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 June 2-8, 2016

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows

The pizza-loving martial-arts heroes in half-shells are back to save New York in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, which involves the emergence of a mysterious purple ooze that turns humans into animals.

Returnees from the 2014 entry in the franchise include Megan Fox as reporter April O'Neil and Will Arnett as her wisecracking cameraman. Stephen Amell from TV's Arrow joins the cast as the hockey-masked vigilante Casey Jones, and Tyler Perry is a new villain, the mad scientist who created the ooze.

Critical reception is just beginning to register. It's in 3D in some cinemas, including IMAX. Rated G

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Also opening

Me Before You – A quirky young woman takes a job as a caretaker to a wealthy young man, embittered after he is paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. Emilia Clarke from TV's Game of Thrones stars, along with Sam Claflin. It is based on a novel by British writer JoJo Moyes, who also wrote the screenplay. Critical reception is mixed. This opened in sneak previews over the weekend and now moves to wider release. Rated G

Mr. Right – Sam Rockwell and Anna Kendrick topline this indie-leaning comedy about a heartbroken young woman who falls for a stranger who turns out to be a hitman with a sense of justice. Tim Roth also stars along with Anson Mount, James Ransone and RZA. The script is by up-and-coming screenwriter Max Landis, son of former leading Hollywood figure John Landis. Max's previous credits include Chronicle and Victor Frankenstein. Critical reception is mixed. Rated 15+

High Strung – A street-busking violinist (musician-actor Nicholas Galitzine) falls for a classically trained ballerina (Keenan Kampa) and they decide to work together to take part in a big dance competition. Critical reception is mixed. Rated G

Timeline Next Gen (Timeline เพราะรัก..ไม่สิ้นสุด 2, Timeline Pror Rak .. Mai Sin Sut Song) – This is a followup to a 2013 indie gay romance, offering more stories of couples of various ages. Rated 15+

Housefull 3 – In London, three young men set out to impress the protective father of three wealthy and attractive daughters. This is the third entry in a hit Bollywood comedy franchise headed by Punjabi superstar Akshay Kumar, following the first in 2010  and the second in 2012. Other stars are Abhishek Bachchan, Riteish Deshmukh, Jacqueline Fernandez, Nargis Fakhri, Lisa Haydon and Boman Irani. 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

The Friese-Greene Club – June's schedule focuses strongly on American politics with documentaries and dramas on Wednesday and Thursday. There are also foreign films made in Thailand, with classics on Friday and "not so classic" on Saturday. This is a run-up to the upcoming Thailand International Film Destination Festival, which focuses on foreign films made in Thailand. Sunday focuses on classic films made 75 years ago. Tonight, it's the first in a series of political dramas, Ides of March, with Ryan Gosling as a political operative who becomes disillusioned after he catches his candidate (George Clooney, who also directed) in a scandal and cover-up. The place is closed tomorrow for a private event, but is back open to general membership on Saturday with Emmanuelle, the infamous soft-core erotic film made in Thailand that was the first in a series of many. Sunday has Hitchcock's Suspicion, starring Cary Grant. 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 Mon âme par toi guérie (One of a Kind), in which a man who has inherited his mother's gift of a healing touch wants nothing do with it. And next Wednesday's French film with English subtitles is Dans l'œil de Buñuel, a made-for-TV documentary on the influential Spanish filmmaker. The shows are at 7pm. Admission for the general public is 100 baht.

Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand – American politics are also on the minds of members of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand and the FCCT's Contemporary World Film Series, which will screen Steven Spielberg's Academy Award-winning Lincoln at 7pm on Monday, June 6. Daniel Day-Lewis stars, giving a remarkable, Oscar-winning performance as America's 16th president as he cuts backroom deals with his Cabinet and Congress to ensure his legacy – the passage of the emancipation proclamation. The screening is courtesy of the U.S. Embassy, which will provide snacks and wine. Entry for non-members is 150 baht plus 100 baht for the snacks. The Contemporary World Film Series will have three shows this month, with Oscar-winning Pakistani short films on June 13 and the Swiss film Le Meraviglie on June 20.

