Spring 2012 officially starts this week with the vernal equinox. It's also the day where the sun should cast no shadow at high noon if you're on the equator.

There are a couple of religious and pagan rituals associated with the equinox but perhaps you'd want to celebrate with our pick of the week, the critically acclaimed but Oscar-snubbed A Dangerous Method. The film explores the tumultuous beginnings of the science of psychoanalysis through the equally tumultuous relationships between Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and their students.

The arthouse Sleeping Beauty, produced by NZ favourite Jane Campion, is a beautifully shot mood piece about a girl who sells her time and body to make ends meet.

Kicking off what might be a film trilogy is Hunger Games, the adaptation of the popular teen novel series set in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic North America where teenagers must take part in a festival of gladiatorial fights where only one may survive and go home.

Die-hard romantics have a romcom to watch this week with Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, where Ewan McGregor as a fisheries scientist woos Emily Blunt as a PR consultant in a prince's vanity project to turn a spot in the Arabian peninsula hospital to the North Atlantic fish species.

Till next week,

Vernon Chan