Wise Kwai's Bangkok Cinema Scene

Foxcatcher

One of the season's most-buzzed-about awards contenders, Foxcatcher is based on true events that I don't remember. And I want the story to be a surprise, so I'm avoiding reading too much else about it.

So here's what I've gathered by only halfway researching about the film. Channing Tatum stars as Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz, who despite winning a gold medal, has always been overshadowed by his more-beloved brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo). But Schultz sees a way to greater glory when he and his brother are invited by eccentric millionaire John du Pont to move onto his large estate and train for the 1988 Olympics.

Both Mark Schultz and the creepy du Pont are desperate men, and their drive to achieve pushes them into a spiral of self-destruction.

Bennett Miller (Capote, Moneyball) directs. Already, Foxcatcher has a number of accolades, including the best director prize from Cannes and three Golden Globe nominations – best picture, best actor for Carell and best supporting actor for Ruffalo.

Critical reception is generally positive. Rated 18+

Also opening

Taken 3 – Liam Neeson again brings his particular set of skills to the franchise that relaunched his career as an action star. In this third and possibly final entry, his ex-wife (Famke Janssen) is killed and he's framed for murder. While eluding the authorities and protecting his daughter (Maggie Grace), he must track down the real killers. Forest Whitaker also stars. Olivier Megaton (Taken 2, Colombiana) directs the script by producer Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen. Critical reception is mixed. Rated 13+

Hector and the Search for Happiness– Simon Pegg is a quirky psychiatrist who is tired of his humdrum life. So he embarks on a global quest to uncover the secret to true happiness. Rosamund Pike also stars. Peter Chelsom (Hannah Montana the Movie, Shall We Dance) directs. Critical reception for this piece of schmaltz is mixed. If you're a fan of Pegg's work in such movies as Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, go watch those again. Rated 13+

Black and White: The Dawn of Justice – This is the second entry in a big-budget Taiwanese police-action franchise. Mark Chao stars as Hero Wu, a dutiful police detective. He's paired up with arrogant loner cop Chen Zhen (Kenny Lin) to track down the mastermind behind a series of bombings. They discover the attacks are just a prelude to a bigger scheme involving stolen missiles and biochemical weapons. Thai-dubbed. Rated 13+

Beauty and the Beast– Vincent Cassel and Léa Seydoux star in this live-action adaptation of the French fairy tale about a young woman who falls in love with a beastly-looking man. It's in release for one week only from tomorrow at the Apex cinemas in Siam Square.

Also showing

Frozen Sing-Along– Follow the bouncing snowflake and see if you can match the high notes of "Let It Go" with the sing-along version of Disney's Oscar-winning animated hit. More than a year on, Frozen remains crazily popular, thanks mostly to the hit song "Let It Go", which is not only a favorite with karaoke fans, but is also so insanely loved by children, that director Jennifer Lee has apologized to parents who are fed up with hearing it. The Frozen Sing-along runs in cinemas for just one week. Rated G

The Friese-Greene Club– Spanish filmmakers, "strange futures", Doris Day and documentaries help get 2015 underway at the Club. Thursdays are devoted to Spanish directors, opening with Abre Los Ojos by Alejandro Amenabar, which was remade as Vanilla Sky. "But the original is so much better," seems to be the consensus. Documentaries are featured on Wednesdays and Fridays. Tomorrow, it's 2012's The Imposter, about a man who returns his family after disappearing years before. "Strange futures" are on Saturdays, opening with the influential Silent Running, director Douglas Trumbull's 1972 sci-fi classic, starring Bruce Dern as the last man alive aboard a massive spaceship. Sundays are all about Doris Day. This week it's Pillow Talk. Next Wednesday's documentary is 2009's Cropsey, which examines the New York urban legend of a child-killing monster and segues into the story of Andre Rand, a convicted child kidnapper. Shows are at 8pm. The FGC is down an alley next to the Queen's Park Imperial Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 22. For more details, check the club's Facebook page. There's just nine seats, so book them.

The Circle – SF Cinema's "Doc Holiday" series continues with The Circle, a fact-based Swiss drama about the relationship between schoolteacher Ernst Ostertage and drag queen Robi Rapp, chronicling their efforts as members of the Circle, a pioneering gay-rights group that battled homophobia in the 1950s. It's Switzerland's entry for the best foreign language film at this year's Academy Awards. It screens in German with English and Thai subtitles at 9pm from tomorrow until Sunday and at 5pm on Saturday and Sunday at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld. For details, check the SF Cinemas website.

Filmvirus Kawaii Luv Luv – Filmvirus starts 2015 with a series of Sunday double features of youth-oriented Japanese romances, running until February 8. First up is 2013's See You Tomorrow, Everyone by Yoshihiro Nakamura, followed by 2012's The Drudgery Train by Nobuhiro Yamashita. The show starts at 12.30 on Sunday in the Pridi Banomyong Library at Thammasat University Tha Prachan, in the Rewat Buddhinan Room, floor U2. Dress appropriately and inform the desk worker you are there to see a movie. For details, call (02) 613-3529 or (02) 613-3530.

German Open Air Cinema– It's star-crossed romance in The Silent Mountain, when war breaks out in the Dolomites just as an Italian woman and an Austrian man hope to form their own European union. William Moseley, Eugenia Costantini and Claudia Cardinale star. It screens at 7.30pm on Tuesday, January 13, at the Goethe-Institut off Sathorn Soi 1.

Alliance Française – A bitter and depressed woman falls into an alcoholic coma and awakens 25 years in the past, giving her a second chance at life in Camille Redouble, written, directed by and starring Noémie Lvovsky. Will she make the same choices that led her to an unhappy marriage? It's in French with English subtitles at 7pm on Wednesday, December 14 at the Alliance.

Take note

In addition to the Polish Film Festival from January 18 to 22 at SF World cinema at Central World, another upcoming event is the Japanese Film Festival from January 30 to February 8 at Paragon. And Filmvirus and and Wathann Film Festival join for a screening of old and new Myanmar films on January 24 and 25 at the Reading Room.

The Isthmus

A singularly weird film, The Isthmus (ที่ว่างระหว่างสมุทร, Teewang Rawang Samut) opens for a limited run this week, more than a year after it made initial bow on the festival circuit.

Tapping into indie Thai cinema's popularity for "contemplative" or "shoegaze" films, the film's poster adds a new tagline for the Bangkok theatrical run, "A celebration of nothingness."

Directed by a pair of university film-studies lecturers, Sopawan Boonnimitra and Peerachai Kerdsint, The Isthmus deals with a little girl who suddenly starts speaking only Burmese after her Myanmar nanny dies. The girl's hi-so single mother (Sangthong Gate-U-thong from Citizen Dog and Muay Thai Chaiya) is desperate to find out what's wrong, so she takes the girl and journeys to Ranong, the coastal border province that's home to the late nanny's sister and a vast community of Mynamar migrants. There, they encounter various other characters, such a local physician and community activist, and an oddball Japanese priest.

Screened at the 2013 edition of the Busan film festival and the World Film Festival of Bangkok, The Isthmus is a strange film and is difficult to sum up, though it is a worthy attempt to address the issues of Myanmar migrants and show their place in society. It's at House on RCA and at Apex in Siam Square.

