Showing 41 - 44 of 44
The Wolf's spectacular folly
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 31/01/2014
» Propelled by manic energy, Martin Scorsese's The Wolf Of Wall Street zips through a dollar-fuelled bacchanalia and raunchy pool parties (there are so many pool parties) with train-wrecking velocity. It's as if the filmmakers and their cast are popping speed pills or knocking back a succession of Red Bulls. You watch the film with exhilaration and dread, a dread that the entire narrative accelerating, over the top and almost unstoppable is going to veer over the precipice and crash, leaving Leonardo DiCaprio smiling goofily in the rubble. But it's not; this is tightly controlled filmmaking in the guise of something running amok, and it's actually that sense of dread, risk and danger that fires us up and keeps us on edge. Scorsese is 72 and yet, hats off to him, this film feels like a young man plunging into an all-night orgy while managing to somehow stay sober amidst the threat of overkill.
Make a slip? Get the moral hormone jab
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 27/07/2013
» Whoa, welcome to the hormonal monsoon season.
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/03/2013
» Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained is a happy whip, drawing as much blood as laughter. It runs on Road Runner humour, fired by cruel comedy, cartoon revenge, cracking you up and making you wince, and that balancing act has always been one of the secrets of Tarantino's brilliance. Still, this is a serious film about history and how cinema appropriates history. In a year that most Oscar-contending titles lay pompous claims to accurate retelling of the past, from Argo, Zero Dark Thirty and Lincoln, the blissful disregard of "history" somehow makes Django the most truthful film of the lot. Or at least it feels truthful in spirit, leaving the grandstanding of other filmmakers looking spurious, frivolous, or simply wrong.
Baptism of fire
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/11/2012
» Nothing in Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master matches the freakish intensity of the milkshake moment at the end of There Will Be Blood, but here's another strange, affecting character study whose quivers come off from the acting: Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix holding court, while Amy Adams, gentle yet febrile, lighting a fire of neurosis and mystery from the fringe.