Showing 21 - 30 of 35
A baroque nightmare, upgraded
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/11/2018
» The original 1977 Suspiria was a trashy bloodbath, an Italian giallo at its most lurid and disturbing -- a lair of maggots, murderers and witches. The remake, in cinemas this week, is high-trash Euro art house, more bourgeois and hipsterish -- a baroque nightmare whose danse macabre has been upgraded to fit the faces and forms of Dakota Johnson and Tilda Swinton. The new film has been directed by Italian Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, A Bigger Splash, I Am Love) and shot by Thai cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, whose 35mm work here is one of the film's high points.
Two grainy fists for resurrection
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/10/2018
» Shot mostly in Thai prison, with a fair number of ex-cons as extras, A Prayer Before Dawn dives headfirst into the unfiltered squalor of prison life -- not the sociological or political dimension of state incarceration, but the physical, uncooked-meat kind of life in jail, particularly the Thai jail.
House RCA retrospective honours Japanese Palme d'Or winner
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 27/07/2018
» Hirokazu Kore-eda's Shoplifters will open in Thailand on Aug 2, two months after the film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival. Among modern Japanese filmmakers, Kore-eda has amassed the strongest following in Thailand, largely due to the fortunate fact that most of his films -- not all, mind you -- have opened commercially here since 2004. To pave the mood for Shoplifters, a gem of a family drama that finally brought the 56-year-old director one of the highest honours in international cinema, the Thai distribution Mongkol Major brings back seven films by the master in a Kore-eda Retrospective programme at House RCA, starting today.
Romance and rage
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/07/2018
» The air in that rural village is impregnated by unsettling emotions and propaganda announcements from loudspeakers. Three people sit drinking and talking in front of an old house: an honest, confused young man; a pretty, even also confused young woman; and a rich, suave, sport-car-driving playboy, so sure of himself and the power he has over the other two.
Dream, murder and reality
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/05/2018
» The 11-day Cannes Film Festival will close tomorrow, and as the race for the Palme d'Or is the most breathtaking in years, we look at some of the highlights of the second week of the world's largest movie festival
Guilt and sin minus the politics
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/04/2018
» The squalor of Manila slums populated by high-school drug runners, then a chaotic precinct ruled by corrupt cops and even more corrupt chiefs -- these are the familiar turfs of Brillante Mendoza, the best-known Filipino filmmaker among international audiences.
In Three Billboards, pain and grief seek a visual expression
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/03/2018
» Frances McDormand is an embodiment of maternal anger and defiance, of the weight of grief and guilt, which often comes in tandem. In Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, her sorrow, festered into rage, is the emotional epicentre of the film that strives to quake all the American fault lines, moral, racial and political, and she gives a gut-punching performance in a classic feminist register that, as we have seen, eventually won her an Oscar.
Devil on the doorstep
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/02/2018
» You go into a Lav Diaz's movie as if you were going into a church, or a trench war, or an ultra-marathon: you prepare for the epic length, the brutal transcendentalism and the implacable burden of history that hit you like a blow.
Wandering narrative
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/02/2018
» There's a good film somewhere inside Sad Beauty, though I'm unable to locate its exact spot. It feels like something is on the verge of taking shape out of smoke and mirrors, something that could mean something. But it never is.
For your viewing pleasure
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/12/2017
» In a thoroughbred year for film, here are our must-see picks from 2017.