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  • LIFE

    A Bigger Splash allows actors room to shine

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/07/2016

    » Four characters, white and privileged, play out their favourite game of seduction. They frolic in the sun, nurse their ego, indulge in excesses, splash in the pool of a luxurious villa on an island in the Mediterranean -- also the island where dark-skinned migrants arrive like phantoms after their perilous journey across the sea.

  • LIFE

    On the edge of sanity

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 17/01/2020

    » In Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse, Willem Dafoe is a demented Poseidon, or perhaps a crazed, ocean-battered ex-sailor on the run from a Melville novel. Playing one of the two lighthouse keepers on a wind-whipped rocky islet in the Atlantic, circa 1890s, Dafoe turns up his mad-uncle mode, feral hair, chronic farting and drawling speech, plus a possessive relationship with the lantern -- the source of light atop the lighthouse (he refers to it as a "she").

  • LIFE

    The Genius of Thai cinema

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/10/2017

    » A high-school thriller shows films from the Kingdom can be a hit on the world stage

  • LIFE

    Romancing Bangkok

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/08/2016

    » Paris had Paris Je T'aime, New York had New York I Love You. Now Bangkok has its own film ensemble drawn from different neighbourhoods of the city. Bangkok Stories, a portmanteau of six films telling tales of brief encounters and nebulous romance, will premier tonight at the 20th Short Film and Video Festival at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, before going on to cinema and television release later.

  • LIFE

    Our best films of the year

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/12/2016

    » As usual we have two lists, for titles released in local cinemas and the wider universe of world films shown elsewhere (and hopefully coming to our screens soon).

  • LIFE

    The Darkest Hours

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/08/2015

    » A psychosexual Thai gay film is a rare treat -- actually it's almost unprecedented. Anucha Boonyawatana's Onthakarn (The Blue Hour) arrives at SF cinemas this week with a strong tail wind after its premiere in Berlin in February. Nightmarish, oblique and deliberately disjointed, the film is in part ambient horror and in part a brooding drama about family violence centred around a gay teenager. We savour its chilly mood, its haunting wasteland of disaffected youth, though we sometimes wince at the stilted dialogue. What we see is also a confident switch between what's real and what's not, which is to say The Blue Hour is not something for the impatient and the literal-minded.

  • LIFE

    Scary swim

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/08/2014

    » Love hurts. Young love hurts even more and pregnancy, the unwanted kind, hurts (and haunts) the most. Hear me puppy lovers: without self-restraint, at least carry condoms. Without condoms, well, wear a strong amulet or else the demon will follow you like an interminable bloodhound — at least when abortion is still illegal and immoral in this society.

  • LIFE

    From horror to biopic

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/06/2015

    » Youth, sex, death — preferably in that order — the indispensable ingredients of horror movies get a spooky shake-up in David Robert Mitchell's It Follows. Ripe with a psychosexual vibe, this creepy film can be read as a metaphor about the demon of one-night-stands, or the venereal guilt of casual sex. Or you don't have to care much, because as far as a ghost flick goes, this one remixes the old formula with wit, serves up a series of shocks, and manages to give off a stylish, purring chill.

  • LIFE

    Hat-trick for Thai cinema

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/02/2015

    » In the snowy German capital, the year's first major cinema festival has kicked off. The 65th Berlin International Film Festival (or Berlinale, as it's better known) opened last night with Nobody Wants The Night, a drama by Spanish director Isabel Coixet, starring Juliette Binoche and Rinko Kikuchi. Some of the hot world premieres include Terrence Malick's Knight Of Cups, Kenneth Branagh's Cinderella, Werner Herzog's Queen Of The Desert, and other art-house darlings. The Berlinale runs until Feb 15, with the Golden Bear being announced next weekend.

  • TRAVEL

    Return to paradise

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/01/2022

    » At Maya Bay, hawk-eyed park officials patrol the sandy stretch, whistles at the ready. It was a gorgeous morning last Thursday, just days after the fabled beach on Phi Phi Leh Island had reopened after three years of closure, and the 300 or so holidaymakers, masked or otherwise, were ambling or striking catwalk poses on the pillow-soft sand, awestruck by the emerald splendour around them.

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