Wise Kwai's Bangkok Cinema Scene

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

"Just let it in."

The continuing saga of faith continues with Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the much-anticipated reboot of George Lucas' science-fiction phenomenon.

Even the grizzled scoundrel Han Solo, a once-cocky pilot and disbeliever in the Force, has changed his tune. "It's true. All of it," he tells the youngsters. "The Dark Side. The Jedi. They are real."

Rebooted by Disney, which bought Lucasfilm in 2012 for $4.06 billion, the Star Wars universe is reimagined by writer-director J.J. Abrams along with Empire Strikes Back screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan and Michael Arndt (Toy Story 3, Hunger Games).

No spoilers here.

The story, as far as I can make out, is set 30 years after Return of the Jedi, and introduces new characters, including a loner young scavenger woman (Daisy Ridley) and an ex-stormtrooper (John Boyega) who cross paths with figures from the original 1970s and '80s trilogy. They include Harrison Ford as Solo, Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker and Carrie Fisher as Leia. They'll clash with a new host of villains, including the fearsome Kylo Ren (Adam Driver).

Thailand is one of the first places in the universe to get this new film, but it's worth noting, as the Bangkok Post's Kong Rithdee did, that it took years for the original Star Wars trilogy to finally screen in local cinemas.

Early reviews are positive. More reviews to come. Rated G

Also opening

The Guitar King– Thai rock and blues musician Lam Morrison is profiled in this TrueVisions-produced documentary by director Passakorn Pramunwong. Lam, 72, is followed as he performs at his Hot Tuna Pub in Pattaya and revisits Norway and Germany, where he performed in his rock 'n' roll heydays. Passakorn, a founder of A Day magazine, previously collaborated with filmmaker Pen-ek Ratanaruang on the documentaries Total Bangkok and Paradoxocracy. There's more about the movie in a Bangkok Post article. It's at Eastville, Esplanade Ratchada, Major Ratchayothin, Mega, Paragon and Quartier CineArt. Rated 18+

Irrational Man– A womanizing alcoholic philosophy professor (Joaquin Phoenix) is coaxed through an existential crisis with help from a much-younger woman (Emma Stone), who is one of his students. Woody Allen writes and directs. Critical reception is mixed, leaning to negative. Rated 18+

Fathers and Daughters– Russell Crowe and Amanda Seyfried star in this tear-jerking melodrama about an award-winning author who suffers a mental breakdown while coping with being a widowed single dad raising a little girl. Years later, as an adult, the girl has issues. Critical reception is mixed, leaning to negative. Rated 13+

Dilwale– Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol are star-crossed lovers trying to overcome a violent conflict between their familes in this action-comedy. Varun Dhawan and Kriti Sanon are also featured. In Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Paragon and Major Cineplex Sukhumvit, Rama III and Pattaya.

Also showing

The Friese-Greene Club– Tonight, in honor of Kirk Douglas' 99th birthday last Wednesday, it's another one of Woody Allen's favorite films, the World War I drama Paths of Glory by Stanley Kubrick. Tomorrow, it's the restored classic Tras El Cristal (The Glass Cage), about a pedophile Nazi mad scientist who is confined to an iron lung and is looked after by one of his former victims. The club's Christmas Party is on Saturday, and though there's no film that night, there is plenty of Christmas cheer in Sunday's Miracle on 34th Street. And next Wednesday has 1982's Made in Britain, featuring Tim Roth in his debut performance as a teen racist thug. 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– John Malkovich is the Duke of Wellington, scheming to lure French troops into a trap in the historical drama Les Linhas de Wellington at 7pm on Wednesday, December 23, at the Alliance.

Take note

There's no German Open Air Cinema for the next couple of weeks, owing to the Christmas and New Year's holidays. The outdoor movies resume on January 5 at the Goethe.

On hiatus for the past year or so, the 9FilmFest has returned and is seeking entries for an online contest set for next year. The idea is to make original short films of nine minutes in length and include a unique "signature item". In this case, the "9SI" is "flower". For more details, check the festival website or Facebook page.

Iris

Iris Apfel, the quick-witted, flamboyantly dressed 94-year-old style maven of the New York fashion scene, is profiled in Iris.

It is directed by acclaimed documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles, himself a legend for his contributions to the "Direct Cinema" movement with Salesman and Gimme Shelter in the 1960s and '70s. He died last March at age 88, but not before his cameras recorded Apfel reflecting on her glamour-filled life and humble middle-class upbringing during the Depression.

Critical reception is mostly positive. This is another release from the Documentary Club, which closes out a strong first year bringing documentaries to mainstream Thai movie-goers. Stay tuned for more new documentary releases in 2016. It's at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld and SFX Maya Chiang Mai. For details, check www.facebook.com/DocumentaryClubTH.

Also opening

Goosebumps– A boy is upset about his family’s move from the big city to a small town until he meets his neighbor, an attractive teenage girl, whose father happens to be the mysterious RL Stine (Jack Black), the author of the best-selling “Goosebumps” horror novels. When the monsters from those fantastic tales are accidentally unleashed, it’s up to Stine and the youngsters to return the beasts back to the books where they belong. Rob Letterman (Gulliver's Travels, Monsters vs. Aliens, Shark Tale) directs. Critical reception is generally positive. Rated G

Love the Coopers– Four generations of a wildly dysfunctional family rediscover the importance of kinship as they gather for the holidays. John Goodman, Diane Keaton, Ed Helms, Olivia Wilde, Amanda Seyfried, June Squibb and Alan Arkin are among the huge ensemble cast in this comedy. Jessie Nelson, the writer of Stepmom, I Am Sam and Fred Claus, directs. Critics view this as a lump of coal in their Christmas stockings. Rated 15+

The Boy and the Beast– A lost boy in Tokyo falls into an alternate universe where he’s raised by bear-man, who acts as the boy’s spirit guide and trains him in martial arts. Mamoru Hosoda (Summer Wars, Wolf Children) directs. Critical reception has been favorable, and there's even talk of The Boy and the Beast being among Oscar nominees for Best Animated Feature. It's in Japanese with English and Thai subtitles. Rated G

Kyushu the Movie– Musicians Worawech “Dan” Danuwong and Pongjak “Aeh” Pitthanaporn star in this road-trip comedy about the Thai singing duo SanQ on a busking tour of Kyushu Island, Japan. They have 30 days to survive with no money; their only currency is 999 CDs of their songs, which they can sell or trade. At SF cinemas.

Bajirao Mastani– Romance develops between the fierce Maratha warrior Bajirao I and a plucky Rajput princess in this historical romance starring Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone. This was originally scheduled for release last Friday, but was swapped at the last minute with Dilwale, which was supposed to come out here this week. It's in Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Paragon and Major Cineplex Sukhumvit, Rama III and Pattaya. Opens Friday.

Also showing

The Friese-Greene Club– Tonight, for Christmas Eve, it's Joe Dante's cinematic gift to the world, Gremlins, followed by the traditional Christmas Day screening of It's a Wonderful Life. There's more colorful cheer with the traditional Boxing Day screening of The Wizard of Oz on Saturday and The Bishop's Wife on Sunday. And there's one more movie for the year next Wednesday with a final "cool Britannia" entry, Jonathan Glazer's British gangster comedy Sexy Beast. The club then takes a break for the New Year. 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.

