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Robots have always made for fascinating and iconic movie characters. Like aliens, robots’ innate status as something ultimately ‘other’ than ourselves, yet often displaying recognisably human emotions through the lens of robotic metaphors or principles, make them endlessly compelling to watch. Whether it’s the psychotic machismo of the Terminator, the low-status infatuation of Wall-E, the schoolboy precociousness of R2-D2 or the banjo-playing racism of the Bicentennial Man (I haven’t seen Bicentennial Man. I may have been misinformed), robots have been relentlessly reliable at throwing the mirror up to mankind, forcing us to recognise our faults and strengths either through their own imitation of humanity, or, more often, their programmed lack of it. They also make a pretty rad unstoppable army too.

The robot in Robot and Frank is similarly mesmerising. He (it?) is immediately a paradox. He has no face apart from a creepily impassive black screen – making his head look more like a white motorcycle helmet – but his voice is silky and welcoming, played with a dreamy earnestness by Peter Sarsgaard. He looks clumsy and weighty but moves with an almost silent grace, robot suit piloted from within by dancer Rachael Ma. He is tasked with maintaining the health of elderly rogue, Frank (Frank Langella) but has no moral compass, which allows his programming to be manipulated in a certain extra-legal capacity.

You see, Frank’s a retired cat burglar and slowly but surely succumbing to dementia, his memory fraying away around him. The present is slowly passing him by, old being usurped by youth – given a face in form of Frank’s antagonist, Jake (Jeremy Strong) a smarmy little hipster who regards old age as quirky. Frank’s son (James Marsden) buys him a robot to regiment his life and improve his health. Frank doesn’t take too kindly to such interference setting the stage for an odd-couple personality clash. Needless to say they grow to depend upon each other and a genuine, moving friendship blossoms.

This nurse-patient arc is well-well-worn, but the predictability is offset by the robot’s otherness. Rather than change – the robot can’t, he’s not programmed to – the friendship develops via Frank’s subtle manipulation of the robot’s logic and programming in order to coax it (him?) into carrying out a few last robberies. Cleverly, the robot – programmed to expect resistance – manages a little manipulation of his own. It’s a tiny little tale of an inhuman – but recognisably human – friendship. It’s also my favourite film of 2013 thus far.

What’s even more remarkable is that this is the debut feature for not only writer Christopher D. Ford but also for director Jake Schreier. The structure and thematic motifs are so intricately constructed, the pacing so deliberate and the tone so gracefully handled that the futures of both men are very exciting to anticipate. Speaking of the future, that’s another of the film’s subtle successes. Set in the purposely vague “near future”, the technological advances are slight but ring completely true; apart from the robot, the most obviously futuristic technology is – of course – phones.

The film confidently sidesteps the potential pitfalls of its rather sombre subject matter as well. Frank’s encroaching dementia could have made for a plethora of maudlin scenes, but Frank’s roguish disregard for such things is echoed in the film-makers’ tact. We only notice a few excusable slips in memory and awareness at first, but they very gradually build – sewn into Frank’s routine – that we almost disregard them as well until a third act plot development occurs, which in less capable hands could have been hokey, but in the hands of Ford and Schreier manages to be quietly devastating.

A quick word about the acting. Each and every member of the cast give their best – perhaps Liv Tyler is a shade too ethereal as Frank daughter, but it suits her character well enough – but Frank Langella’s downright impeccable; at once bullishly stubborn, delicate, sly and charming. He manages to convey not only years of experience, but also the very real fear of losing such years with deftness. Only when Frank can see himself in the robot’s mimicry of his life does his facade crack and it’s all so well-handled! Gah!

I’ll stop gushing now. All this unfettered praise is becoming sickening, but Robot and Frank really is a perfect little character piece. Like the robot himself, it’s warm, gracefully constructed and – recognisably – human. See it please.

Veteran film producer To (Chapman To) addresses a room for of know-it-all students, through flashback we see his struggles to get his most recent film made. Along the way he makes dodgy deals with eccentric crime boss, has sexual encounters with attractive women and donkies and navigates his way through a messy family life.

At first glance Vulgaria seems little more than a smutty, innuendo filled “comedy” about making porn. Happily it’s more than that. Yes there’s plenty of smut – the opening scene revolves around putting the word “pubes” into as many sentences as possible . There are several scenes of open mouthed men staring wide-eyed and attractive looking women and did I mention the sexy hook up with a mule? Unlike the majority of sex comedies made in recent years, especially American movies, Vulgaria brings an air of satire to the discussions of blow jobs with popping candy. Fundamentally Vulgaria is a film about making films. A very exaggerated one that borders on the slapstick and ridiculous but it shows the extremes that it can take for film makers to get there films made. Think a more hyper-colourful version of In the Soup and you’re half way there. At times Chapman To brings to mind Ryo Ishibashi in Audition. A lonely, intelligent man who finds love in a woman must younger. Albeit a much louder version. Rather than appearing as a one dimensional sex pot To shows a whole range of emotions. We first meet him as a authoritative producer address a lecture room. Soon we see him debased and drunk over dinner with Brother Tyrannosaur the crime boss who is helping to bank role his smutty epic.

Ronald Cheng is very watchable as the bizarre Tyrannosaur. It’s definitely the role of film as he gets to shout out absurdities and obscenities with great flare. It’s a role that could easily become annoying but it’s a credit to Cheng that he plays it just the right side of fun. Vulgaria’s also impressively mounted visually. The opening credit sequence flashing by in a kaleidoscope of colour. For a “smutty” comedy it has had a lot of love and craft put into it. It could be said that if the more crass elements were taken out that Vulgaria could be a decent edition to the films about making films genre, but to be fair part of the films charm come from some it’s more lurid jokes. I laughed several times at some pretty childish jokes. The actors know how to deliver a line even through the nuisance of the subtitle (shouldn’t complain really, if I was THAT bothered I would learn the language).