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Sneak preview

The Conjuring 2 – Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga take another outing as Ed and Lorraine Warren, the real-life American ghost-hunting couple who documented the "Amityville horror" and other paranormal encounters. In Conjuring 2, they head to England, to look into the case of the Enfield poltergeist. Franka Potente, Frances O'Connor, Simon McBurney and David Thewlis also star. James Wan, helmer of those Saw and Insidious movies, directs. Critical reception is ghostly, so far. It's screening from around 8 nightly from Saturday until Wednesday in most multiplexes, ahead of the wider release next week.

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Take note

There is yet another film fest coming up – the European Union Film Festival at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld from June 22 to July 3. Tickets will be Bt120.

That's in addition to previously announced events:

• Bangkok Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, June 10-19, Quartier CineArt
• The Third Silent Film Festival in Thailand, June 16-22, Apex Siam Square.
• Singapore Film Festival in Bangkok, June 16 to 19, SF World.

There will also be the Thai Film Archive's screening series in honor of His Majesty the King's 70th anniversary of accession, beginning in July, and the Thailand International Film Destination Festival, also in July. I hope to have details on those events soon.

Also, as mentioned in last week's post, House cinema on RCA is closed until June 15. The 12-year-old boutique twinplex has become worn in places and is undergoing much-needed sprucing up.

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening May 19-25, 2016

X-Men: Apocalypse

Comic-book-obsessed Hollywood turns the page to the X-Men franchise overseen by producer-director Bryan Singer and 20th Century Fox, with X-Men: Apocalypse, in a story that is set in 1983 and deals with the re-emergence of the immortal space-faring entity Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac), who was worshiped as a god in ancient Egypt. He's back with plans to reshape the world to suit his needs and rallies disaffected mutants to serve as his four horsemen, among them the disillusioned Magneto (Michael Fassbender).

To counteract the threat, the telepathic mind-reader Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) puts together his own team of superpowered mutants, under the leadership of his shape-shifting blue-skinned childhood friend and off-and-on enemy Mystique, now rechristened as Raven (Jennifer Lawrence). Somehow, in the battle, Professor X will lose his hair, taking on the shiny-domed appearance he's best known for.

Actors portraying the rookie supers include Nicholas Hoult, Olivia Munn, Evan Peters, Sophie Turner (from Game of Thrones), Tye Sheridan, Lucas Till, Kodi Smit-McKee and Alexandra Shipp. Hugh Jackman, the only constant in the X-Men movie-verse, is also expected to put in an appearance, which isn't a spoiler because they've been teasing the his character's claws in the trailers for months.

X-Men: Apocalypse is the third film in a rebooted franchise that began with X-Men: First Class in 2011 and then 2014's X-Men: Days of Future Past. It is under the banner of 20th Century Fox, and is thus mostly separate from the Disney-owned Marvel Cinematic Universe, even though those threads began to become intertwined with the MCU's Deadpool movie earlier this year.

Critical reception is mixed, making this not as good as Captain America: Civil War but perhaps not as bad as Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. It's in 2D as well as actual 3D in some cinemas, including IMAX. Rated G

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Also opening

Bolshoi Babylon – With yet another comic-book movie flooding theaters, the Documentary Club offers counter-programming with the release of an HBO Documentary Films feature from last year. Bolshoi Babylon exposes divisions in Russia's world-famous ballet troupe after its artistic director Sergei Filin was hit by an acid attack in 2013. Critical reception is generally positive. It's at SF World Cinema at Central World, SF Cinema The Crystal Ratchapruek, SFX The Crystal Ekamai Ram-Indra and SFX Maya Chiang Mai. For showtimes, please check the Documentary Club Facebook page or SF Cinemas' bookings website. Rated G

Pandemic – Following the outbreak of a virus and the collapse of society, a doctor (Rachel Nichols) and her team head to Los Angeles with the hope of finding uninfected survivors. Alfie Allen (Reek from Game of Thrones), Missi Pyle and Mekhi Phifer also star. Like the recent Hardcore Henry, this is another film made in the first-person point-of-view style, similar to first-person-shooter video games and other media. Critical reception is mixed. This appears to be at SF cinemas, as well as Major Hollywood and Century but not Major Cineplex; it was earlier listed on the leading chain's website and app but seems to have been removed. Rated 18+

