Showing 1 - 7 of 7
We'll always have Casablanca
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/01/2017
» In Casablanca -- yes, Casablanca -- they fall in love amidst the escalation of war. It wasn't supposed to be real: Brad Pitt is Commander Max Vatan, a Canadian intelligence officer parachuting into French Morocco at the height of World War II to meet his contact, a French resistance fighter Marianne Beausejour, played by Marion Cotillard. They only need to pretend to be lovers in order to fool the Germans in the lead up to the assassination of a German ambassador. But like in Casablanca, which is a thousand times more romantic and sad by the way, Max and Marianne can't resist the dangerous lure of romance as the spectre of death and war smother them.
Northern lights
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/09/2016
» With over 400 movies on the slot, the Toronto International Film Festival was a feast and a maze. The latest edition of this North American showcase concluded last Sunday, with Damein Chazelle's La La Land winning the People's Choice Award, a bellwether for the bright Oscar season (Toronto, unlike other major festivals, has no prominent juried competition, instead letting the audiences decide the big winner). The festival is known as a launch pad for Oscar hopefuls as well as independent titles looking for distribution. It also features a strong experimental section that casts its radical net far and wide.
Bond's countdown clock still ticks
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/11/2015
» The first shot in Spectre begins above a carnivalesque party during Mexico's Day of the Dead; the camera then comes down to the ground, weaves among the masked revellers dressed as skeletons, glides into a hotel door, up the elevator, out of the elevator, slips into a bedroom where Her Majesty's secret agent kisses a woman, then follows him out of the window -- "I won't be long", he tells her -- then it goes up again to see Bond sneak across the roofs to a spot where he performs his first assassination in this 24th James Bond movie.
A poem in motion
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/09/2015
» From the first shot to the last, when the assassin leads a group of peasants into the majestic wilderness of Tang Dynasty China, this is likely to be the most ravishing film you'll see in a long while. The swift tumult of fabric, the heart-bleeding colours, the luxuriant verdant of the forest -- The Assassin, shot on 35mm at a time when almost every film in the world is shot on digital, is also a martial arts drama that compels us to rethink the essence of the genre. Historically regarded as a cheap, sweaty form of entertainment, the wuxia film has reached the pinnacle of high-art in this Taiwanese production -- and some audiences will certainly feel baffled, if not exasperated.
Cannes Day 8: Killing me softly
Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/01/2015
» Brad Pitt is here. He plays Jackie Cogan, the typically violent and fashionably cheeky hitman in "Killing Them Softly". The film is so stylised that you thought the director, Andrew Dominik, was actually trying to impress Jean-Paul Gaultier, who sits on Cannes' jury this year. Each murder, by Cogan mostly, is designed to its nano-second detail, with every shard of bullet-shattered glass visible in its fatal, mid-air flight. Amidst the killings and score-settling, Barack Obama, on TV, campaigns for new America and the soundbites constantly tell us how badly the economy is doing. "Killing Them Softly" is a film that's so conscious about its cleverness that it seems less clever eventually, and one of the clever messages it constantly reminds us is summed up in Cogan's last sentence: "America is not a country, it's a business." I wonder if Quentin Tarantino could've made it more subtle, and more comical.
Osama, where art thou!
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/02/2013
» Poor Maya. The waking life of the pretty CIA agent played by Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty is spent obsessing over one thing and nothing else: hunting down that bearded piece of work dubbed by military-speak as "UBL". Usama Bin Laden is Maya's Holy Grail, her lifetime achievement, her addiction, her soulmate. If Maya were an actress, the terrorist would be her Oscar. And given that we all know what happened 20 months ago in that house in Pakistan _ the UBL assassination is re-enacted here with the thrilling, goggle-eyed, sometimes first-person video-game aesthetics _ history and headlines have already put on the spoiler alert for the world audience: Maya wins, big time. She's got her metaphorical Oscar, and fittingly, she's shocked and awed and even breaks down after the trophy (the corpse) has been brought to her.
Southeast Asian Round-UP
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/06/2012
» From a new film festival in Kuala Lumpur to Myanmar movies on General Aung San