Showing 1 - 10 of 41
Armed to the teeth, with no battle to fight
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/07/2017
» When everyone else is dead, the arms dealers will sip champagne and cuddle Playboy bunnies. Why? "Because everyone else will be busy killing each other," said Yuri Orlov, the arms dealer in Lord of War as portrayed by Nicolas Cage. When his client orders him a shipment of machine guns used in Rambo, Mr Orlov, an award-winning salesperson, asks, "Rambo part 1, 2 or 3?"
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.
Stop the tall tales about election dates
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/05/2018
» There's no way round it and there's no time for subtlety: The past four years have been a sham, a false dream stage-managed by false prophets.
A comedy likely to end only in horror
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 03/02/2018
» The junta can read the stars and history and they must know this isn't going to end well. As frustration grows, as protests form, as their support ebbs even their idol Gen Prem Tinsulanonda flat-out said so they amp up censorship and tighten the squeeze, not with gusto but with desperation. With Deputy Prime Minister Gen Prawit Wongsuwon looking increasingly like a plump Chinese deity on the verge of losing his worshippers, the regime reacts with force, gagging tactics and plain old bullying.
Vampires rule roost in this heartless land
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/11/2017
» The mother looked for her son's heart in a foam box. "Where is it?" she asked. She's already had his body, and only when she requested was she was allowed to take back his soul.