Also opening

Blackhat – Celebrated director Michael Mann (Heat, Collateral) makes his return with this globe-trotting high-tech crime thriller. Chris Hemsworth stars as a convicted hacker who cuts a deal with the authorities to be freed from prison so he pursue a network of cyber-criminals in a hunt that takes him from Chicago to Los Angeles and Hong Kong to Jakarta. Viola Davis also stars, along with top Taiwanese talents Tang Wei and Wang Leehom. Critical reception is forthcoming. Rated 15+

Into the Woods– A baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt) are cursed with childlessness by a witch (Meryl Streep). So they venture into an enchanted forest to find a way to break the spell and encounter various fairy-tale characters who are searching for their own happy endings. Based on the hit 1980s Broadway musical by James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim, there are plenty of songs and dancing along the way. Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine and Johnny Depp also star. A nominee for three Golden Globe Awards (Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, best actress for Emily Blunt, best supporting for Meryl Streep), critical reception is leaning to positive. Rated G

The Water Diviner– Russell Crowe directs and stars in this historical drama as an Australian farmer whose three sons go off to war in Turkey. When they fail to return after the Battle of Gallipoli, he heads to Turkey himself. In Istanbul, he forms a bond with a hotel owner (Olga Kurylenko) while trying to find a way to get to Gallipolli. Critical reception is mostly positive. Rated 15+

Home (a.k.a. At the Devil’s Door) – As she's preparing a house for sale, a real-estate agent encounters a young runaway girl and then becomes entangled with a supernatural force. An indie horror, it premiered at last year's South by Southwest festival and is directed by Nicholas McCarthy, who earlier did the indie horror The Pact. Critical reception is mixed. Rated 15+

Laggies – Keira Knightly stars in this indie coming-of-age comedy as a 28-year-old slacker woman. At her 10-year high-school reunion, she panics after her long-time boyfriend suddenly proposes marriage. She then crosses paths with a 16-year-old girl (Chloe Grace Moretz), buys her beer and feels a kinship. Sam Rockwell also stars. Lynn Shelton (Humpday, Your Sister's Sister) directs. Laggies premiered at Sundance last year. Critical reception is generally positive. Rated 15+

Wolves– A popular high-school student (Lucas Till) awakens from a horrific nightmare, only to realize that he’s living it. Forced into a life on the run, he is drawn to a remote mountain town where he discovers others like him. Jason Momoa and Merritt Patterson also star. David Hayter, screenwriter on Watchmen and X-Men 2, directs, making his feature debut. Critics are howling. Rated 15+

Tevar – A young man goes to factionalism-hit part of the country to participate in a kabaddi match, but ends up being drawn into a conflict over a young woman and the dangerous faction leader who seeks to marry her. Arjun Kapoor, Sonakshi Sinha and Manoj Bajpai star. It's in Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Major Cineplex Sukhumvit, Central Rama III and Pattaya. Opens Friday.

Also showing

The Friese-Greene Club– Tonight, it's a masterpiece of Spanish cinema with Spirit of the Beehive, a 1973 drama by Victor Erice, it's been described as the "bewitching portrait of a child’s haunted inner life". Tomorrow's documentary is The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia, a 2009 portrait of a family of redneck career criminals. Saturday's "strange future" is Woody Allen's Sleeper, while Sunday's Doris Day movie is Calamity Jane. Next Wednesday's documentary is Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Shows are at 8pm. The FGC is down an alley next to the Queen's Park Imperial Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 22. For more details, check the club's Facebook page. There's just nine seats, so book them.

Filmvirus Kawaii Luv Luv – Up first in the Sunday double-bill of Japanese romantic dramas is Permanent Nobara from 2010. Directed by Daihachi Yoshida, it follows a young divorced woman back to her small hometown, where she takes up work in her mother's hair salon, where the women spend their days talking about men and relatinships. Next is 1995's A Last Note, about a group of ageing actresses and their friends and their reflections on life. The show starts at 12.30 on Sunday in the Pridi Banomyong Library at Thammasat University Tha Prachan, in the Rewat Buddhinan Room, floor U2, the basement. Dress appropriately and inform the desk worker you are there to see a movie. For details, call (02) 613-3529 or (02) 613-3530.

Polish Film Festival– Six recent examples of Poland’s celebrated cinema will be shown in the Polish Film Festival from Sunday until Thursday at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld. Organized by the Polish Filmmakers Association, the Polish Film Institute and the Embassy of Poland, here is the lineup:

Ida– Poland's official submission to the Academy Awards, the black-and-white drama is set in the 1960s and follows a young woman as she's about to take her vows as a Catholic nun. She takes trip to see the last surviving member of her family, and uncovers dark secrets about World War II and the Nazis. Screens at 6pm on Sunday with q-and-a by producer Ewa Puszczynska and 9pm on Wednesday.
Walesa: Man of Hope – Veteran filmmaker Andrzej Wajda directs this acclaimed biopic about the Nobel Prize-winning founder of the Solidarity Movement, which spearheaded the Polish revolution. Screens at 8pm on Sunday and 9pm on Tuesday.
One Way Ticket to the Moon– It's 1969 and a young man is about to enter the submarine service in the Polish Navy. Before he goes, his older brother decides to take him on a trip across the country to meet friends and relatives – and for the young man to lose his virginity. Screens at 7pm on Monday with q-and-a by director Jacek Bromski and 9pm next Thursday.
Fanciful– After the death of her mother, a 15-year-old girl falls ill with a strange disease, and her previously distant father enters her life and tries to re-establish a connection. Meanwhile, the girl’s fight against illness presents a tough test for the family. Screens at 9pm on Monday and 7pm next Thursday with q-and-a by producer Eryk Stepniewski.
Gods – Another biopic, this one follows the efforts of Dr Zbigniew Religa, a maverick cardiac surgeon who led a team of doctors in Poland’s first human heart transplant. Screens at 7pm on Wednesday with q-and-a by director Lukasz Palkowski.
Life Feels Good– A young man grows up with cerebral palsy against the backdrop of major changes in Polish society during the 1980s and '90s. Screens at 7pm on Tuesday.

All films have English and Thai subtitles. Tickets are Bt120.

German Open Air Cinema– The fact-based story of a Swiss policeman who helped German and Austrian Jews escape the Nazis during the late 1930s is depicted in Akte Grüninger (Grüninger's Fall). It screens at 7.30pm on Tuesday, January 20, at the Goethe-Institut of Sathorn Soi 1.

Alliance Française – A woman struggles to balance her job as a journalist with raising her two young daughters, just as the president election arrives in her town and her ex-husband shows up for his court-appointed visit with the kids. It's La Bataille de Solférino (Age of Panic), in French with English subtitles at 7pm on Wednesday, January 21 at the Alliance.

The Songs of Rice

My favorite film of 2014, The Songs of Rice (พลงของข้าว, Pleng Khong Kao), finally comes to Thai cinemas this week in a limited release.

Directed by Uruphong Raksasad and produced by Pimpaka Towira, The Songs of Rice is a joyous celebration of the often-lively (and even explosive) rites and festivities that accompany rice cultivation in Thailand.

It premiered about a year ago at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, where it won the Fipresci Award, and made several other festival appearances. I saw it twice, at Salaya Doc and in Luang Prabang, and both times I was blown away by the film's gently building tempo and the vivid intensity of the images.

A documentary, it is the completion of a trilogy of farming films that Uruphong began with in 2005 with The Stories from the North, a collection of short stories from around his native Chiang Rai province. He followed that up with the ambitious documentary Agrarian Utopia, which followed two families growing rice by hand for a year on a small plot of land, also in Chiang Rai, way up in Thailand's North.

With The Songs of Rice, Uruphong starts out in that same location, but then moves further afield, travelling the length and breadth of the country as he documents religious ceremonies, beauty pageants, parades, communal food preparation, dancing and music. He covers the rocket festival in Yasothon in the Northeast, the buffalo races in Chonburi in the East and falls in with a travelling band of workers and their rice-harvesting spaceships in Roi Et.

Released by Extra Virgin, The Songs of Rice is at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld. Next week, it spreads to Chiang Mai's Maya and SF Cinema City in Khon Kaen on February 5. Rated G

For more details, check the movie's Facebook page. There's also a trailer.

