Envying the past isn't difficult; all it requires is that you disregard the advances made in your time and focus instead on what has been lost, convincing yourself of some mythical and departed golden age.

This is as true of cinema as anything else: our access to films has never been greater, but our voracious obsession with upcoming releases can sometimes create a nostalgia for a time when there weren’t film trailers for film trailers. This nostalgia makes it very easy to envy those cinemagoers who first saw Alien in 1979; cinemagoers who walked into a cinema knowing nothing about it other than its setting and basic premise. In a world where exposure to a film would largely come from a single viewing of a trailer, and perhaps a review or two, Alien's considerable surprises would have been extraordinary.

Its successor, Prometheus − technically a prequel − isn't nearly so fortunate. With news outlets scrambling over each other for any sort of scoop (to the point where this country’s most popular film magazine ran a split-second analysis of one of Prometheus’ trailers), it's impossible to come to the film with anything less than sizeable expectations. While the marketing department has used that situation to its advantage masterfully, creating genuine excitement about the film whilst giving little away about its actual plot, this unrelenting culture of anticipation can only be negative for the film's reception.

Prometheus just can't win: caught in a dust-storm of hype, anything less than one of the greatest science-fiction films of all time would be a massive disappointment, not only because it has the blessing/curse of coming from a series that already contains two of those

As such it's remarkable how close the film comes to achieving its lofty goals. Engaging, spectacular and tense, Prometheus loosely follows the beats of the original: a group of people travel to a planet they shouldn't, and things ends very poorly for them. The key difference is that the core team are purposefully making the journey: true believers rather than the bored crew of Alien’s Nostromo, their trip is a quest for discovery. As a result the film deals with larger questions of faith and the pursuit of knowledge, but loses the streamlined terror of its progenitor. Both in setting and in structure, Prometheus is open and expansive where Alien was closed and claustrophobic.

The plot of Alien was simple: a perfect killing machine with acid for blood stalks the crew of a spaceship. The plot of Prometheus is far less clear. Ambiguity is something to be praised considering how morally simplistic most films with massive budgets are, but Prometheus is in dire need of an imperative for its characters beyond a desire to learn their origins. Crowding the edges are too many characters with ulterior or murky motivations that it's hard to get a purchase on anything, or to feel that much is at stake for anyone − there’s a surprising lack of drama considering how big and noisy everything is.

It’s a testament to how well the film is made and how many great elements it contains (foremost of which is its production design and Michael Fassbender’s superlative performance as the complicated, chilling robot David) that it manages to be as entertaining as it is, in spite of its many flaws and missed opportunities. But to give any more away however would be a disservice. As thoughtful and accomplished as Prometheus’ marketing campaign has been, one feels that the best way to view the film would not be dissimilar to way those audiences in 1979 watched Alien: in the dark.

We're off to Wilderness Festival this year and we can't wait. It sounds like the best bits of scout camp (bushcraft skills!), with some medieval-style banquetting thrown in. Oh, and music from headliners Wilco, Rodrigo Y Gabriela and Spiritualized.

Only in its second year, Wilderness' big idea is to revel in the great outdoors, rather than just camp on it. Activities like food foraging and horse-riding are on the programme. There are also wellbeing workshops to nourish your soul and talks from groups like the School of Life.

It's the food we're most excited about. Last year, there were long-table banquets hosting up to 300 people, and they'll be back with chefs including Yotam Ottelnghi and Fergus Henderson.

Wilderness runs 10th-12th August, and you can book here.

The folk at White Stuff are full of surprising ideas. Most recently, their take on the mid-year calendar has us interested, not least because of its unusual name: 'UHT Charity Calendar'.

If you thought 'UHT' stood for 'Ultra High Temperature' think again. Here it means 'Udderly Hot Totty', after the dashing group of guys who modelled for the calendar. White Stuff ran a competition to find their UHT models and, from a revenue officer and electrician to a psychologist and artist, each calendar month features a different man. They aren't models but they're charming and confident and the calendar celebrates this.

