Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening June 16-22, 2016

Distance

Three award-winning Asian indie directors – Tan Shijie from Singapore, Xin Yukun from China and Sivaroj Kongsakul from Thailand – each take a crack at directing Taiwanese actor Chen Bo-lin in Distance
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The three-segment drama has the actor in different roles in stories that explore the notion of "distance" and what it means in our societies.

The producer behind this ambitious indie project is Anthony Chen, the Singaporean filmmaker who won much acclaim for his 2013 drama Ilo Ilo. He's helped out by Thai producer Aditya Assarat, who also wrote one of the segments.

Distance previously was the opening entry in the Golden Horse Film Festival in Taipei.

It's in Chinese with English and Thai subtitles at SF World Cinema CentralWorld, SFX Cinema Central Rama 9 and SFX Cinema Maya Chiang Mai. Rated 15+

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Also opening

The Nice Guys – Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe team up for this buddy comedy that is a throwback to a bygone era of Hollywood comedies. Set in 1970s Los Angeles, the neo-noir story has a down-on-his-luck private eye (Gosling) getting help from a self-employed enforcer (Crowe) in investigating the mysterious death of a porn star. Shane Black, the cult-figure screenwriter of Lethal Weapon, co-wrote the script and directs. Critics love it. Rated 15+

Central Intelligence – And Thai movie distributors and cinema chains double down on buddy comedies, with this one starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Kevin Hart. Johnson is a former fat kid who was bullied in school. He grew up musclebound and became a CIA agent. He attends his high-school reunion while claiming to be on secret mission. He and a motor-mouthed classmate (Hart) get up to adventures while they foil a terror plot. The director is Rawson Michael Thurber, who previously helmed the comedy masterpiece Dodgeball as well as We're the Millers. Critical reception is just starting. Rated G

Finding Dory – After more than a decade of enduring the endless pestering of talk-show host and comedian Ellen DeGeneres to make a sequel to 2003's Finding Nemo, animators at Disney-Pixar finally gave up and made Ellen a movie featuring her forgetful blue tang fish Dory. She starts to have flashbacks to her family, and enlists her clownfish friends Marlin and Nemo to help her. She's then captured and taken to a marine research facility, where she has to make new friends to help her in her quest. Albert Brooks is back as the voice of Marlin with other voice talent including Ed O'Neill, Idris Elba, Dominic West and many others. Critics have all drunk the Pixar Kool-Aid. It's in 3D in some cinemas, including IMAX. Rated G

Udta Punjab – Four characters – a rock star, a migrant labourer, a doctor and a cop – fight the menace of drugs. Shahid Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor, Alia Bhatt and Diljit Dosanjh star. In Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Major Cineplex Sukhumvit, Rama III and Pattaya. Opens Friday.

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Also showing

The Third Silent Film Festival in Thailand – One of the earliest vampire films, 1922's Nosferatu opens the festival at 8 tonight at the Scala. Live musical accompaniment will be by German composer and multi-instrumentalist Gunter A. Buchwald, with percussion by Thai classical musician Anant Nark-kong. Tickets are 200 baht. The fest then shifts over to the Lido for screenings from Friday until Wednesday. Tickets are 120 baht. They are all great films and are worth seeing on the big screen with live musical accompaniment – it is an experience that can only be had in the cinema. The line-up was profiled in a special post last week. For further details, check check www.Fapot.org or www.Facebook.com/silentfilmthailand.

Singapore Film Festival – The third annual Bangkok showcase of Singaporean cinema gets underway today at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld. Running until Sunday, the fest have five entries, ranging from 1997's 12 Storeys to last year's SG50 celebration 7 Letters. It was all covered in a special post last week. Tickets are free and will be handed out 30 minutes before the shows. For more details, check the SF cinemas' site.

Bangkok Gay and Lesbian Film Festival – The second edition of the BGLFF continues until Sunday at the Quartier CineArt. Lots of worthwhile stuff. The line-up and schedule were detailed in a recent special post. Tickets are 160 baht and 180 baht. Please note that there are no ads before the shows, so the films are generally starting on time, at least that was the case when I attended last weekend.

The Friese-Greene Club – American politics are still in focus tonight with Recount, an award-winning 2008 HBO drama about the 2000 presidential ballot recount in Florida. Kevin Spacey, Laura Dern, John Hurt and Denis Leary are among the stars. Tomorrow, it's Wong Kar-wai's drama of unrequited romance In the Mood for Love, which had Bangkok locations standing in for 1960s Hong Kong. And Saturday has a "not-so-classic" foreign film made in Thailand, Sacrifice!, a 1972 Italian cannibal horror that's also known as The Man from Deep River. And Sunday's film from 75 years ago is the Josef von Sternberg thriller The Shanghai Gesture. Next Wednesday is a documentary on U.S. politics, 1960's Primary, which recalls the Democratic nomination fight between JFK and Hubert Humphrey. Shows are at 8pm. The FGC is down an alley next to the under-renovation Queen's Park Imperial Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 22. For more details, check the club's Facebook page.

