Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening June 9-15, 2016

Where to Invade Next

Though it seems like he never really went away, Michael Moore returns from a hiatus of around six years with Where to Invade Next, in which he turns his eyes to progressive European countries and elsewhere to find examples of social policies that could turn troubled America around, and really, really make it great.

The documentary premiered at last year's Toronto International Film Festival, and critical reception has been generally positive.

Where to Invade Next is the latest in the Doc Holiday series of The Documentary Club and SF Cinemas.

Shows are at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld, SFX The Crystal Ekamai-Ramindra, SFC The Crystal Ratchapruek and SFX Maya Chiang Mai. Some of the screenings at CentralWorld will be accompanied by talks by various Thai advocacy groups.

For further details, please check The Documentary Club Facebook page or SF's bookings website. Rated G

---

Also opening

Now You See Me 2 – The quartet of outlaw illusionists known as "the Four Horsemen" are in Macau, where they are tasked by a tech prodigy (Daniel Radcliffe) with stealing a powerful computer chip. Meanwhile, the FBI agent (Mark Ruffalo) tasked with finding the Four Horsemen pursues a personal case – taking revenge on a jailed magic debunker (Morgan Freeman). Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson and Dave Franco reprise their roles as the magician-thieves from the first film, joined this time around by Lizzy Caplan, who takes over for Isla Fisher, who had to bow out due to pregnancy. Other stars include Jay Chou and Michael Caine. Jon M. Chu (Step Up 2: The Streets, G.I. Joe: Retaliation) directs. Critical reception is mixed. Rated 15+

The Conjuring 2 – Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga take another outing as Ed and Lorraine Warren, the American ghost-hunting couple who documented the "Amityville horror" and other paranormal events. 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 generally positive. This was in sneak previews last week and now moves to a general release. Rated 15+

The Faith of Anna Waters – Demonic possession grips us. In Singapore, an American journalist (Elizabeth Rice) is seeking answers about the purported suicide of her sister. With help from her brother-in-law (Matthew Settle), she uncovers links to many mysterious deaths that point to an apparent demonic entity. This is billed as Singapore's first "Hollywood" supernatural thriller and is directed by Kelvin Tong, a well-known Singaporean director whose previous efforts include the 2005 horror The Maid and the Hong Kong action thriller Rule No . 1. It's at Major Cineplex. Rated 15+

Te3n – Amitabh Bachchan is a grandfather who for eight years has been on a quest for justice over the kidnapping and murder of his granddaughter. Ignored by the cops, he gets help from a former cop who is now a priest (Nawazuddin Siddiqui). Vidya Balan also stars. It's a remake of the 2013 South Korean thriller Montage. It's in Hindi With English and Thai subtitles at Major Cineplex Sukhumvit, Rama III, Pattaya and EGV Mae Sot. Opens Friday.

---

Also opening

Bangkok Gay and Lesbian Film Festival – The second edition of the BGLFF opens tomorrow night with Tomcat, an Austrian drama that won the top-prize Teddy Award in Berlin this year. With many award-winning, much-acclaimed films, the entire lineup was profiled in a special blog post last week. I'm most interested in seeing the Filipino entry, Miss Bulalacao, an indie comedy about a drag performer who becomes pregnant. Another one is Nasty Baby, directed by and starring Chilean filmmaker Sebastian Silva. It's about a gay couple trying to have a baby, with help from a surrogate mother (Kristen Wiig, in a dramatic turn). The fest, which runs until June 19, is at the Quartier CineArt, and tickets can be purchased through the Major Cineplex website. Films will have English and Thai subtitles. For more details, check www.Facebook.com/BGLFF or Attitudethai.com/s/bglff.

The Friese-Greene Club – With the U.S. presidential race locking into focus, American politics are on the minds of barstool pundits at the Club, which tonight has Jay Roach's 2012 HBO comedy-drama Game Change, which recalls the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Tomorrow, it's The Killing Fields, the Oscar-winning drama about Cambodia's "Year Zero", as seen through the eyes of translator-reporter Dith Pran (played by Haing S. Ngor) and New York Times reporter Sidney Schanberg (Sam Waterson). It was filmed in Thailand and is part of a line-up of "classics" made here. Saturday has "not-so-classic" movies made in Thailand, with 1976's Emanuelle in Bangkok. Sunday has 1941's The Little Foxes, directed by William Wyler and starring Bette Davis. Next Wednesday is a documentary on American politics, 2005's Our Brand is Crisis, about American political operators working on a Bolivian presidential campaign. It was recently adapted into a comedy with Sandra Bullock and Billy Bob Thornton. 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 – Violence against women is in focus in two Academy Award-winning short documentaries from Pakistan at the FCCT at 7pm on Monday as part of the Contemporary World Film Series. From 2012, Saving Face deals with acid attacks. The short film follows a London-based plastic surgeon as he travels to Pakistan to perform facial-reconstruction surgery. And from 2015 is A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, which profiles a young woman who survived an "honor killing" by her father and uncle. She ran into conflict in Pakistani society for not forgiving the men. Both shorts are courtesy of SOC Films. Admission for non-members is 150 baht. Take note that there will be another entry in the Contemporary World Film Series, Le Meraviglie from Switzerland, on June 20.