Also opening

American Sniper – One of this year's nominees for the Academy Awards, Bradley Cooper portrays Chris Kyle, the most lethal sniper in U.S. military history. A U.S. Navy SEAL, he's so effective at protecting his comrades that they nickname him the "Legend", which also puts a price on his head and has insurgents gunning for him. Despite the danger, he serves four harrowing tours of duty in Iraq. But upon returning home, he finds the can’t leave the war behind. Sienna Miller also stars. Clint Eastwood directs. American Sniper is nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor for Cooper. The film is controversial in the U.S., where society is divided over whether the film is pro-war propaganda or a tribute to the men and women who sacrifice their lives in service to the country or even just anti-war. Critical reception is mostly positive. Rated 13_

Big Eyes – Tim Burton directs fact-based comedy-drama about 1950s and '60s American pop artist Margaret Keane (Amy Adams) and her entrepreneurial husband (Christoph Waltz), who took credit for his wife’s famous paintings of big-eyed children. Terence Stamp, Danny Huston, Jason Schwartzman and Krysten Ritter also star. A return to form for Burton, whose recent output has been assailed critically, Big Eyes was nominated for three Golden Globes, and won best actress for Amy Adams. Oscar buzz for it was high, but it was snubbed in the end. Critical reception is mostly favorable. Rated 13+

Maps to the Stars– David Cronenberg taps into the inner-psyche of Hollywood with this social satire about a family that is involved with various facets of show business. John Cusack is a famed TV self-help therapist while his wife (Olivia Williams) is managing the career of their child-star son (Evan Bird), who, at the age of 13, has already been to rehab. Their mentally unstable daughter (Mia Wasikowska) is an assistant to a faded movie star (Julianne Moore). And on the fringes is an aspiring writer-actor (Robert Pattinson) who works as a limo driver. Maps to the Stars premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, and critical reception is mixed. The consensus seems to be that it's got just enough of the requisite Cronenberg weirdness to satisfy the director's fans. Rated 18+

Mortdecai– Well, there's no Johnny Depp in this year's Tim Burton film, but that doesn't mean you can't go watch Depp put on silly costumes and clown around. In Mortdecai, he's a moustache-twirling upper-class British twit who is assigned to recover a stolen painting that contains a code to a lost Nazi bank account. He gets help from his leggy girlfriend (Gywneth Paltrow) and his long-suffering servant Jock (Paul Bettany). Ewan McGregor and Olivia Munn also star. It's based on a series of comic novels from the 1970s by British writer Kyril Bonfiglioli. David Keopp (Premium Rush, Ghost Town) directs. Can't imagine critical reception is going to be kind. Rated 13+

Dumb and Dumber To– Twenty years after they made their name with Dumb and Dumber, directors Bobby and Peter Farrelly revisit goofball characters Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne, with original stars Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels finally returning to their iconic roles after years and years of sequel rumors. The story reunites the two friends for a road trip in search of Harry's long-lost child. Critical reception is mixed. Ratedc 13+

The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death– With bombs raining down on London during World War II, a schoolteacher and her headmistress take their orphan charges to seek refuge in the countryside. Stranded in a deserted village, they set up their school in a manor where supernatural events occurred years before. Phoebe Fox, Helen McCrory and Jeremy Irvine star. Critical reception is mixed. Rated 13+

Ror Dor Khao Chon Phee Thee Khao Chon Kai (รด.เขาชนผีที่เขาชนไก่) – Respected Thai director Tanwarin Sukkhapisit shifts to horror-comedy with this picture distributed by Phranakorn Film. It's set at at the Khao Chon Kai bootcamp in Kanchanaburi, where rival groups of schoolboys going through the ror dor territorial defence training deal with mysterious happenings at night. Somchai Kemklad stars as a ghostly drill instructor. Rated 15+

The Fox Lover– White Fox spirit Xiaochui (Gillian Chung) is in love with the naive mortal Wang Yuanfeng (Julian Cheung), who has hidden powers that enable him to destroy demons. But when Xiaochui’s loyalties are tested in the clash between humans and demons, she is willing to sacrifice her life for love. Thai-dubbed.

Baby – Akshay Kumar stars in this Bollywood actioner as a counter-intelligence agent battling a global plot by a maniacal mastermind. In Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Major Cineplex Sukhumvit, Central Rama III and Pattaya. Opens Friday.

Also showing

Polish Film Festival– Wrapping up today, two entries remain in the festival at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld. First up at 7pm is Fanciful, a coming-of-age drama about a teenage girl who comes down with a mysterious illness after the death of her mother. Producer Eyrk Stepniewski will be on hand afterward for a q-and-a. That's followed at 9pm by One Way Ticket to the Moon, in which a young man about to enter the navy's submarine service is taken on a road trip to lose his virginity. Tickets are Bt120.

The Friese-Greene Club– Pedro Almodovar is the Spanish director in focus tonight with his romantic film, Talk to Her. Tomorrow, head to Jesus Camp, a documentary about an unusual South Dakota summer camp. The club hosts a private event on Saturday but is open for all on Sunday with another classic Doris Day movie, Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much, with James Stewart and featuring Day's signature song, the Oscar-winning smash "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)". Next Wednesday is another documentary, 2008's Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father, a touching tribute to a murdered best friend. Shows are at 8pm. The FGC is down an alley next to the Queen's Park Imperial Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 22. For more details, check the club's Facebook page. There's just nine seats, so book them.

Mini-Wathann Film Festival – Filmvirus and the Reading Room present a two-day program of old and new Myanmar films from the Wathann Film Festival, which was Myanmar's first film festival and the first to feature independent films. It was founded in Yangon in 2011 by Myanmar filmmaking couple Thuthu Shein and Thaiddhi, who studied at the Czech National Film School. Opening at 1pm on Saturday and Sunday, the fest will have an older feature from the festival's "memory" section followed by a line-up of short films. Saturday opens with Tender Are the Feet, a 45-minute film from 1972 by Mg Wunna. Short documentaries follow at 2pm. Sunday kicks off with an old memory, 1953's feature Yatanabon (Treasure-trove) by U Tin Maung, followed at 2.30pm by short fictional and experimental films. Myat Noe, Myanmar filmmaker and critic, will be on hand for talks afterward. Admission is free. The venue is the Reading Room, a fourth-floor walk-up near the corner of Silom Soi 19.

Filmvirus Kawaii Luv Luv – Filmvirus' Sunday afternoon double features of Japanese films offers a change of pace this week with Key of Life, a 2012 comedy by Kenji Uchida, about an out-of-work actor who steals the identity of a stranger at a bathhouse and finds himself in the shoes of an elite hitman. That's followed by 9 Souls, a 2003 crime drama by Toshiaki Toyoda about nine escaped prisoners hunting for buried treasure. The show starts at 12.30 on Sunday in the Pridi Banomyong Library at Thammasat University Tha Prachan, in the Rewat Buddhinan Room, floor U2, the basement. Dress appropriately and inform the desk worker you are there to see a movie. For details, call (02) 613-3529 or (02) 613-3530.

German Open Air Cinema– It's a western set in the Alps with The Dark Valley, a 2014 drama in which a lone rider takes a hidden path and turns up in an Alpine town, where people wonder where he came from and how he got there. It screens at 7.30pm on Tuesday, January 27, at the Goethe-Institut of Sathorn Soi 1.

Alliance Française – A lonely man on a park bench is observed by an immense all-star French cast in Bancs publics (Versailles Rive-Droite), a 2009 comedy by Bruno Podalydès. It's in French with English subtitles at 7pm on Wednesday, January 28 at the Alliance.

Sneak preview

The Imitation Game – As if 11 new movies in general release and the many other film events going on aren't enough, here's one more – The Imitation Game, a biographical drama about Alan Turing, the mathematician and mastermind of the Allied effort to crack the German Enigma code of World War II. After he heroically helped defeat the Nazis, Turing was criminally prosecuted for his homosexuality. Starring recent Golden Globe winner Benedict Cumberbatch, The Imitation Game is nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director for Morton Tyldum, Best Actor for Benedict Cumberbatch and Best Supporting Actress for Keira Knightley. Critical reception is mostly positive. It's in sneak previews from around 8 nightly at most multiplexes before opening wide next week.

Take note

The Japanese Film Festival is coming up next week, from January 30 to February 8 at Paragon. I'll aim to provide a special update soon. Another upcoming event is the Thailand International Destination Film Festival, running from February 4 to 12.

Major Cineplex is celebrating 20 years with an update of its website. After being dysfunctional for probably close to a year, it's now a bit easier to use and actually provides showtimes.

Under the theme of “Life”, the Japanese Film Festival has 15 entries, all from the past couple years or so, running from January 31 until February 8 at Paragon Cineplex.

Thankfully, in a departure from past editions of the long-running festival (it's been held for some 40 years!), you have to buy tickets at the box office. They are 100 baht – a bargain compared to the old arduous process of standing in a queue for up to two hours and competing with all the balloon chasers to retrieve precious "free" tickets.