Alliance Française – Tomorrow night's French film with Thai subtitles is Il était une forêt (Once Upon a Forest), a documentary by Luc Jacquet, who later did March of the Penguins. Next Wednesday's French film with English subtitles is Alda et Maria (All Is Well), in which a pair of teenage girls escape civil war in the Congo and land in Lisbon. Shows are at 7pm. Admission for the general public is 100 baht.

Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand – The Contemporary World Film Series has one more movie this month, with Le meraviglie (The Wonders) at 7pm on Monday. An Italian-Swiss drama, it's about a family of beekeepers in the Tuscan countryside who have their quiet lives disrupted by the arrival of a troubled teenage boy and by a reality-TV crew. Directed by Alice Rohrwacher, it won the Grand Prize of the Jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014. Admission is 150 baht for non-members plus 100 baht for anyone wanting the wine and cheese laid on by the Swiss Embassy.

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Take note

House cinema is still closed for renovations. The place was to reopen today, but work is taking a bit longer than expected, now lasting until June 22.

The European Union Film Festival kicks off next week at CentralWorld, running June 22 to July 3.

And the oddball Thailand International Film Destination Festival has finally got around to simply stating when it will take place. Drumroll please: July 4 to 13 at Paragon Cineplex.

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening May 12-18, 2016

Embrace of the Serpent

The first film from the South American country of Colombia to be nominated for an Academy Award, Embrace of the Serpent is a look at the Amazon forest as seen through the eyes of a shaman and sole survivor of his tribe, in a story that tracks him over 40 years and covers his travels with two foreigner scientists who are searching for a sacred plant with psychedelic properties.

The story is based on the journals of German ethnologist Theodor Koch-Grunberg, who explored the Amazon in the early 1900s, and American botanist Richard Evans Schultes, who went there in the 1940s.

Filmed in glorious black and white, this rare motion picture is brought to cinemas by HAL Film, the indie distribution outfit that previously offered the unusual "foreign" films White God and The Tribe, and is determined to give movie-goers rewarding alternatives to the endless comic-book movies.

In addition to making the short-list of nominees for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars, Embrace of the Serpent won the Art Cinema Award at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as accolades at Rotterdam, Sundance and many other fests. Critical reception is overwhelmingly praiseworthy.

It's in the original soundtrack with English and Thai subtitles at Esplanade Ratchada, House on RCA, Major Cineplex Ratchayothin, Paragon, SF World Cinema at CentralWorld and SFX The Crystal Ekamai Ram-Indra. Rated 15+

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Also opening

The Man Who Knew Infinity – Dev Patel, the English-Indian actor who made his breakthrough in Slumdog Millionaire and was also featured on the HBO series The Newsroom, stars in this fact-based biographical drama, portraying Srinivasa Ramanujan, the Indian mathematician who instinctively pioneered many theories despite having little formal training. The British production follows his rise from a humble upbringing in Madras to his acceptance into Cambridge University, where he encounters discrimination as he attempts to prove his theories. Ultimately, his genius is recognized and he becomes a close collaborator with fellow pioneering maths theorist G.H. Hardy, who is played by Jeremy Irons. Other stars include Toby Jones, Stephen Fry and Jeremy Northham. Critical reception is mixed, leaning to positive. Rated 15+

The Angry Birds Movie – It's been seven years since the iPad time-waster rocketed to popularity. Now comes a movie that will further cement the addictive Finnish game's place in pop culture. The Sony Pictures Imageworks animated feature attempts to tell the origin story of the main angry bird, a feathered misfit named Red, who for some reason has a chip on his wings and is always angry. Assigned to attend an anger-management retreat, he becomes suspicious about the mysterious arrival of strange green pigs and struggles to rally the other birds against what he sees as an alien invasion. Jason Sudekis voices the main character with other voices provided by Josh Gad, Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph, Kate McKinnon, Sean Penn, Tony Hale, Keegan-Michael Key, Bill Hader and Peter Dinklage. This doesn't come out in the U.S. until next week, so the studios get a week to make bank in unsuspecting overseas territories without the benefit of mainstream critical reception. It's in 3D in some cinemas. Rated G

Equals – Two fine actors, Kristen Stewart and Nicholas Hoult, star in this science-fiction romantic thriller about youngsters who live in a society where emotions have been outlawed and love is strictly forbidden. Nonetheless, biology tends to override any genetic engineering and they are tragically drawn to each other. Other stars include Jacki Weaver and Guy Pearce. This does not come out in the U.S. until July, and critical reception, so far, is tepid. Rated 15+