Sneak previews

Snap (แค่..ได้คิดถึง, Kae .. Dai Kit Tung) – Writer-director Kongdej Jaturanrasmee sharply observes contemporary Thai society with this romantic comedy-drama, which premiered in competition at the Tokyo International Film Festival. Set just as the military declares martial law, the story follows a young woman who is about to be married to a military officer. She returns to her provincial-capital hometown of Chanthaburi for a wedding of high-school friends and becomes nostalgic as she reconnects with her old boyfriend, who is the wedding photographer. You can read more about the film in an article in The Nation. There's also a review in the newspaper. It's in sneak previews from around 8 nightly at the Apex cinemas in Siam Square and most other multiplexes, then moves to a wider release next week. Rated 15+

Daddy's Home– Will Ferrell reteams with his Other Guys comedy pal Mark Wahlberg for this family romp about a mild-mannered radio executive (Ferrell) who is struggling to bond with his new wife's two children. Complications ensue when their drifter father (Wahlberg) turns up, kicking off a war of one-upmanship as the two men compete for the kids' affections. Critical reception is mixed, placing Daddy's Home somewhere in the middle of the canon of Ferrell's comedies. It's in sneak previews from around 8 nightly before a wider release on New Year's Eve. Rated G

Take note

There is no German Open Air Cinema nor free screenings at the Alliance Française to report this week. Both are on holiday break and will return after the New Year.

And looking ahead to the New Year, the Japan Foundation has announced the dates and line-up for the Japanese Film Festival. Under the theme "Shapes of Love", the fest will screen contemporary romance films from February 11 to 14 at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld.

The Peanuts Movie

To close out 2015, some movies are coming out a day earlier on the eve of New Year's Eve, while others are being released as usual on Thursday, which is New Year's Eve. And some new movies are actually already playing, having made their bows in sneak previews last week.

I'll start with one of tomorrow's openings, The Peanuts Movie, which is adapted from the beloved newspaper-comic strip that spawned a merchandising empire as well as a string of successful animated holiday TV specials and theatrical features.

This new 3D computer-animated outing for the characters created by Charles M. Schulz offers Peanuts fans many familiar sights, such as Snoopy flying his doghouse against the Red Baron and Charlie Brown getting tangled up in a tree when he tries to fly a kite. The story also re-introduces Brown's perennial love interest, the mysterious "little red-haired girl", who is new in town and is thus clueless about how big a blockhead Charlie Brown can be.

The Peanuts Movie is put together by Blue Sky Studios, the same outfit that did such films as Robots, Ice Age and Rio. Critical reception has been generally positive, with the consensus being they got this one right. Perhaps it helped that Schulz' son and grandson were directly involved in the production, along with Paul Feig, a trusted comedy brand. It's even being mentioned as a possible Oscar nominee. Supposedly, the release includes a supporting short cartoon, Cosmic Scrat-tastrophe, featuring Scrat the sabretooth squirrel from Ice Age. Rated G

Also opening

Snap (แค่..ได้คิดถึง, Kae .. Dai Kit Tung) – Writer-director Kongdej Jaturanrasmee sharply observes contemporary Thai society with this romantic comedy-drama, which premiered in competition at the Tokyo International Film Festival. Set just as the military declares martial law, the story follows a young woman who is about to be married to a military officer. She returns to her provincial-capital hometown of Chanthaburi for a wedding of high-school friends and becomes nostalgic as she reconnects with her old boyfriend, who is the wedding photographer. You can read more about the film in an article in The Nation. There's also a review in the newspaper. This opened last Thursday in sneak preview and moves to a wider release tomorrow. Rated 15+

Pantai Norasingh (พันท้ายนรสิงห์) – As the story goes, Pantai Norasingh was an oarsman on the royal barge of a king during the Ayutthaya Period. One day, while steering in a fierce river current, Norasingh lost control and the boat slammed into a tree, breaking the bow. The penalty for damaging the king's barge and endangering the life of the monarch was death. No ifs, ands or buts. The king, witnessing that the barge crash was obviously an accident and not wanting to kill one of his best, most loyal men, objected to the death penalty. However, the dutiful oarsman insisted that no exception be made, otherwise, he feared, public respect for the law and the crown would be undermined. Veteran director MC Chatrichalerm Yukol presents this story as the latest in his long line of historical epics on Ayutthaya Period royals, which started in 2003 with Suriyothai and continued with the recently wrapped-up six-part Legend of King Naresuan series. According to Soopsip in The Nation, Chatrichalerm had originally intended Pantai Norasingh to be broadcast on television, but when he and the station could not agree on the best time to show the series, he took it back and re-edited it into the feature we now have before us. Opens today. Rateed G

About Ray– Teenage Ray (Elle Fanning) has made the decision to transition from female to male, against the objections of his mother (Naomi Watts), with the support of his lesbian grandmother (Susan Sarandon) and in the absence of his father (Tate Donovan). Critical reception is mixed. Opens today. Rated G

Daddy's Home– Will Ferrell reteams with his Other Guys comedy pal Mark Wahlberg for this family romp about a mild-mannered radio executive (Ferrell) who is struggling to bond with his new wife's two children. Complications ensue when their drifter father (Wahlberg) turns up, kicking off a war of one-upmanship as the two men compete for the kids' affections. Critical reception is mixed, placing Daddy's Home somewhere in the middle of the canon of Ferrell's comedies. This opened in sneak previews last Thursday and moves to a wider release tomorrow. Rated G

Barcelona Christmas Night– Christmas may be over and done with, but here's one more movie to keep the yuletide spirit going through New Year's. Multiple love stories unfold in this fluffy Spanish comedy-drama. One man is trying to win back his ex while another leaves his family to follow a woman. Meanwhile, a grandmother has a secret she's dying to tell her family, and a moody grandfather meets a Frenchman who reminds him of his first love. Opens today. Rated 15+

Also showing

German Open Air Cinema – Returning after a two-week holiday break, the series resumes next Tuesday night with Jack, a hard-hitting drama about a 10-year-old boy who goes looking for his mother after she fails to turn up to collect him after school. A nominee for the Golden Bear at this year's Berlin International Film Festival, it's directed by Edward Berger, who co-wrote the screenplay with Nele Mueller-Stöfen. The show is at 7.30pm on Tuesday, January 5, outdoors at the Goethe-Institut on Sathorn Soi 1.

Alliance Française – Female-centered films form the bulk of the free French film schedule for January, starting with Les Gazelles, a comedy about five thirtysomething women who are experiencing various problems in their relationships with men. The show is at 7pm on Wednesday, January 6, at the Alliance.

Cartel Land

One of the most significant contributions to the Thai movie-going world in 2015 was the formation of the Documentary Club, which brought in a steady stream of buzzworthy new documentaries to local cinemas and promoted them mostly through online social media.

Formed as a personal project of Bioscope magazine editor Thida Plitpholkarnpim, the Documentary Club has been a big success, showing that mainstream audiences really do want to watch documentaries, and it forges on into 2016, with its ongoing Doc Holiday series at SF Cinemas, starting with Cartel Land.

Directed by Matthew Heineman (Kathryn Bigelow is among the executive producers), Cartel Land gets into Sicario territory as it trains lenses on the ongoing Mexican Drug War and profiles vigilante efforts to stop the violence on both sides of the border, with the U.S.-based Arizona Border Recon founded by Tim “Nailer” Foley and Mexico's Autodefensas, run by a physician, Dr. Jose Mireles.

One of the titles being mentioned as a possible Oscar nominee, Cartel Land premiered at last year's Sundance Film Festival, where it won Best Director and the Special Jury Award for Cinematography in the U.S. Documentary Competition.