Alliance Française – There are three French film events this week. Tomorrow night's French film with Thai subtitles is Un château en Italie (A Castle in Italy) in which a dysfunctional industrialist family is forced to sell their home in Italy. Saturday has a matinee for the kids, Les contes de la nuit (Tales of the Night), which has distinctive animator Michel Ocelot weaving together various fantastic stories. And next Wednesday's French film with English subtitles is Les châteaux de sable (Sand Castles), in which a young woman returns to her family home after her father's death and is reunited with an ex-lover. Shows are at 7pm except for the 2pm Saturday matinee. Admission for the general public is 100 baht.

---

Take note

The Silent Film Festival in Thailand has issued its schedule, and will open with Nosferatu on Thursday, June 16, at the Scala. This is a change from the previous two editions of the festival, which had the Scala gala screening as the closing event. Tickets go on sale at the Lido tomorrow, which coincidentally is the 119th anniversary of the first film screening in Thailand, which was on June 10, 1897. I will aim to have a special post on the Silent Film Fest very soon.

Also next week is the Singapore Film Festival at CentralWorld. Details of the films and the schedule are now online at SF Cinema's website. The five-film lineup ranges from 1997's 12 Storeys to last year's much acclaimed seven-segment omnibus 7 Letters.

And the long-running annual European Union Film Festival has posted its lineup, which includes Tale of Tales, the latest effort from Italian director Matteo Garrone, which stars Salma Hayek. The fest runs from June 22 to July 3 at SF World.

Bangkok Cinema Scene special: Bangkok Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, June 10-19, 2016

Twelve films, many of them award winners, which deal with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender themes from 10 countries will be shown at the Quartier CineArt during the second edition of the Bangkok Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. It’s organised by Attitude magazine.

With the theme “Love Wins”, the BGLFF opens next Friday with Tomcat, an Austrian drama that earned accolades at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. The story of an orchestra musician and his boyfriend who live with their pet cat, Tomcat won the Berlinale’s best feature Teddy Award, a prize given by an independent jury to films with LGBT topics.

And the Teddy Award audience prize from this year’s Berlinale, Paris 05:59, is the BGLFF’s closing entry. It follows a young gay couple as they meet in a Paris bathhouse and pursue a relationship into the early morning hours.

In a move to boost the festival’s visibility, organisers have chosen a new venue, shifting from the hidden-away Esplanade Ratchadaphisek to the ritzy Quartier CineArt in the Em Quartier downtown.

“Last year was the first year for the Bangkok Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and we were really happy with the turn-out. All sorts of people came out to support us and our films,” says organiser Marut “Nume” Prasertsri, a senior writer at Attitude magazine. “This year we’re working hard to increase the visibility of the festival to non-LGBT audiences. The films we’ve picked are all quality, well-made films with a wide appeal. We’re looking forward to sharing them with a broad audience of people, not just LGBT folks.”

Along with the prize-winning opening and closing films, Marut suggests a French entry, the lesbian romance Summertime (La Belle Saison) as one film the “straights” might embrace. Set in 1971, it’s the story of a young woman from the countryside who moves to Paris and is attracted to a strong-willed older feminist, who then follows the girl back to her farm. “Non-LGBT folk will better understand what it means to grow up different and they’ll enjoy the romance scenes,” says Marut.

Several of the films in the BGLFF are from Asia, such as Japan’s A Cappella (Mubansô), which takes place during campus protests in 1969 Sendai. South Korea offers a documentary, Weekends, about a gay men’s choir in Seoul. Directed by Lee Dong-ha, it placed third in the Panorama Audience Awards at Berlinale this year.

Further Asian themes are explored in Spa Night, in which a young Korean-American man struggles to reconcile his obligations to his immigrant family with his life in the underground world of gay hookups at Korean spas in Los Angeles. Spa Night star Joe Seo won the Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Performance at Sundance.

And there’s an award-nominee from India, Loev, about a businessman who heads out of town with an old friend, leaving behind problems with his boyfriend in the city. It was up for prizes at festivals in Jeonju, South Korea, and at the Black Nights of Talliin in Estonia.

The Asean bloc is represented by Miss Bulalacao, a quirky independent comedy about a drag princess who gets pregnant following an alien abduction. He is elevated to the status of a cult leader following rumours of immaculate conception. Directed by Ara Chawdhury, Miss Bulalacao won the festival prize at Manila’s Cinema One Originals Digital Film Festival and best first feature from the Philippines Young Critics Circle.