Embracing Khemarat (อ้อมกอดเขมราฐ, Aom-Kod-Khemarat) – Three loosely connected stories of romance take place in idyllic Khemarat, a small town in Ubon Ratchathani on the banks of the Mekong. They involve a young female physician who is posted to the local hospital and runs into cute conflict with the owner of a local coffee shop. Other stories have a young Lao immigrant woman who falls for a photographer and a "nerdy girl" who has attracted the eye of a quiet and shy schoolboy rock musician. Among the stars are Miss Thailand 2009 runner-up Kobkullaya Chuengprasertsri, who is an actual physician. Other stars are "Fluke" Teerapat Lohanan, "Palmy" Nantariya Namboon, "Tao" Phusin Warinrak, "Nong" Puttason Seedawan and "Golf" Anuwat Chucherdwattana. The film is written and produced by Dr Ritt Pokkrittayahariboon, a surgeon and businessman who settled in Khemarat and wanted to make a movie to promote the town and its attractions. The Nation had a bit more about it. Rated 15+

The Bodyguard – The formidable martial-arts actor Sammo Hung, the "big brother" of Jackie Chan who is still best known in Thailand as Hung Chin Pao for his string of 1980s Hong Kong action films, is back in action in The Bodyguard. He's an ageing former lawman from Beijing who has retired to a border town. He takes up the cause of protecting an innocent neighbor girl and runs into conflict with Russian gangsters, making this essentially a Chinese remake of Denzel Washington's The Equalizer. Critical reception is mixed. It's Thai-dubbed in most places but has the Chinese soundtrack with English and Thai subtitles at the usual downtown multiplexes, including Esplanade Ratchada, Paragon, Quartier CineArt and SF World Cinema at CentralWorld. Rated 15+

Azhar – The life of controversial Indian cricketer-turned-politician Mohammad Azharuddin is dramatized in this Bollywood picture, chronicling his accomplishments as batsman as well as his involvement in a match-fixing scandal toward the end of his career. Emraan Hashmi stars along with Prachi Desai and Nargis Fakhri. In Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Major Cineplex Sukhumvit, Rama III and Pattaya.

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Also showing

The Friese-Greene Club – The club has a private event tonight but is back open tomorrow with sex and swimming pools in Peter Greenaway's erotic murder drama Drowning by Numbers from 1988. On Saturday, a housecat steals the scene in The Long Goodbye, Robert Altman's adaptation of a Philip Marlowe mystery, starring Elliot Gould. Sunday has another Fritz Lang film-noir starring Edward G. Robinson in Scarlet Street. And next Wednesday is a mid-career Jim Jarmusch feature, five taxi-cab tales in Night on Earth. Shows are at 8pm. The FGC is down an alley next to the under-renovation Queen's Park Imperial Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 22. For more details, check the club's Facebook page.

Alliance Française – There is no Friday French movie with Thai subtitles this week because there is a jazz concert. Saturday has the monthly "kids' movie", with the animated feature Mia et le Migou, a fantasy-adventure about a girl in South America who leaves her impoverished village in search of her father and has an encounter in the jungle with giant beings. The show is at 2pm. Next Wednesday at 7pm, there's a French film with English subtitles, the 2015 romantic comedy Caprice, which involves a triangular romance between a hapless guy, the actress he has a crush on and the pesky girl who inserts herself into the situation. Admission for the general public is 100 baht.

Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand – Small-town secrets are spilled in The Sweet Hereafter, about a lawyer trying to persuade families to take part in a class-action lawsuit over a school-bus crash that killed 14 children. The much-acclaimed 1997 drama is by Canadian director Atom Egoyan, and it won many prizes, including the Grand Prize of the Jury at the Cannes Film Festival. It was also nominated for two Academy Awards. Ian Holm stars as the lawyer, who has his own conflicts to deal with on top of the dysfunction of the townspeople. Part of the FCCT's Contemporary World Film Series, the screening is at 7pm on Monday, May 16, and is supported by the Embassy of Canada. Entry is 150 baht for non-members and 100 baht for the wine and snacks. There will be another entry in the series on Monday, May 30, with Thy Womb, a drama by noted independent Filipino director Brillante Ma Mendoza.

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Take note

The landmark Scala remains committed to the profession of showing movies, despite being threatened with imminent closure by landlord Chulalongkorn University, which is keen to redevelop Siam Square. The Scala's devoted management recently installed a new screen because the old one was showing its age and was long past due for an upgrade. The result is a much clearer and brighter picture that makes going to movies at the Scala well worth your while. It is the best value in movie-going in Bangkok. Please support the Scala while it exists.

Meanwhile, general Thai public awareness of the Scala's plight is finally starting to emerge, perhaps too little, too late. There was a Nation editorial this week, and there is also a Thai-language Change.org petition that asks Chula U. to "keep Scala" open and recognize that its unique cultural and architectural values outweigh the supposed economic benefits of building yet another shopping mall in a city already saturated by shopping malls.