As a plus, all films will have English and Thai subtitles, something you won't find at the Japan Foundation's regular Friday night screenings, which generally only have Thai subs. Here is the line-up:

Saturday, January 31

11am – Tug of War!– From 2012, this comedy follows the efforts of a young public-relations official for a city government who is tasked with putting together a women’s team for a national tug-of-war tournament. She ropes in a motley band of workers from a school lunch centre that’s on the verge of being shut down.
1.30pm – A Story of Yonosuke– Set in 1987, this light-hearted 2013 comedy is about the romantic misadventures of a wide-eyed young man who leaves his hometown and goes off to college in Tokyo.
5pm – Saudade – One of three films in the festival that explore Thai-Japanese relations, this 2011 drama deals with the migrant-worker community as seen though the eyes of a young Japanese man who enters the construction trade. He bonds with his Japanese co-workers over a shared interest in Thai culture, and, especially, Thai women. They also encounter Brazilian labourers, and get into a rap-music battle with them. The movie will be followed by a talk by director Tomita Katsuya with two local film experts, documentary director Panu Aree (his day job is working in international acquisitions at Sahamongkolfilm) and critic Wiwat “Filmsick” Lertwiwatwongsa, programmer for Filmvirus.

Sunday, February 1

11am – Akko-Chan: The Movie – From 2012, this is a live-action adaptation of the pioneering “magic girl” subgenre of anime and manga. Haruka Ayase (Oppai Volleyball, Cyborg She) portrays the young woman, who comes into possession of a magic compact mirror that allows her to transform into anything. She uses her powers to help save a troubled cosmetics company while at the same time falling in love.
1.30pm – The Kirishima Thing— The stratified society of a high school is examined in the much-acclaimed 2012 drama, in which the student body is left reeling after the sudden disappearance of the school’s leader and star volleyball player. Out of this backdrop emerges a geeky kid from the school’s film club. He comes into conflict with the other cliques when he decides to make a zombie movie on the school’s rooftop. Widely praised by critics, The Kirishima Thing won several awards, including the Japan Academy Prize for Picture of the Year and Director of the Year for Daihachi Yoshida.
4pm – The Light Shines Only There– Japan’s official submission to the Oscars didn’t make the final list of nominees, but it has been lauded by critics for its depiction of lost souls eking out an existence at the margins of society in a desolate port town.

Monday, February 2

7pm – Casting Blossoms to the Sky– Important director Nobuhiko Obayashi tackles the issues surrounding the 11/11/11 disasters with this story of a reporter who heads to Nagaoka to cover the fireworks festival and to write about people displaced by the Great Tohoku Earthquake of 2011. She also reconnects with a former flame.

Tuesday, February 3

7pm – Hospitalite – A family’s life is turned upside-down when the son of the their wealthy former benefactor shows up looking for a job in their printing shop.

Wednesday, February 4

7pm – About the Pink Sky – Don't let the colorful title mislead – this comic drama was shot in black and white. Premiering in competition at Sundance in 2012, Pink Sky deals with a high-school girl who finds a wallet containing a large sum of cash. She sets out to find the wallet’s owner.

Thursday, February 5

7pm – Leaving on the 15th Spring– From 2013, this coming-of-age drama is about an Okinawan girl completing her last year of junior high, her island’s only school. Her anxiety mounts as she’s faced with the prospect of leaving home to attend high school.

Friday, February 6

7pm – Until the Break of Dawn– Veteran actress Kirin Kiki, beloved for her award-winning role in Tokyo Tower: Mom and Me, and Sometimes Dad, stars as a grandmother who is training her young grandson to be a tsunagu, a spirit medium, who “connects” people to their dearest departed.

Saturday, February 7

1.30pm – Lupin III– This is actually the opening film of the festival on January 30, but that's an invite-only gala screening. So for the rest of us, here's a chance to feast eyes on a brand-new live-action adaptation of the popular manga and anime about a gentleman thief. Ryuhei Kitamura (Versus, Midnight Meat Train) directs this colorful and stylish adventure yarn starring Shun Ogiri as the cocky thief in the trademark red jacket. They story brings Lupin the Third and his partners in crime to a "fictional Southeast Asian country" (it was filmed in Thailand in 2013), where they battle a local crime kingpin (veteran Thai actor Nirut Sirichanya) for possession of the priceless Crimson Heart of Cleopatra. Cult-favorite actor Tadanobu Asano also stars, portraying Lupin's dogged police-detective nemesis.
4pm – Hand in the Glove– This film is so new, it doesn't yet have an IMDb entry. Featuring Thai and Japanese talents on both sides of the lens, the story involves a prince visiting from a fictional country who seeks to escape the clutches of his minders and experience life as an ordinary person. He’s portrayed by Thai actor-musician Chanon Rikulsurakan, best known for his supporting role in The Love of Siam and his work with the August band. The second feature from indie actor-director Yusuke Inaba, its cinematography is by young Thai lensman Pairach Khumwan, noted for his work on director Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit’s two popular features 36 and Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy. They’ll all be present for a talk afterward, along with other cast members.

Sunday, February 8

1.30pm – The Ravine of Goodbye– Directed by Tatsushi Omori, this 2013 drama puts characters through the emotional and moral wringers with a story about a mother suspected of killing her own child.
6.30pm – My Man – The fest's closing entry explores a father-daughter relationship of sorts, with Asano from Lupin III heading the cast as a lonely 26-year-old man taking in his orphaned 10-year-old niece, a refugee from the 2011 tsunami. However, their relationship is fraught with controversy in their snowy village, and the odd couple must make their escape to Tokyo.

Following the Bangkok screenings, the Japanese Film Festival moves to Chiang Mai's Major Cineplex Central Festival from February 13 to 21; however, Hand in the Glove will not be part of the programme.

Life Itself

The incredible life story of influential and popular Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert is told in Life Itself, a documentary based on his best-selling 2011 memoir.

Directed by Steve James, whose 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams was enthusiastically championed by Ebert, Life Itself has footage and interviews with the critic during the final months before his death in 2013. He was suffering from cancer that had robbed him of his lower jaw and ability to speak, except through a computerized box. Despite his illness, Ebert harnessed the Internet and social networking platforms like Twitter to remain a vital voice, almost until he passed.

Friends, colleagues and family interviewed include his steadfast wife Chaz along with Martin Scorsese, Werner Herzog and Errol Morris. It covers his early days as a Hollywood screenwriter with Russ Meyer on the cult film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. There's also a look at his often-stormy relationship with his friend and chief rival, Chicago Tribune film critic Gene Siskel. Together, the pair hosted a popular movie-review show on TV, which popularized the phrase "two thumbs up".

Ultimately, it's a portrait for how Ebert, the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize, transcended his chosen field's rather stodgy public image to become an influential cultural voice who brought critical thought about movies to the masses.

After premieres at Cannes and Telluride – festivals Ebert regularly attended – critical reception is overwhelmingly positive, which is hardly surprising. Despite all the acclaim, Life Itself missed the cut when it came to Academy Award nominees for documentary feature, but I tend to think that's how Ebert himself would have preferred it, to give the spotlight to other films.

Part of SF Cinema's ongoing Doc Holiday series, Life Itself screens this weekend in a very limited release, at 5pm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld.

Also opening

The Imitation Game– A war hero whose top-secret efforts saved countless lives but cost him dearly, Alan Turing was a brilliant mathematcian, cryptanalyst and computing pioneer who led British efforts during World War II to break the Nazis' Enigma code. He was also gay, and in return for his efforts, he was criminally prosecuted under the U.K.'s draconian indecency laws and chemically castrated. He's delicately portrayed in The Imitation Game by Benedict Cumberbatch, a Golden Globe and Oscar nominee. Fellow nominee Keira Knightly also stars, as Turing's confidant, the gender-barrier-breaking code-breaker Joan Clarke. Other stars include Matthew Goode, Charles Dance from Game of Thrones and Mark Strong. A nominee for eight Academy Awards, critical reception is generally positive. Rated 13+

Tracers – Twilight heartthrob Taylor Lautner shows off his muscles in this action drama. He's a New York bicycle messenger who is indebted to the mob. After a run-in with a beautiful but mysterious woman (Marie Avgeropoulos), he sees a possible way of pay off those debts when he's introduced to a crew of criminals who use the daring sport of parkour to pull off heists. Critical reception is unknown – this doesn't come out in the States until next month, so Bangkok viewers have a head start on letting the world know whether this is actually any good. Rated 15+

Project Almanac– Here we go with another fake “found footage” movie. This one chronicles the efforts of teenage friends to build a time machine to undo past mistakes. Well-meaning at first, they believe they are successful, but as they use their device for personal gain, they come to discover their actions have dire consequences. This is just coming out in the States this week, so critical reception is only just coming in. Rated 13+