Serd (เทริด) – The title means "crown", and alludes to the ornate headdress of the Manorah or Nora classical dance of southern Thailand. Singer-actor Ekachai Srivichai stars in and co-directs this drama. He portrays the ailing father of a young man named Singh (Paisan Khunnu) who rebels against family tradition and goes off to follow his dreams of being a pop musician. Singh then falls in love with Saithip (second runner-up Miss Universe Thailand 2015 Anchalika Na Phatthalung), a young woman who is a Manorah dancer. He is then inspired to return home and follow in his father's footsteps as a Nora master. Winai Kraibutr and Siwat Chotchaicharin also star, and Pakphum Wonjinda co-directs. Rated 15+

Sarbjit – Injustices and rocky India-Pakistan relations are highlighted in this female-centered tale about an Indian farmer who, as the story goes, had a bit too much to drink one night and strayed across the border into Pakistan, where he was captured, accused of spying and terrorism and sent to a prison's death row, where he languished for 23 years. Bollywood leading lady Aishwarya Rai sheds her usual glamorous looks to portray the man's sister Dalbir, who wages a decades-long campaign to clear her brother's name. Randeep Hooda also stars. It's directed by Omung Kumar, who previously did the biopic of Indian female boxer Mary Kom. 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

The Friese-Greene Club – Orson Welles Thursdays continue tonight with Compulsion, which has Welles in front of the lens as a lawyer defending law students in a murder case. Tomorrow's "Over-rated or Under-appreciated?" entry is Peter Greenaway's A Zed and Two Noughts while Saturday has Robert Altman's Hollywood satire The Player, which opens with one of the best-regarded long tracking shots in cinema history. Sunday, it's adventure on the high seas with Edward G. Robinson in Michael Curtiz' The Sea Wolf. Next Wednesday's Jim Jarmusch offering is the unusual and wryly entertaining Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, which has Forest Whitaker as a mob hitman who adheres to the bushido code. It's one of my favorite movies. 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.

Cinema Diverse: Director's Choice – The Female Perspective – The Bangkok Art and Culture Center's Cinema Diverse begins a new season this Saturday with Soraya Nakasuwan leading off the first in a series of screenings of films chosen by Thai female filmmakers. Soraya made her breakthrough with the 2007 commercially released documentary Final Score, about schoolboys struggling to prepare for the crucial, life-changing university entrance exams. She has chosen The Pearl Button, a nature documentary by Chilean director Patricio Guzmán, on the indigenous people of Chile’s remote Tierra del Fuego archipelago. “The Pearl Button tells the story of the history of Chile and how that history is profoundly intertwined with the ocean. Jemmy Button was a boy from a small island. He was one of the island's original inhabitants and he was sold in an exchange for a pearl button. Later he was unable to reconnect with his former identity upon returning to the island. The Pearl Button is presented like a film essay in narrative form with breath-taking and delicate cinematography,” says Soraya. Registration opens at 4pm with the show at 5pm on Saturday in the BACC's fifth-floor auditorium. Afterward, there will be question-and-answer time with Soraya, in Thai with English translation. Others taking part in the series are Wanweaw and Weawwan Hongvivatana on July 23, Pimpaka Towira on September 24 and Anocha Suwichakornpong on November 19.

Alliance Française – There is no Friday French movie with Thai subtitles this week because of the Visakha Bucha public holiday. Next Wednesday at 7pm, there's a French film with English subtitles, the 2015 romance La belle saison (Summertime), in which a French farmgirl moves to 1970s Paris and falls in love with a woman, a militant feminist schoolteacher. The next French film with Thai subtitles is on Friday, May 27. Admission for the general public is 100 baht.

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Take note

Details are beginning to emerge about the third edition of the Silent Film Festival in Thailand, which will have a 1922 adaptation of Hamlet as part of its program running from June 16 to 22 at the Lido and Scala cinemas in Siam Square.

Stay tuned also, for news of a local screening or screenings of Santi-Vina, a historic 1954 Thai romantic drama that was "lost" and resurfaced to be shown this year at the Cannes Film Festival.

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening April 27-May 4, 2016

Captain America: Civil War

With Captain America: Civil War, Marvel Studios offers a more brightly lit and quippier counterpoint to the drab darkness of the DC comics films.