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening April 12-20, 2016

The Mermaid

Hong Kong comedy great Stephen Chow returns to the scene with The Mermaid, the story of a pretty young mermaid  (Lin Yun) who is sent to the city to seduce and kill a playboy developer (Deng Chao) whose project is destroying the merpeople's marine habitat. She ends up falling in love with the guy.

It's being hailed as a return to form for Chow, an actor, writer and director who came up in the late 1980s and early 1990s with a string of comedies and then rocketed to worldwide cult status in the early 2000s as the director and star of Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle, inventive martial-arts films that mixed graceful kung fu moves with cartoonish slapstick. Critics weren't so crazy about his follow-up, the family friendly sci-fi tale CJ7. And then there was the 2013 fantasy Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons, which was mainly only a hit with mainland audiences.

The Mermaid has been a blockbuster smash in China, breaking the box-office record for highest-grossing film previously held by Monster Hunt.

Critics like it too.

Sadly, it seems The Mermaid is not getting an English-friendly release in Thailand. Appears it's Thai-dubbed except for a handful of select downtown cinemas that have the Mandarin soundtrack and Thai subtitles only – no English. It's out today, on Songkran Eve, with more movies coming out tomorrow for the official start of the three-day Thai New Year public holiday. Rated G

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The Jungle Book

Anglo-Indian writer Rudyard Kipling's children's stories are again adapted by Disney, this time as a photorealistic computer-animated live-action adventure.

The Jungle Book is directed by Jon Favreau, one of the guys behind the guys of the late-1990s indie film boom, making the scene as the writer and star of the cult-classic Swingers.

As a director, his career has veered wildly from smaller, indie-leaning projects, such as the sweetly funny Christmas comedy Elf and his food-oriented family film Chef, to huge Hollywood blockbusters, like Marvel's Iron Man movies and now Disney's The Jungle Book.

The only human actor onscreen is Neel Sethi, an Indian-American first-time child actor who auditioned for the role of Mowgli and was plucked from a field of some 2,000 boys who tried out.

The animals in the movie are all voiced by top Hollywood talents, including Idris Elba as the tyrannical tiger Shere Khan, Bill Murray as the bear Balloo, Ben Kingsley as the mentoring panther Bagheera, Christopher Walken as the orangutan King Louie, Scarlett Johansson as the seductive snake Kaa and Lupito Nyong'o as Mowgli's wolf mother.

Critical reception is generally positive. Filmed in actual 3D it's on regular 3D screens and IMAX but also looks just fine in 2D. Rated G. Opens Wednesday.

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Also opening

Knight of Cups – Christian Bale is a womanizing screenwriter who is having an existential crisis as he sleeps with a series of beautiful women and indulges in the Hollywood party scene. Terrence Malick directs this puzzler, which is inspired by Tarot cards and continues with the philosophical and spiritual musings he explored in To the Wonder and The Tree of Life. Other stars include Imogen Poots, Wes Bentley, Brian Dennehy, Antonio Banderas, Cate Blanchett, Freida Pinto, Teresa Palmer, Natalie Portman and Isabel Lucas, along with dozens of other well-known names who all just wanted to be in a Malick movie. Among them were comedy actor Thomas Lennon, who recently related how weird it is to make a film with the secretive, iconoclastic director. As with Malick's other late-period films, critics are polarized. Rated 18+. Opens Wednesday.

Suksan Wan Klab Baan (สุขสันต์วันกลับบ้าน, a.k.a. Take Me Home) – Kongkiat Komesiri directs this thriller about a young man (Mario Maurer) who wakes up in a hospital after a five-year slumber with no memories of his past except that his name is Tan. He's brought home by his twin sister Tubtim (Wannarote Sonthichai) who lives a seemingly perfect existence in a fancy house with her architect husband Cheewin (Nopachai Jayanama) and his two children from a previous marriage. Having enjoyed Kongkiat's previous efforts – 2007's Muay Thai Chaiya, 2009's Slice and 2012's Antapal – I have what I guess are unreasonably high expectations for Take Me Home, which is produced by the indie shingle North Star and is being released by Major Cineplex-owned M Pictures. There's more about the movie in an article in The Nation today. Rated 15+. Opens Wednesday.

Fan – Shah Rukh Khan plays dual roles in this thriller about a young man who develops an unhealthy obsession with a superstar actor. The 50-year-old King Khan plays both characters, with digital de-ageing technology used to give him the face of the 17-year-old obsessed fan. It's in Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Paragon, Major Cineplex Sukhumvit, Rama III, Pattaya and Maesot. Opens Friday.