It's at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld and at SFX Maya Chiang Mai. For more details, check the Documentary Club Facebook page. Rated 18+

Also opening

The Big Short– The beginnings of this fact-based financial comedy go back to the closing credits of The Other Guys, the 2010 Will Ferrell-Mark Wahlberg comedy about police partners trying to arrest a crooked Wall Street financier. Humorously illustrated with simple charts and diagrams, the closing credits of The Other Guys explained the Ponzi scheme that led to the 2008 financial meltdown. Director Adam McKay, better known for comedies like Anchorman or Stepbrothers than for prestige-seeking social-commentary pieces, wanted to continue with that theme. That led him to this unlikely adaptation of Michael Lewis' non-fiction book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. It's about financial-world outsiders who spot a worrisome trend in the housing-lending market and then decide to profit from the inevitable collapse. Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and a bearded Brad Pitt are among the ensemble cast. Earning comparisons to another much-acclaimed high-energy finance flick, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Big Short has been nominated for three Golden Globe Awards and is being mentioned as a possible Oscar nominee. Critical reception is generally praiseworthy. Rated 15+

The Hateful Eight– Right from the beginning, Quentin Tarantino has made a big deal out of his latest picture. He threw a tantrum when the script was leaked and vowed not to make the movie. Friends and financial backers convinced him to change his mind, and so he organized a table read of the script before a live audience. More yes-men emerged to tell Tarantino to make the movie. In shooting it, he decided to revive a moribund film format, Ultra Panavision 70, and then take it on a "roadshow" to the handful of theaters still equipped to project 70mm. It comes to us in digital form only, which is too bad. With plenty of Tarantino's non-stop, rapid-fire vulgarities, the story is about passengers on a stagecoach – a hangman (Kurt Russell), his condemned prisoner (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a bounty hunter and former Union Army cavalry major (Samuel L. Jackson) and a town's new sheriff (Walton Goggins) – seeking refuge from a blizzard in a remote outpost. They encounter four other figures – an elderly Confederate general (Bruce Dern), a cowboy (Michael Madsen), an Englishman (Tim Roth) and a Mexican (Demián Bichir) – whose motives are mysterious. Influenced by TV westerns such as Bonanza and The Virginian, it's been described as an Agatha Christie drawing-room mystery set in the old American west. It is already nominated for three Golden Globe Awards: screenplay, best score (by Ennio Morricone, his first in decades) and actress (for Leigh, her second Globe nod following 1994's Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle). And The Hateful Eight is also feeling the Oscar buzz. Critical reception is mixed. Rated 18+

The Dressmaker– Kate Winslet stars in this Australian comedy-drama. Set in the early 1950s, it's about a small Outback town's former resident, who left in disgrace decades before, returning to care for her ailing, eccentric mother (Judy Davis). An accomplished Paris fashion designer, she sets up her sewing machine and begins to bring a new sense of style to the locals, among them the town lawman, played by Hugo Weaving. Liam Hemsworth also stars. Jocelyn Moorhouse (Muriel's Wedding, How to Make an American Quilt) directs. It was a major nominee at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards and winner of the best actress, supporting actress and supporting actor prizes for Winslet, Davis and Weaving. Critical reception is mixed, leaning to positive. Rated 15+

Also showing

The Friese-Greene Club– Satyajit Ray's restored Apu Trilogy screens on Thursdays. Tonight, it's the second entry, 1956's Aparajito. Fridays have a line-up of great motion pictures lensed by cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, who died on January 1 at age 85. It starts with Robert Altman's LA-noir entry, The Long Goodbye, starring Elliott Gould as detective Philip Marlowe. Saturdays are devoted to Paul Thomas Anderson, who was right out of the gates with his first feature, Hard Eight, starring Philip Baker Hall as a roving gambler who takes a young buck (John C. Reilly) under his wing. Gwyneth Paltrow also stars. And watch for Philip Seymour Hoffman – it wouldn't be a PT Anderson film without him. Sundays, the church pews are reserved for worshipers of St. Audrey, starting with 1961's Breakfast at Tiffany's. Truman Capote, Blake Edwards and Henry Mancini will deliver the liturgy. Wednesdays thumb their nose at the corn-fed with "U.S. Meet World", a series of critically acclaimed "foreign" films that for reasons nobody can figure were hits in the United States. Next week's offering is all about that American fascination for weird Spanish Civil War stories with Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth. 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 Open Air Cinema – The Swiss embassy chips in with I Am the Keeper (Der Goalie bin ig), a drama about a criminal who is released from prison after he served his time and kept his mouth shut. He seeks a fresh start back in his hometown and falls for a local diner's waitress while trying to stay out of the way of his past. The show is at 7.30pm on Tuesday, January 12, outdoors at the Goethe-Institut on Sathorn Soi 1.

Alliance Française – It's West Side Story in France in Geronimo, which has star-crossed young lovers from rival gangs shielded by an idealistic young community educator. Tony Gatlif directs. The show is at 7pm on Wednesday, January 13, at the Alliance.

Spotlight

Nominated for three Golden Globe Awards, Spotlight went home empty handed from the first big show of Hollywood's awards season. But don't count Spotlight out just yet – it's likely to be a major Academy Award nominee and is already a nominee for Baftas, Screen Actors Guild Awards and many more. Spotlight also already won the Film Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award for best ensemble cast.

A newspaper drama in the grand muckraking tradition of All the President's Men, Spotlight is the fact-based account of investigative reporters at the Boston Globe in 2002, who get wind of a massive official cover-up of rampant sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests. They blow the lid off the story and win a Pulitzer.

Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, Brian d’Arcy James, Stanley Tucci, Billy Crudup and John Slattery star. It's directed by Tom McCarthy, who debuted to much acclaim with The Station Agent. He's also an actor, having previously played a quote-fabricating Baltimore Sun reporter on TV's The Wire.

Critical reception is mostly positive. Rated 15+

Also opening

Cop Car– Two boys find an abandoned sheriff's cruiser in the countryside and, with lights flashing and siren blaring, take the Crown Vic for a joyride. Meanwhile, the absent sheriff – a corrupt and dangerous lawman played by Kevin Bacon – angrily sets out to find his missing car. The debut feature by young indie director Jon Watts, Cop Car picked up solid buzz from its premiere at Sundance last year, helping to propel Watts into the top ranks as he was selected to helm yet another Spider-Man reboot. I have actually seen Cop Car and am here to say it is a terrific little movie. Many critics think so too. Rated 15+

The 5th Wave – Yet another talented young actress is dropped into yet another young-adult science-fiction franchise. Adapted from the 2013 novel by Rick Yancey – the first in a trilogy, of course – The 5th Wave stars Chloë Grace Moretz (Kick-Ass, The Equalizer) as a 16-year-old heroine who has survived four apocalyptic waves of an alien invasion. She needs to find her little brother before he becomes a weapon in the fifth wave. Critical reception is just forming. Rated 13+

Ip Man 3– Donnie Yen tangles with Mike Tyson in this third installment in director Wilson Yip's series of biographical dramas about Ip Man, the 1950s Hong Kong kung-fu grandmaster who, according to legend, taught Bruce Lee. The story has Ip Man keeping a low profile as he quietly teaches martial arts and looks after his family. He returns to the public eye to tangle with a street-brawling property developer (Tyson) who is bullying residents. Yuen Woo-Ping choreographed the action. He's the painterly martial-arts wizard behind such films as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Matrix and Wong Kar-wai's The Grandmaster (which was also about Ip Man). Critical reception is mixed. Rated 13+

Sweet Alibis – Mismatched, bumbling police partners investigating the death of a poodle stumble onto a drug case involving gay gangsters in this Taiwanese crime farce. Alex Su is a cowardly, more-seasoned cop with Ariel Lin as a rookie cop trying to prove herself to her father. Matt Wu (Sway) also stars. A nominee for awards at 2014's Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards the and Osaka Asian Film Festival, Sweet Alibis got some decent reviews. It's at Esplanade Ratchada and Major Ratchayothin. Seems it is in Thai only. Rated G

Wazir– An anti-terrorism police officer (Farhan Akhtar) who is grieving over the death of his daughter bonds with the girl's chess master (Amitabh Bachchan) and comes up with a strategy to battle the terrorist threat. In Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Major Cineplex Sukhumvit, Rama III and Pattaya. Opens Friday.

