Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening November 5-11, 2015

Spectre

Despite expressing his weariness of the role, "blond Bond" Daniel Craig is back for a fourth outing as Agent 007 in Spectre, the 24th entry in the action-packed James Bond film franchise.

He's on the trail of the shadowy organization Spectre. Meanwhile, Bond's boss M (Ralph Fiennes) is in a power struggle for control of his spy agency and the future of the lethal "00" program.

Directed by Sam Mendes, Spectre marks the return of the Spectre name to the Bond franchise. Originally an acronym standing for Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion, the use of Spectre as a plot point in Bond films had been caught in a rights dispute stretching back to the "unofficial" Bond movie Thunderball. With those legal issues sorted, Bond can now officially battle Spectre as well as his perennial nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

The criminal mastermind Blofeld is portrayed in the new film by Christoph Waltz, the Austrian character actor who owes his career to Quentin Tarantino and Inglourious Basterds.

Joining the proceedings are actresses Léa Seydoux (Blue is the Warmest Color) and Monica Bellucci (Shoot 'Em Up) as the newest "Bond girls", and wrestler Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy) as an assassin. Returnees from previous Bond outings include Naomi Harris as Ms. Moneypenny and Ben Whishaw as gadget guru Q.

Already released in the U.K., where it broke box-office records, critical reception is mostly praiseworthy. Rated 13+

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Also opening

Hand in the Glove – Thai and Japanese talents combine both in front of and behind the lens for this quirky indie romantic comedy. Thai actor-musician Chanon Rikulsurakan stars as a glove-clad prince from a fictional country, who is visiting Kumamoto, Japan. Desperate to escape the pressures and protocols of being the heir to the throne, he sneaks out of his hotel and meets a local woman, who accompanies him on sightseeing trips. Directed by Japanese actor-director Yusuke Inaba, it was shot in Kumamoto by Thai cinematographer Pairach Khumwan, who is noted for his work on Thai director Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit’s 36 and Mary Is Happy, Mary Is Happy. Hand in Glove first screened in Bangkok in January during the Japanese Film Festival, so here's a chance for more folks to see it. It's in Japanese with English and Thai subtitles at House on RCA.

Tag – The bloodsoaked spirit of director Kinji Fukasaku and his Battle Royale appear alive and well in Tag, which is directed by prolific Japanese helmer Sion Sono. An adaptation of a novel by Yusuke Yamada, the story, such as it is, has skirt-clad Japanese schoolgirls being mowed down in various gory ways by mysterious malevolent forces. Reina Triendl, Mariko Shinoda and Erina Mano star. It's in Japanese with English and Thai subtitles at Apex and House. It's also showing at select Major Cineplex branches. Rated 18+

The Taking of Tiger Mountain – Hong Kong martial-arts veteran Tsui Hark returns to the scene with this Chinese historical epic, set after World War II, with Liberation Army forces trying to unseat an outlaw warlord and his gang, who have taken over a former Japanese stronghold. Tony Leung Ka-fai, Lin Gengxin and Zhang Hanyu star. Critical reception is leaning to positive. Seems it is Thai-dubbed only. Rated 15+

The Vatican Tapes – A Roman Catholic priest and exorcists from the Vatican encounter a young woman who has been possessed by an ancient satanic force. Michael Peña, Djimon Hounsou, Peter Andersson, Dougray Scott, Kathleen Richardson and Olivia Taylor Dudley star. It's directed by Mark Neveldine in his first solo outing from the Neveldine/Taylor duo, who are best known for their innovative Crank action comedies. Critical reception is mixed. Rated 15+

Baahubali – A prince who was raised as an orphan fights his estranged evil sibling for control of an ancient kingdom in this epic of all epics. It's rumored to be the most expensive movie ever made in India, and features state-of-the-art visual effects, sumptuous costumes and stunning locations. Immensely popular Telugu actor Prabhas stars. 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 – There are two other movies this week in addition to the Alliance's usual Wednesday screening. Tonight and tomorrow, there are Southeast Asian films as part of the Produire au Sud Bangkok film-funding workshop, which is organized by the World Film Festival of Bangkok and the Three Continents Film Festival in Nantes, France. The workshops give up-and-coming independent filmmakers experience in pitching their projects and finding backers to fund their films. Tonight's screening, at 7pm, is the Filipino coming-of-age drama Anita's Last Cha Cha, which was supported by the Produire au Sud Nantes in 2010. And tomorrow at 6.30pm is the Malaysian social satire Men Who Save the World by Liew Seng Tat. It was pitched at Produire au Sud Bangkok in 2008 and screened in the recent Bangkok Asean Film Festival. Both films will also screen in the World Film Festival of Bangkok, which opens on November 13. Next Wednesday, the Alliance has another climate change movie, Tara, voyage au coeur de la machine climatique, a made-for-TV documentary on an Arctic adventure aboard the schooner Tara. It screens at 7pm on Wednesday, November 11, at the Alliance.