Like DC's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Marvel's new Captain America movie pits top comic-book heroes against one another.

Here, the eternal Boy Scout, Steve "Captain America" Rogers, sees a threat in a plan by politicians to make superheroes accountable for all the collateral damage they are causing. It's understandable, I guess, given how Manhattan was ripped apart in the first Avengers movie and then Washington, DC took a big hit in Captain America: Winter Soldier.

The complex military industrialist Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man, is on board with the politicians' scheme to keep the Avengers in check, but Rogers isn't so sure. So it's Cap and his team on one side and Iron Man and others on another.

Chris Evans returns as Cap, along with the core team that includes Anthony Mackie as Falcon, Sebastian Stan as Cap's former friend Bucky (now the damaged and brainwashed Winter Soldier), the archer Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and the supernatural-powered Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen)

Also back in action is Scarlett Johansson as conflicted anti-heroine Black Widow.

Robert Downey Jr. joins the proceedings this time out as Iron Man, adding his snappy one-liners, and basically making this Captain America movie an Avengers movie or another Iron Man movie. Don Cheadle is in there as well, as Iron Man's sidekick War Machine, along with Paul Bettany, the voice of longtime Stark family servant Jarvis, now the super cyber entity Vision.

And watch for a special appearance by the new Spider-Man, Tom Holland. Spidey was formerly trapped solely in Sony's web of Marvel Comic movies. With yet another new Sony Spider-Man series set to start next year, the webslinging teen hero has been freed up for crossover action in the Disney-owned Marvel Studios cinematic universe.

Many, many other supers will take part as well, introducing Chadwick Boseman as Black Panther and tossing in Paul Rudd as Ant-Man.

It's directed by the Russo brothers, Anthony and Joe, frequent TV-comedy hands who won accolades for their work on Winter Soldier. This doesn't come out until May 6 in the U.S., but, in a positive sign, many critics have already been allowed to see it, and are giving it good reviews. It's in converted 3D in some cinemas, including IMAX. Opens today.  Rated G

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Also opening

The Idol – It's pretty rare for a Palestinian film to hit our screens, but I suppose this fact-based musical biopic makes commercial sense in a country where TV talent shows are a primary diversion, and so many of the movie and TV stars and popular musicians are former contestants of reality-TV talent shows. The drama covers the life of Mohammed Assaf, a young Palestinian musician who performed at weddings in refugee camps in Gaza. He went on to win on TV's Arab Idol in 2013, found worldwide fame and put Palestine in the spotlight. Tawfeek Barhom portrays the singer and Hany Abu-Assad directs. It screened at last year's Toronto International Film Festival and has been well-received by critics. Opens Thursday. It's in limited release in a handful of Major Cineplex outlets plus Apex in Siam Square, in the original Arabic with English and Thai subtitles. Rated G

Terra Formars – They are terraformers. On Mars. Get it? Terra Formars is yet another live-action adaptation of yet another popular Japanese comic series, and is much anticipated by fans of manga and Japanese pop culture. The prolific cult-film director Takashi Miike helms this big-budget effort, which was filmed in Iceland. Stars include Rinko Kikuchi and Rila Fukushima along with Kane Kosugi. Bit like Starship Troopers, the story deals with a small unit of soldiers who are fighting mutated cockroaches, giant bugs that were originally installed to help colonize the Red Planet. Opens Friday. It's Thai-dubbed in most places but the Japanese soundtrack with English and Thai subtitles is available in the usual downtown cinemas, including Apex Siam Square, Paragon, Quartier, Esplanade Ratchada, SFW CentralWorld and SFC Terminal 21. Rated G

Baaghi – A lot of Bollywood films, and other films, TV series, commercials, music videos, etc. from India, are made in Thailand. Local production-services company Benetone handles many of those projects, and they worked on Baaghi, which is actually set in Thailand. New-face leading man Tiger Shroff, along with Shradda Kappoor and Sudheer Babu star. It's the story of former college chums who fell in love with the same woman. Years later, she is abducted and is being held in Thailand, bringing the two former friends together again as fierce enemies. 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

Alliance Française – Lots of French film activities to report, in line with the Alliance's expansion of its movie programming. As covered in last week's update, tonight's French film with English subtitles is Heat Wave (Coup de chaud), a murder mystery that's set during a hot time in a small African town. Friday's French film with Thai subtitles is School of Babel, a comedy-drama about a special school in Paris for immigrant children. And there's a Saturday matinee "kids' movie", the 2010 animated Une vie de chat (A Cat in Paris), about a thieving feline who looks after a little girl. And the May schedule opens next Wednesday with the English-subbed Vincent, about a young man with secret superpowers. Shows are at 7pm (except the Saturday matinee, which starts at 2pm). Admission is 100 baht for the general public.