Also opening

The Friese-Greene Club– Sayajit Ray's restored epic Apu trilogy wraps up tonight with 1959's last chapter Apur Sansar. Tomorrow, cue the banjo music for a relaxing canoe trip with Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox in Deliverance, part of a month-long tribute to the late cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. This Saturday's Paul Thomas Anderson entry is his "documentary" on the "golden age of porn", Boogie Nights. And Sunday has another great Audrey Hepburn film, 1953's classic Roman Holiday. Next Wednesday is another "U.S. meet World" entry that exposed flyover-state hayseeds to "foreign" films, 1994's Il Postino. 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 Open Air Cinema – A young computer whiz joins masked hackers who stage increasingly daring raids on corporations and the government in Who Am I – No System Is Safe. Tom Schilling stars and Baran bo Odar directs, tossing in Fight Club references. It was a major nominee at last year's German Film Awards and won for editing, sounding and production design. The show is at 7.30pm on Tuesday, January 19, outdoors at the Goethe-Institut on Sathorn Soi 1.

Alliance Française– There are two free French films to report this week. First up at 2pm on Saturday is a children's matinee, the animated Gus - Petit oiseau, grand voyage (Yellowbird). Featured at last year's World Film Festival of Bangkok, it's about an unusual orphaned yellow bird who becomes the unlikely leader of a mass migration to Africa. And then the usual 7pm Wednesday screening is Séraphine, an award-winning 2008 historical biographical drama about painter Séraphine Louis. Yolande Moreau stars.

45 Years

Tensions surface between an elderly childless couple as they prepare to celebrate their 45th anniversary in 45 Years, which stars Tom Courtenay and features an Oscar-nominated turn by Charlotte Rampling.

Geoff (Courtenay) and Kate (Rampling) are a comfortably well-off liberal couple who are planning a small celebration when Geoff receives news that the body of his girlfriend has been found in the Swiss Alps, where she fell and died while hiking with him 50 years before. While bittersweet memories come flooding back for Geoff, Kate begins to wonder if their entire marriage was based on a lie.

It's the first release of the year from HAL Film, the film school that entered the movie distribution business last year with the release of the offbeat foreign indie titles White God and The Tribe,

Directed by Andrew Haigh, 45 Years debuted in competition at Berlin last year, where it won the Silver Bears for best actor and actress for Courtenay and Rampling. Other wins included the European Film Awards, festivals in London, Edinburgh and Valladolid and more accolades from critics' societies worldwide. Critical reception is overwhelmingly positive. Rated G

Also opening

Tangerine– And now, oddly, the Documentary Club has a dramatic feature, Tangerine. It's the indie comedy-drama that's known in the biz as "that iPhone movie". So I guess it is intended by the Doc Club to show the possibilities of that gadget you're carrying. The story centers on transgender prostitute Sin-Dee Rella (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez), who goes off on a tear through Hollywood with her friend and fellow hooker Alexandra (Mya Taylor) after she hears her pimp-boyfriend Chester (James Ransone) has cheated on her. Directed by Sean S. Baker, the entire low-budget feature was shot with the iPhone 5S and created a sensation at Sundance last year. Critical reception is generally positive. It's in limited release at SF World Cinema, SFX Central Rama 9, SFX Central Lat Phrao and SFX Maya Chiang Mai. Rated 18+

Steve Jobs– In addition an iPhone movie, here's a movie about the man who brought us the iPhone. Oscar-winning Social Network screenwriter Aaron Sorkin teams with Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle for yet another movie about the mercurial Apple Computer co-founder who died in 2011. The movie is based on Walter Issacson's best-selling biography and on interviews Sorkin conducted with various figures. Michael Fassbender portrays Jobs in the biopic, which tracks him as he prepares for the launch of three key products – the Macintosh, the NeXT and iMac G3 – and also deals with his strained relationships with family and colleagues. Nominated for four Golden Globes, including best actor and screenplay, it won the supporting-actress Globe for Kate Winslet, who plays Jobs' co-worker and confidante. It's also an Oscar nominee for actor and supporting actress. Seth Rogen and Jeff Daniels also star. Critical reception is generally positive. Rated G

Awasarn Loke Suay (อวสานโลกสวย) – The year in Thai cinema commences with this teen psychological drama from Kantana Motion Pictures, in which a faded Internet idol (Apinya Sakuljaroensuk) becomes upset at being unseated by a new schoolgirl star (Napasasi Surawan). She decides to teach the naive upstart a lesson in cruelty. Pun Homcheun and Onusa Donsawai direct, adapting a short film of the same name. In a gimmick to gin up publicity, there are two versions – rated 18+ and the “uncut” 20-

Krasue Kreung Khon (กระสือครึ่งคน) – And there's another Thai film to start 2016 – veteran actor-director Bin Banluerit's horror-comedy, which has a jungle tribe of dwarfs being terrorized by the notorious krasue, the female ghost of Southeast Asian folklore that’a floating vampiric head and entrails. Rated 15+

Airlift – Bollywood action star Akshay Kumar revisits the 1990 airlift of Indians from Kuwait after the invasion by Iraqi forces during the First Gulf War. Over 59 days, Air India flew nearly 500 planes into the war zone to airlift some 177,000 Indians, a feat that holds a Guinness Record for the most people airlifted by a civilian airline. Nimrat Kaur (The Lunchbox) also stars. It's in Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Major Cineplex Sukhuvmit, Rama III and Pattaya. Opens Friday.

Also showing

The Friese-Greene Club– Tonight (not last Thursday as I erroneously stated here last week), Sayajit Ray's restored epic Apu trilogy wraps up with 1959's last chapter Apur Sansar. Tomorrow, it's the director's cut of Michael Cimino's epic western Heaven's Gate, which was a legendary flop on release and brought down the United Artists studio. Part of a monthlong tribute to the late cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, it's now hailed as a modern masterpiece. Saturday's Paul Thomas Anderson film is Punch-Drunk Love, which is possibly the best film Adam Sandler will ever be part of. Sunday has Audrey Hepburn as a blind woman terrorized in her apartment by intruders. And next Wednesday is another "U.S. Meet World" entry of films that were popular with the meth-heads and trailer-park trash in the good old U.S. of A. It's Like Water for Chocolate, which became the highest-grossing Spanish-language film there. 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 Open Air Cinema – The Rostock-Lichtenhagen riots of 1992 are recalled in We Are Young. We Are Strong (Wir sind jung. Wir sind stark.), a historical drama that tracks the lives of various characters throughout the night in which unemployed youths violently vented their boredom and anger on a public housing development that was home to Vietnamese, Romanian Roma and other foreign migrants. The show is at 7.30pm on Tuesday, January 26, outdoors at the Goethe-Institut on Sathorn Soi 1.

Alliance Française– A 15-year-old girl is desperately in love with her 19-year-old boyfriend when he decides to leave her and explore the world in Goodbye First Love (Un amour de jeunesse). Hard feelings emerge eight years later when the two lovers are reunited. The show is at 7pm on Wednesday, January 27, at the Alliance.

Take note

I've already mentioned the upcoming Japanese Film Festival, which is set for February 6 to 14 at SF World Cinema.

Another event to mention is the Bangkok Art and Culture Center's Cinema Diverse: Directors' Choice series, which wraps up on February 6 with a screening of the Chilean drama No hosted by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand's most-celebrated filmmaker. He and film critic Kong Rithdee will talk about the movie afterward, with translation in English. Registration opens at 4.30pm with seating on a first-come, first-served basis.