Sean Sayong (เศียรสยอง , a.k.a. Under the Mask) – Thailand's revered and sacred classical masked dance – khon – provides the backdrop for this indie horror about a gang of miscreants who kidnap some party-goers and flee into a haunted forest that was once a center for dance training. There, they encounter a ghost dancer who dreamed of being the "khon yak"– the giant monster of masked-dance lore. Rated 18+

Gangnam Blues – Against the backdrop of the 1970s building boom that made Seoul’s luxurious Gangnam district what it is today, the relationship of two childhood friends is put to the test as gangsters and political powers vie for control of the lucrative real-estate market. Yoo Ha (Once Upon a Time in High School, A Dirty Carnival) directs and Lee Min-ho and Kim Rae-won star. It's currently topping the box-office in South Korea. It's in Korean with English and Thai subtitles at CentralWorld, Paragon and Esplanade Ratchada and dubbed elsewhere. Rated 18+

The Truth About Beauty– The obsession over cosmetic surgery is parodied in this Chinese romantic comedy. Recent college graduate Guo Jing (Bai Baihe) figures she lost her boyfriend and can’t find a job because she isn’t attractive enough. So she undergoes plastic surgery, then lands a job selling real estate and catches the eye of her boss (Ronald Cheng). Now her dilemma is what to do if her colleagues and friends discover her "ugly" past. In Mandarin with English and Thai subtitles at SFW Centralworld and House on RCA. Rated 15+

Also showing

The Friese-Greene Club– Spanish surrealist filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky's unsuccessful attempt to adapt Frank Herbert's sprawling sci-fi novel Dune is recounted in the cult-hit 2013 documentary Jodorowsky's Dune, screening tonight. Tomorrow is another documentary on a couple more cult-cinema figures, Werner Herzog and his frequent leading man, the volatile Klaus Kinski. Their stormy relationship is recounted in 1999's My Best Fiend. And the month closes out with one more look at our "strange future", the underappreciated 1985 neo-noir Trouble in Mind starring Kris Kristofferson, Keith Carradine and an excellent Devine, out of drag.For the February schedule, check the club's Facebook page. Shows are at 8pm. The FGC is down an alley next to the Queen's Park Imperial Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 22. There's just nine seats, so book them.

Japanese Film Festival– Officially opening on Friday with an invite-only gala screening, one of Bangkok's longest-running film fests has a handful of films that have Thai ties. Saudade, screening at 5pm on Saturday, deals with the migrant-worker community in Japan, where two laborers bond over their shared interest in Thai culture, and especially, Thai women. Other highlights include Sunday's The Kirishima Thing, a much-acclaimed drama about cliques in conflict at a high school, and a bleak drama, The Light Only Shines There, Japan's official submission to this year's Oscars. The fest runs until February 8 at Paragon Cineplex, where you can buy tickets for 100 baht. Please see my previous posting for full details.

Filmvirus Kawaii Luv Luv– In addition to the Japanese Film Festival, Filmvirus' Sunday afternoon double features of Japanese films continues – sort of. Up first is Max, Mon Amour, a 1986 French comedy by Japanese great Nagisa Oshima. Charlotte Rampling stars as a diplomat's wife who has entered into a shocking love affair with a chimpanzee. Next up is Yuki and Nina, a 2009 childhood drama in which a Japanese girl facing the divorce of her parents finds solace with her French best friend. The show starts at 12.30 on Sunday in the Pridi Banomyong Library at Thammasat University Tha Prachan, in the Rewat Buddhinan Room, floor U2, the basement. Dress appropriately, bring an ID and inform the desk worker you are there to see a movie. For details, call (02) 613-3529 or (02) 613-3530.

German Open Air Cinema – Cross-cultural connections and conflicts form the backdrop for Kaddish for a Friend, a 2012 drama in which a Palestinian boy moves into a mixed neighborhood in Berlin. Pressured by his peers, he breaks into the apartment of an upstairs neighbor, an elderly Jewish man, and the two must come to some sort of agreement if the boy is to learn anything about life. It screens at 7.30pm on Tuesday, February 3, at the Goethe-Institut of Sathorn Soi 1.

Alliance Française– "Lost illusions" is the theme for February, which kicks off with La folie Almayer (Almayer's Folly), a 2012 drama about a Dutchman risking all in his search for lost pirate treasure in Malaysia in the 1950s. It's adapted from Joseph Conrad's debut novel. Chantal Akerman directs and Stanislas Merhar stars. It's in French with English subtitles at 7pm on Wednesday, February 4 at the Alliance.

Sneak preview

The Theory of Everything– Young English stage and screen actor Eddie Redmayne has emerged as the actor to beat this awards season after pulling down the Golden Globe and other prizes for his portrayal of Dr. Stephen Hawking. Felicity Jones also stars in this biopic, which charts Hawking's life at university and his struggles in overcoming overwhelming disabilities stemming from rare early onset motor neurone disease. Critical reception is generally positive. This is in sneak previews from around 8 nightly before opening wider next week. Rated 13+

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

Saturday, February 7

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

Sunday, February 8

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

Monday, February 9

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

Tuesday, February 10

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

Wednesday, February 11

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

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

Jupiter Ascending

The creators of The Matrix, siblings Andy and Lana Wachowski, return with another story of a seemingly ordinary person who is plucked from obscurity to change the destiny of moviegoers for another generation.

Jupiter Ascending is the story of a young woman named Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis), who was born under a night sky, with signs predicting she was destined for great things. Grown up, she's accepted the cold reality of her job as a housecleaner, but her life changes with the arrival of a space-faring warrior (Channing Tatum), who tells her she's actually descended from alien royalty, which makes her the ruler of Earth.

Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything), James D'Arcy, Sean Bean, Douglas Booth, Tuppence Middleton and Gugu Mbatha-Raw also star.

Critical reception is mixed, leaning to negative. The consensus seems to be is that it looks fantastic but doesn't make a lick of sense. It's in real 3D in some cinemas, including IMAX. Rated 13+

Also opening

The Theory of Everything– Oscar-nominee and Golden Globe winner Eddie Redmayne portrays renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking during his time at Cambridge and his early romance with fellow student Jane Wilde (Felicity Jones). Debilitated at the tender age of 21 by early onset motor neurone disease, Hawking feels he's in a race against time as he embarks on groundbreaking scientific work. Critical reception is generally positive. This opened in sneak previews last week and now moves to a slightly wider but still limited release. It's at Apex, Paragon, SFW CentralWorld, SFX Maya Chiang Mai and Major Cineplex Central Festival Chiang Mai. Rated 13+

Single Lady Phror Khoei Me Fan (ซิงเกิลเลดี้ เพราะเคยมีแฟน) – Popular celebrity "Aum" Patcharapa Chaichuea earns more from making personal appearances at product-launch events and from TV soap operas than she ever will as a movie actress. So it's not surprising that her outings on the big screen are infrequent, with her last being in 2011's 30 Kamlung Jaew. Now she's back as the high-profile star of the second project from a new production company, Transformation Films, which launched last year with the successful Tukkae Rak Pang Mak. In Single Lady, Aum is a career woman who decides to right old wrongs and reconnect with old boyfriends. The guys are a varied bunch, from rotund little comedian Jaroenpron “Kotee Aramboy” Ornlamai to more conventionally handsome types, such as "Tar" Navin Yaovaponkun, "Tar Barbie" Phaopon Dhephasdin Na Ayutthaya (actual former exes of Aum's), Ravit Therdwong, Ekachai “Ekkie” Uasangkomset and Arak Amornsupasiri. Thanakorn Pongsuwan, who made his debut with the 2003 romance Fake, also starring Aum, is the director. It's a comeback of sorts for him, following his move into martial-arts action with 2007's Opapatika and 2009's Fireball. Rated 13+

The Rewrite– Hugh Grant is a washed up, divorced and broke Oscar-winning screenwriter who has been forced to take a job as a teacher at a small college. His life, wait for it, takes on new meaning when he becomes involved with a single mother (Marisa Tomei) who has gone back to school. J.K. Simmons (Whiplash, Juno) and Allison Janney (Juno) also star. Critical reception is mixed, leaning to positive. Rated G

Comet– A chance encounter brings together a cynical guy (Justin Long) and a quick-witted young woman (Emmy Rossum) for a tempestuous, star-crossed love affair that takes them from a meteor shower in Los Angeles, to an encounter in a Paris hotel room, to a fateful phone call. Critical reception is mixed. Rated 13+

Gallows Hill– After an American man and his family are involved in a traffic wreck in Colombia, they take refuge in a secluded inn. There, they discover a girl locked in the basement and free her without knowing she’s an ancient evil spirit. Peter Facinelli, Sophia Myles and Nathalia Ramos star. Also known as The Damned, critical reception is mostly negative. Rated 15+

Dolly Ki Doli – Sonam Kapoor is a conwoman who travels around, duping wealthy men into marriage and then running away with their loot. It's in Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Major Cineplex Sukhumvit, Rama III and Pattaya. Opens Friday.

