stylish, hard-as-nails Natalia Fábregas; and Antonio Durán 'Morris' as the sneering Detective Varela, but the whole cast were great.

This was wonderful. Gradually growing tension, garnished with comic touches, and played to perfection by the two male leads.

A smooth and successful young actor is to fly from his Berlin home to Britain to audition for a superhero movie. His only frustration at that point is getting hold of the script. His taxi to the airport arrives too soon, so he sends it off and thinks to fill in time with a drink at the local bar. There he encounters another inhabitant of his block of flats. He treats their discussion with tactful reserve, as a fleeting encounter with an unimportant man. But the conversation proves quite sticky. His frustrations grow, tension deepens.

Almost the entire film takes place in the bar, giving it the feel of a stage play. And almost all the dialogue is between the two men, though there are important scenes involving his wife and the woman who owns the bar.

The backdrop is gentrification, with the two protagonists representing a clash between the old and the new. Looming over all is the shadow of the past: the Stalinist regime in Eastern Germany.

I would be happy to watch this again.

This subject had the ingredients for a fascinating documentary: the disappearance of a girl, then 15, near the Vatican and living with her family within its walls; possible involvement of Italian organised crime and/or international terrorist organisations; and speculation that the Vatican itself was concealing the truth, to protect misdeeds within its own ranks. Unfortunately the opportunity was squandered here. This series is stretched out by endlessly repeated footage, a drip-feed of real information, and extensive coverage of dead-end theories. The topic deserves sober treatment in one or two episodes.

Six and a half stars. It offers a window into current-day urban Japan, and it's refreshing to look at a culture that has some distinctive quirks and retains some autonomy from the western value system. The series is well led by Kaoru Kobayashi, the Master cook and owner of the diner and its central character, who provides a friendly and steadying influence on his unsettled, sometimes silly clientele. Some are regulars, while a sequence of others provide the changing story line in each new episode. Unfortunately the stories felt too lightweight to me, and the characters lacked depth. It's just appealing enough to keep watching.

A tasteful and thoughtful comedy mixing myth, wish-fulfilment and English charm.

It is the late 1950s. Jasper Pye is an earnest young civil servant commissioned to visit (and recommend the closure of) an odd little unit of Her Majesty's Government based in a castle on the border of Norfolk and Suffolk - a wartime stopgap measure mysteriously prolonged.

The locality is called Arcady, a hint that we will soon disconnect from everyday things. The last part of his journey is on a steam train, owned by the local Lord Flamborough. Legless since 1926, he lives on the train, travelling endlessly forward and back. His family's motto is hic manemus: here we remain. Jasper alights at a station called Arcady Halt.

The lord's three lovely daughters leave Jasper hovering between desire and disgrace: the nympho Belinda, unhappily-married Chloe, and the Pre-Raphaelite, virginal, 16 year old Matilda, frenziedly romantic but scared of sex.

Belinda makes a playful reference to Freud, who is never far away. Her mother, the beautiful Lady Flamborough, keeps whisking Jasper away to attend to her flowers. The Flamborough family has only married within its own extended ranks for generations. And then there is her husband's severed legs. Myth also plays an important role, but nothing is laboured in this delightful tale.

Sometimes bravery is needed not to face hardship, but to take the leap into joy. That is the challenge Jasper faces.

The series is very friendly to the intentions of the novel, though there are subtle differences in the ending.

A nuclear waste disposal facility nears completion in northern Sweden, plagued by environmental activists and extreme time and cost pressures. Days before the opening an explosion deep within an old mine leads to the discovery of a strange wall, of an unknown substance, set into the ancient bedrock. A group of workers tries to find out what they are dealing with - led by the solution focused, unimaginative site manager, Lars.

This is an exploration of the inner and the outer. The characters are interesting and well-drawn, but their personality clashes are no mere sub-plots but deeply intertwined with the course of events. And always there is the enigma of the White Wall, with its deep and disturbing otherness.

Overall a wonderful series, offering deep sweetness without sentimentality. It celebrates Japan's restrained aesthetic of beauty - a row of different coloured jars and bottles on a shelf becomes a revelation.

Two 16 year old girls enter a house for the training of geisha (geiko). Sumire (Natsuki Deguchi) displays exquisite sensitivity, captured by close ups of her face. Her friend Kiro (Nana Mori) is a creature of sunlight; dark words and experiences slide off her, unable to get any hold on her personality. When she can't make the grade as a trainee geisha she becomes a dedicated "makanai" cooking for the household. Tsurukoma (Momoko Fukuchi) stood out for me in the supporting cast - one of the young trainees full of liveliness and charm, within the constrained atmosphere of the house.

Early on the show sharply separates geisha from sleaze. The geisha's audience is represented by a handful of middle aged men who know and appreciate the intricate meanings of the performances. The action is mainly in a traditional house and handful of traditional streets, meticulously preserved in modern Japan; we only have faint hints of drunken salarymen or tourists after instant-gratification pics with a geisha.

In taking her geisha training Sumire defies her father's wish that she train to be a doctor. The show celebrates close female bonding and gentle but firm refusal to submit to fathers or lovers. It can also be seen as celebrating Japanese women's physical beauty and delicacy, their role in providing pleasure and entertainment, their deference, and even perhaps the many forms of restriction they face in the Maiko House.

Three stars and they're all for the good cast. The theme of hallucinogenic drugs interweaves with pain, longing and wish fulfilment, which had lots of potential. Unfortunately most of the story lines are sentimental and shallow as couples and families deal with their fights and traumas. Tension, tragedy, comedy - none of it comes off. As the story develops we have to suspend disbelief ever more often; some events would only work if this was in the fantasy genre, which it is not. The ending is particularly weak; there the comic touches feel like an apology for failing to deliver a sharper and more satisfying end. It is set in a very Australian California - the series was filmed in Byron Bay New South Wales.