Latin American flavor comes in two entries, From Afar, from Venezuela and Four Moons from Mexico. Winner of the top-prize Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival last year, From Afar is about a 50-year-old man who pays for the companionship of young men. A meeting with the teenage leader of a street gang changes their lives forever. Four Moons, which won prizes in Montreal, Monterrey and Barcelona, has four stories of gay desire, love and self-acceptance.

And there are high-profile offerings from the U.S. and Canada, with Nasty Baby, which has Chilean actor-director Sebastian Silva working with Tunde Adebimpe in a story about a gay couple trying to have a baby with the help of a surrogate mum, played by former Saturday Night Live star Kristen Wiig. They have a violent run-in with a thug (Reg E. Cathey from The Wire).

And Closet Monster won the best Canadian feature film award and other prizes at the Toronto festival last year. Directed by Stephen Dunn, it’s the dramatic coming-of-age story of a high-school teen who dreams of being a special-effects makeup artist and finds new inspiration.

The Bangkok Gay and Lesbian Film Festival runs from June 10 to 19 at the Quartier CineArt at the EmQuartier mall. Films will have English and Thai subtitles. For more details, check www.Facebook.com/BGLFF or Attitudethai.com/s/bglff

(Cross-published in The Nation)

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening March 31-April 6, 2016

All Things Must Pass

Remember Tower Records? In the days before streaming music services, MP3s and digital downloads, Tower Records and other record stores were the places to get your music fix. There used to be Tower Records outlets in Bangkok, but despite me spending much hard-earned money there, they were shuttered in the early 2000s as the U.S.-based music retailer headed toward bankruptcy.

What happened? There’s more to it than just the Internet and illegal downloads. The answers await in All Things Must Pass, a documentary that examines the legacy of Tower Records and its colorful founder Russ Solomon.

It’s directed by Colin Hanks – son of Tom and a talented actor and filmmaker in his own right. He’s joined by a host of well-known musicians who lament Tower’s passing. Among them are hip-hop titan Chuck D, rockers Chris Cornell and Dave Grohl and top pop artists Elton John and Bruce Springsteen.

Critical reception is overwhelmingly positive. All Things Must Pass is yet another fine release organized by the Documentary Club. It's in a limited release at select SF cinemas. For times and venues, please check booking.sfcinemacity.com.

---

Also opening

10 Cloverfield Lane – A young woman is injured in a car wreck and wakes up in a storm cellar with no memory of how she got there. She tries to escape, but there’s a strange man there who says that’s impossible due to fallout from a deadly chemical attack. Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman and John Gallagher Jr star. What's going on? Is this a sequel to the 2008 found-footage surprise hit Cloverfield? Of course it is! But because this is from the Bad Robot factory of producer J.J. Abrams, details about the film were kept under wraps until the very last minute in order to stoke that ever-so-valuable viral curiosity. Despite Abrams and his cutsey-pie marketing gimmicks, critics love 10 Cloverfield Lane. Rated 13+

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 – With their teenage daughter about to head to college, Toula (Nia Vardalos) and her non-Greek husband Ian (John Corbett) are dealing with marital problems in the face of a secret from Toula’s past and the prospect of a bigger, fatter and even-more-Greek wedding. This is the follow-up to the 2002 low-budget smash hit that kickstarted the Hollywood career of writer-actress Nia Vardolos. And ever since that first film, Vardolos' close friends have been bugging her and bugging her to write another Big Fat Greek screenplay. Helps that two of those close friends are producer Rita Wilson and her husband, some guy named Tom Hanks. Nonetheless, critical reception has been tepid. Rated 13+

11 12 13 Rak Kan Ja Tai (11 12 13 รักกันจะตาย a.k.a. Ghost Is All Around) – Horror anthologies. The Thai film industry has a thing for horror anthologies. Saravuth Wichiansarn (Ghost Game) directs this one, which is released by the M-Thirtynine studio. It has the same type stories as other Thai horror anthologies – one about a guy haunted by the spirit of his suicidal girlfriend and another about goofball pals haunted by a friend who is dead but doesn't know it. A third story follows a woman who is in for terror in her travels with her gay chum. Heartthrob "Weir" Sukollawat Kanarot is among the stars. Rated 18+

Ki and Ka (Hers and His) – Traditional gender roles are reversed in sweeping Bollywood style in this romantic comedy starring Kareena Kapoor and Arjun Kapoor, which is about a rising young female corporate executive who wants to stay focused on her career, and her man, who stays at home to cook and clean. It's in Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Major Cineplex Sukhumvit, Rama III and Pattaya. Opens Friday.