We've got a couple of White Stuff's UHT calendars to giveaway, so drop a line saying hello over at [email protected] to win one. Find more on the calendar here.

Photo: Mr. November. William Banks Sutton, a publisher and jurist from Cambridge.

Out of the many talented filmmakers currently working there are perhaps only a handful whose aesthetic is both consistent and distinctive enough that their films are instantly recognisable. This consistency extends beyond specific artistic preoccupations and even visual tics; Steven Spielberg may have an obsession with absent fathers and shafts of light, but none of his films look or feel quite the same. From Tim Burton to David Lynch there’s a paucity of directors whose choices in cinematography, scoring and performance are singular to a point that they’ve become more than filmmakers, they’ve become brands.

There are worse problems to have than being so aesthetically idiosyncratic that everyone knows what your films look like, but the situation does come with complications. It’s a sad truth that the more distinctive a filmmaker’s style the more likely they are to run that style into the ground. From Zack Snyder’s judicious slow-motion to Tim Burton’s pop gothic Americana (and obsessive use of Johnny Depp wearing lots of make-up and sporting a silly accent), what starts off as different and fresh can quickly congeal into a sad parody of itself, something that is homogeneous in its uniqueness.

Obsessively repeating oneself stylistically and thematically is a criticism that Wes Anderson would be well aware of. Perhaps the most highly distinctive of highly distinctive directors, Anderson’s seven films share a great deal in common, from fastidious production design to British Invasion music (inevitably played as characters walk in slow-motion) to locked-down axial cinematography. His films are populated with precocious children and failed adults and Bill Murray, with characters that isolate themselves in enchanting worlds: underground burrows, aging ships, and sleeper trains threading their way across India. The pictures look and feel so similar to each other that it’s hard to believe he’s capable of making them any other way.

Anderson’s latest film, Moonrise Kingdom, is no different. Set on an isolated island off the coast of New England, the film is about a pair of 12-year-old lovers who run away together, drawing the attention of the lonely adults who are meant to look after them. Like the other Wes Anderson films that came before it, Moonrise Kingdom flirts with preciousness with every line reading and musical cue. But while it is undeniably whimsical, to deride it as being fey or twee would somewhat miss the point.

Moonrise Kingdom has the feel of reading an old children’s book but beneath that still and intricate exterior is a sensitive rumination on young love. At one point in the film the runaways, Sam and Suzy (Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward), find shelter on a secluded beach, a place so remote that it’s only known as “Mile 3.25 Tidal Inlet” until they arrive and give it a name. The beach is a world of their own making that exists only for the two of them. As a metaphor for how it feels to fall in love for the first time, it’s as thoughtful and beautiful as the film’s production design, costuming or score. Moonrise Kingdom captures the all-consuming, glorious strangeness of falling in love for the first time, and how it feels unstoppable and absolute.

The singularity of Anderson’s work doesn’t just come from mustard yellows and Futura typefaces, but from being celebrations of intelligence and heart (and by being very funny at the same time). Anderson uses his meticulous and artificial style not to distance the viewer but to draw them in: his bright, damaged characters, while impeccably dressed, are typically haunted by neglected relationships and neglected promise, and his films are compassionately optimistic about how they can reverse such decline. They solve their problems by learning to properly value the people in their life, embracing families either actual or created. It’s through this that his films avoid the diminishing returns from which other stylistically distinctive filmmakers inevitably suffer.

In Moonrise Kingdom it is the older, secondary characters that are in need of revelation of a better path, which comes to them from the union of Sam and Suzy. The film is admirable in the way it allows its characters to change their minds – instead of the couple’s quest being continually star-crossed, the strength and purity of their love changes and enriches everyone around them. It’s a story of an idyll: in this film, if not in real life, first love is able to endure, and thrive.

We love this image of Twiggy taken in the early 1970s when she was in her early twenties. It's one of the photographs of the model taken by Justin de Villeneuve and is currently on display as part of the Faces of the Sixties display at Proud Gallery on the King’s Road, London.

