I have it on good authority (i.e young people told me) that to go to a movie alone is so wrong and awful! … and – though I admit that anything involving superheroes does gain something by being shared – I’m going to assert that there’s a difference between a movie and a film, and it is similar to the difference between fiction and literature, or between a fast food place and a fancy restaurant. Just as the lone female hunched over a tub of fried chicken under fluorescent lights cuts rather a depressing figure, while the solitary woman gazing at the rain through the glass of a Parisian cafe is quite romantic in her solitude, so too, to go to a movie alone might be a little sad, but to go to a film alone is perfectly classy…

…all of which is a roundabout way of saying that the Japanese Film Festival opens tonight, and, in the fortnight ahead, I’m going to see (alone!) a couple of films which seem related to the issues of Not Ending Up Where You Expected and Changing One’s Circumstances with Pluck.

‘Bunny Drop’ is the story of a 27-year-old man who takes pity on a rejected six-year-old girl (the child of his grandfather), adopts her, and finds himself, overnight, a single father. ‘It’s a Beautiful Life’ is based on the true story of a group of elderly women who restored life to their dying village with an unconventional business idea (I don’t know what it was) and, I assume, the aforesaid pluck.

Well, I don’t know about you, but for this piece of roadkill – who cannot afford a life-changing adventure overseas – a change from the usual cinema experience is something to look forward to!