Showing 1 - 10 of 17
Pen-ek Ratanaruang's Morte Cucina shows off killer Thai cuisine at Tokyo film festival
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 31/10/2025
» Pen-ek Ratanaruang's new film features a protagonist on a quest for culinary retribution -- a triglyceride revenge trip that gets greasier and weirder along the way.
Ripley strikes quite exquisitely, again
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/04/2024
» Just when you thought the original book was bled dry, its last drop of smouldering homoerotic blood squeezed and sucked by multilple movie adaptations, from Rene Clement (French) and Anthony Minghella (American) to Liliana Cavani (Italian), here comes Steven Zaillian's seven-episode Netflix series bluntly titled Ripley. Dusky and exquisitely coldblooded, the latest reworking proves that the Patricia Highsmith's 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley is a living gift that continues giving after 69 years.
The afterlife of Mitr Chaibancha
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/10/2023
» In an abrupt moment of life's brutal script, Mitr Chaibancha fell to his death from a helicopter ladder on Oct 8, 1970. He was filming Insee Thong (Golden Eagle), playing an anti-communist masked hero, when he slipped from the rung and plunged to the ground in Pattaya. That same evening, his body was transported to Wat Kae Nang Loeng. Thousands of people, unable to believe that Thailand's most famous actor was really, tragically dead, amassed impromptu at the temple and demanded that his corpse be raised from the coffin and shown to the public.
Gay cowboys and glorious flesh
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/05/2023
» After the lukewarm opening film -- Maiwenn's Jeanne Du Barry, a fluffy costume drama starring Johnny Depp as King Louis XV -- the 76th Cannes Film Festival had its hottest ticket in a short film. Not just any short though: it's Pedro Almodovar's queer cowboy movie Strange Way Of Life, which saw patient festival-goers queuing up in the Rivera drizzle for nearly an hour to fill up even the worst seat of Salle Debussy on Wednesday.
The vagabond returns
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/01/2023
» A film once overlooked and misunderstood may have found its moment many years later, the work's peculiar vibrations finally detected and at last appreciated.
Rebel without a cause
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/05/2021
» She came, she provoked, she burned, she left pools of blood and bits of brain on the school yard while laughing her pretty head off all the way to purgatory. She's Nanno, the demon child with Lolita's freckles and the Joker's face-splitting grin. She's the headline girl from the hit Thai series Girl From Nowhere which, since the May 7 release of its Season 2 on Netflix, has made it to the top-10 chart in many Asian countries and summited the algorithm in Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines. In China, the series' hashtag was for a time trending on Weibo (Nanno's Thai school uniform also inspires Chinese cosplayers).
A night of surprises, some splendid
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/05/2019
» The odds weren't in Asia's favour, since there were only two films from the continent in competition. But South Korea did it, just like Japan had last year. Bong Joon-ho's Parasite won the Palme d'Or at the 72nd Cannes Film Festival, making it the second year in a row that an Asian film has won world cinema's most coveted prize, after last year's victory of Hirokazu Kore-eda's Shoplifters.
An imperfect world
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/05/2019
» Even on the ground at the Cannes Film Festival, what people seemed to be anticipating most on Monday was, well, the final episode of Game Of Thrones. No, it wasn't being shown at the festival (how unbecoming that would be), but isn't it a sign of our times that a TV episode has the Valyrian-steel nerve to dominate global discussion and upstage the world's biggest film showcase?
Strong field of films match up against Roma
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/01/2019
» Five films from five countries have been shortlisted for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 91st Oscars, with the winner to be read out on Feb 24 (morning of Feb 25 Thailand time). In a way, this is a no-brainer: Roma is a clear favourite, though that leads to another complication: with the Netflix-backed Mexican film also being nominated for Best Picture, can the beloved Roma win both categories? Not to mention that Alfonso Cuaron is also a front runner to win the Best Director prize, a likelihood that only widens the smile on Netflix's 2.35:1-ratio face (the film is still showing at House RCA, as well as on your Netflix account).