Showing 1 - 3 of 3
In Cannes, it's cinema as usual
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 17/05/2022
» After the cancellation in 2020 and a bump to the month of July in 2021 -- with smaller attendance as international travel was still interrupted -- the Cannes Film Festival returns to its usual mid-May slot, keyed up and fully prepped to show the world that it's cinema, and the cinema business, as usual.
Horror film does double duty as social satire
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/04/2017
» Hot on the trail of the Oscar-winning Moonlight and half-a-century after Katherine Hepburn gasped at her daughter's black fiancée in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, here comes Get Out, a "social thriller" about a black man trapped in a white horror. These weird white folk voted for President Obama -- they keep repeating that to assure themselves and others -- but their exaggerated civility is more creepy and menacing than ever in Trump-ruled America.
Blonde, bruised and stalked by shark
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/07/2016
» They're hyping this one as "the best shark film since Jaws". Seriously? The muddy psychological waters of the 1970s -- the collective fear and anxiety lurking in the Vietnam War years channelled into a shark -- has given way to the lone, existentialist despair of the iPhone generation of the 2010s. In the Steven Spielberg film, we're swept into the hunters' dark obsession, the exorcism of the demon within and without; in The Shallows we have something much less complicated: survival. And it helps that the person struggling to survive despite being stranded just 200 hundred yards from shore is played by Blake Lively -- blond, bruised, brave, sun-tanned and bikini-clad.