De Villeneuve, then known as Nigel Davies, met Twiggy, then known as Lesley Hornby, in the 1960s and became her manager. They both changed their names and became one of that decades most famous partnerships. It was de Villeneuve who convinced traditional London cobbler, George Cleverley, to design his first shoes for women: the stylish pair of brogues worn by Twiggy in the image.

Unsurprisingly images of Twiggy dominate the display which also includes some of the Art Deco-styled imagery Twiggy and De Villeneuve created for the 1960s and 70s fashion brand Biba, and the shot of her with David Bowie that was used for the cover of his Pin Ups album. A few other sixties superstars get a look in too, like Marsha Hunt and Pattie Boyd.

Faces of the Sixties offers a fascinating glimpse into the glamour of another era. It’s also fun to speculate whose shoes we will be admiring in fifty years time, in an exhibition on the faces of 2012.

Faces of the Sixties: Photographs by Justin de Villeneuve is at Proud Chelsea, 17 May–8 July. Photograph © Justin de Villeneuve.

Well, folks, the magazine has been around for over two years now, and it's high time for our first reader survey. We'd love it if you could take the time to fill it in here. We're really excited to hear what you think. As a thank you, we're giving away a free subscription to four lucky survey-completers.

This photo of issue eight is from reader Helen Ogbourn, and the one on the front page is by Hannah Daisy.

Try and imagine, just for a few moments, that you are Mel Gibson.

Mel, while your movie star looks have aged relatively well, your career has not; this has less to do with your film choices and more to do with the person that you are. The problem is, you see, that you have lots of deep-seated views which are deeply offensive, some of which you might not fully be aware of in your day-to-day life: views such as anti-Semitism, homophobia and misogyny. You managed to keep this part of yourself internalised, or at least out of the public's view, for most of your successful career. And very successful it was: you were one of the biggest stars of the 80s and 90s, balancing popular action films with the occasional venture into more serious drama. Your work as a writer/director also, while containing a major obsession with physical suffering, was for the most part accomplished and interesting. You took some bold chances, funding by yourself a $30 million non-English language film you were making about the death of Jesus, which most people predicted would be a massive failure and end your career. It made $600 million, most of which went to you.

But then something happened. The thing is, you're a recovering alcoholic, and in 2006 you relapsed severely with an infamous arrest for drunk driving. It wasn't the arrest that shocked people, but the tirade of hate that accompanied it. You argued that the awful things you said weren't your real feelings but were instead the result of extreme drunkenness. Perhaps this could have been true, and perhaps people might have moved on, but then the vitriol poured out from you again, and again, and again. You’ve developed a nasty habit of leaving abusive voicemail messages, insulting co-workers, and threatening to kill your ex-wife. As such, your career has imploded, and it is now almost impossible for audiences to separate your damaged public image from the characters you play.

So what do you do now? You don't need the money, but everyone has to fill their days somehow, and presumably you still harbour a desire to perform. Perhaps you even think people might start liking you again if you appear in something they enjoy. Ultimately you’re an actor: you want to act. But what sort of films do you choose to appear in? You tried playing a lovable family man, attempting public rehabilitation with man-finds-happiness-through-a-hand-puppet movie The Beaver. It was a flop: while audiences could accept you playing someone mentally unhinged, someone who would speak entirely through a puppet of a beaver, they couldn’t accept you portraying a decent human being.

A year passed, and now you’ve tried another tack, producing and co-writing a film with your old first AD, Adrian Grunberg. The picture, How I Spent My Summer Vacation, casts you as the roguish Driver, a career criminal trapped in the notorious Mexican prison El Pueblito. Driver must learn to survive in El Pueblito whilst trying to recover his ill-gotten millions and protecting a 10-year-old boy (Kevin Hernandez) from the prison’s organ-harvesting kingpin Javi (Daniel Gimenez Cacho). Ostensibly a black comedy that’s supposed to grittily evoke genre pieces of the 70s, the film just doesn’t work, despite impressive production design and the tobacco-bleached cinematography of Benoit Debie. How I Spent My Summer Vacation is not nearly as funny or exciting as it tries to be, or as innovative as it imagines it is.