Spanish Film Week – Presented by the Embassy of Spain in collaboration with SF Cinemas, the mini-fest has four films screening from tonight until Sunday at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld:

• El Niño – In Gibraltar, a hard-nosed Spanish detective and his female partner track a dangerous criminal known as "the Englishman" (Ian McShane). Meanwhile, a trio of youngsters enter the marijuana trade in hopes of raising the cash they need to open a bar. Directed by Daniel Monzon, El Niño was nominated for more than a dozen Goya Awards (the "Spanish Oscars"), including best director, original screenplay and supporting actor and actress for Eduard Fernandez and Barbara Lennie. It won prizes for production supervision, sound, special effects and song. Screens at 7 tonight.
• Magical Girl – The father of a terminally ill girl wants to make true his daughter's last wish - to have a dress inspired by the main character from "Magical Girl Yukiko", a Japanese animated TV series. As the dad is pushed to the brink in his quest for the expensive dress, he meets various quirky characters, among them a vomit-spewing femme fatale (portrayed by Goya-winning Barbara Lennie) and an unstable ex-con. Screens at 7pm tomorrow.
• 10,000 Km – Alex and Sergi are a young Barcelona couple who are planning to have a baby. Their plans hit a snag when Alex is offered a once-in-a-lifetime job offer to work as a photographer in Los Angeles. It'll take more than modern technology to keep them together. The romantic comedy had many festival appearances, including South by Southwest and Palm Springs, and won several awards, including the Goya for Best New Director for Carlos Marques-Marcet. Screens at 7pm on Saturday.
• Loreak (Flowers) – This Basque-language romantic drama centers on an unfulfilled married woman who begins receiving weekly deliveries of flowers. Her story slowly intertwines with that of a toll-booth attendant and that woman's crane-operator husband. The sophomore feature from the In 80 Days duo of Jose Mari Goenaga and Jon Garano, Loreak won prizes at festivals in San Sebastian and Palm Springs, and was a nominee for best film at the Goyas. Screens at 5pm on Sunday.

Tickets are 120 baht. For more details, check the SF cinemas website.

The Friese-Greene Club – Al Pacino, Takashi Miike, Christopher Guest, contemporary Chinese cinema and the utter pointlessness of it all are the focus of this month's schedule at the Club. Just a handful of the many many films by prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike screen on Thursdays, starting tonight with the gore-filled introduction to his bizarre oeuvre, Ichi the Killer. Fridays are devoted to Christopher Guest and his highly entertaining string of documentary-style comedies, starting tomorrow with the classic rockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, in which Guest co-starred and co-directed with Rob Reiner. Surely, the sound system will be cranked to "11". The club has private events listed this Saturday and Sunday, which pre-empts the regular program of Chinese films (Blind Shift opens the series on November 14) and existential crises movies (opening last Sunday with Magnolia). Next Wednesday is Serpico, with Pacino portraying the corruption-fighting New York cop who became an icon for Thai truckers. More on Serpico in Thailand is at the Southeast Asia Movie Theater Project. 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.

German Film Series – The Goethe-Insitut in Bangkok holds monthly film screenings at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center and the Thai Film Archive. This month's offering is the adventure yarn Measuring the World, about German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and geographer Alexander von Humboldt and their surveys of the world in the 1800s. Detlev Buck (Same Same But Different) directs. It screens at 1pm on Sunday at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom, and at 6pm on Tuesday in the little FA Cinematheque on the second floor of the BACC. For more details, visit www.Goethe.de/bangkok.

Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand – The Club's Contemporary World Film Series closes out another year with a Thai film, the award-winning 2014 romantic drama The Teacher's Diary (คิดถึงวิทยา, Kid Tueng Wittaya). It's the sweetly sentimental tale of two teachers who are posted to an isolated floating schoolhouse a year apart. Despite never having met, they fall in love with one another through a diary they share at the school. Directed by Nithiwat Tharatorn and starring "Ploy" Chermarn Boonyasak and "Bie" Sukrit Wisetkaew, it won many awards for its screenplay, art direction and music. It was also Thailand's submisssion to this year's Oscars. Nithiwat will attend the screening, which is at 7pm on Monday, is supported by the GTH film studio and a wine brand. Admission is 150 baht for non-members and 100 baht for the wine.

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Take note

The 13th World Film Festival of Bangkok is nearly upon us, running from November 13 to 22 at SF World. Highlights include the six-hour-long, three-part arthouse drama Arabian Nights, and two classics by Taiwanese New Cinema stalwart Hou Hsiao-hsien, Dust in the Wind and A Time to Live, A Time to Die. An article in The Nation has more details. Hopefully the festival organizers will update their website soon with a schedule of the screenings.

Bangkok Cinema Scene special: Thailand International Film Destination Festival, February 4-12, 2015

Now in its third year, the Thailand Film Office's Thailand International Film Destination Festival – a showcase of foreign films made in Thailand – has 10 movies screening from Saturday until Wednesday at Paragon Cineplex. The line-up is as follows:

Saturday, February 7

• 5.30pm – The Lost Medallion – Youngsters travel back in time after they encounter a mysterious medallion. They then come to the aid of peaceful islanders who are enslaved by a diabolical warlord. With Q-and-A afterward.
• 8pm – Pernicious – A dream trip to Thailand for some young women turns into a nightmare when they accidently awaken the evil spirit of a murdered child. With director's Q-and-A afterward.

Sunday, February 8

• 5.30pm – The Prince and Me: The Elephant Adventure – A direct-to-video offering in a tween-girl-oriented franchise, the story has the former-commoner princess and her blue-blood husband visiting a fictional Southeast Asian kingdom and getting mixed up in a jungle conflict with the locals. Stars include Selina Lo, doing some decent action sequences, and noted newcomer actor Vithaya Pansringarm (Only God Forgives, The Last Executioner) in his debut role. Of course, a Q-and-A follows.
• 8pm – Pale Moon – Winner of the Audience Award at last year's Tokyo film fest, this Japanese drama follows the moral decline of a housewife and bank employee who suddenly turns into an embezzler and embarks on an affair with a much younger man.

Monday, February 9

• 5.30pm – It's Entertainment – Akshay Kumar stars in this Bollywood comedy as a hapless guy who suddenly learns his true father is a very wealthy man. However, before the rich guy learns he has a son, he dies and leaves his fortune to his dog. Followed by Q-and-A.
• 8pm – Stretch – Infamously, this the film David Carradine was in Bangkok for in 2009 when he died under mysterious circumstances. A French-produced thriller, it's about a disgraced horse-racing jockey who seeks to restart his career in Macau, but runs into conflict with a crooked trainer and local gangsters.

Tuesday, February 10

• 5.30pm – Bikers Kental – A Malaysian guy on a motorcycle journey through Thailand falls for a local lass. Followed by Q-and-A.
• 8pm – Zero Tolerance – Thai director Wych Kaosayananda, infamous for his universally panned Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, returns to the scene with this gritty action film featuring direct-to-video butt-kickers Scott Adkins and Gary Daniels along with Vietnamese star Dustin Nguyen. Followed by Q-and-A.

Wednesday, February 11

• 5.30pm – Last Flight – A Chinese production, this thriller tracks the crew and passengers of a late night flight over the Pacific encountering supernatural phenomena. Ed Westwick of Gossip Girl is among the stars. Followed by Q-and-A.
• 8pm – The Railway Man – Colin Firth stars in this biopic about a former prisoner-of-war from Death Railway of World War II. Taking in the actual Kanchanaburi locations that include the famous railway bridge, the film follows Firth's character as he seeks to make peace with his Japanese captor. Nicole Kidman, Stellan Skarsgaard and Jeremy Irvine also star. Followed by Q-and-A.