Also showing

The Friese-Greene Club– Australia vs. New Zealand is one of the features this month, with the two countries' film masterpieces going head-to-head on Thursdays and Fridays. Tonight, it's Nicolas Roeg's highly regarded Walkabout, in which a girl and boy stranded in the Outback are assisted by a mystical Aboriginal boy. Tomorrow, it's the Kiwis' turn with Jane Campion's award-winning The Piano, starring Holly Hunter as a mute Scotswoman sold into marriage in Auckland. With the help of her daughter (Anna Paquin in her debut role) and a buns-baring handyman (Harvey Keitel), she struggles to get her prized piano back after it was sold by her boorish husband (Sam Neill). There are no film screenings this weekend, so it is suggested that club members find a seat at the Thailand International Film Destination Festival, covered below. Shows are at 8pm. The FGC is down an alley next to the Queen's Park Imperial Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 22. For more details, check the club's Facebook page. There's just nine seats, so book them.

The Upside Down World: Three Short Films by Pramote Sangsorn – Acclaimed indie filmmaker Pramote Sangsorn dusts off some of his work for a special screening this weekend at Thong Lor Art Space. The films are Observation of the Monk, featuring well-known performance artist Wannasuk "Kuck" Sirilar, the award-winning Island of Utopias and his most recent award-winning effort, Isan Mars, which looks at an effort to train Northeastern farmers for work on the Red Planet. The screenings are at 7.30pm nightly from Friday to Sunday. Admission is 250 baht with part of the proceeds going to the Ramintra School for the Blind. For more details, please see the Facebook events page.

A scene from Hand in the Glove.

Japanese Film Festival – The long-running and popular festival continues through Sunday at Paragon Cineplex. Tonight at 7, it's Leaving on the 15th Spring, a coming-of-age story about an Okinawan girl. Tomorrow, veteran actress Kirin Kiki stars in Until the Break of Dawn, in which she's a spirit medium teaching her trade to a young grandson. Saturday's encore screening of the made-in-Thailand manga adaptation Lupin III is said to be fully booked. However, distributors United Home Entertainment have taken note and plan to bring it to cinemas on March 19, hopefully with English subs. Also on Saturday is Hand in the Glove, a brand-new film featuring an intriguing mix of Japanese and Thai talent on both sides of the lens. The fest wraps up on Sunday with two dramas, The Ravine of Goodbye and My Man. Please see my earlier posting for more details. Tickets are Bt100 – general admission seating, so sit wherever you want.

Thailand International Film Destination Festival– Now in its third year, the Thailand Film Office's showcase of foreign films made in Thailand has 10 entries screening from Saturday until Wednesday at Paragon Cineplex. Noteable entries include the Tokyo film festival Audience Award winner Pale Moon on Sunday, 2011's Stretch, which David Carradine died during the making of, and Zero Tolerance, a British-produced action yarn directed by the infamous Wych Kaosayananda and starring direct-to-video butt kickers Scott Adkins and Gary Daniels along with Vietnamese star Dustin Nguyen. It's all covered in an earlier blog post. Tickets are free, but as with all these "free" festivals there's a catch – you'll have to first register by phone and then pick up your tickets from a special table in the cinema lobby 30 minutes before showtime. To register, call (091) 757-0467 or (091) 757-1067.

Filmvirus Kawaii Luv Luv– The Sunday afternoon series of Japanese double features wraps up this weekend. First up at 12.30pm is Pool, a 2009 drama that was filmed in Thailand. In a nice bit of synergy that ties in with two film festivals happening here right now, it deals with a young woman who reunites with her estranged mother, the operator of a run-down Thai resort. That's followed by Sleeping Man from 1996, which is pretty much as the title describes. The venue is the Pridi Banomyong Library at Thammasat University Tha Prachan, in the Rewat Buddhinan Room, floor U2, the basement. Dress appropriately and inform the desk worker you are there to see a movie. Bring identification. For details, call (02) 613-3529 or (02) 613-3530.

German Open Air Cinema– Two more screenings remain in the annual series at the Goethe-Institut. Next up is On the Edge, a 2013 drama about the affairs of a random group of strangers who meet at a Swiss resort. It screens at 7.30pm on Tuesday, February 10, at the Goethe-Institut off Sathorn Soi 1.

Alliance Française– "Lost illusions" is the theme for this month and next week's entry is Les lendemains, in which an idealistic young woman falls in with a bunch of militant squatters. It's in French with English subtitles at 7pm on Wednesday, February 11 at the Alliance.

Take note

Several films that were already in cinemas in recent months have returned this week through a promotion at Major Cineplex theaters to capitalize on the free publicity generated by Hollywood's awards season. This week's returnees include the Academy Award-nominated animated features Big Hero Six from Disney and Studio Ghibli's The Tale of Princess Kaguya. There's also Begin Again, a musical romance, which has an Oscar-nominated original song. Upcoming other re-releases are the indie hits Boyhood and Whiplash plus Gone Girl. and another Oscar-nominated animation, How to Train Your Dragon 2.

Coming up next month is the fourth edition of the Salaya International Documentary Film Festival, running March 21 to 28. But before that, from February 26 to March 6, the Thai Film Archive has something called Memory! Reprise in Thailand International Film Heritage Festival, with a very interesting line-up of old movies at. if I'm reading it right, the Alliance Française.

Kingsman: The Secret Service

Director Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake, X-Men: First Class) reteams with Kick-Ass comic-book writer Mark Millar for Kingsman: The Secret Service, which looks to be a fun-filled and campy spoof of stiff-upper British spy action.

Colin Firth, channeling his more serious role in the spy drama Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, is an impeccably tailored veteran operative with a super-secret organisation. He recruits an unrefined but promising street kid (Taron Egerton) into the agency’s ultra-competitive training program just as a global threat emerges from a twisted tech genius.

Samuel L. Jackson also stars, along with Michael Caine and Vaughn regular Mark Strong (also from Tinker Tailor and numerous other Brit thrillers). Star Wars' Mark Hamill also turns up in a brief role.

Critical reception is generally positive. Rated 15+

Also opening

Still Alice – Julianne Moore is getting overdue recognition this season, earning an Oscar nomination and winning the Golden Globe, Bafta and other prizes for her performance in this drama. She portrays a renowned linguistics professor who struggles to stay connected to her family and her identity after she is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Alec Baldwin also stars. Critical reception is mostly positive. Rated G

Fifty Shades of Grey– Owing to the Valentine's Day weekend, there are romance-themed films being forced onto screens. The most anticipated, by fans of E.L. James' erotic novels anyway, stars Dakota Johnson as a naive 21-year-old college student who takes an assignment for her school paper to write about Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), an eminently successful 27-year-old entrepreneur who turns out to have a thing for sadomasochism. Although she's intimidated at first, she enters into a torrid affair with the man, who makes her sign a non-disclosure agreement forbidding her to discuss anything that they do together. Critical reception is just starting. Have your I.D. cards handy as it's rated 20-.

Playing It Cool – Chris Evans takes a break from playing Captain America in this mushy indie romance. He's a love-struck man who enters into a platonic relationship with a woman (Michelle Monaghan) who's already engaged to someone else. Luke Wilson, Topher Grace, Giovanni Ribisi and Patrick Warburton also star. Also known as A Many Splintered Thing, critical reception is bit of an unknown. Rated 15+

Phaun Kheed Sen Tai (เพื่อนขีดเส้นใต้) – Three relationships are focused on in this effort by three indie directors. The stories include a husband who is asked to quit smoking by his wife so that they can have a baby. Another examines the conflicts between senior-year film students as they race to complete their thesis works. And there's the friendship between two soldiers that starts on the battlefield and continues after their military discharge. Rated 15+

Roy – Three lives intersect in this Bollywood drama starring Ranbir Kapoor as a mysterious thief no one can catch. His life seems linked with that of another man's (Arjun Rampal), a filmmaker who has made a fortune directing movies about the robberies. A playboy, he takes up with a new girlfriend (Jacqueline Fernandez), who is also filmmaker, but maybe she's also a globetrotting socialite. It's in Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Major Cineplex Sukhumvit, Rama III and Pattaya. Opens Friday.

