Showing 1 - 3 of 3
The old skeleton in the closet
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 05/04/2019
» Motherly ghosts are Southeast Asia's fiercest creatures, as they cling to their memories with a vengeance. In Marn-Da (The Only Mom), a Myanmar-Thai haunted-house horror, a motherless child wanders her old colonial house -- she was already dead, sure -- looking for love and hugs. When a new family moves in, the girl-ghost finds the perfect mother she never had and the old skeleton in the closet comes tumbling out.
Soulful, sorrowful, tragic
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/08/2015
» Amy is a biographical documentary of the singer Amy Winehouse, but it is also a horror film. Watching it is like watching a ghost, a confused, tortured ghost of a woman who has boundless talent in singing and none in living. As we watch Amy Winehouse -- in home video footage, concert recordings, TV interviews, etc -- it hits us that we're watching her being killed slowly at every passing minute; killed by herself, her addiction, and by the cruel ecosystem of the fame industry that feeds first on her gift then more voraciously on her downfall. This is one of the best documentary films this year, and in some parts it's also one of the hardest to watch.
Evocative hymn to Thai rice
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/01/2015
» This is the film you simply have to see this weekend. Uruphong Raksasad's Pleng Khong Kao (The Songs Of Rice) is a lyrical poetry of image and sound, as beautiful as 19th-century pastoral paintings and as evocative as murmured hymns. In a compact 75 minutes, we see muddied beasts stomping the paddies and whirring tractors aglow with nocturnal eyes; we hear the chanting for the Rice Goddess and rhythmic windpipe numbers for the harvest dance. We even marvel, unlikely as it seems, at a zonk-out sci-fi rendition of a northeastern rocket festival, ablaze with fire and sparks and songs and joy.