The Friese-Greene Club – April winds down with one more spy movie tonight, Carol Reed's Our Man in Havana with Alec Guinness. The club has a private event on Thursday, but is back open on Friday for a "quirky eighties" movie, Parents by director and often-seen character actor Bob Balaban. And the month closes out on Saturday with the dystopian drama Children of Men. For May, the club's schedule ponders the question, "Over-rated or Under-appreciated?" and then covers four distinctive auteur directors and one iconic actor. Wednesdays have the American indie director Jim Jarmusch while Thursdays are devoted to the great Orson Welles. Fridays have the artful eroticism of Britain's Peter Greenaway while Saturdays feature the overlapping dialogue and sprawling casts of America's Robert Altman. And Sundays, see, are devoted to Edward G. Robinson, starting with his film-noir classic with Bogie and Bacall, Key Largo. Wednesdays are mostly the early, under-appreciated efforts of Jarmusch, starting with 1984's Stranger Than Paradise, while next Thursday is the 75th anniversary screening of the classic film, Welles' Citizen Kane. 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.

The Special Screening of Three Classic Asean Films – The most-popular tickets at the Bangkok Asean Film Festival were the "Asean Classics", three older films that were screening alongside newer entries from all the Asean bloc countries. Those three films will be screened again on Sunday at the Film Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom. They are the 1972 Cambodian fantasy The Snake Man at 1pm, 1954's After the Curfew from Indonesia at 3pm and 1975's Manila in the Claws of Light at 5pm. I actually saw Manila, and it is well worth making the trip to the Archive if you missed the Bangkok screening. The film recently underwent digital restoration and looks amazing. It's a gripping and gritty drama about the working class in the city. Please note that The Snake Man is Thai-dubbed with no English subtitles, but the others have both English and Thai subtitles. For details, check the Facebook events page.

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Take note

I've gone ahead and issued my weekly update here a day early, owing to the big-tentpole opening of Captain America: Civil War, one day earlier than usual. Notably, Captain America doesn't open until next week in the U.S., so movie-goers in Thailand are among the first to feast eyes.

Tomorrow, the usual day movies tend to open here, there is scheduled to be one more new release, the Palestinian entry Idol.

For some reason, the Japanese film Terra Formars is not opening until Friday, which is unusual. And then there's the Bollywood release Baaghi, which opens on Friday, as per usual with the Bollywood films in Bangkok.

There are public holidays next week, including a Monday substitution for Labor Day on May 1, to give the working-class comrades and their elite overseers an extra day of rest. And then next Thursday is Coronation Day. But it appears the movies will shift back to their regular schedule of opening on Thursday.

Coming up, the dates for the third edition of the Silent Film Festival in Thailand are set for June 16 to 22, 2016 at the Lido and Scala cinemas. That's according to the latest newsletter from the Film Archive. Hopefully, more details will emerge soon.

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening April 6-12, 2016

Luang Phee Jazz 4G

Today's Chakri Memorial Day public holiday kicks off anticipatory celebrations of next week's Songkran Thai New Year, which is a three-day public holiday from next Wednesday to Friday. So, this week and next, the movies are being released a day or two early in hopes that the idled government workers, corporate staffers and bank employees will want to spend their time out of the office paying to see new movies.

The big Thai tentpole is the Songkran-flavored Luang Phee Jazz 4G (หลวงพี่แจ๊ส 4G, a.k.a. Joking Jazz 4G). It's about a bespectacled, gauge-eared, tattooed hipster with a checkered past who is hiding out as a monk at an isolated mountaintop temple. He's played by hipster comedian Phadung “Jazz Chuanchuen” Songsang. He and his temple-boy friends have an adventure as they are sent to Bangkok on a mission during Songkran.

