Only by slow degrees do we learn the secret ingredient of these magical delicacies, which will only help to reinforce the stereotype of Chinese cuisine And you thought eating dogs was bad… Fruit Chan’s innocent-sounding film centres upon ageing former actress Qing (Miriam Yeung), who is desperate to win back her philandering husband. If ‘Hard Candy’ fails to satisfy your sweet tooth for misanthropy then you might care to sample this endurance-test horror from Hong Kong. The performances, however, merit the full five stars: Patrick Wilson plies a nicely ambiguous line in male loneliness, while Ellen Page dominates the screen with terrifying precocity You won’t forget her anytime soon.. First-time director David Slade keeps this two-hander as taut as piano wire, which slackens only in the final 10 minutes after one twist too many.

To reveal any more would be to spoil the shocks: suffice to say that, if you’ve ever seen Takeshi Miike’s Audition, then brace yourself for something really quite unpleasant. But our assumptions about hunter and prey are savagely overturned when Hayley reveals herself as half-Lolita, half-Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Following a chatroom flirtation, 14-year-old Hayley (Ellen Page) meets up with thirtysomething photographer Jeff (Patrick Wilson) in a coffee-shop, and, flouting all the advice about taking lifts from strangers, goes back to his place to drink vodka. Initially reluctant to give her refuge, the old man gradually unbends, and the secrets begin to tumble out. Redford seems to be aiming for the gruff redemption-seeker Eastwood played in Unforgiven (with the same best friend in Freeman), but any hopes of humility or understatement are dashed by the syrupy warmth director Lasse Hallstrom pours over everything. He also displays a notably benign view of grizzly bears, which, as Werner Herzog’s recent documentary about Timothy Treadwell shows, are anything but sentimental Soft-hearted is fine; soft-headed is just a drag..

Nasty misanthropic fun. Writer Brian Nelson has wired into the public hysteria over internet “friendships” and the vulnerability of children as the basis of his screenplay, then given it not so much a twist as an almighty wrench. Robert Redford plays an old-timer who’s swapped booze for self-loathing following the death of his only son. Now he looks after his friend (Morgan Freeman) who got mauled by the lion that haunts the mountains surrounding Redford’s Wyoming farm. Life takes a sudden turn when his daughter-in-law (Jennifer Lopez) shows up, with bruises on her face and an 11-year-old daughter in tow. This promising scene goes nowhere, unfortunately, but in Lowe it does reveal a true Mephistopheles at work: the professional who regards the public only as dupes.

Thank You For Smoking has its moments, certainly, and the cast is outstanding But you might find its draw a bit too smooth.. I was hoping that Eckhart might really bare his teeth, as he did some years ago in In the Company of Men, playing a white-collar devil who seduces a deaf secretary just so that he can dump her Here he’s a softie pretending to be a cynic. Only when Nick pays a visit to a Hollywood uber-agent (Rob Lowe) and his terrifyingly insincere PA (Adam Brody) do we pick up an authentic whiff of sulphur.These days, as Lowe concedes, the only people who smoke on screen are “either psychopaths or Europeans”: the best way to enhance the smoker’s image would be by sponsoring major movie stars to light up, thus reliving the golden age of cinema when cigarettes were sexy and glamorous. The subplot in which Nick is kidnapped by an anti-smoking group doesn’t come off, fudged by the looming emphasis on our hero’s relationship with his young son (Cameron Bright), an unsubtle ploy to show the protagonist as a decent dad and therefore an Unarguable Good Guy.For all its subversive talk the film is more conservative than it thinks.