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Also showing

The Friese-Greene Club – The Club will be open tomorrow to members who might be seeking a refuge from the Songkran revelry. Please leave your water guns by the door. Wednesday's show has Richard Burton as The Spy Who Came In from the Cold while Thursday is the cult-classic Hong Kong crime thriller City on Fire, one of the films Quentin Tarantino copied to make Reservoir Dogs. Friday's "quirky '80s" movie is the little-known end-of-the-world comedy Miracle Mile while Saturday has loads of steampunk weirdness in City of Lost Children. Sunday's Akira Kurosawa film is the underrated and influential kidnap tale High and Low. And next Wednesday has another spy movie, Hitchcock's Notorious from 1946. Please note that the Club has a new policy on smoking. Shows are at 8pm. The FGC is down an alley next to the under-renovation Queen's Park Imperial Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 22. For more details, check the club's Facebook page.

Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand – The Contemporary World Film Series picks up after the Songkran break with Earth, a sweeping 1998 drama about a multi-cultural circle of close friends growing up in Lahore during very turbulent times around 1947, which saw the partition of India and Hindu-Muslim riots. Aamir Khan, Maia Sethna and Nandita Das star. Earth has music by award-winner A.R. Rahman, and it was India's submission to the Academy Awards in 1999. The show is at 7pm on April 19 at the FCCT. Directed by noted Indian-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta, it is the first of two movies this month by award-winning Asian women directors living in the West. Next up on April 25 is the Pakistani drama Dukhtar by Afia Nathaniel. Admission is 150 baht for non-members.

Alliance Française – There are no films at the Alliance this Wednesday, nor this Friday, because of the Songkran public holiday. The next show is at 7pm on Wednesday, April 20, with Fidelio, l'odyssée d'Alice, about a young woman who takes a job that is unusual for women, as an engineer aboard an ocean-going freighter. It's in French with English subtitles. The Alliance is now also showing French films with Thai subtitles on Fridays, with the next one on April 22. I'll aim to cover that next week. Take note that there is now an admission charge for the movies – 100 baht for the general public and 50 baht for members and Alliance students.

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Sneak preview

Colonia – Emma Watson (Hermoine from the Harry Potter movies) is a young woman caught up in the unrest of 1973 in Chile. After her husband (Daniel Brühl) is kidnapped by Pinochet's secret police, she tracks him into the jungle to a torture center run by a cult led by a Nazi war criminal (Michael Nyqvist). She decides to join the cult in hopes she'll be able to rescue her husband. Critical reception is mixed. This opens tonight in sneak previews, with screenings from around 8 nightly through April 20. Rated 13+

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Take note

Movies are being released one or two days earlier than usual this week as distributors try to entice Songkran holidaymakers into the theaters.

Next week, the new-movie releases will return to their usual day on Thursday.

Coming up, there will be the second edition of the Bangkok Asean Film Festival, which will run from April 21 to 26 at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld. It will have a mix of new films from Thailand and its Southeast Asian neighbors as well as a few classics of world cinema, including the serpentine fantasy romance Pous Keng Kang from Cambodia, 1954's After the Curfew from Indonesia and Lino Brocka's Manila in the Claws of Light. More on that later in the week.

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening March 17-23, 2016

Jane Got a Gun

Natalie Portman is a young frontierswoman in Jane Got a Gun. Although she's got plenty of sand, she has to get help from her gunslinger ex-boyfriend when her farm and her husband (Noah Emmerich) come under attack from a land-grabbing villain.

Amazing that this movie got made. The gritty, female-focused western was initiated as a project for British director Lynne Ramsay (We Need to Talk about Kevin). But things apparently weren't to Ramsay's liking, and she departed the production on the first day of shooting. A game of musical chairs then took place as cast members departed and were replaced and others changed roles.

Australian actor Joel Edgerton was originally to play the villain, with Michael Fassbender as Jane's gunslinger ex. But Fassbender left and Edgerton moved into the hero role.

Edgerton brought in Gavin O'Connor, who he'd worked with on the fight picture Warrior, to direct.

Meanwhile, Jude Law, who was to be the new villain, left because he only wanted to work with Ramsay. Bradley Cooper was then cast, but didn't stick around. So Ewan McGregor ended up in the villain role.

Critical reception has been mixed, but it should do the trick if you are a fan of westerns like Unforgiven, True Grit or The Homesman. Rated 15+

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Also opening

Triple 9 – Corrupt cops who are under the thumb of the Russian mob are forced into pulling off the perfect heist. To do so, they come up with a plan that involves setting up a rookie cop to be killed. A very violent police thriller, Triple 9 is directed by John Hillcoat, an Australian whose previous uncompromising, unrelenting and bleak efforts have included The Proposition, The Road and Lawless. The ensemble cast is toplined by Casey Affleck, with support from Chiwetel Ejiofor, Woody Harrelson, Anthony Mackie, Aaron Paul, Norman Reedus, Michael K. Williams and Clifton Collins Jr. Kate Winslet is the Russian mob boss. Critical reception is mixed, but if you're a fan of Hillcoat's previous efforts and aren't squeamish about violence, this is one to see. Rated 20-