Directed by Poj Arnon, Luang Pee Jazz 4G is the first release under the prolific producer-director's rebooted Film Guru production marque, which has been relaunched in a new partnership with Major Cineplex, the Kingdom's biggest movie-theater chain.

Poj and Film Guru were formerly associated with Phranakorn Film, a film studio owned by the Thana Cineplex chain of upcountry cinemas. Phranakorn released a string of hit country comedies in the early 2000s, including the original Luang Phee (Holy Man) movie in 2005.

Originated by comedian, actor and director Note Chernyim, the first Luang Phee Teng starred ubiquitous comedian and TV host Pongsak "Theng Terdterng" Pongsuwan as a former street hood who has entered the monkhood and ministers to colorful residents in a provincial town. Other Luang Phee Teng installments followed in 2008 and 2010, with rapper Joey Boy and actor-musician Krissada Sukosol Clapp taking respective turns as the saffron-clad lead character. As each movie stands alone, with different characters in the lead, they aren't really sequels but are part of a franchise all the same.

The Nation has more on this latest Luang Phee movie, which is the fourth in the series. Rated 15+

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Also opening

The Huntsman: Winter’s War – Universal Pictures is borrowing more than a couple pages from Disney as it attempts to spin its 2012 live-action Snow White and the Huntsman film into an epic franchise. A bit like Frozen, though likely not near as much fun, this new picture is the tale of cold sister royals in a wintry realm. Charlize Theron returns as the Evil Queen Ravenna, who is joined by her sister, the Ice Queen Freya, played by Emily Blunt. They ban love from the land and are cruel. So it's up to one of the Evil Queen's former soldiers, the huntsman Eric (Chris Hemsworth) and his comrade-in-arms (and secret lover) Sara (Jessica Chastain) to fight back. In addition to conventional 2D, it's in converted 3D, including IMAX. Critical reception is mostly negative. Rated 13+

The Himalayas – This fact-based adventure story recounts the bond between famed South Korean mountaineer Um Hong-kil and plucky younger climbers, culminating in the risky scaling of Everest by the senior climber, who comes out of retirement for a very meaningful ascent. Critical reception has been mixed, but it beat Star Wars: The Force Awakens at the South Korean box office. It's in Korean with English and Thai subtitles at the True Screen X at the Quartier CineArt. That's the panoramic 270-degree cinema in the ritzy EmQuartier mall. Rated G

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Also showing

The Friese-Greene Club – Tonight, Robert Redford is a young CIA analyst in over his head in 3 Days of the Condor. Tomorrow, it's Bruce Lee's The Way of the Dragon, which has him in Rome, helping a relative defeat Italian mobsters. A fur-covered Chuck Norris is a featured fighter. On Friday, it's Static, an early feature-film effort by Mark Romanek, the innovative director of many classic music videos. Saturday has dystopian time-travelling by Bruce Willis in Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys while Sunday is Akira Kurosawa's mystery thriller Rashomon. Please take note of the Club's new policy on smoking, which snuffs the butts from 7.15 until the movie is over. If you've visited before and were bothered by the smoke but didn't say anything except to vote with your feet, maybe give the place another chance. 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 – I now have a belated clarification on the programming changes at the Alliance, which last Friday began weekly screenings of French films with Thai subtitles. That's in addition to the usual Wednesday screenings of French films with English subs as well as a "kid's movie" on one Saturday each month. This week, owing to Chakri Day, there is no English-subbed screening. Friday has Rengaine (Hold Back), about the taboo romance between a black Christian man and an Arab Muslim woman in Paris. It's at 7pm. Again, it will screen in French with Thai subtitles. Also, there is now a cost for these movies – 100 baht for non-members, 50 baht for members and Alliance students. Take note that there will be no films at the Alliance next week, because of the Songkran public holiday. The films resume on April 20 and April 22.

