Showing 1 - 10 of 14
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.
Melancholy and absurdity
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/05/2021
» Chaitanya Tamhane was 27 years old when his breakthrough film Court became a critical sensation and won the Lion of the Future Award at the Venice festival in 2014. A film of understated power about India's Kafkaesque judicial tribulation, Court announced the arrival of an exceptional talent from Mumbai, a proud cinema city usually associated with rambunctious Bollywood titles.
Psycho-killers, interviewed
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/08/2019
» The series didn't drop with as much ballyhoo as most Netflix new releases; instead it creepy-crawled into the algorithm of fans with chilly stealth last Friday. Mindhunter Season 2, created by Joe Penhall with several episodes directed by David Fincher, is a cerebral remedy to Netflix's glut of story-driven series and formulaic cliffhangers. Mindhunter takes almost a geeky pride in its dialogue-heavy exploration of the most vicious minds in the anthology of American true crime, the procession of ultra-violent serial murderers, pathological rapists and sadistic torturers, and in the way it isn't fixated on solving any particular cases (as is expected from a detective show) but taking time to study the methodological eccentricity of each crime and the increasingly dark obsession of the detectives, sucked ever more inextricably into the transgressive vortex.
All in the family
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/06/2018
» You know you're walking into a horror movie, but the brilliance of Ari Aster's Hereditary is the way it deftly hides its cards and stacks up mystery upon mystery, secret upon secret, madness upon madness, until everything unravels in demonic hellfire. The film ticks all the familiar elements of a ghost story -- a dead grandma, a spooky house, a grave robbery, a candlelit seance where spirits are summoned, a sleepwalker roaming the dim corridor, an occult sign written on the wall, a couple of headless corpses, etc -- but Hereditary rises above the genre formula with its coolly composed formalism, its deliberate pacing, and its sly psychological manipulation that almost convinces us at certain points that this is more of a domestic drama than a horror movie.
Into the Khmer Rouge abyss
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/09/2017
» It's the kind of project that courts doubt and even disdain from the very logline. Angelina Jolie, the Hollywood A-lister lately known for marital drama, is directing a film in Cambodia about the atrocity of the Khmer Rouge years, based on the memoir of a woman who, as a girl, lived through it all.
Close your eyes
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/09/2017
» In June 13, 1981, Issei Sagawa, 32, was arrested after he was seen dumping two suspicious suitcases in the Seine. A student of comparative literature at Sorbonne, the Japanese man two days earlier had killed his Dutch classmate, raped her corpse, stored her body in his fridge and ate morsels after morsels of her flesh to stimulate his sexual desire. Only when the smell became unbearable did he pack what remained in the suitcases and threw them into the river. The French court declared Sagawa legally insane and released him. He returned to Japan, wrote a comic book about his world-famous case, became a food critic (no kidding), and starred in pornographic films. Today Sagawa, old and paralytic, still lives in a suburb of Tokyo.
Guests of honour
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/08/2017
» Last night when the clock struck 12, India turned 70. The birth of India or the rebirth after a century of colonial rule, is an ecstatic occasion that also has a darker edge in the partition of Pakistan, carved out of the former British Raj in a brutal bloodshed between Hindus and Muslims that killed hundreds of thousands and uprooted millions (Pakistan Independence Day was celebrated yesterday).
The sad saga of southern discomfort
Oped, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/03/2017
» We thought never again, but we’re always wrong. The godless attack and murder of four people, including an eight-year-old boy, in Narathiwat on Thursday was the latest reminder of the longstanding deep South anguish. The death toll is nearly 6,800 and counting. A beautiful region has been cursed for 13 years and counting. A land of many faiths is being threatened by faithless goons, and the urge among authorities to tighten their grip will fan the flames of violence.
We need trust in the law, not cowboys
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/02/2017
» In cowboy movies, there are two sets of justice. Legal justice -- slow, frustrating, futile, executed by the sheriff or the hangman -- and frontier justice, which is as swift as the trigger and as thirst-quenching as a mug of moonshine. It can be executed by anyone with bullets to spare.
Youth strike fear into old, cold hearts
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/10/2016
» We can imagine the scene: Twenty policemen mobbed a 19-year-old boy arriving at the airport immigration. They took him to the detention quarters and kept him there, refusing communication, and consequently sent the entire world into a manhunt frenzy. Where's Joshua Wong? What has he done? Or more directly to the heart of the midnight stealth: What did the Thai authorities fear? Why did the mighty state have to send 20 officers -- not five, not 10, but 20 -- to whiz away a skinny boy on a red-eye flight? A boy whom I bet never won a fist-fight in his high-school yard.