Classic Chinese Films: Spring in a Small Town (1948)

How often does one hear about classic Chinese films? It is a rarity, which is why the BFI and season curator Noah Cowan, have joined forces to innovatively showcase major Chinese classic films in cinemas nationwide from June this year. Fei Mu’s Spring in a Small Town (1948) is the chosen masterpiece to jumpstart the season – a film that is considered the pinnacle of post-war Chinese film and possibly the best Chinese film ever made.  

Click here for my review of Spring in a Small Town on the LDNCard website

Film: Fifty Shades of Bland

Fifty shades of grey the movie

It was only a couple of years ago when I would sit on the train and openly read Fifty Shades of Grey, and I wasn’t the only one. Some women were so caught up in the stigma behind erotic novels they’d resort to reading them behind a newspaper, or on a Kindle, just to avoid being asked grating questions about its sexual content.  Men would creep up next to them just to get a glimpse of what had awakened women’s curiosities and trumped their preferred reading list. (19th February 2014)

Click here for full review on LNDCard.com

Film: Martin Scoresese’s Wall of Wall Street

I wish I was as rich as a trader that got high and satisfied at the same time.

There are so many things to love about the Wolf of Wall Street. Not only for Leonardo Di Caprio’s handsome face as millionaire trader Jordan Belfort, not only for his loud mouth crony and confidante Donnie Azzoff’ (Jonah Hill) and the endless humour that got you cracking up in hysterics but for the endorphins and drive for money, drugs and sex with a lot of high class hookers.

It is a parallel universe to the 95% of people who will watch this movie, because only a small cohort of real traders will have the time while the rest of them will be too busy making that money or not bother to view this lavish explosion of gluttony party mayhem, which they probably endure day in, day out. Matthew Macconaughey plays a cameo role as one of Jordan’s first mentors (Mark Hanna,) and tells him that there are two factors that keep him going in the business, ‘cocaine and hookers’, after having a scream at a bunch of wall street money mongers. ‘Let’s f***!’, is what he shouts when it turns 9.30am on the ticket clock – the time when they start picking up the phones and making those millions of dollars. (January 20th 2014)

Click here for full review on my personal blog – Trendfem.blogspot.com