---

Also showing

Salaya International Documentary Film Festival – The annual Salaya Doc festival has moved into the city, to the Bangkok Art and Culture Center, where it will continue until Sunday with events starting at 1pm daily. Today's selection includes Look Love, which contrasts stories of Chinese schoolboys from different social classes, and Tea Time, an Chilean feature about elderly ladies who have had weekly tea gatherings for 60 years. Both of those are part of the fest's "Sense and Sensibility" category for films directed by women. There are also entries in the Asean Documentary Competition, screening in four programs from 5.30pm today and tomorrow. Tomorrow has Face Taiwan, which looks at the state of contemporary Taiwanese cinema, and Return to Nostalgia, which is about the search for a lost classic film of Malaysian cinema. Both of those are part of the Power of Asian Cinema series commissioned by KBS Busan television. There's also Visible Silence, a short documentary on the Thai lesbian realm of "toms" and "dees". Saturday is devoted to a panel talk on funding, the announcement of awards in the Asean competition and then Homeland: Iraq Year Zero, a 334-minute look at Iraq before and after the U.S. invasion. Sunday has No Lullaby, on the insidious cycle of sexual abuse by a parent, When We Talk About KGB, about a Lithuanian former political prisoner's search for answers and Before the Last Curtain Falls, about ageing German drag queens. For more details, please check the fest's Facebook page.

The Friese-Greene Club – One last film for March tonight, closing out the monthlong tribute to David Lynch. It's his most atypical film, The Straight Story, a gentle, heartfelt road drama about an elderly man who drives his riding lawnmower across the country in order to see his ailing estranged brother. Richard Farnsworth, Sissy Spacek and Harry Dean Stanton star. And the April schedule is just out, with "the secret life of secret agents" on Wednesdays, Hong Kong action on Thursdays, "quirky Eighties" on Fridays, "a bright future?" on Saturdays and Akira Kurosawa on Sundays. The '80s quirk gets underway tomorrow with one of Martin Scorsese's best, After Hours, with dystopian sci-fi in Terry Gilliam's Brazil on Saturday. Sunday has Toshiro Mifune caught between warring sides in a small town. It's Yojimbo. And next Wednesday is Robert Redford as an intelligence analyst in over his head in 3 Days of the Condor. 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 – The Alliance switches things up this week with just one film screening to list, this one at 7 tomorrow night. It's the equine-themed drama Jappeloup, a fact-based yarn about a lawyer who gives up a successful legal career in order to pursue the sport of show jumping, entering the Olympics with his prize steed Jappeloup. As is customary, the Alliance then takes much of April off, owing to the Songkran holiday. The free movies will resume on Wednesday, April 20.

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+

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening March 10-16, 2016

The Hunting Ground

Rape culture at American colleges is exposed in The Hunting Ground, a documentary on campus rape crimes, institutional cover-ups and the toll that rape and sexual abuse takes on students, families and society.

It's the latest film by Kirby Dick, the noted documentary filmmaker whose previous works include Twist of Faith (on sex abuse of children in the Catholic Church), the informative This Film Is Not Yet Rated (on Hollywood's hypocritical film-ratings agency) and The Invisible War (on sexual assault in the U.S. military).

A winner of several awards, The Hunting Ground features the Academy Award-nominated original song "Til It Happens to You", written by Diane Warren and performed by Lady Gaga. It was featured in a special live performance at the recent Oscars ceremony. Critical reception has been mostly positive.

Brought to Thailand by the Documentary Club, The Hunting Ground is at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld and SFX The Crystal Ekamai-Ram Indra. For more details, check the Documentary Club Facebook page and SF's bookings site. Rated 13+

---

Also opening

Kung Fu Panda 3 – The DreamWorks Animation talking-animals franchise keeps rolling, with the portly panda martial-artist Po (Jack Black) reuniting with his long-lost father (Brian Cranston) and paying a visit to a secret panda paradise. Meanwhile, a new villain arises in the form of a snorting bull named Kai (J.K. Simmons), who is defeating kung-fu masters across the land and stealing their supernatural powers. Along with Black, returning voices include Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen, David Cross, Dustin Hoffman, James Hong and Jean-Claude Van Damme. Kate Hudson and Jolie's children add their voices to this latest adventure. Critical reception is generally positive. This was in daytime sneak previews last week and now moves to general release. It's in 3D in some cinemas. Rated G

The Divergent Series: Allegiant – Taking a page from adaptations of Harry Potter, The Hobbit and The Hunger Games, it's apparently mandatory now for the third book in young-adult-science-fiction novel trilogies to be broken in two for the Hollywood movie adaptations. This is part one of the final chapter in Divergent, with Part 2 (now called Ascendant) not due out until next year. So it's not over yet. Anyway, the story has the teen heroine Tris (Shailene Woodley) and her rebel-scum friends faced with having to flee for their lives from a comfortable existence in post-apocalyptic utopian Chicago. Theo James, Jeff Daniels, Octavia Spencer, Ray Stevenson, Zoë Kravitz,  Miles Teller and Ansel Elgort also star. Critical reception is starting to trickle in, but won't really get going until next week when this opens in the U.S. The release in overseas territories is a move to gin up box-office takings before the majority of critics weigh in and trash the film. In addition to 2D screenings in ordinary cinemas, there's also a 2D IMAX version. Rated 13+