Other upcoming events this year include the Goethe-Institut and Thai Film Archive's Wim Wenders Retrospective, which will include Wings of Desire outdoors at Lumpini Park in February and a 3D screening of Pina at the Archive in March. There's also the Salaya International Documentary Film Festival in March, the Archive's travelling Memories fest in April, the Silent Film Festival of Thailand in June and the Thai Short Film and Video Festival in August. I'll have more details on some of those events in the coming weeks.

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi

Michael Bay takes a break from transforming robots and mutant turtles to direct the fact-based military thriller 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, which recounts the September 11, 2012 attacks on the U.S. Embassy compound in Libya, and the defense of the place and its people by a small team of private security contractors, all former military special-ops veterans.

James Badge Dale and John Krasinski head the ensemble cast, which also features Pablo Schreiber, Max Martini, Toby Stephens and David Costabile. Chuck Hogan (The Strain, Prince of Thieves) wrote the screenplay, adapted from the book by Mitchell Zuckoff.

Critical reception is mixed. Rated 15+

Also opening

The Boy– Just as Thailand's own creepy doll trend has made headlines, here's a horror film about a haunted toy that's uncannily similar to Thailand's so-called "child angels". The story has a young American woman taking a job as a nanny in a remote English village, only to discover that her 8-year-old charge is a life-sized doll, and that her employers' real son died some 20 years before. After breaking some of the rules concerning the "child's" care, and various disturbing and inexplicable events, she comes to believe that the doll is actually alive. Critical reception is generally negative. Rated 15+

The Finest Hours– In 1952, two oil tankers are sinking off the coast of New England during a severe winter storm. While senior rescuers are sent to fetch the crew of one of the wrecked ships, younger, less-experienced Coast Guardsmen are sent out in tiny lifeboats to the other. Meanwhile, the crew of the ship tries to survive, while on land, there's drama with the wives of the rescuers. The fact-based drama stars Chris Pine, Casey Affleck and Ben Foster. Critical reception is mixed. Rated G.

Burnt – Bradley Cooper is a troubled two-star Michelin chef who loses his job in Paris. He sobers up while shucking oysters in New Orleans and seeks a fresh start and a third Michelin star with his own eatery in London. He assembles the best chefs he can find and clashes with a strong-willed sous chef (Sienna Miller). John Wells (August: Osage County and TV's Shameless) directs. Critical reception is mixed. Rated 15+

Exposed– Whoa. Poor Keanu. He's a police detective who uncovers evidence of corruption while trying to solve the mystery of his partner’s death. Meanwhile, a Latina girl (Ana De Armas) is experiencing strange things after witnessing what she believes to be a miracle. The film was originally called Daughter of God, and focused on the girl and her supernatural religious experience, but studio execs wanted the focus on a big-name star, so Lionsgate Premier changed it so it mostly dealt with Reeves' brooding detective. Critics are trashing it. Rated 15+

Finding Calico– A retired school headmaster (Issei Ogata) is left alone after the death of his wife, except for the stray tri-colored cat that his wife used to feed. The widower at first doesn’t care for the feline, but when the cat stops coming around, he rallies the community to find her. Also known as Sensei to Mayoi Neko, a.k.a. Teacher and Stray Cat, it's adapted from a fact-based novel by Chiaki Kizuki. Rated 13+

Khon Muay Kab Rak Thee Taektaang (ฅนมวยกับรักที่แตกต่าง, a.k.a. Boxing in Love) – Former childhood sweethearts – traditional dancer Roong and boxer Yord – are reacquainted years later in Bangkok, where Yord gets mixed up with mobsters. Roengsak Misiri and Kriangsak Phinthutrasi direct. Rated G

Also showing

The Friese-Greene Club– There's a private screening tonight but the club is open tomorrow for one more film lensed by the great cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. It's Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Saturday, there's one more Paul Thomas Anderson movie for the month, 2012's The Master, which features Philip Seymour Hoffman as the leader of a Scientology-like cult, and Joaquin Phoenix as the drifter alcoholic war veteran who falls under the cult leader's spell. Sunday has Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. 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 Open Air Cinema – Queer history comes into focus in The Circle (Der Kreis), in which homosexual schoolteacher Ernst Ostertag (Matthias Hungerbühler) gets involved with a gay-activist publication in Zurich in the 1950s, and falls in love with transgender performer Robi Rapp (Sven Schelker). It won several prizes, including the Teddy Award at the Berlin film fest in 2014. The show is at 7.30pm on Tuesday, February 2, outdoors at the Goethe-Institut on Sathorn Soi 1. It's the second-to-last screening of the series, which wraps up on February 9.

Alliance Française– A small-town woman tries to make it in the big city in Le Beau monde (High Society). Arriving in Paris, she crosses paths with a fashion designer who sponsors her enrollment in a top fashion school. Meanwhile, she dumps her hometown boyfriend and takes up with her sponsor's hi-so son. The show is at 7pm on Wednesday, February 3, at the Alliance.

Sneak preview

The Danish Girl– One of the first patients to undergo sexual reassignment surgery is covered in this highly fictionalized historical drama. Alicia Vikander and Eddie Redmayne star as Dutch painter couple Gerda and Einar Wegener, whose relationship evolves after Gerda asks her husband to pose as a woman for a portrait. Thereafter, Einar decides he wants to be Lili. Directed by Tom Hooper (The King's Speech, Les Misérables), the film has been a major nominee, with Golden Globe, Academy Award and Bafta nods for both Vikander and Redmayne (a big winner last year for his turn as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything). Critical reception is generally positive. It's in sneak previews from around 8 nightly in most multiplexes and opens wider next Thursday. Rated 18+

Take note

Tonight is the opening of Future's Ruins: The Southeast Asia Movie Theater Project Installation at H Project Space. The work of researcher Philip Jablon, it's an exhibition of photos of the old stand-alone movie theaters that used to be common landmarks in cities across the region, but are fast disappearing. The show runs until May 29.

Ahead of the Japanese Film Festival from February 11 to 14 at SF World, there is a sidebar program, Sayonara Setsuko: A Tribute to Setsuko Hara, on Sunday, February 7 at the Reading Room. Put on by Filmvirus, with support from the Japan Foundation, the event will screen three classic films starring actress Setsuko Hara, who died last September at age 95. The films feature her work with three masters of Japanese cinema, 1946's No Regret for Our Youth by Akira Kurosawa, 1949's Late Spring by Yasujiro Ozu and 1951's Repast by Mikio Naruse. The show starts at 1pm. I'll have a complete look at the Japanese Film Fest in the next few days.

Correction

The Documentary Club supported the local release of "the iPhone movie"Tangerine. I incorrectly stated last week that HAL Film was behind both Tangerine and 45 Years. Apologies to both the Doc Club and HAL Film for the mix-up.

The Japan Foundations' annual gift to movie-goers, the Japanese Film Festival, comes to SF World Cinema at CentralWorld during next month’s Valentine’s Day holiday, with a selection of nine romance films under the theme “Shapes of Love”.

Among the highlights is Love and Peace, the latest weird movie from Sion Sono, who tells the story of a struggling rock musician whose life is changed after he comes in contact with a tiny magical turtle that brings him good luck. Winner of the Audience Award at Montreal’s Fantasia fest, critics gave the oddball Love and Peace high marks. “It’s Babe by way of Godzilla, except that here, our human protagonist, Kyo (Hiroki Hasegawa), inhabits the pigsty, while the giant reptile in question has only benevolent intentions,” said Peter DeBrugge of Variety.

The hyper-prolific Sono also has Be Sure to Share, a 2009 drama in which a young man named Shiro is caring for his cancer-stricken father. Shiro reflects on his strained relationship with his strict dad while also keeping a secret about his own illness from his friends and family.