The real problem, as always, is you. Where once you fruitfully played against type as an anti-hero in darker fare such as Payback, here your public perception bleeds distractingly through: instead of Driver seeming like a world-weary cynic with a hidden kind streak, instead he just comes across as a horrible, cynical, bitter man. Driver’s fondness for the unnamed boy and the boy’s mother (Dolores Heredia) feels insincere, and his criminal resourcefulness doesn’t have the charm that it’s meant to. The mischievous charisma that has been your appeal since Lethal Weapon has deserted you: the joke isn’t funny anymore.

As a career choice, playing an unpleasant character wasn’t a bad impulse, and perhaps the strategy would have worked if the film itself was better. Unfortunately for you it wasn’t, and like the many, many other problems in your life, this is your own fault and you’re just going to have to live with it.

She is a believer in transformation and redemption, film director Tinge Krishnan. Lynette, the young homeless girl, and Frank, the wrung-out soldier, strike up an unlikely friendship in her latest film, Junkhearts, creating a fragile connection that exists only for a moment – but it is going to change everything.

While the film is beautifully shot with lingering scenes that seem to take us into the minds of the characters, the desperation of these two lonely souls means Junkhearts is an overwhelmingly bleak experience.

“It wasn’t intended to be bleak, does it feel bleak?” says Krishnan. We’ve been chatting while waiting for our tea to arrive, and the director has just told me how she’s always worried about letting the film down by saying silly things. And here I am, having possibly misread its intentions completely.

Krishnan seems genuinely interested in my interpretation of the film though. Watching Frank and Lynette connect and then come apart again is like a warning against trusting people, I say, awkwardly. Krishnan thinks about it for a moment.

“That does exist in Frank. His worldview is that people are not to be trusted, so he’s almost waiting for it to happen. All the little decisions he makes contribute to it. That is a pattern Frank has to shift, and in the end it’s proved, it was right to trust,” says Krishnan. “Frank couldn’t have continued to live the way he lived when he met Lynette. Yes, he did have to go through a lot of pain, but there was a lot that shifted in that pain and it opened him up.”

Frank suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from being a soldier in Northern Ireland, and this was a key point of connection for Krishnan. A former doctor, Krishnan was in Thailand during the 2004 tsunami, and her experiences of helping in the aftermath of the crisis led to her developing PTSD.

“It was a very powerful experience,” says Krishnan, who received counselling after returning to the UK. “I wanted to find a way to creatively express those experiences in a way that could touch an audience. I think it’s hard to understand PTSD when you haven’t experienced it yourself.”

Before becoming a filmmaker, Krishnan worked as an A&E doctor - not exactly a typical route for budding creative types. Krishnan can trace the idea of a ‘detour’ back to school: “All the way through school I’d write plays and stories, reading them out in the playground. I assumed I was going to become a writer, but my English teacher said I should go do and do something different first.”

While the path to filmmaking wasn’t a conscious choice, Krishnan has no regrets about hanging up her white coat: “That’s fine, because I learned so much from it, it’s amazing.” It must have been great to have a job where you got to help people, I suggest, but Krishnan shakes her head: “Medicine isn’t all running around saving lives, sometimes it feels like its mainly banging your head against a bureaucratic wall!” She laughs. “I’m not sure to what degree doctors actually feel they’re making a difference.“

And as a filmmaker, does she feel like she’s making a difference now? Krishnan thinks about it for a moment: “I would hope so. It is my intention. Maybe not? I don’t know. All I can do is try.”

Krishnan still has dreams where she’s a doctor, but her heart belongs to film now. “It’s about that moment when we’re on set, and the actors are releasing powerful, in-the-moment performances. I can see it in the monitor and I can hear it in the headset and I can feel that electricity that means we’re getting something powerful. That’s the best feeling.” Krishnan pauses, she seems to have drifted off somewhere. “When making a film there will be a moment when there’s a commitment, you feel it coming from the crew and the cast when everyone knows they are working on something exciting. You really feel the moment when people start to walk through the fire.”