---

Also showing

Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand – Film screenings resume at the FCCT, with a special Thai documentary screening and panel discussion tonight and a South African film on Monday. First up is Y/Our Music, a critically acclaimed and nominated Thai-British documentary on the political and social divide in Thai music. It covers the nearly forgotten mor lam artists of the Thai country music scene in the Northeast and oddball indie musicians in Bangkok. Panelists will be co-director "Art" Waraluck Hiransrettawat Every, political scientist Dr. Sirote Klampaiboon, and Bangkok Post music columnist John Clewly. The show is at 7 tonight. Admission is (yikes!) 450 baht for non-members. Monday marks the beginning of the year's Contemporary World Film Series, which opens with Drum, a fact-based 2004 South African drama about a writer for Drum magazine getting caught up in the anti-Apartheid movement in the 1950s. Taye Diggs and Gabriel Mann star. South African Ambassador Ruby Marks will be on hand, along with South African wine and snacks. Entry is 150 baht for non-members plus 100 baht for the drinks and food. The show starts at 7pm.

German Film Week – The Goethe-Institut's annual showcase continues tonight with Inbetween Worlds (Zwischen Welten), following a German soldier in Afghanistan as he becomes conflicted between duty and his conscience as he works in a Taliban-controlled area with a young Afghan interpreter. Tomorrow, it's A God send (Ein Geschenk der Götter), in which an unemployed actress takes a job teaching theater to other jobless folks. Saturday has Jack, about a 10-year-old boy looking for his missing mother. And the week concludes on Sunday with Patong Girl, about a dysfunctional German family on vacation on Phuket. It was shot in Phuket with a Thai and German cast, with assistance from production-services firm De Warrenne Pictures. Shows are at 7pm at Paragon Cineplex. Tickets are 120 baht and 150 baht at the box office.

The Friese-Greene Club – A support-group meeting for the confused will be convened at the Club immediately following tonight's screening of the L.A.-noir mystery Mulholland Drive, part of a monthlong tribute to cult director David Lynch. Tomorrow's "controversial" film is another cult entry, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. "Not for the faint-hearted," warns the Club. Saturday is the first of three screenings this month of Trump: What's the Deal?, a 1999 documentary on the bloviating U.S. presidential candidate. It's reportedly "the movie Trump doesn't want you to see." Showing no fear of being sued by Trump, the FGC has specially licensed the film for screenings in its nine-seat boutique cinema, and is charging 150 baht a head to recoup the costs. Douglas Slocum, the veteran British cinematographer who died last month at age 103, is paid tribute in Sunday screenings. This week's entry is The Servant, a 1963 adaptation of a Harold Pinter novel that won four BAFTAs, including best cinematography. "The Best of Danish" is featured on Wednesdays, with Thomas Vinterberg's 1998 family drama Festen. It's the first of the films made under the rules of the Dogme 95 movement, which aimed to bring filmmaking back to the basics of story, acting, and theme, eschewing special effects and slickness. 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 has got it going on when it comes to film. In addition to the recent Wim Wenders retrospective and the ongoing German Film Week there are the monthly installments in the year-round German Film Series, which has screenings at the Thai Film Archive and the Bangkok Art and Culture Center. This month's entry is Love Steaks, an indie romance about the unusual relationship between a resort's trainee masseur and the hotel's chef-in-training. It screens at 1pm on Sunday at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom, and at 6pm on Tuesday in the BACC's fifth-floor auditorium.

Alliance Française – Following a one-week hiatus, the free French films return at the Alliance with Deux de la Vague (Two in the Wave), a 2010 documentary on the friendship between two of the founding titans of the French New Wave – Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut. It screens at 7pm on Wednesday, March 16, at the Alliance.

---

Take note

Details are starting to emerge about the Salaya International Documentary Film Festival, which runs from March 26 to April 3 at the Film Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom, and the Bangkok Art and Culture Center. Hit the Salaya Doc Facebook page to see what they are up to.

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening March 3-9, 2016

Hail, Caesar!

With Hail, Caesar!, the Coen Bros. return to the Hollywood Golden Age at Capitol Pictures, which they first mined for screwball-comedy hijinks in Barton Fink, which was set in the 1940s.

Now in the 1950s, Capitol has a brash new executive “fixer”, played by Josh Brolin, who has his work cut out for him when the studio's biggest star, matinee idol Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) goes missing during the production of a swords-and-sandals epic. Turns out he's been kidnapped by a shadowy group known as "the Future".