The Japanese film industry’s own “master of romance”, Takehinko Shinjo, returns with his fifth feature in Beyond the Memories, in which a heartbroken young woman learns to feel love. Based on a best-selling manga, the story centres on Kanna (Masami Nagasawa), who has been sad since her childhood best friend was killed in a car wreck as he was expressing his love for her. She’s been unable to have feelings for any men since, but then she meets Roku (Masaki Okada), the brooding employee of a manga-publishing house.

Another first love is featured in My Pretend Girlfriend, in which nerdy high-schooler Noburu is tasked by senior student Miyazaki with being the “fake boyfriend” of the new girl in school, Momose, in order to cover up a fling that Miyazaki and Momose are having.

Still another popular manga, “Kinkyori ren ai”, which is also a hit TV series, comes to the big screen as Close Range Love. It’s the story of age-challenged romance, with brainy high-school girl Yuni at the top of her class in all subjects except English. So she is ordered to attend one-on-one sessions with Haruka, the school’s new English teacher, a handsome young man.

Other titles are It All Began When I Met You, which has six love stories involving 10 people; Jinx!!!, about a South Korean exchange student playing matchmaker between an uptight classmate and a shy boy; Poison Berry In My Brain, in which the voices in a woman’s head debate whether she should reach out to a guy she met at a party, and Three Stories of Love (a.k.a. Lovers), which covers the loves and losses of three loosely connected people.

The Japanese Film Festival runs from February 11 to 14 at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld in Bangkok, February 19 to 21 at SFX Maya Chiang Mai, February 26 to 28 at SF Cinema City, CentralPlaza Khon Kaen and March 4 to 6 at SF Cinema City, CentralPlaza Surat Thani. Tickets are Bt120 in Bangkok, Bt80 in Chiang Mai and free in Khon Kaen and Surat Thani. For more details, check www.sfcinemacity.com or www.jfbkk.or.th.

In the run-up to the Japanese Film Festival, Filmvirus and the Japan Foundation have joined for Sayonara Setsuko: A Tribute to Setsuko Hara, which is set for February 7 at The Reading Room in Bangkok.

On of Japan’s most revered actresses, Hara died last September at age 95. Though she had quit acting in 1963 and had not appeared on screen for more than 50 years, she left behind an unforgettable legacy.

“We invite you to pay tribute to the restrained beauty and effortless talent of Setsuko Hara and remember an exquisite time in world cinema through three movies by three masters of Japanese cinema: Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu and Mikio Naruse,” says Filmvirus, a group of fanatically dedicated Thai cinephiles.

Three films will showcase her legacy, starting with 1946’s No Regrets for Our Youth
by Kurosawa, followed by Ozu’s Late Spring from 1949. Mikio Naruse’s Repast from 1951, completes the triple feature. The show starts at 1pm. For more details, check the Facebook events page.

(Cross-published in The Nation)

The Revenant

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

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

Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson and Will Poulter also star.

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

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

Critical reception is generally positive. Rated 15+

Also opening

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

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

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

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

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

Also showing

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

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

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

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

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

Sneak preview

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

The Act of Killing

The perpetrators of genocide in Indonesia in the 1960s are given a chance to tell their side of the story in The Act of Killing, which has these colorful military figures and politicans re-enacting their gruesome deeds in often self-aggrandizing fashion, in scenes from their favorite types of movies – westerns, film-noir mysteries and lavishly staged musical numbers.

The Act of Killing rubbed me the wrong way when I saw it in a one-off special screening in Bangkok a few years ago. I felt it let those men mostly off the hook for their wave of politically motivated killings in 1965-66. But it was part of a one-two punch by director Joshua Oppenheimer and his "anonymous" team of filmmakers, who followed up the The Act of Killing with the powerful and essential counter-punch, The Look of Silence, which focused on one gentle survivor's personal search for truth and justice.

Brought back by the Documentary Club, this is the 159-minute "director's cut" of The Act of Killing. It won many awards, including the European Film Award for Best Documentary and the Asia Pacific Screen Award. It was also a nominee for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

The Act of Killing opens this week, and the must-see followup The Look of Silence is released next Thursday. There's a special screening of both films from 6pm on Saturday in an event put together by the Documentary Club and Film Kawan, an academic group that specializes in Southeast Asian films. It's at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld.

Apart from that special screening, regular venues for The Act of Killing are SF World, SFX Central Rama 9, SFX Central Lad Phrao and SFX Maya Chiang Mai. For further details, check the Documentary Club Facebook page or SF Cinemas booking site

Also opening

Luk Thung Signature (ลูกทุ่ง ซิกเนเจอร์, a.k.a. Love Beat) – Star-studded stories unfold to the toe-tapping beat of Thai country songs in this sprawling musical drama by producer-director Prachya Pinkaew (Ong-Bak, Tom-Yum-Goong. The stories include a brooding business executive (Krissada Sukosol Clapp) who is searching for the cleaning lady he heard singing while he was in the toilet. She's played by Rungrat "Khai Mook The Voice" Mengphanit. Another story centers on a washed-up overweight pop singer (Chalitit "Ben" Tantiwut) who finds new popularity when he switches to luk thung. Other stars include The Voice Thailand Season 1 winner Tanon Jamroen as well as Siraphan Wattanajinda, Chaiyathat Lampoon, Sombat Metanee and Pitsamai Wilaisak, Sumet Ong-art, Su Boonliang and luk thung songwriter Sala Khunawut. Read more about it in a story in The Nation. Rated G

Deadpool– Marvel Comics’ wisecracking "Merc with a Mouth" comes to the screen in this origin story starring Ryan Reynolds. He's a mercenary former Special Forces operative who has cancer and submits to a rogue experiment that leaves him horribly disfigured but with heightened healing powers and superhuman abilities. Deadpool is officially part of the X-Men franchise, which is held by Fox. It's been in development a long time, but it seems with all the tinkering they may have got it right, leaving critics impressed. Rated R in the States, mainly for baudy language, this comic-book movie is not necessarily for the kiddies. Rated 15+

Carol– One of the big titles of awards season, Carol has been widely praised for its performances by Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara as women in a taboo lesbian relationship in the U.S. in the 1950s. Blanchett is the housewife Carol who attracts the curious eyes of shopgirl and aspiring photographer Therese (Mara). They gradually grow closer while Carol is in the midst of a messy divorce. Todd Haynes (I'm Not There, Far from Heaven) directs. Listed among the year's best by many, many critics, Carol has six Academy Award nominations, including best actress for Blanchett and supporting actress for the co-lead Mara. Critical reception is wildly positive. This opened in sneak previews last week and now movies to general release. Rated 15+

The Choice– Ick. It's Valentine's Day weekend, so here's yet another movie adaptation of yet another weepy Nicholas Sparks romance novel. It's the story of the evolving relationship between a womanizing small-town veterinarian (Benjamin Walker) and his neighbor, an attractive young woman (Teresa Palmer) who is a medical student. Critics think it's yucky. Rated G

Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong – Combining the spirit of two holidays, last weekend's Chinese New Year and this weekend's Valentine's Day, here's a love letter to Hong Kong. The story has a young Chinese-American woman (Jamie Chung) visiting Hong Kong for the first time. She meets an expat American (Bryan Greenberg) who is working in finance. The two hit it off as they tour the sights. They then meet again a year later. Critical reception has been generally favorable.