German Film Series – In East Germany in 1989, as the Berlin Wall is set to come crumbling down, a little girl wants to build a machine to bring home her uncle who escaped to the West. Meanwhile, an East German police officer tries to keep order. It's Sputnik, part of the German Film Series put on monthly by the Goethe-Institut. The show is at 1pm on Sunday at the Film Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom, and at 6pm on Tuesday in the little FA Cinematheque on the second floor of the Bangkok Art and Culture Center (not the fifth floor auditorium). For details, check the Goethe website.

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Take note

As mentioned at the top of this week's post, the movies are being released a day or two earlier during the Songkran holiday period. Usually, new movies are released on Thursdays.

Next week, there will be program changes on Tuesday, Thai New Year's Eve, with the much-anticipated Stephen Chow comedy The Mermaid. and sneak previews for the Emma Watson Chilean coup drama Colonia. More new releases are set to follow next Wednesday on the actual Songkran Day with the Thai horror Take Me Home, Disney's live-action adaptation of The Jungle Book and the Terrence Malick head-scratcher Knight of Cups. So see you next Tuesday.

Looking past Songkran, the FCCT will have a one-two punch of screenings in its Contemporary World Film Series, with Deepa Mehta's Earth on April 19 and the Pakistani drama Dukhtar (Daughter) on April 25.

And there will be a second edition of the Asean Film Festival, organized by the Culture Ministry, which is keen to promote Bangkok the hub of Southeast Asian art and culture. According to a source, this year's fest runs from April 21 to 26 at SF World, with plans is to show classic films from neighboring countries, 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 from 1975. I hope to have more on that soon.

Bangkok Cinema Scene: March 24-30, 2016

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Good old Batman. Just a regular dude, looking out for the rest of us mere mortals. He's always suspicious, always wary. And for every superhero or supervillain that emerges from outer space or out of a vat of chemicals, Batman studies their powers and abilities and methodically comes up with ways to defeat them, just in case.

Superman is his biggest test yet. Who is this guy in the red cape? Where does he come from? How does he get his powers? Batman, the Great Detective, figures it out in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Controversially, this latest version of Batman is played by Ben Affleck, who takes over the iconic role from Christian Bale, who portrayed the Cape Crusader in the Dark Knight Trilogy of Christopher Nolan. Having already been featured in the comic-book rodeo, playing a lackluster Daredevil years ago (the Netflix series does Daredevil justice), his reading of Bruce Wayne/Batman is a world-weary, been-there-and-done-that type. It seems the brooding darkness of the Nolanverse is carrying over into the DC Extended Universe.

But it's the comic-book-crazy 300 and Watchmen director Zack Snyder who helms this latest iteration, carrying on his meticulous and devoted panel-by-panel work from Man of Steel, which introduced Henry Cavill in the role of Superman and his bespectacled alter-ego newspaper reporter Clark Kent.

Here, Warner Bros.' DC Comics movie franchise takes further shape as it seeks to match Disney, Marvel Comics and the Avengers. Not only does this movie have the essential element Batman but they also rope in Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot, making her debut) and arch-nemesis Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg). Jeremy Irons joins as Bruce Wayne's butler and crime-fighting partner Alfred, with Amy Adams, Laurence Fishburne and others continuing in their roles from Man of Steel. It's all in service of the eventual Justice League movie, but first we'll get Suicide Squad and standalone films for Wonder Woman, Aquaman, The Flash and others.

Critics have been desperate to trash this film since it was first announced. They don't care for Snyder, aren't crazy about Cavill as Superman and have mixed feelings about the Batfleck. Warner Bros. kept them at bay, imposing strict embargoes. But the reviews are starting to trickle in. It's in converted 3D in some cinemas, including IMAX. Rated 13+

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Also opening

Risen – Praise Jesus. Our cinemas become churches in observance of Easter Sunday. In Judea in 33AD, veteran Roman military tribune Clavius (Joseph Fiennes) begins to question his beliefs and spirituality as he works to uncover the truth of what happened to a certain crucified troublemaker. Basically, it's a straight-faced and faith-based version of the movie-within-the-movie that George Clooney was making in Hail, Caesar! Cliff Curtis and Tom Felton also star. It's directed by Kevin Reynolds, who is best known for his work as Kevin Costner's go-to guy (he actually called action on the famed buffalo-hunt scene in Dances with Wolves). Critical reception is mixed, with praise for the performance by Fiennes. Rated 13+