Aside from Coen veterans like Clooney and Brolin, there's also Frances McDormand as a film editor and Tilda Swinton in dual roles as rival twin sister gossip columnists. Channing Tatum and Alden Ehrenreich are a couple other young leading men at the studio. Ralph Fiennes, Scarlett Johansson and Jonah Hill also star.

The Coens have stated that this is the third entry in their Numbskull Trilogy of films with their favorite numbskull Clooney, following O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) and Intolerable Cruelty (2003), though 2008's Burn After Reading might also fit in there too.

Critical reception is mostly positive, putting Hail, Caesar! somewhere in the Coens' middle realm, below A Serious Man and above The Man Who Wasn't There. Rated 13+

---

Also opening

London Has Fallen – Remember 2013, when there were two back-to-back "Die Hard in the White House movies"? One was Roland Emmerich's stupidly fun White House Down, with Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx, and the other was the straight-faced, grimmer-toned and much-less-fun Olympus Has Fallen, which was directed by Antoine Fuqua and starred Gerard Butler as a disgraced Secret Service agent who redeems himself when the White House comes under attack. He's back in London Has Fallen, protecting president Aaron Eckhart as he attends a British prime minister's funeral, which becomes a target for a Pakistani arms dealer who wants to wipe out all the world leaders. Charlotte Riley joins the cast, playing a British agent. Returnees include Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett, Robert Forster and Melissa Leo. Babak Najafi, an Iranian-born Swedish filmmaker, takes over as director, making his English-language debut. Rated 18+

Love Say Hey .. Yaak Say Wa Rak Ther (เลิฟเซเฮ.. อยากเซว่ารักเธอ) – High-school seniors have to figure out how to balance love, friendship and their studies as they work to make a film together for their graduation project. Napat Jaitientum directs. He previously directed the gay romances, last year's Love Love You and 2014's Love's Coming. Rated G

Office – An office supervisor (Bae Sung-woo) snaps after a long day at work, kills his family and disappears. A police detective (Park Sung-woong) is on the case, but co-workers are tight-lipped about the man, until, one by one, they start getting killed off too. It's directed by Hong Won-chan, who makes his debut as helmer following screenplays on such acclaimed South Korean thrillers as The Chaser, The Yellow Sea and Confession of Murder. In Korean with English and Thai subtitles at SFW CentralWorld and Esplanade Ratchada. Rated 18+

Mojin: The Lost Legend – An infamous tomb robber (Chen Kun) has settled down to retire with his new fiancee when an old girlfriend (Angelababy) who he thought died 20 years ago resurfaces and lures him back to China and the tomb of a Mongolian princess, which holds an artifact that has the power to raise the dead. Thai-dubbed it seems. Rated 13+

Jai Gangaajal – Priyanka Chopra portrays the first female police superintendent in Bankipur, Bihar. She decides to take on a corrupt local politician and his henchmen. Manav Kaul, Rahul Bhat and Queen Harish also star. In Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Major Cineplex Sukhumvit, Rama III and Pattaya.

---

Also showing

The Friese-Greene Club – Danish films, David Lynch, "controversy!", a tribute to cinematographer Donald Slocum and Donald Trump: What's the Deal? are featured this month. The abstract movies of David Lynch are featured on Thursdays, beginning with The Elephant Man. Friday's "controversial" film is A Clockwork Orange. This Saturday is a one-off special event, the fourth edition of the 9 Film Fest, which will screen the winning entries in this year's online contest. To compete, filmmakers have to come up original nine-minute films that contain a "signature item" that is unique from year to year. This year's "9SI" was "flower". Sunday has the films shot by Slocum, beginning with the screwball British comedy The Lavender Hill Mob. Later in the month, the club has scheduled Saturday screenings of Trump: What's the Deal?, a 1999 documentary that is reportedly "the movie Trump doesn't want you to see". It's set for March 12, March 19 and March 26, for Bt150 per person. 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.

Signes de Nuit in Bangkok – The Reading Room, Filmvirus, the Goethe-Institut and the International Festival Signet de Nuit present an extensive selection of experimental short films and documentaries from this year's International Festival Signet de Nuit in Paris. Screenings are on Friday and Saturday night and Sunday afternoon at the Reading Room on Silom Soi 19. For the full schedule, please check the Facebook events page.