Bangkok 13 (บางกอก 13 เมือง-ฅน-ตาย) – Veteran producer-director Dulyasit Niyomkul helms this horror thriller about a young woman (Tarntara Rungruang) who has a supernatural sixth sense. Haunted by a childhood secret, she hopes to find answers when she joins the cast of a reality TV series that sends contestants into 13 spooky places in Bangkok. Rated 13+

Ride Along 2 – Diminutive motor-mouth Kevin Hart reteams with hip-hop tough-guy Ice Cube in the second entry in director Tim Story's buddy-cop franchise. The original set up had Hart's wannabe cop trying too hard to impress his brother-in-law, a streetwise veteran lawman. So it's just more that sort of thing. Critical reception is mostly negative. Rated 13+

Friend Request – Social-media dangers are depicted in this German-produced thriller, in which was popular college student "unfriends" an acquaintance, which causes her to be cursed by a demonic presence that is killing her closest pals. Alycia Debnam-Carey, William Moseley and Connor Paolo star. Simon Verhoeven (no relation to Dutch director Paul Verhoeven) directs. Rated 15+

Jeruzalem – American tourists visiting religious sites in Jerusalem have to fight for their survival when the Holy City becomes the epicenter of the apocalypse. An Israeli-produced thriller, it's directed by the Paz brothers. Rated 15+

Retribution – And here's a Spanish-made thriller, in which a bank executive receives an anonymous phone call informing him he has just a few hours to obtain a large sum of money or a bomb under his seat will explode. Rated 13+

Hana's Miso Soup – Just as she is ready to start her life, a young woman is hit with a cancer diagnosis, but, miraculously, she becomes pregnant. And when the baby is born, the young cancer-stricken mother becomes determined to teach her daughter everything she knows, including how to make tasty, healthful miso soup. In Japanese with English and Thai subtitles at Apex Siam Square, House on RCA and SFW CentralWorld. Rated 13+

Kapoor and Sons – Summoned by their 90-year-old grandfather (Rishi Kapoor), estranged bickering brothers Rahul Kapoor (Fawad Khan) and Arjun Kapoor (Sidharth Malhotra) return to their childhood home. There, they fall in love with the same woman (Alia Bhatt). It's in Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Major Cineplex Sukhumvit, Rama III and Pattaya. Opens Friday.

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Also showing

Thailand-China Film Culture Week – Forty years of diplomatic ties and increasingly cozier relations are celebrated in Thailand-China Film Culture week, organized by the Guangxi Film Group Company Limited, SF cinemas and the Thai-Chinese Culture Union. Running from tomorrow until Sunday at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld, the event will have five contemporary Chinese films playing alongside two critically acclaimed indie Thai films. Here is the line-up:

• The Nightingale – An eight-year-old girl and her grandfather walk from Beijing to his rural hometown in Guilin in order to fulfill promise to his dead wife, to deliver a caged nightingale bird. From 2013, The Nightingale made the rounds of film festivals in 2014 and last year, and won a few awards.
• Liu San Jie – From 1978, here's a classic from the Guangxi library. Touted as China’s first musical movie, it's the story of a travelling folksinger, Third Sister Liu, who inspires villagers wherever she goes.
• The Dancing Young – High-school students who are crazy about dancing look for their big break as they try to balance the activity with their studies and social lives.
• Monkey King: Hero Is Back – The hero of Chinese literature and legend gets another outing in animated form in a story of a special child who unknowingly releases the Monkey King from a 500-year curse. He pays back the kid by fighting the evil monster who have taken over his village.
• Saving Mr. Wu – Andy Lau toplines this taut, fact-based thriller about a Hong Kong actor who is kidnapped in China by four criminals posing as police. The real cops have 24 hours to come up with a ransom to save the guy. Sheng Deng (Police Story: Lockdown and Little Big Soldier) directs. It was nominated for two awards at last year's Golden Horse Film Festival and has scored positive reviews.
• Eternity (ที่รัก, Tee Rak) – Award-winning Thai indie writer-director Sivaroj Kongsakul recounts a rural Thai-Chinese upbringing in this haunting, heartfelt drama that was inspired by the death of his father and the romance of his parents. It won the Tiger Award at the 2010 International Film Festival Rotterdam and also took prizes in Deauville and Hong Kong.
• W. – Chonlasit Upanigkit, a young filmmaker who sought out for talent in the film-editing suite, made his directorial debut with the enigmatic W., which was his student film. Originally three hours long, it was trimmed down to its two-hour bare essence and won critical acclaim in 2014. It's the story of a disoriented young woman who is thrown into the deep end of college life.

There's actually a screening of the musical tonight, but it is invitation only. Public screenings begin tomorrow night at SF World. Tickets are free and will be handed out 30 minutes before the shows – get your place in line well before that ensure you have a decent seat. For the schedule, please see the SF Cinemas website.

