Showing 1 - 10 of 13
Hear her roar
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/05/2023
» The image of a girl taking off her hijab is wrought with cinematic symbolism. Kamila Andini shows it in her Indonesian film Yuni (2021); Hesome Chemamah in his Thai short I'm Not Your F*cking Stereotype (2019); Ana Lily Amirpour in the Iranian vampire film A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014). Subversion? Provocation? Liberation? At this year's Cannes Film Festival, we see that image in Amanda Nell Eu's Tiger Stripes, a work as playful as it is potent in its portrayal of adolescence and what it entails for a young woman's body.
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.
Rage against Wall Street
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 27/05/2016
» Jodie Foster's Money Monster touches on two topical subjects. First, Wall Street's greed and how its casino logic can destroy lives; second, the obscene realism of live broadcast and how the producers and audience are both complicit in turning private lives into public spectacle. Big social issues, both of them, and with George Clooney and Julia Roberts in the lead and Foster directing, we expected a smart blast.
The Lobster is a love story like no other
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/11/2015
» The strangest movie of the year opens this week in Bangkok. The Lobster imagines a future world where single people are ostracised, then shipped off to "The Hotel", a clinically, sinisterly beautiful resort where they have to find a romantic partner within the deadline of 45 days. If they fail to find a "compatible" mate from among the singles herded there, they will be transformed into an animal of their choice and banished into the wild. Colin Farrell, glum and potbellied, plays David, who states that he wishes to become a lobster when his time comes.
Lessons from the hitmaker
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/11/2015
» Surprise, shock and awe greeted the news that GTH, Thailand's most commercially successful movie studio, will close shop at the end of the year.
The horror of our inhumanity
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/09/2015
» Historical films, when they stare into the abyss, are always horror films, and none attests to that with a greater conviction than German Concentration Camps Factual Survey. This is probably the most frightening documentary ever filmed, the sheer scope of inhumanity shown in it almost beyond belief if we didn't know that everything was indeed true. A very difficult film to watch, and certainly not for the faint-hearted and Holocaust deniers (not an endangered species here), this is one of the most important accounts of the event whose ramifications remain relevant 70 years after World War II ended.
Wake in fright
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/07/2014
» The parched outback saps all the juice from their hearts. In The Rover, David Michôd’s Aussie western that opens this week, two men traverse a lawless wasteland looking for a stolen car and maybe for the last shreds of empathy. Something bad has happened — to the world and its population. The film blithely leaves out any explanation, but we gather that it was some sort of financial apocalypse that reduces Australia to an expanse of sand-blustering wilderness. The collapse renders the local currency useless (only the US dollar is accepted) and pushes men either towards stupor or barbarism.
Nature versus nurture
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/12/2013
» Always gentle, always composed, the films of Hirokazu Kore-eda also register quiet devastation, often within the family. The stirring _ the earthquake, even _ usually happens beneath the surface of calm. Two years ago he gave us I Wish, a story about children of divorced parents, and before that, the sublime Still Walking, about a family wound that members prefer not to discuss. And, of course, Kore-eda's biggest hit in Bangkok was in 2003 with Nobody Knows, a painfully moving story of children left to fend for themselves after their mother walked out on them. That film packed Scala for more than a month.
Stretching genre limits
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/10/2013
» In the universe of Thai romantic comedy, Rak Ngo Ngo (literally "stupid love", although the official English title is Love Syndrome) is one of the brighter stars _ not the brightest, mind you, but bright enough to deliver the required dose of laughter and, perhaps, cause the sentimental to squeeze out a few tears. Penned by a team of talented young writers and directed by Pantham Thongsang, this is another progeny of the Love Actually-inspired family of loosely entangled tales of the heart (four in this film), criss-crossing many demographics and sexualities. But while Love Syndrome sticks to stock twists and choreographed romantic button-pushing (kneeling to propose, dramatic confessions via big songs), it does manage to rise above the formula at the right moment and also comes armed with a healthy supply of irony.
When wizardry Dwarfs reality
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/12/2012
» So we're back in the Middle-earth, green and gnarly, volcanic, folkloric, heroic, mystically Germanic, mythically Norse, and obviously New Zealand. In short, a familiar neighbourhood from The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, last inhabited and winning 11 Oscars in 2003. Populated by murderous ogres, phosphorescent elves, salivating goblins and digitally ageless Cate Blanchett and Ian McKellen, the narrative is strictly another quest of a little hairy-footed being who'll have to prove his worth, conquer his fear, and slay the dragon (the latter will come in the second episode, or maybe the third, stick around). Gollum also returns _ no, in the Tolkien universe the creature has lived in that grotto long before LOTR _ only that he's now even more life-like, more hideous, more sad. Should I also add: more real?