Wim Wenders: A Retrospective – The Thai Film Archive lets light filter through its state-of-the-art 3D projector for the first time, with back-to-back Saturday screenings of two 3D films by influential German director Wim Wenders. First up at 1pm is Pina, Wenders' tribute to the late German dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch. That's followed by the drama Every Thing will be Fine, which has James Franco as writer who kills a child in a car wreck. These are two films in which the filmmaker seeks to use 3D to "immerse" the audience in sights, sounds, experiences and storytelling, rather than just titillate with gimmicks and flashy special effects as most mainstream commercial 3D films do. It's an approach that contemporaries of Wenders have taken, such as Werner Herzog with his 3D documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams or Martin Scorsese, with his epic childhood drama Hugo., and Jean-Luc Godard with Goodbye to Language. For more details, check the special post, the Archive's website or the Goethe website.

German Film Week – Following the recently concluded Open Air Cinema season, the ongoing Wim Wenders: A Retrospective and the monthly German Film Series, German cinema remains in focus with German Film Week from March 7 to 13 at Paragon Cineplex. It will screen seven contemporary German films from 2013-14. Here's the line-up:

• Monday, March 7: Who am I – No System is safe – Baran bo Odar directs this thriller about a hacker who uses the virtual reality to become "somebody". An opening reception precedes this screening, beginning at 6pm.
• Tuesday, March 8: Schönefeld Boulevard – A plus-size teenage girl gets her first taste of the wide open world when construction of a new Berlin airport comes to her neighborhood.
• Wednesday, March 9: The Age of Cannibals (Zeit der Kannibalen) – Two longtime business consultants who make their living travelling to far-flung countries advising companies, are both in for disappointment when they are passed over for a big promotion.
• Thursday, March 10: Inbetween Worlds (Zwischen Welten) – In Afghanistan, a German soldier becomes conflicted between duty and his conscience as he works in a Taliban-controlled area with a young Afghani interpreter.
• Friday, March 11: A God send (Ein Geschenk der Götter) – An unemployed actress takes a job teaching a theater class to chronically jobless folks. They will try to put on the play Antigone.
• Saturday, March 12: Jack – A 10-year-old boy goes looking for his mother after she fails to turn up to collect him after school. A nominee for the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, the drama is directed by Edward Berger, who co-wrote the screenplay with Nele Mueller-Stöfen.
• Sunday, March 13: Patong Girl – There's conflict for a German family on vacation in Phuket, when the teenage son falls for a local lass and runs off. Mum runs off too, to search for the boy, but instead goes on a journey to find herself. Susanna Salonen directs this Thai-German comedy-drama, filmed in Phuket with a Thai and German cast.

Shows are at 7pm. All films will have English subtitles. Tickets cost 120 baht and 150 baht at the Paragon box office.

---

Sneak preview

Kung Fu Panda 3 – The Dreamworks Animation franchise returns with Jack Black's rotund martial artist Po and his friends getting up to more adventures. Po, the orphaned panda, finds his homeland and bonds with his father and other panda family members. Meanwhile, an evil new adversary arises in the former of master Kai, voiced by J.K. Simmons. Along with Black, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, David Cross, Seth Rogen and Jackie Chan in returning roles, newcomers to the franchise include Bryan Cranston and Kate Hudson. It's in sneak previews from Saturday until Wednesday, with kid-friendly screenings starting between 2pm and 5pm . Rated G

---

Take note

There's no free film screening next Wednesday at the Alliance Française, which instead will have a one-off concert Duo Brunetti-Pachioli. The free French films return on March 16.

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening February 18-23, 2016

The Look of Silence

Following last week's release of The Act of Killing, here's the essential companion piece, The Look of Silence, which delves further into politically motivated genocide in 1960s Indonesia.

While The Act of Killing kept its focus on the perpetrators of the genocide – politicians and military figures who still hold power and influence – The Look of Silence is all about the victims. They are embodied by a sole survivor, an optician who goes door-to-door, plying his trade in giving eye exams to the elderly.

His job is excellent cover for what he's really doing – tracking down those who were responsible for killing his older brother in 1965. Patiently and methodically, he finds these people, and gets them to confess to truths that have been buried for nearly 50 years. Often, the words are out their mouths before they realize what they are saying.

An Academy Award nominee and almost-universally praised, The Look of Silence a must-see movie, especially for local residents and anyone interested in the history and politics of Southeast Asia. It's at SF cinemas. For further details, check www.Facebook.com/DocumentaryClubTH or SF's bookings site. Rated G

---

Also opening

The Rain Stories (เมื่อฝนหยดลงบนหัว, Meur Fon Yod Long Bon Hua) – Nichaphoom Chaianan, the indie writer-director of last year's gay romance My Bromance, directs this anthology of unconventional high-school love stories. They involve a disabled girl falling for the hottest boy in school, a boy who is about to meet his father for the first time becoming embroiled in a relationship with his best friend, and another boy who is considering entering the gay sex trade in order to repay his gambling debts. Check the trailer. It's at Major Cineplex. Rated G

