Showing 1 - 4 of 4
Pandemonium
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 30/09/2022
» The first shot of Athena will be discussed in every writing about the film. A bravura choreography of movement that begins with an intimate close-up of a face and ends, after 10 blood-rushing minutes, with an explosion of revolutionary rage -- a la Les Miserables and Do You Hear The People Sing? transported to a predominantly-Muslim Paris suburb -- that opening shot is so hypnotising and immersive in its non-stop kineticism that we're led to forgive that it's also an earnest show-off, a proud enshrinement of style and attitude over everything else. Romain Gavras, a filmmaker known for making music videos for Jay Z and M.I.A, will cement that approach with many similar shots throughout the film -- long, seemingly uninterrupted shots with parkour camerawork full of angry bodies -- more than enough for aspiring filmmakers of the world to slobber over.
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.
In the dark places
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/11/2018
» It rains incessantly in Zhang Yimou's Shadow, a monochromatic palace-intrigue-and-martial-arts high rhapsody set in a perpetual monsoon. Everything is grey, brown, black and white, a solemn palette befitting a solemn story interspersed with a blur of sword-fighting where warriors wield blades and umbrellas as if they were painting calligraphy.