I've watched three movies this week, two new and one old.

The first was Sicario. Set in a "bleached and menacing desert landscape". Very, very dark. (Really, no-one wins in the end; the FBI agents will have no fine illusions ever again; there are countless dead, including the little kid's dad; the gunfights still rage in Mexico; and the sicario, or hit-man, goes on his cool vindictive way.) But it's good. Well shot. Gripping. And the music is awesome.

Martin Scorsese's Kundun was absolutely beautiful from a visual point of view. And Philip Glass's music definitely added value. But otherwise, it was a little ho-hum, I felt.

Some of the scenes feature sand mandalas. These exquisite works of art are made from coloured sand. Once they are completed, they are consecrated -- and then swept away. Everything is impermanent, including painstakingly constructed beauty.

Curiously enough, at my university's 15th anniversary gala dinner on Saturday evening, the sand drawing was the most spectacular performance by far, I thought. I've never seen anything quite like it. It is done with a light box and black sand. The artist strews the sand, magically creates a picture with a few deft strokes, and then wipes it out to begin on the next episode. Stunning.

Today's movie was Pawn Sacrifice, about the life and struggles of Bobbie Fischer. Again very good. It flirted with the edge of viewer patience in the intense, eyeball-to-eyeball chess scenes, but it pulled back and moved on just in time. What remains in my mind is not the tension of the matches, but the melancholy, brown-toned scenes in hotel rooms and rented lodgings, as a tormented genius increasingly succumbs to paranoia and megalomania.

We followed this up with lunch at Grandmama's. Sambal udang petai and paku belacang. Both delicious.

Things are a little tough at the moment. Work, health, air pollution -- all not so good. Which is why escapes are vital. And why it's useful to visualize all the crappy stuff being swept away like sand, ready for the next -- hopefully better -- instalment.