Joy – Writer-director David O. Russell gets the band back together for his latest effort, which has several of the same cast members as his recent critically acclaimed hits Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle. It's the fact-based tale of Joy Mangano, the inventor of the self-wringing Miracle Mop, who became a self-made millionaire selling her products on cable-TV shopping channels. Jennifer Lawrence stars, portraying Joy as a struggling divorcee in a dead-end job who is heavily in debt and is sharing a house with her bickering divorced parents (Robert De Niro and Virginia Madsen), her kindly grandmother (Diane Ladd) and her singer ex-husband (Edgar Ramirez). With help from her father's new girlfriend (Isabella Rosselli), she comes up with the Miracle Mop and gets on TV with the assistance of a visionary QVC network executive (Bradley Cooper). Lawrence won the Golden Globe for best actress in the comedy category and she's also an Oscar nominee. Critical reception is mixed, leaning to favorable. Rated 13+

Concussion – Snubbed for an Oscar nomination, Will Smith portrays the brilliant Nigerian-American physician Dr Bennet Omalu, who discovered links between repeated blows to the head and the premature deaths of professional gridiron football players. He encounters vigorous pushback from the National Football League when he wants to present his findings. Alec Baldwin, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Albert Brooks also star. Critical reception is mixed, leaning to positive. Rated G

Legend – Tom Hardy is in a dual role in this indie British drama, which covers the rise and fall of identical twin gangsters Reggie and Ronnie Kray, two of the most notorious and violent criminals in British history. It's a story previously covered in The Krays, a 1990 cult film that had the twins portrayed by brother musicians Gary and Martin Kemp of Spandau Ballet. Hardy, who's had a heck of run this season with such films as Mad Max: Fury Road and The Revenant, was snubbed by the Baftas but he won best actor at the British Independent Film Awards for his work in Legend. Critical reception is mixed, leaning to positive. Rated 18+

Zoolander 2 – Fifteen years later, dimwitted male fashion models Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) and Hansel (Owen Wilson) are called back into action to stop a criminal mastermind who is killing the world's most beautiful people. Penelope Cruz joins the cast this time around, playing the Interpol agent handler of Derek and Hansel. Will Ferrell returns, as fashion world arch-villain Mugatu. A comedy that found a cult following after it was released on home video, the first Zoolander was quite funny and holds up to at least a couple of repeated viewings before it gets old. Zoolander 2, which is simply a shameless cash grab, is destined to be forgotten in the same bin that Anchorman 2 went into. Critical reception is mostly negative. Rated 13+

Little Boy – Upset that his father has volunteered to fight in World War II, a developmentally stunted 7-year-old boy learns many important lessons after he turns to the Christian faith in a bid to bring his father home. Stars include Emily Watson, Kevin James, David Henrie, Tom Wilkinson, Ted Levine and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa. Critical reception is mostly negative. Rated G

Bakuman – A young man becomes determined to be a manga and anime artist after he falls in love with a girl who wants to be a voice actress. She’ll marry him only after they achieve their dreams. A live-action adaptation of a popular manga and anime TV series about manga and anime artists, this opened in sneak previews last week and now moves to a wider release. Rated G

Neerja – Sonam Kapoor stars in this fact-based drama about the hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 in Karachi in 1986, in which a 23-year-old flight attendant bravely rose up to defend the hostages. It's in Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Major Cineplex Sukhumvit, Rama III and Pattaya.

---

Also showing

The Friese-Greene Club – Tonight, Alan Rickman is a Paris wine-shop owner who comes up with a contest that pits "New World" wines against French vintages in the 2008 indie comedy Bottle Shock, which also stars Chris Pine, Bill Pullman and Dennis Farina. Tomorrow, a black cop from Philadelphia (Sidney Poitier) works with a Southern white police chief (Rod Steiger) to solve a murder in 1967's In the Heat of the Night, directed by Norman Jewison and featuring cinematography by Haskell Wexler, who is paid tribute this month following his recent passing. Saturday's "kinky" movie is 1982's Cat People starring Nastassja Kinski. It also works as a tribute to the late David Bowie, who performed the film's theme song. Sunday has another Billy Wilder film noir, his 1950 Hollywood portrait, Sunset Boulevard. 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 fiftysomething Paris businessman enters into a tryst with a young Ukrainian male prostitute who is involved with a violent street gang in the 2013 drama Eastern Boys. It screens at 7pm on Wednesday, February 24, at the Alliance.

---

Take note

Until Saturday, you can reserve seats for Wim Wenders: A Retrospective, which is taking place at the Film Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom on February 27-28 and March 5, screening such films as Paris, Texas and The American Friend as well the 3D movies Pina and Every Thing will be Fine, which will be the first 3D films shown there. The place has 120 seats, and half of them are up for grabs now, with the other half held for walk-ins on the show dates. The retrospective opens next Thursday with Wings of Desire, outdoors, in Lumpini Park. I'll have more about Wendersfest in a couple of days.