The Monkey King 2– This actually came out last week, but wasn't in cinemas until Friday, so I got confused when it didn't appear last Thursday and didn't list it. Sorry about that, campers. An obligatory release for Chinese New Year, The Monkey King 2 is a sequel to a 2014 big-budget blockbuster fantasy based on ancient Chinese literature. Aaron Kwok steps into the role of the Monkey King, taking over from Donnie Yen. He is released from prison after 500 years and tasked with undertaking his "journey to the West" to retrieve sacred scriptures. Gong Li also stars, playing the chief villain, the White Bone Demon. Soi Cheang directs with action choreography by Sammo Hung. Special effects were handled in New Zealand by the same folks that did visual effects for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. It's in Chinese with English and Thai subtitles in select cinemas. Rated 13+

Fitoor– Charles Dickens'Great Expectations receives the Bollywood treatment in this sweeping romantic drama starring Aditya Roy Kapur, Katrina Kaif and Tabu. It's the story of star-crossed relations between a poor boy who lives by the docks and the beautiful daughter of the wealthiest man in town. It's in Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Major Cineplex Sukhumvit, Rama III and Pattaya.

Also showing

The Friese-Greene Club– "Blue baby syndrome" is at the heart of tonight's selection, Something the Lord Made, a well-regarded made-for-HBO drama starring Alan Rickman as a pioneering American researcher in the 1930s, who performs medical studies with help from a gifted young black man (Mos Def). Tomorrow, talented cinematographer Haskell Wexler takes his place in the director's chair, mixing fiction with documentary footage in Medium Cool, a counter-culture drama about a TV cameraman caught up in the violence that erupted during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Saturday's "kinky" movie is The Night Porter, starring Dirk Bogarde as a sadomasochistic former Nazi concentration camp officer who is in a twisted relationship with one of his former prisoners. Sunday has a special Valentine's Day movie – The Road Home– Zhang Yimou's timeless love story of a schoolteacher and the young woman (Zhang Ziyi) who falls for him. Next Wednesday, it's another of David Bowie's cinematic contributions, the Japanese prisoner-of-war drama Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. 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 – Struggling Berlin artists collaborate on a project sponsored by a biotech company and they become the next step in human evolution in the science-fiction comedy-drama Art Girls. The show is at 1pm on Sunday at the Film Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom and at 6pm on Tuesday in the fifth-floor auditorium at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center. Keep in mind, the Archive and the Goethe have special event coming up, Wim Wenders: A Retrospective, opening on February 25 with a Lumpini Park screening of Wings of Desire.

Alliance Française– Voilà! The AFThailande.org website appears to be back up. Next week's show is Brooklyn. Not to be confused with last year's current critical hit with the same title, this Brooklyn is from 2014 and is the story of a runaway girl who tries her luck with the hip-hop scene in Paris. It's at 7pm on Wednesday, February 17, at the Alliance.

Sneak preview

Bakuman– Japanese teenage comic-book artists meet in high school and try to get their stories published in a weekly comics magazine. This is a movie adaptation of a popular manga about manga artists that has also been adapted as an animated TV series. It's by the same folks who did the popular manga-based horror Death Note. It's in sneak previews with shows from around 8 nightly in most multiplexes. It opens in general release next week. Rated G

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.

Wim Wenders, the award-winning German auteur who has explored existential rootlessness in such films as Wings of Desire and Paris, Texas, will be paid tribute in a series of screenings organised by the Thai Film Archive and the Goethe-Institut.

Highlights of Wim Wenders: A Retrospective include an outdoor showing of Wings of Desire in Bangkok’s Lumpini Park next Thursday and the first 3D screenings at the Film Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom, which will distribute special glasses to the audience for the dance documentary Pina and Wenders’ 2015 drama Every Thing will be Fine.

“The Film Archive is excited to collaborate with the Goethe-Institut Thailand in organising ‘Wim Wenders: A Retrospective’. This is due not only the fact that Wim Wenders is a world-class German filmmaker, but also because we believe that films are one of the best learning tools. The reason why Wim Wenders has been admired around the world is that his films have brought audiences to discover mankind, the world we live in, and most importantly ourselves,” says the archive’s director, film historian Dome Sukvong in the program notes.

A fervent believer in the old-fashioned cinematic experience, Dome reckons the Wenders retrospective will give local film lovers a once-in-a-lifetime memory they can cherish.

“Nowadays, watching films, including the nine Wim Wenders’ films shown in this event, can easily be done on the Internet. However, watching films on a big screen with friends and strangers, who have a passion and faith in films, is not easy. This rare gathering is a marvellous chance for all moviegoers to watch good films that have been meticulously well preserved. Fine films enable us and our next generation to experience mankind and discover ourselves again and again.”

Born in 1945 in Dusseldorf, Wenders was one of the proponents of the New German Cinema movement in the 1970s. He had studied medicine and philosophy before moving to Paris in 1966 to study painting. He instead gravitated toward movies, receiving a “crash course in the history of film” at the Cinemateque Francaise. He returned to Germany in 1967 to enrol in the newly founded University of Television and Film Munich. During this time, he worked as a film critic, directed short films and helped found Filmverlag der Autoren, a distribution company for independent auteurs.

After graduating from film school, Wenders’ first feature was 1972’s The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter), which follows a brooding footballer as he’s sent out of a game for arguing and then commits murder.

Wenders then moved on with his Road Movie Trilogy, three dramas he made with cinematographer Robby Muller, who has shot most of Wenders’ films. They are Alice in the Cities from 1974, The Wrong Move from 1975 and Kings of the Road from 1976. The three low-budget efforts established a meandering style that Wenders and Muller would later follow for their bigger-budget efforts, including 1984’s Paris, Texas.

His international breakthrough came with 1977’s The American Friend, an adaptation of one of Patricia Highsmith’s crime novels, with Dennis Hopper as art forger Tom Ripley, who befriends a terminally ill picture framer portrayed by Bruno Ganz. It was West Germany’s official submission to the Oscars.

Triumphs for Wenders followed, including the Venice Golden Lion for The State of Things in 1982, the top-prize Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Paris, Texas, Best Director at Cannes for Wings of Desire and Academy Awards nominations for for his documentaries Buena Vista Social Club, Pina and The Salt of the Earth.

From 1987, the Lumpini Park opener Wings of Desire (Der Himmel Uber Berlin) is about immortal guardian angels in Berlin. Weary of immortality, the celestial beings yearn for human experiences, with one of them, portrayed by Ganz, falling in love with a trapeze artist. American actor Peter Falk and the rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds also figure into the plot.

With Goalie’s Angst, the road movies Alice and Kings, and The American Friend representing Wenders’ New German Cinema period, the retrospective will also feature Paris, Texas and the 1993 Wings of Desire sequel Faraway, So Close! (In Weiter Ferne, so Nah!), to show off his mid-career efforts.

As a coincidence, the screening of Paris, Texas, will be exactly 31 years from the date the film was first shown in Thailand, in Lumpini Park on February 28, 1985, according to archive officials and film critic Manotham Theamtheabrat.

Lately, Wenders has committed to making films in 3D, which he believes immerses the viewer. It’s a medium he first explored with 2011’s Pina, about German dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch, who died in 2009. He stuck with 3D for last year’s Every Thing will be Fine, a harrowing drama about a writer (James Franco) who kills a child in a traffic mishap.

“I discovered that 3D had more potential than just for dance and architecture,” Wenders told the Guardian last year. “I could see it created a whole different presence in close-up. It has a magnifying effect, it’s like a magnifying glass, making everything stand out.”

Wim Wenders: A Retrospective runs from February 25 until March 5 at Lumpini Park and the Film Archive. Here is the schedule:

February 25, Lumpini Park
6pm, Wings of Desire

February 27, Archive
1pm, The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick
3pm, Alice in the Cities
5pm, Kings of the Road

February 28, Archive
1pm, The American Friend
3.15pm, Paris, Texas
6pm, Faraway, So Close!