The Friese-Greene Club – Heineken? Don't even think about it ordering one if you see Blue Velvet at the Club tonight. It's part of monthlong tribute to cult director David Lynch. Tomorrow's "controversial" film is 2005's Hard Candy, about a teenage girl seeking revenge against a pedophile. And Saturday has the second of three screenings this month of Trump: What's the Deal?, a revealing 1999 documentary that is reportedly "the movie Trump doesn't want you to see." It costs 150 baht. Sunday has another of the films shot by the late British cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, the ahead-of-its-time dystopian sci-fi sports drama Rollerball, from 1975. And next Wednesday is another entry from Denmark's Dogme 95 school, Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark, starring Bjork. Shows are at 8pm. The FGC is down an alley next to the under-renovation Queen's Park Imperial Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 22. For more details, check the club's Facebook page.

Alliance Française – There are two movies to list this week – a "kids' movie" on Saturday and the usual Wednesday night screening. First up at 2pm on Saturday is The Painting (Le tableau), which has characters in an unfinished painting coming into conflict. Three of them team up for an adventure in which they leave the painting in search of the artist. And then the next usual Wednesday night screening will be Party Girl, a 2014 comedy-drama about an ageing nightclub hostess who decides to settle down and get married.

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Take note

Way too many movies to deal with this week, as distributors and cinema chains work to get a few titles off their books and clear the decks ahead of next week, when the main focus will be on Warner Bros' big superhero tentpole, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Meanwhile, the Salaya International Documentary Film Festival is continuing to offer updates on on its sixth edition, which runs from March 26 to April 3 at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center and the Film Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom. Watch the Facebook page as details emerge.

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening February 4-10, 2016

The Revenant

After several months of delays, The Revenant finally comes to Thailand.

Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, an Oscar-winner for last year's Birdman, the fact-based historical adventure is the account of American frontiersman Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), who was attacked by a bear and then betrayed and left for dead by his hunting party in the early 1800s. He claws his way out of a shallow grave and goes on an epic journey through the snow to take revenge.

Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson and Will Poulter also star.

As has been touted in the numerous stories released to promote the film during its vigorous awards-season campaign, The Revenant was made under often-punishing conditions, plunging DiCaprio into frozen Canadian rivers and into live animal carcasses. Despite the cold weather and hardships, the production had trouble locating places to film snow. The crew eventually was forced to pack up and leave Canada, trekking to the far southern tip of Argentina to find adequate amounts of the white stuff.

Much-hyped, The Revenant won three Golden Globe Awards and is the leading Academy Award nominee, with 12 Oscar nods, including including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for DiCaprio (his fourth acting nom and likely his to win), Supporting Actor for Hardy and Best Cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki.

Critical reception is generally positive. Rated 15+

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Also opening

Room – While The Revenant has garnered much of the attention this awards season with its very prominent campaigning, the small indie feature Room has quietly been racking up accolades for its performances by Brie Larson and young Jacob Tremblay. The story is about a woman and her five-year-old son who have been held captive in a single room for years. One day, the mom sees a chance for the boy to escape, allowing him to experience the real world for the first time. It's nominated for four Academy Awards – Best Picture, Best Director for Lenny Abramson (Frank), Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay. Critical reception is almost universally positive. Rated 13+

The Danish Girl – One of the first patients to undergo sexual reassignment surgery is covered in this highly fictionalized historical drama, which has been winning awards and nominations. Alicia Vikander and Eddie Redmayne star as a Danish painter couple whose relationship evolves after the wife asks her husband to pose as a woman for a portrait. This awakens a longing inside, and the husband decides he is a she named Lili. Directed by Tom Hooper (The King's Speech, Les Misérables), The Danish Girl has been a major nominee, with Golden Globe, Academy Award and Bafta nods for both Vikander and Redmayne, who was a big winner last year for his turn as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. Critical reception is generally positive. This opened in a sneak preview last week and now moves to general release. Rated 18+

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – Zombie-comedy hijinks meet Jane Austen in this horror romp that has heroine Elizabeth Bennett (Lily James) and her socialite gal pals as highly-trained martial arts warriors. They kick into high gear to combat an undead plague. But the willful Elizabeth must put also aside her differences with the snobby Mr Darcy (Sam Riley) to defeat the zombie menace. Critical reception is mixed. Rated 15+

Dirty Grandpa – Just before his wedding, a strait-laced young man (Zac Efron) is tricked into driving his recently widowed grandfather (Robert De Niro) to Florida. The foul-mouthed old man wants to cut loose, and indulge in the booze, drugs and sex on offer during the college Spring Break. Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation) also stars. This movie has been widely reviled by critics and has been termed among the worst and most embarrassing of the late-career efforts of De Niro. Rated 18+

Extraction – I imagine Bruce Willis banks in the same place as Robert De Niro. He cashes another paycheck with this drama that mostly went straight to video in the States but has been deemed as good-enough filler for the Thai multiplexes. The Die Hard star is a retired CIA operative who is taken hostage by terrorists. His only hope for rescue is his son (Kellan Lutz), a deskbound CIA analyst, who launches an unsanctioned rescue mission. Gina Carano (Haywire) also stars. Critical reception is overwhelmingly negative. Rated 15+