Also showing

The Friese-Greene Club– The battle for cinematic supremacy between Australia and New Zealand continues tonight with 1971's Wake In Fright (a.k.a. Outback), the crime thriller that gave rise to the Ozploitation genre. It's a mean-spirited and violent counterpoint to the Kiwis' well-mannered offering, the coming-of-age Maori drama Whale Rider from 2002, screening tomorrow. Saturday begins a run of Monty Python films, beginning with the 1979 religious satire Life of Brian. Sundays feature the classic films of Vincente Minnelli, and this week it's Gene Kelly doing the old song and dance in An American in Paris. Wednesdays this month feature films about "those darn kids". And they sure talk funny in next week's entry, the neo-noir thriller Brick, the feature debut of director Rian Johnson, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Shows are at 8pm. The FGC is down an alley next to the Queen's Park Imperial Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 22. For more details, check the club's Facebook page. There's just nine seats, so book them.

German Open Air Cinema – The Goethe-Institut's annual outdoor showcase of German cinema comes to a close next week with Hannah Arendt, a 2012 biopic that focuses on the Jewish German intellectual and her criticism of Israel's trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, in which she coined the phrase "the banality of evil". The show is at 7.30pm on Tuesday, February 17 at the Goethe-Institut off Sathorn Soi 1.

Alliance Française– "Lost illusions" is the theme for this month and next week's entry is Les beaux jours (Bright Days Ahead), in which a married woman (Fanny Ardant) signs up for a computer class and falls in love with her significantly younger instructor. It's in French with English subtitles at 7pm on Wednesday, February 18 at the Alliance.

Take note

Some movies might be opening a day earlier next week in a bid to milk a bit more from the box office on the eve of Chinese New Year, which starts on Thursday. Among the Wednesday releases will be the latest Jason Statham action reel, Wild Card. But it seems most movies will be released as usual on Thursday, so I'll just wait until then to post an update.

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Academy Award-nominated director Alejandro González Iñárritu brings an unblinking approach to comedy-drama in the much-acclaimed Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).

Former Batman actor Michael Keaton, a Golden Globe winner for his role in Birdman, portrays a washed-up former superhero actor who is struggling to reinvent himself. For his latest comeback attempt, he is trying to mount a Broadway play, but his frail psyche and domineering ego are getting in the way, causing him to hallucinate and lose touch with reality.

Other stars are Emma Stone, Edward Norton, Zach Galifianakis, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan and Naomi Watts.

With cinematography by Oscar-nominee Emmanuel Lubezki, the film employed a method of production in which it appears to have been shot in just one take, which created the need for rehearsals and intense concentration so everyone would hit their marks on cue.

It's an ambitious effort by Iñárritu, who made his debut in 2000 with the gut-punch of the gritty drama Amores Perros, which is still his best. He followed that up with two more entries in what would become his "death trilogy", the bleak 21 Grams and the depressing Babel. Even sadder was 2010's Biutiful.

Accolades for Birdman are many, with Keaton winning his first Golden Globe for his work. The film also took a Globe for best screenplay. It's tied with Grand Budapest Hotel with nine Academy Award nominations, including best picture, director, actor, supporting actor and actress. Critical reception is wildly positive, though if you look hard enough you will find naysayers. Rated 15+

Also opening

Unbroken– In her sophomore effort behind the lens, Angelina Jolie directs this fact-based biographical epic about Olympian and war hero Louis Zamperini, who died just last year. The film recounts his transformation from young troublemaker to Olympic long-distance runner. Following his Olympic glory in 1936, he joined the US Army Air Corps during World War II, and his bomber was downed over the Pacific. He then spent 47 days in a lifeboat before being captured and held in a Japanese labor camp. There, he was made an example of by the commander, an infamous war criminal. Jack O’Connell stars with Japanese rock musician Miyavi looking particularly terrifying as the sadistic camp commandant. Adapted from a best-selling 2010 biography, the script had treatments from an all-star line-up of Hollywood talent: the Coen brothers, Richard LaGravenese (The Fisher King) and William Nicholson (Gladiator). Although it attracted a bit of Oscar buzz before the nominations, it ended up with just three in the technical categories, including cinematography for Roger Deakins. Critical reception is polite, and evenly mixed. Rated 13+

Wild Card– Butt-kicking British diva Jason Statham was just in Thailand terrorizing the locals as he made The Mechanic: Resurrection, and now here he is again in this retread of an old Burt Reynolds film, which is adapted from William Goldman's novel Heat. He's a bodyguard-for-hire in Las Vegas, where he takes odd jobs to support his gambling habit. He comes to the aid of a former girlfriend (Dominik Garcia-Lorido) who was beaten by a sadistic thug (Milo Ventimiglia), which puts him in conflict with the local mob powers. It's helmed by Simon West (Con Air), who previously worked with Statham on The Expendables 2 and 2011's The Mechanic, which was a remake of a Charles Bronson film. The made-in-Thailand sequel is on the way next year. Critics are underwhelmed with Wild Card, but Jason Statham doesn't care, and neither do his fists. Rated 18+

Penguins of Madagascar– The scene-stealing, troublemaking flightless birds of Dreamworks Animation's Madagasgar franchise take the lead in this spin-off, becoming reluctant heroes as they go to work for a top-secret spy organization to stop a crazed octopus from destroying the world. Benedict Cumberbatch, John Malkovich and Ken Jeong are among the voice cast. Critical reception is generally positive, with the consensus being it's fun for the kids but maybe not fun enough for the parents. Rated G

Dragon Blade – Fugitive generals from wildly different cultures become reluctant allies in this Chinese historical fantasy, which arrives on our screens just in time for the big Chinese New Year holiday. Jackie Chan dons weird facial hair to portray the disgraced commander of a scrappy division of fighters in the Han Dynasty’s western region. They encounter a Roman general (John Cusack) and his rogue legion, who are on the run from the power-crazed madman (Adrien Brody) who seeks to invade China. With the Chinese cinema market the fastest-growing in the world, expect to see more of this type of thing, with Western actors performing alongside Chinese superstars. Only I think the Hollywood guys secretly hope no one back home will ever see this. It's in Mandarin and English with English and Thai subtitles in some cinemas. Rated 15+

Song One– Anne Hathaway stars in this indie musical drama as a young woman who returns home after a long absence to be with her comatose musician brother. Piecing together his life through his notebooks, she finds her brother’s idol and seeks to convince the shy recluse to perform at her brother’s bedside. This premiered in competition at Sundance last year. Critics are mixed, though not exactly singing praises. Rated 13+

Bon Srolanh Oun (บองสรันโอน ) – Nine years after she made her debut with the little-girl drama Khao Niao Moo Ping, director Siwaporn Pongsuwan returns to the scene with this pan-Southeast Asian drama, starring veteran Thai leading man Ray MacDonald as a guy who returns to Thailand after graduating from college overseas college. He moves back into the apartment he once shared with his girlfriend in the hope that she’ll one day return. A series of incidents occur that he suspects are related to the person who lived there before him, so he travels to Cambodia to find out the truth. Cambodian actress Saray Sakana also stars. Rated 15+

Ananta Sang Sawang Hang Khwam Wang (อนันตา แสงแห่งความหวัง, a.k.a. Ananta: Light of Hope– Because of all the intense labor and technical know-how that's required, animated films are a rarity in Thailand, with perhaps one coming along every other year or so, if at all. This latest feature, made in good old-fashioned traditional 2D animation, is a historical fantasy epic about a young prince who is forced into a life on the run after he is framed for assassinating his father the king. Living in the jungle and helped by soldiers still loyal to him, Ananta searches for a holy stone that will help them overthrow the enemy. Rated G

Also showing

The Friese-Greene Club– Representing pretty much the end of the gritty Ozploitation era, 1981's post-apocalyptic adventure Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior made Mel Gibson a star in Hollywood. See how it stacks up tonight against tomorrow night's New Zealand entry, 1995's Once Were Warriors, a powerful portrait of a Maori family's struggles to maintain tradition while fitting in with modern society. Saturday head to that "silly place" with Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Just try and refrain from spouting all the film's quotable dialogue while you watch. Sunday's Vincente Minelli feature, 1951's musical Gigi is also a tribute to sauve French leading man Louis Jourdan, who died last Saturday. Next Wednesday's "those darn kids" entry is Gummo, the debut of controversial director Harmony Korine. Shows are at 8pm. The FGC is down an alley next to the Queen's Park Imperial Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 22. For more details, check the club's Facebook page. There's just nine seats, so book them.

