An account of the journey of film student and first-time documentary maker, SÁNDOR LAU, who walked 500km from Auckland to Cape Reinga, New Zealand's spiritual tip, to make his documentary, Behaviours of the Backpacker.

SÁNDOR LAU's documentary journey from Auckland to Cape Reinga continues here.

TIM WONG files an appreciation of Samuel Fuller's incendiary “The Naked Kiss”.

NOT THAT YOU would have noticed, but I have this obsession with suburbia, and I just can't shake it. Maybe it's because I still reside in one, or that on a deep subconscious level, I'm chipping away at my own mental barriers of complacency as a comfortably apathetic, middle class citizen. For the last four years, I've absorbed, researched, scrutinized and made the neighbourhood I call home my own private little ant farm. I've photographed just about every archway, picket and SUV; walked up and down it a zillion times; nearly once mustered the courage to knock on a few doors and ask if I could look around. I've also scoured a lot of suburban-related movies – Ghost World, Far From Heaven; dirty Larry Clark flicks; stuff by Douglas Sirk, David Lynch, Todd Solandz – the usual suspects. I pretty much consider myself a nerdish expert on the subject, but only really since discovering The Naked Kiss.

Reviewed by Tim Wong

VAGUELY, I can trace my first experience in martial arts cinema to a half-empty Chinese restaurant, a bored Maître d', and the climactic last third of Dragon Inn, beamed out in non-subtitled Cantonese via an in-house Karaoke system. Don't get me wrong – it was an ambience killer, for sure, and although in my early teens, I couldn't help but feel a little shocked at the all the impaling and blood spurting and male eyeliner going on. But as strange encounters go, I owe a lot to Serendipity for that afternoon – she shoved me through the looking glass, and taught me from that day onwards there's more to martial arts than Ralph Macchio and Enter the Dragon.

SÁNDOR LAU sits down with screenwriter/novelist/actor William Brandt to talk about Proust, letting go of your baby, and the truth about Shoes.

I suppose that it can be said that the Americans have Fight Club and the English have The Football Factory. Both films addressing male issues of aggression, frustration, and source of release for both: violence. I don't know about other countries having similar films, heck there may be an Argentinean one for all I know, but The Football Factory deals with the same stuff, just differently.

Reviewed by Tim Wong

SERVING AS an elusive release, Hero (Ying xiong) is a Zhang Yimou film that for once is neither sentimental, nor starring Gong Li. All those beautified laments over the Cultural Revolution set to semi-didactic undertones he's famous for did eventually turn apolitical – the post-Not One Less romantic afterglow of The Road Home, or the soggy tissue bittersweet-ness of Happy Times, for instance. And judging by Happy Times – believe it or not, a contemporary present-day film – Zhang must have been fidgety, waning or in desperate need of a new muse (so it's all Gong Li's fault). Turns out, all he ever wanted to do was make a martial arts movie, finally submitting to those withdrawn boyhood fantasies, and offloading any social conscience and historical obsessive compulsiveness along the way.

Reviewed by Tim Wong

HOW they got children cast in this film, I'll never know. Driven by self-gratification of the green-backed variety, parental ambition, it seems, considers nothing sacred anymore – not even an offensive, alcoholic, self-defecating version of that most beloved childhood institution: Father Christmas. As Bad Santa, Billy Bob Thornton not only does the unthinkable in shattering the myth of global chimney-hopping for every kid that bypasses his urinated lap, but swears at them. Profusely. Frankly, I had thought the "F" word was an overused, spent force in the movies, considering it's deployed with such nonchalance these days. That was until now.