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Also showing

The Friese-Greene Club – David Bowie, Alan Rickman and Haskell Wexler, all beloved film figures we lost in the past month or so, are paid tribute in February at the Club. Rickman is a ghost humorously haunting his widow (Juliet Stevenson) in tonight's offering, the 1990 romantic comedy Truly, Madly, Deeply. Cinematographer Wexler's talents are on display in 1966's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which also showcases the abilities of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton as a bickering couple. Saturdays are devoted to "Variety's 'kinkiest movies ever made", a list that exists as a backlash to Fifty Shades of Grey, which the Club hates. This week's entry is Secretary, with James Spader in one of his creepiest roles. He's the sadomasochistic boss of a new secretary (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Sundays are devoted to director Billy Wilder, starting with the 1944 film-noir thriller Double Indemnity, starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson. Bowie's films screen on Wednesdays. He's a vampire in next week's offering, The Hunger, a pre-Top Gun effort by Tony Scott. Shows are at 8pm. The FGC is down an alley next to the under-renovation Queen's Park Imperial Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 22. For more details, check the club's Facebook page.

Sayonara Setsuko: A Tribute to Setsuko Hara – In the run-up to next weekend's Japanese Film Festival, Filmvirus, the Japan Foundation and the Reading Room join for a tribute to one of Japan’s most revered actresses. Three films will demonstrate her legacy, starting with 1946’s No Regrets for Our Youth by Akira Kurosawa, followed by Yasujiro Ozu’s Late Spring from 1949 and Mikio Naruse’s Repast from 1951. The show starts at 1pm on Sunday, February 7 at The Reading Room on Silom Soi 19.

Cinema Diverse: Director's Choice – Thailand's most celebrated filmmaker, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, is still scheduled to make an appearance on Saturday at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center for the closing entry in the BACC's Cinema Diverse: Director's Choice series for 2015-16. His choice is the 2012 Chilean political drama No, starring Gael García Bernal as an advertising man who takes up work for the scrappy "No" campaign that ousted General Augusto Pinochet in a 1988 national plebiscite. Pablo Larraín directs. “This film makes me realize that we were born to be puppets. Our strings are being pulled by different forces. Even the word “Democracy” has its own agenda. By the time we grow up and see the strings, we cannot cut them. All we can do is smile as the scripts tell us to. So much so that sometimes we think that our freedom and happiness are real,” Apichatpong says in translated remarks on the BACC website. He and Bangkok Post film critic Kong Rithdee will host a discussion following the screening. It's a free event, with seats available on a first-come, first-served basis. If you want to go, you'll probably need to queue up early for registration, which opens at 4.30pm. The screening is at 5.30pm in the 220-seat fifth-floor auditorium.

German Open Air Cinema – The crime farce Suck Me Shakespeer closes out the Goethe Institut's annual outdoor screening series. A critically acclaimed 2013 box-office hit, Suck Me Shakespeer follows an ex-convict criminal who lands a job teaching rowdy teenagers at a school that was built over the place he buried stolen loot. The show is at 7.30pm on Tuesday, February 9, outdoors at the Goethe-Institut on Sathorn Soi 1. Meanwhile, the Goethe's regular German Film Series continues with monthly screenings at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center and at the Film Archive. And the Archive and the Goethe have joined for Wim Wenders: A Retrospective, which will feature nine of his films, including a Lumpini Park screening of Wings of Desire on February 25 and the first 3D screening at the Film Archive, with Pina on March 5.

Alliance Française – The AFThailande.org website appears to be down. There's Facebook, but it's not the same. In the meantime, I have two movies to list. First, there is a "kids' movie", a 2pm Saturday show of U, a fairy tale about a unicorn that befriends a lonely imprisoned princess. And then the usual free French film next Wednesday is Le Petit Lieutenant, a 2004 crime drama about a fresh academy graduate from Le Havre getting picked for the Paris vice squad and partnered with a senior officer who is old enough to be his mother. She's played by Nathalie Baye. It's at 7pm on Wednesday, February 10, at the Alliance.

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Sneak preview

Carol – Another of the big titles of awards season, Carol has been widely praised for its performances by Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara as women in a taboo lesbian relationship in the U.S. in the 1950s. Blanchett is the housewife Carol who attracts the curious eyes of shopgirl and aspiring photographer Therese (Mara). They gradually grow closer while Carol is in the midst of a messy divorce. Todd Haynes (I'm Not There, Far from Heaven) directs. Listed among the year's best by many, many critics, Carol has six Academy Award nominations, including best actress for Blanchett and supporting actress for the co-lead Mara. Critical reception is wildly positive. It's in sneak previews from around 8 nightly in most multiplexes before opening in general release next Thursday.