Showing 1-10 of 11 results
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Pandemonium
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 30/09/2022
» The first shot of Athena will be discussed in every writing about the film. A bravura choreography of movement that begins with an intimate close-up of a face and ends, after 10 blood-rushing minutes, with an explosion of revolutionary rage -- a la Les Miserables and Do You Hear The People Sing? transported to a predominantly-Muslim Paris suburb -- that opening shot is so hypnotising and immersive in its non-stop kineticism that we're led to forgive that it's also an earnest show-off, a proud enshrinement of style and attitude over everything else. Romain Gavras, a filmmaker known for making music videos for Jay Z and M.I.A, will cement that approach with many similar shots throughout the film -- long, seemingly uninterrupted shots with parkour camerawork full of angry bodies -- more than enough for aspiring filmmakers of the world to slobber over.
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The next step in evolution
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 27/05/2022
» The maestro is teasing us, with his favourite instrument: the scalpel. Mechanical, electrified scalpels that split open the flesh -- often, the belly -- like a bulging purse being unzipped. This time, what comes out of the belly is a menagerie of grotesque organs -- organs with neither names nor functions, grown inside the body primed for involuntary evolution.
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Horror film does double duty as social satire
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/04/2017
» Hot on the trail of the Oscar-winning Moonlight and half-a-century after Katherine Hepburn gasped at her daughter's black fiancée in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, here comes Get Out, a "social thriller" about a black man trapped in a white horror. These weird white folk voted for President Obama -- they keep repeating that to assure themselves and others -- but their exaggerated civility is more creepy and menacing than ever in Trump-ruled America.
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Dead cool
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 27/11/2015
» Javanese vampires, an undead tribe of immortal warlocks, a hard-boiled detective and an assortment of beautiful demons -- all of which stalk the twilight of Jakarta looking for blood, thrills and power in HBO Asia's original series Halfworlds. Premiering on Sunday at 9pm on HBO, the eight-episode show mixes Southeast Asian folklore with anime-cool and noir cinema, and it shows promise of a regional TV production that carries a dose of international appeal.
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To see the forest for the trees
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/01/2015
» Into The Woods is a delightful riot, a maddening mash-up of fairy tales, magic, farce and camp, with a healthy dose of Freudian mockery of macho princes. But the reason this film by Rob Marshall feels refreshing and subversive (it was adapted from the Broadway musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine) is its wry, dark spirit — it continues to smile and wink while simultaneously picking the bones of the carcasses of those fluffy Disney tales, acknowledging the eerie undercurrents of the original Brothers Grimm stories.
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Lego builds a blockbuster
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/03/2014
» This is pretty clever. The plastic brickwork of The Lego Movie gives us quaintly jolly entertainment that comes from parody, riotous cuteness and a throwback to 1980s stoners’ anti-chic. The Lego Movie is the proud and clumsy combination of Wreck It Ralph crossed with the headlong quest narrative of Toy Story, and while kids will dig the gabby characters — from Lego’s bricklaying stars to Batman as well as cameos by pretty much everyone else in the galaxy, including Han Solo and Gandalf — adults should find wild intelligence along this zany rollercoaster.
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Picks of the year
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/12/2013
» Like ravenous hunter-gatherers, we forage the thick forest of cinema and emerge with our pickings. Or maybe: like a mental patient, we plunge into the dark asylum of movie theatres in search of sanity, of light, of secrets. Most of the times we come out empty-handed, but the point, for madmen and women out there, is to keep looking.
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Vacant homes and empty heads
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/09/2013
» Meet the Spring-break revellers from hell. Sometimes clad in Pussy Riot-style balaclavas, but most of the time in fluorescent bikinis, Faith (Selena Gomez), Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Brit (Ashley Benson) and Cotty (Rachel Korine) orchestrate the year's most hallucinatory orgy to date, a candy-coloured bacchanalia of robbery, bong parties, contraband firearms, murders and a C-cup binge; all of this lubricated by endlessly flowing booze and a riotous beachside cacophony. Bored kids looking for gratifying oblivion, pushing and pushing and pushing the limit of fun. Spring Breakers is driven by the anxiety of excess, visually and psychologically, showing us how an American-style pursuit of happiness can edge pursuers over the cliff and into the sunshine of hell, where they feel right at home and become even more happy.
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Celebration of juvenile subversiveness
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/01/2013
» Starring Mei Gwei-lun, Rhydian Vaughan and Chang Hsiao-chuan. Directed by Yang Ye-che. At House RCA.
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Airing new agendas
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/10/2012
» The 27-rai compound of low-rise, industrial-chic grey buildings on Vibhavadi Rangsit Road is a picture of calm authority. Nearly 900 people work here in the offices, studios and control rooms of the country's only public television station, the non-profit, four-and-a-half-year-old, largely admired if sometimes embattled TV Thai, better known as Thai PBS.
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