Not to say that Vulgaria is a great film. It’s not. Merely that it delivered much more than I expected. Even at 90 minutes though it still seems a bit too long, suffering from the second act drag. Due to the films comic tone some characters act little more than cyphers for punchlines leaving their characters under developed and ultimately uninteresting. Also at times the films swerves too harshly into drama territory when before I was enjoying cruising along in bawdy comedy control. Somewhere between Altman’s The Player and Kitano’s Getting Any?, Vulgaria is a chucklesome look at the nightmare of filmmaking.

When news first hit the gossip columns that Calvin Broadus, aka Snoop Dogg, had embarked on a journey of self-discovery to Jamaica and returned with the moniker Snoop Lion, I’m pretty confident I wasn’t the only one who found the whole affair quite amusing. In recent years, Snoop has become a bit of a joker of the rap genre. Rather than the drug pushing gangster he was when he first burst on the scene as a fresh faced 18 year old under the tutelage of rap legend Dr Dre, he has grown into the sort of class clown of hip hop. An exponent of fun in the genre, he’s often seen to be lampooning the clichés of the culture with a smile on his face. Whether he’s donned from head to toe in the attire of a pimp looking like a modern day Dolemite, or singing about “Sexual Eruptions” in a 1970s style music video, you can’t help but smile with him. So when popular counter-culture magazine Vice teamed up with Snoop to document his time in Jamaica, it would’ve been fair to expect a bit of a farce. Instead, Snoop and Vice veteran Andy Capper, who takes up the role of director, deliver a sincere and often enlightening film that occasionally offers glimpses of the real Calvin Broadus as opposed to the seasoned showman with the silly stage name.

The film itself follows Snoop through a spiritual journey of self-discovery as he explores the Rastafarian culture of Jamaica whilst recording a reggae album with Major Lazer producer, Diplo. Cutting between three main focuses (recording the album, exploring Jamaica and past reflections), Reincarnated begins with a brief and stylish prologue based around the career of the man, which then quickly leaps straight into the crux of his trip in the guise of a familiar ‘making of’ doc you’d likely find on VH1. We are then privy to a very personal journey around the country where he visits a number of iconic locations and meets the people that inspired his own musical career. From a heartwarming visit to a boys orphanage that culminates in an impromptu jam session, to an eye-opening visit around the Jamaican equivalent of his own drug and violence filled home town, Reincarnated takes you around parts of Jamaica that you won’t see in the tourist brochure. Quite apt coming from Vice, then, but the people Broadus meets and the places he visits are for him and him alone, ultimately contributing to his own metaphorical rebirth as Snoop Lion even if there’s the odd bit of bizarre awkwardness between himself and the locals.

Flitting between his exploration of the country he feels spiritually linked with and the recording sessions, the films first half is almost entirely themed around marijuana; the drug the country, and Snoop himself, are commonly associated with. Although offering an interesting insight to the making of his maiden reggae album, the access all areas recordings offer little more than a healthy dose of fan service for followers of the one time Death Row Records stars. And while the film is guilty of drifting in and out of self-indulgent forays into weed smoking a little too often, it is most certainly at its best when Snoop Dogg is completely bamboozled on weed. His wrestle with a grapefruit tree is particularly hilarious, but these moments of drug-fuelled intoxication expose Snoop at his most candid. The resulting straight to camera reflections are interesting, intimate and often incredibly poignant. Capper manages to unfurl a number of home truths from Snoop and his honesty is wholly refreshing. Openly admitting to a once indecent and illicit lifestyle, but never really apologising for it, it becomes clear that at 41, the motive for his rebirth is that of finding peace within a career previously littered with violence, debauchery and indecency rather than a public issue of apology for a mischievous life. Rarely admitting regret, or asking for forgiveness, he comes across as an honest man simply reaching a period of transition in his career. Capper therefore manages to craft a film that is very much a personal journey of reflection and enlightenment for the charismatic rapper, rather than the throwaway whimsical documentary it first appears to be. There is the odd instance where the supposed reality does feel like a manufactured catalyst merely to set up proceeding chapters, but the few occasions this does occur only cues up the strongest parts of the documentary. Snoop’s complications with the Death Row camp, where he once feared for his life, and the loss of his dear friend and colleague Nathaniel Hale (aka Nate Dogg), are quite easily the most gripping and emotionally bounding of the film.

At 96 minutes, it is long enough to feel fulfilling for the most ardent of fans but when the vast majority of the film is shot through a blinding haze of weed smoke, it’s hard to ignore the lull of repetition presumably used to pad out the run time. While somewhat essential to illustrate the character of the man, it does become a bit of bore to just see shot after shot of his entourage partaking in the inhalation of doobs, getting baked off their tits and blowing smoke into the lens. Despite this however, Reincarnated still offers a supremely interesting insight into one of the most charismatic artists of this generation. Naturally, fans of the man himself will want to watch Snoop’s journey, and despite it sagging slightly at the half way point, with disjointed darts between past and present, fans of both reggae and hip hop will probably find enough to warrant a watch. There are moments when it’s hard to take everything seriously when it’s all about the weed, but for the most part it does attain a heightened level of substance and honesty that suggests it is more meaningful than the publicity stunt it could easily be accused of being.

Reincarnated is in cinemas nationwide as of now!