It looks like people are getting their major entertainment this week from the saga of someone who lost her job thanks to her late-night racist rants. We at the Fridae Movie Club urge everyone to keep calm and watch movies instead. It's healthier!

Our pick of the week is the film adaptation of Perks of Being a Wallflower, a paean to awkward adolescence, confused teenage sexuality, social introversion, and being exuberantly unconventional. Logan Lerman, Emily Watson, and the chameleonic Ezra Miller star as the odd trio who band together as the ultimate outsiders in high school.

The latest adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses hails from China. But how will Dangerous Liaisons fare against the John Malkovich adaptation or the Korean Untold Scandal? Find out if the scandalous court intrigue of French nobility can make a convincing retelling in a Chinese republican setting.

In Looper, we get a trifecta of film. Joseph Gordon-Levitt makes a return to indie projects, Bruce Willis returns to time travel film, and up-and-coming indie director Rian Johnson gets to make another genre masterpiece. The gimmick is simple: JGL grows up into Bruce Willis... and must kill Bruce Willis in order to save his life!

Ethan Hawke is a driven crime novelist whose latest research leads him into the realm of the demonic in Sinister. Directed by Scott Derrickson (Haunting of Emily Rose, Day the Earth Stood Still), this scary film has his usual moral and philosophical touches.

Till next week,

Vernon Chan