Admission is free, but as with most of these "free" festivals there's a catch – you'll have to first register by phone and then pick up your tickets from a special table in the cinema lobby 30 minutes before showtime. To register, call 091-757-0467 or 091-757-1067.

Bangkok Cinema Scene special: Journey through ASEAN, April 27-May 8, 2011

TK Park, the government-sponsored educational media center on the eighth floor of CentralWorld, is back to running regular programs after a closure caused by the fires at the shopping center last year.

This week, TK Park teams up with Film Kawan for the Journey Through ASEAN film series, with a line-up of five youth-oriented movies from across Southeast Asia, starting on Wednesday (April 27).

The screenings are in Mini Theater 1. For details, call (02) 270 1350-4 visit www.TKPark.or.th.

Here's the program:

Mukhsin – This 2006 drama is the third entry in Malaysian director Yasmin Ahmad's Orked trilogy about cross-cultural romances and family dynamics. It has the 10-year-old girl Orked falling in love for the first time when Mukhsin, a 12-year-old boy from a traditional Muslim family, moves to town. Screens at 4.30 on Wednesday, April 27.

Laskar Pelangi (The Rainbow Troops) – Indonesian director Riri Riza's childhood drama deals with 10 schoolboys growing up in the 1970s as they struggle with poverty in their village on a tin-mining island. The movie was a major sensation at the Indonesian box office and won many awards. Screens at 2pm on Saturday, April 30.

Moving to Mars – This British documentary deals with two families of refugees from Burma, tracking their journeys from a camp on the Thai-Burmese border to their new homes in the U.K. Screens at 2pm on Sunday, May 1.

Buddha's Lost Children – This 2006 Dutch documentary is about a Thai Buddhist monk who uses his patience and faith (as well as his Muay Thai skills) to help orphaned children, fight drug abuse and preserve a vanishing way of life. Screens at 2pm on Saturday, May 7.

Homerun – This heartfelt 2003 family drama is directed by popular Singaporean comedian and filmmaker Jack Neo. It's a remake of an Iranian film, Children of Heaven, and is about a poor brother and sister and their adventures over a lost pair of shoes. It's set in 1965, against the backdrop of Singapore's independence from Malaysia and also contains satire about relations between the two countries. Screens at 2pm on Sunday, May 8.

Bangkok Cinema Scene special: FCCT-NETPAC Asian Film Festival

The Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand, in association with the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC) will screen six NETPAC award-winning films over the next three months. The movies are from India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand.

NETPAC, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, is a group of Asian filmmakers, screenwriters, festival programmers and academics. The organization is perhaps best known for its special jury panels at 23 film festivals, including the Bangkok International Film Festival.

It has previously organized conferences on Asian Cinema Heritage and Culture in New Delhi in 2007 and Kuala Lumpur in 2008.

NETPAC also holds the annual Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival in Indonesia.

In collaboration with Australia's Asia Pacific Screen Awards, there's the APSA NETPAC Development Prize, worth US$5,000 to an emerging Asian filmmaker.

NETPAC was also instrumental in the development of AsiaPacificFilms.com, a digital film library that streams artistic and culturally significant films from Asia and the Pacific.

NETPAC has also supported books on Asian cinema.

Many of these now-classic NETPAC award-winning films in the FCCT series will be screened during NETPAC's 2010 Imaging Asia conference in New Delhi from August 19-22. It includes a great line-up of films, among them Uruphong Raksasad's Agrarian Utopia (2009) and Nonzee Nimibutr's ghost romance, Nang Nak (1999), both NETPAC award winners.

The FCCT's film series starts on Thursday, July 22 with Mr. and Mrs. Iyer from India.

The opening was to have been in April, but was postponed because of the red-shirt protests that took place at the Rajprasong Intersection near the FCCT's penthouse club in the Maneeya building at the Chitlom skytrain station.

