Film: The Girl with All the Gifts

It's fair to say that the zombie genre is pretty saturated now. It's becoming more and more difficult to come up with anything original, and so filmmakers are starting to look at storyline and plot instead to differentiate - so we now have moral dilemmas, the breaking of taboos and philosophical arguments as well as the usual scares and thrills that come with films about the undead.

The Girl with All the Gifts is about the relationship between a half-zombie-in-the-making girl and her teacher, and asks questions about the greater good and even zombie rights. That in itself was enough to make the film a pretty decent watch, but some good acting by the child star of the film and some genuinely scary moments also helped.

For those of you who have played The Last of Us, you'll find plenty of parallels here. And in the same way as the game was, it's also recommended to check out.

Food: Mint Leaf

Sometimes it's tough being of subcontinent origin. Amongst the many challenges we face, trying to remain objective and impartial when visiting an Indian restaurant ranks up there with all the worst.

Take Mint Leaf for instance. It would be easy for me to poo poo the place as a typical posh-but-not-really Indian place designed to extract as much money from an expensed City dinner as possible, resulting in a low quality high price experience which is very easy to forget... but instead I'll spend some time explaining exactly why this place sucks so bad.

First of all it was too hot. As in the place. Maybe the air conditioning wasn't working or maybe we were all just having so much fun (not really) but the place was quite uncomfortable at times. The drinks were expensive and boring, mainly consisting of heavily sugared water that didn't really hit any spots. The food was okay I suppose, with the tandoori broccoli something I'd never had before. The daal and paneer were above average, the lamb and prawns not as much. The amount of food was pretty stingy - we had to do the unforgivable and ask for more which tested the service (which was also passable).

But the real nail in the coffin was the price. At £55 per head (excluding drinks) I'm hard pressed to think of any other meal I've ever had that was of such poor value. It was enough to put me off ever going back, even if the bill was being covered. There really is no need for a place like this in London anymore.

Film: Don't Breathe

Quite probably the scary movie of the year, Don't Breathe is as refreshing in premise as it is in execution. For a start, we have three delinquent teenagers (boo) who decide to rob a blind (aw) man's house. The set up is upside down from the start, and it takes a lot for the film to flip the roles by the end of the movie. But that's all part of the thrill really, seeing exactly how far we're willing to go to allow ourselves to root for a bunch of annoying teens.

Film studies aside, Don't Breathe does all the right things - the scares are both shocking and tense, taboos are offered and broken, and the plot isn't thin by necessity. My heart was in my mouth a fair few times, and it was great for each. The acting sufficed for the genre, with The Blind Man doing an awesome job of being pretty darned scary.

For those who enjoy a decent scary romp, don't look any further than Don't Breathe. For anyone else I'd still recommend the film unless you know you're of a nervous disposition (again, boo)

Film: Sausage Party

You would have thought that there would be a fair amount of cognitive dissonance watching a film like this. You have the visual of an (albeit low quality) children's animated cartoon, but with the language and references which belongs to something for a much older audience, but the truth be told it didn't really jar as much as I thought it would. Which is a good thing really as you get to enjoy the film for its fundamental comedic value, and not just because of the contrast of expectations we have from cartoons these days.

That's not to say the language and content in the film didn't have issues. It was pretty gratuitous most of the time - much more than something that would have usually come from Seth Rogen and the like. I wouldn't say that it spoiled the film altogether, but there were times when even I had to cover my eyes.

But if you manage to look past (or even enjoy) the vulgarity, you are actually left with something that manages to tackle quite a few of the more important social issues of our time - more so than many other grown up films. In the 90 minutes or so that Sausage Party runs for, we debate religion and science, ethnic prejudice and racism, friendship and love - and all without the compromise you would otherwise expect from film. It's almost as if abstracting away from real life and people allows us to magnify the issues with more clarity.

Overall though the film was both fun and funny, so gets a recommendation from me - but perhaps it's one to watch at home with trusted company (and no, that definitely doesn't mean your parents).