Trumbo – One of Hollywood’s highest-paid screenwriters, Dalton Trumbo, is caught up in the anti-communist crusades in the 1950s and is banned from working. Friends turn their backs on him, he's sent to prison and he veers toward financial ruin, but he continues to produce award-winning scripts, giving the credit to others or writing under a pseudonym. Bryan Cranston stars and he earned Academy Awards and Golden Globe nominations for his portrayal. Helen Mirren is the scandal-addicted columnist Hedda Hopper, and she also earned a Golden Globe nomination. Other stars include Louis C.K., Alan Tudyk, Diane Lane, Michael Stuhlbarg and John Goodman. Critical reception is generally positive. It's in limited release, playing only at the Lido in Siam Square.

Rocky Handsome – Rock-hard abs and explosions combine in this violent Bollywood thriller starring John Abraham and his gym membership. He's a father who embarks on a deadly rampage of revenge after his adorable little eight-year-old daughter is killed. 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

Salaya International Documentary Film Festival – The Thai Film Archive's sixth annual documentary fest opens at 1pm on Saturday with The Scala, a 50-minute made-for-TV piece by Thai filmmaker Aditya Assarat, who takes his cameras inside Siam Square's imperiled landmark cinema for what he reckons is one last look around. The Scala is part of a special Power of Asian Cinema package, co-produced by the Busan International Film Festival and Korean Broadcasting. Other programs are Sense and Sensibility, which groups together documentaries by female directors, and the Asean Documentary Competition, which has entries this year from Vietnam, Myanmar, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia. A major highlight is The Memory of Justice, a 1976 film that looked at wartime atrocities, by the Germans in World War II, and by the Americans in Vietnam. Running 278 minutes, the film was recently restored and presented at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Another marathon screening will be Homeland: Iraq Year Zero, an award-winning chronicle of everyday life in Iraq before and after the U.S. invasion. It runs 334 minutes and will be presented in its entirety. The fest is at the Film Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom, from Saturday through Monday, and then from Tuesday shifts over to the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, where it runs through April 3. The schedule is embedded below. You can state your interest in attending the opening film and ceremony on the Facebook events page. For more details, please check the fest's Facebook page.

The Friese-Greene Club – There's one more scheduled screening on Saturday of Trump: What's the Deal?, a revealing 1999 documentary that is reportedly "the movie Trump doesn't want you to see." A specially licensed screening, the cost is 150 baht. The place has a private event tonight, but is back open tomorrow with the controversial erotic thriller Irreversible by Gaspar Noe and a Douglas Slocombe cinematography effort in the historical drama Lady Jane on Sunday. Next Wednesday, there's one more great Danish film, 1994's Nightwatch, starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Game of Thrones) as a morque watchman who gets caught up in a murder case. 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 – A young man sets out to find his missing grandmother, who escaped from an old-folks home, in Les souvenirs (Memories). It screens at 7pm on Wednesday at the Alliance.

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Take note

The Bangkok Art and Culture Centre has posted the line-up for this year's Cinema Diverse: Director's Choice series, taking the added theme of The Female Perspective and recruiting prominent female Thai filmmakers to show thought-provoking films and then talk about them. The opener is on May 21, with Soraya Nakasuwan showing The Pearl Button from Chile. Others will be twin-sisters Wanweaw and Weawwan Hongvivatana on July 23, producer-director Pimpaka Towira on September 24 and producer-director Anocha Suwichakornpong on November 19.

An article in The Nation last Friday details efforts by researcher Philip Jablon and the Southeast Asia Movie Theater Project to raise awareness about the plight of old movie palaces. It includes updates on the Lido and Scala, which will now hopefully remain open through 2018, as well as two old, shuttered standalone cinemas, The Prince and the Nang Loeng, that could reopen.

Meanwhile, Khao Sod English had a recent article on strong-arm practices being used by theater owners to force movie distributors into paying for ads in newspapers. The story says that distributors who didn't make the big ad buys found their films trounced out of cinemas in favor of movies by distributors who did pay. Explains a lot about how things work in Thai cinemas and why some movies tend to be harder to track down than others. If you are a smaller, independent distributor, you are going to have to work harder to keep your movie in front of eyeballs.