March 5, Archive
1pm, Pina (in 3D)
3pm, Every Thing will be Fine (in 3D)

Seats can be booked in advance until Saturday at bit.ly/wim-retro. For the Lumpini Park screening, there is a Facebook events page. And for more details, check www.Fapot.org or the Goethe website.

(Cross-published in The Nation)

Anomalisa

Charlie Kaufman, the innovative writer-director behind such mind-bending existential conundrums as Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation and Synecdoche, New York, turns to animation with Anomalisa.

It's the story of a lonely self-help author and motivational speaker (David Thewlis) who sees everyone (Tom Noonan) as identical until he's at a convention and meets a lonely sales rep (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who may or may not be the love of his life.

Kaufman, a veteran film and TV screenwriter, who in the past has worked with such directors as Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry, collaborates this time around with Duke Johnson, a stop-motion animator whose previous credits include Morel Orel, Mary Shelley's Frankenhole and the stop-motion episode of Community, all under writer-producer Dino Stamatopoulos, the guy who is perhaps best known as "Starburns" on Community. Starburns Industries is the main production company behind the film. They put together initial funding through a Kickstarter campaign.

It was awarded the Grand Special Jury Prize and the Future Film Festival Digital Award at the Venice Film Festival last year and was nominated for a Golden Globe. It's also an Oscar nominee, up against other animated features, Pixar's Inside Out (the likely winner), Brazil's Boy and the World, Aardman's Shaun the Sheep and Studio Ghibli's When Marnie Was There.

Critical reception is generally praiseworthy. Although it's animated, this isn't a movie for the kiddies because there is a stop-motion animated sex scene, plus off-color language. In the U.S., it was rated R, which is restricted to viewers 17 and over unless accompanied by a guardian. Thai censors, doing their jobs, are also keen on keeping youngsters from seeing anatomically accurate stop-motion figures having sex, and have rated Anomalisa 20-, meaning you're supposed to show an I.D. if you look young.

Also opening

Son of Saul– The Oscars' Best Foreign Language Film race comes into focus with Son of Saul, a Hungarian Holocaust drama that has already won the Grand Prix at Cannes, the Golden Globe and Critics' Choice Award. It's the likely winner in an Academy Awards category that also has Embrace of the Serpent from Colombia, Theeb from Jordan (two countries that are first-time nominees), the Turkish drama Mustang from France and A War from Denmark. A gripping, handheld-cam, found-footage-type account, Son of Saul takes place over a day and a half in a Nazi death camp in Hungary, where a Jewish prisoner who has been forced to help the Nazis incinerate their victims finds an unburned dead boy in a pile. He becomes determined to give the kid a decent Jewish burial. Meanwhile, the Sonderkommando prison workers plan a rebellion. László Nemes directs, making his feature debut. Critical reception is generally praiseworthy. Rated 15+

Zootopia– Walt Disney Animation Studios, the outfit behind the Oscar winners Frozen and Big Hero 6, didn't make it into the Academy Awards race this year. So maybe you'll be hearing more about this movie around this time next year. Though a more likely Oscar entry from the studio will be the South Pacific seafaring entry Moana, featuring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, coming later this year. All talking animals, the story of Zootopia is set in a world where mammals, predatory and prey alike, peacefully co-exist. Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin), an idealistic bunny rabbit, decides she wants to join the police, even though most cops are bigger critters, such as the cape buffalo voiced by Idris Elba from The Wire. Assigned to parking patrol, Judy is befriended by a fast-talking con-artist fox voiced by Jason Bateman. Other voices include Shakira, J.K. Simmons, Jenny Slate, Tommy Chong, Octavia Spencer and Kristen Bell. There's more about the movie in an article in The Nation. Critical reception is generally positive. This one's okay for the kids and young-at-heart old-timers. It's in 3D in some cinemas, including IMAX. Rated G.

Monkey Twins (วานรคู่ฟัด, Wanorn Khoo Fud ) – Thai action cinema has been on the ropes for the past year or so. The leading proponent was writer, director and choreographer Panna Rittikrai, who died in July 2014. And the leading star, Tony Jaa, has largely parted ways with the Thai film industry in order to go work in Hollywood. So stunt specialists and martial-arts actors have been relegated to supporting roles in TV series and horror movies. But now comes Monkey Twins, which blends Thai and Chinese martial arts, dance and theater. Released by Kao Thaitayarn Co. Ltd., it's co-directed by figures who worked with Panna and Jaa in the past – Ong-Bak 2 writer Nonthakorn Taweesuk and Tom-Yum-Goong 2 action choreographer Weerapol Pumartfon. The story pits Hanuman, the monkey hero of Thai masked dance, against Sun Wukong, the magic monkey of Chinese opera. Sumret Muangput, Kazu Patrick Tang and Panyanut Jirarottanakasem star. Check out the trailer. Rated 15+

Gods of Egypt– Although Thai movie distributors have done a pretty good job this season getting Oscar-nominated movies in front of our eyes, they still must carry water for the Hollywood studios, which are responsible for this epic turd. Gerard "This Is Sparta!" Butler gobbles the scenery as Set, the God of Darkness, who defeats rival deity Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Jamie Lannister from Game of Thrones) and blinds him in one eye. Set takes over Egypt and enslaves the people, giving rise to a mere mortal (Brenton Thwaites) who allies himself with Horus and attempts to lead a rebellion. Chadwick Boseman, Elodie Yung, Courtney Eaton, Rufus Sewell and Geoffrey Rush are also featured. This is is so bad, director Alex Proyas (I, Robot, Knowing) and the studio apologized for it before it was released, because of whitewashing. Further critical response awaits. Rated 15+

Also showing

Wim Wenders: A Retrospective– Angels weary of immortality yearn for the human experience in Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin), which screens at 6 tonight in Lumpini Park. An influential film in the realm of world cinema, it's the opener of a two-week retrospective on German director Wim Wenders by the Goethe-Institut and the Thai Film Archive. The program then shifts to the Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom, with screenings on Saturday and Sunday and next Saturday. This Saturday's offerings are Wenders' feature debut The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick and two entries from his Road Movie Trilogy, Alice in the Cities and Kings of the Road. Sunday has The American Friend, the Cannes Palme d'Or winner Paris, Texas and the Wings of Desire sequel Faraway, So Close! And next Saturday's films will be in 3D – a first at the Archive – with the dance documentary Pina and the drama Every Thing Will Be Fine. For more details, check the special post, the Archive's website or the Goethe website.

The Friese-Greene Club– The club has a private event tonight but the door swings back open tomorrow for the first of three remaining movies this month – One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, featuring Jack Nicholson in one of his great roles. Directed by Milos Forman, Cuckoo's was shot by cinematographer Haskell Wexler, who died in December. Saturday's "kinky" movie is Pedro Almodovar's Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, starring Antonio Banderas. And Sunday's Billy Wilder movie is The Apartment, a contemporary comedy starring Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray and Ray Walston. 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 serial killer is preying on young women in Oise, France, in the 1970s in the fact-based crime drama La prochaine fois je viserai le cœur (Next Time I’ll Aim for the Heart) directed by Cedric Anger and starring Guillaume Canet, Ana Girardot and Jean-Yves Berteloot. It screens at 7pm on Wednesday, March 2, at the Alliance. Please note there is no free French film on March 9 because there is instead a concert by Duo Brunetti-Pachioli.

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.

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.

Jane Got a Gun

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also opening

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also showing

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

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

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

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

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

Take note

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

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

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.

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 love10 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.

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+

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

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.

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.

The Mermaid

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

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

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

Critics like it too.

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

The Jungle Book

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also opening

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

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

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

Also showing

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

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

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

Sneak preview

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

Take note

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

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

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

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Bangkok Cinema Scene: January 14-20, 2016

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