Admission for non-members is 150 baht and 100 baht more for anyone wanting the food or wine tastings that will offered by the various embassies and sponsors. Here's the line-up:


Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, India – The NETPAC winner from the Locarno International Film Festival in 2002, this drama was noted for its "courage in raising an issue of burning relevance, in a work of cinematic density". Helmed by actress-director Aparna Sen, with cinematography by director Gautam Ghosh, score by tabla maestro Zakir Hussain and a dynamic cast, Mr. and Mrs. Iyer was commercially successful in India and won awards around the world. It screened at the 2003 World Film Festival of Bangkok. A love story set against a background of religious fundamentalism and violence, Mrs. Iyer (Aparna Sen's daughter Konkona Sensharma) is a married conservative Brahmin woman who is travelling with her child by bus to meet her husband. She encounters Raja (Rahul Bose), a young wildlife photographer on the bus. The passengers and their different ages, backgrounds and religions, present a cross-section of India's multi-cultural society. The tenor of the proceedings changes when the bus is stopped by Hindu militants and the bus passengers become divided. Mrs. Iyer discovers that Raja is Muslim and in a panic, she calls him "Mr. Iyer" and they pose as husband and wife while they look for a way out of the violence. Before the screening, India's new ambassador, Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty, will provide a grand feast. Thursday, July 22, 8pm.


Akasa Kusum (Flowers of the Sky), Sri Lanka – Directed by Prasanna Vithanage, who's considered the pioneer of Sri Lanka's New Wave, this is the winner of multiple awards, including the NETPAC Award at the Granada Festival in Cines del Sur, Spain, last year for "its strong portrayal of female characters whose lives, regrets and new beginnings are depicted in a delicate yet convincing way." The doyenne of Sri Lankan cinema, Malini Fonseka, portrays Sandhya, an ageing movie star who rents a room in her home to movie "artistes", most of whom use it for their trysts. Scandal erupts when a young married actress (Dilhani Ekanayake) is caught with her actor-lover in her own home. Shalika the moves into Sandhya's house and the two become close friends. Suddenly, someone totally unknown and unexpected from Sandhya’s past reappears. Fonseka was a nominee for last year's Asian Pacific Screen Awards for her performance. Thursday, July 29, 8pm.


Eliana, Eliana, Indonesia – Director Riri Riza's 2002 drama won the NETPAC Award at the Singapore International Film Festival as well as a Dragons and Tigers special citation at the Vancouver festival. Eliana (Rachel Sayidina) arrives home at the end of a day in which she lost her job and kicked a man in the groin to find her mother (veteran actress Jajang C. Noer), whom she has not seen in five months. Her roommate, Heni (Henidar Amroe), is missing. So the mother and daughter go searching while they work out some of their own issues. Thursday, August 5, 8pm.


Nang Nak, Thailand – Winner of the NETPAC Award at the 2000 International Film Festival Rotterdam, Nang Nak was among the films of the "Thai New Wave" that signaled a resurgence of the Thai film industry as it sparked a new popularity for Thai films with domestic audiences and found a legion of fans and acclaim overseas. Directed by Nonzee Nimibutr from a script by Wisit Sasanatieng, it's a reworking of the famous ghost story "Mae Nak of Phra Nakhon", about a woman who dies in childbirth while her husband is away and when he returns he is unaware that she is a ghost. Inthira Charoenpura and Winai Kraibutr star as Nak and Mak. The screening is courtesy of Cinemasia and NETPAC. Thursday, August 26, 8pm.



Bakal Boys (Children Metal Divers), Philippines – Winner of the NETPAC Award at last year's Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival, director Ralston Jover's docudrama is the heart-tugging story of children who scavenge for scraps in the murky waters of Manila Bay, often risking their lives in the process. The screening is courtesy of Queen Bessie LLC, Apogee Films and NETPAC. Thursday, Septmeber 23, 8pm.


$ELL-OU7! (Sell Out!), Malaysia – This musical satire won the NETPAC Award at the 2008 Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival "for the consummate artistry with which the director satirizes business and media glitz, and his successful attempt at the presentation of the Malaysian context to an international audience, thus generating much optimism for a wider acceptance of Malaysian indie films". Director Yeo Joon Han skewers contemporary Malaysian culture, reality television and even pokes fun at independent-film directors and film festival awards. The story has struggling television presenter Rafflesia Pong (Jerrica Lai) stumbling on an idea for a reality-TV program that records people's dying words. Meanwhile, a young inventor at the Fony Corporation has developed a bean-curd machine that is turned down by the hilarious pair of pointy-haired bosses because it has too many useful functions and is too durable. $ELL OU7! also screened at the 2008 World Film Festival of Bangkok. The screening is courtesy of Amok Films & NETPAC. Thursday, September 30, 8pm.