Signes de Nuit Film Festival – Filmvirus and the Reading Room again team up for another showcase of short films from foreign lands, this one coming from the Paris-based Festival International Signes de Nuit, an indie fest that has been taking place since 2003. The programs on Saturday and Sunday afternoons will have a mix of short films and documentaries from all over the world. The shows start at 1pm at The Reading Room, a fourth-floor walk-up gallery on Silom Soi 19. For the full program, please see the Facebook events page.

Alliance Française– The last "lost illusion" this month is next week's entry Le temps de l’aventure (Just a Sigh), a 2013 drama starring Emmanuelle Devos and Gabriel Byrne as strangers who meet on a train and share a brief romance. It's in French with English subtitles at 7pm on Wednesday, February 25 at the Alliance.

Take note

Coming up next Thursday is the opening of Memory! Reprise in Thailand International Film Heritage Festival, put on by the Thai Film Archive and the Alliance Française. It features a line-up of classic silents and old movies from all over the world, including Charlie Chaplin's The Circus, Harold Lloyd's Safety Last, Buster Keaton's The General, Jacques Tati's Playtime, the British comedy classic The Ladykillers Yasujirô Ozu's Good Morning (Ohayô) and even a great old Thai film, Sugar Is Not Sweet by pioneering auteur Rattana Pestonji. They will all be shown for free at both the Alliance and at the Archive in Salaya, Nakhom Pathom. You can see the whole line-up and reserve your seats online.

Focus

Aw hell yeah! Let the renewal of Will Smith's career begin.

The Hollywood leading light, still-stinging from the "painful failure" of his vanity sci-fi project After Earth and a host of other lackluster misfires, dull, well-meaning prestige projects and big-budget bombs, is taking what is hopefully a different direction, perhaps back toward the types of roles that made him fun to watch in the first place.

After a bit of a hiatus, the former Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is back with Focus, a crime thriller and romantic comedy in which he's a slick master of misdirection who falls for a novice con artist and teaches her the tricks of the trade. Three years later, he's in Buenos Aires working on his most elaborate scheme yet, and his old flame shows up and threatens to throw everything into disarray.

Margot Robbie, who got her big break as the female lead in The Wolf of Wall Street also stars, making Focus a test outing of sorts for the upcoming Suicide Squad, an ambitious DC Comics adaptation that will see Smith trying to fit in with an ensemble cast of villains who are forced to take part in do-or-die missions. He'll play the assassin Deadshot while Robbie will portray the Joker's former girlfriend, the unhinged Harley Quinn.

Focus is directed Glenn Ficarra and John Requa who previously did I Love You Phillip Morris and Crazy, Stupid, Love. Critical reception is mixed, leaning to positive. Rated 13+

Also opening

Predestination– Ethan Hawke stars in this slick-looking sci-fi/noir as a temporal agent who travels through time to prevent future killers from committing their crimes. On his final assignment, he must stop the one criminal who has eluded him throughout time. Sarah Snook and Noah Taylor also star. Michael and Peter Spierig (Daybreakers) direct. Critical reception is actually pretty positive. Rated 15+

The Riot Club– Coming out amid a backlash against "posh" figures in Britain's entertainment industry, this film deals with Oxbridge society's all-male "dining clubs". Based on a play called, fittingly enough, Posh, The Riot Club follows two first-year Oxford legacies as they are inducted into an infamous group amid a power struggle among members over the club’s rowdiness and exclusionary policies. Max Irons, Sam Claflin and Douglas Booth star. Lone Scherfig (An Education) directs. Critical reception is generally positive.

The Lazarus Effect – It's Flatliners for the current generation. A bunch of brainy university researchers accidentally kill one of their own and then discover a way to bring her back to life. Unwittingly, they also unleash a deadly force. Mark Duplass, Olivia Wilde and Donald Glover star. It's produced by Jason Blum, who's been behind the recent string of mean-spirited horror-thrillers The Purge, Insidious and Sinister. Critical reception is throbbing to life. Rated 18+

The World of Kanako– A former detective is back on the case when his daughter goes missing. As he probes deeper, he’s shocked to discover his model-student daughter was living a secret double life. Koji Yakusho and Nana Komatsu star. Tetsuya Nakashima, who previously helmed the well-regarded and stylish Kamikaze Girls and Memories of Matsuko, directs. It's in Japanese with English and Thai subtitles at House.

Rise of the Legend– Martial-arts master Wong Fei-hung has been the subject of countless movies, such as Tsui Hark's Once Upon a Time in China series with Jet Li and Yuen Wo-ping's Drunken Master with Jackie Chan. This one's under Hong Kong director Roy Chow, with rising Taiwanese action star Eddie Peng in the lead. Here, he's an orphan who infiltrates the ranks of the Black Tiger gang in a bloody and violent bid for revenge against those who killed his father and mentor. Sammo Hung and Angelababy also star. Corey Yuen, a veteran action choreographer who has worked from Hong Kong to Hollywood, is the stunt director. Critical reception is mixed. At SF cinemas; Chinese soundtrack and English subtitles at CentralWorld. Rated 13+

Badlapur – Varun Dhawan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui star in this decades-spanning drama about two men trapped in an endless self-destructive spiral of revenge and retribution. It's in Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Major Cineplex Sukhumvit, Rama III and Pattaya. Opens Friday.

Also showing

Memory! International Film Heritage Festival – Opening at 6.30 tonight at the Alliance Française, this festival put on by a Phnom Penh-based NGO, Bangkok's Alliance and the Thai Film Archive, will show 11 classic comedies under the theme of "Laughter!" The opening entries are 1902's A Trip to the Moon and Charles Chaplin's The Circus. Tomorrow has the 1955 British comedy The Ladykillers, starring Alec Guinness as the leader of an unusual gang of thieves. The fest shifts over to the Film Archive in Salaya on Saturday and Sunday with the French comedies Happy Anniversary and The Great Love by Pierre Etaix and the 1965 Mongolian "silk road comedy"Before Rising Up the Ranks. Sunday's selections are Jacques Tati's futuristic Playtime and Buster Keaton's railroad epic The General. The fest returns to the Alliance on Monday and Tuesday with the Thai classic Sugar Is Not Sweet and a repeat of the Etaix films. It's back at the Archive for next Wednesday's Makha Bucha holiday with Harold Lloyd's Safety Last and Sugar before wrapping up at the Alliance next Thursday and Friday. Tickets are free and can be booked online. For the schedule and more details, please see a recent article in The Nation or check the festival's Facebook page.

The Last Executioner – If you missed seeing The Last Executioner (เพชฌฆาต, Petchakat) last year (and lots did, given how it whirled in and out of cinemas) then here's a chance sighting in an unusual location, Bangkok's stately Neilson Hays Library. Starring Shanghai film fest award-winner Vithaya Pansringarm as Thai prison death-row rifleman Chavoret Jaruboon, it's a biopic and psychological study about a man conflicted by his faith and his lethal profession. The screening is set for tonight at 7. Tickets are 400 baht (300 baht for members/students). Book here. On hand afterward will be director Tom Waller, screenwriter Don Linder and star "Phu" Vithaya. A signed copy of the screenplay will be a raffled off.

The Friese-Greene Club– There are two entries left in this month's Australia vs. New Zealand battle for cinematic supremacy. Not sure who is winning, as both are terrific. Tonight, it's one of Australian great Peter Weir's early films, 1975's Picnic at Hanging Rock, in which schoolgirls go for a picnic and some don't come back. Tomorrow, New Zealand's Sir Peter Jackson proves he doesn't need hobbits to make movies – it's the tale of a tumultuous relationship between two girls in Heavenly Creatures. And the month closes out with one more Monty Python film, 1983's The Meaning of Life. It's already fully booked, so perhaps console yourself with a wafer-thin mint. Meanwhile, I have yet to see a schedule for March. Shows are at 8pm. The FGC is down an alley next to the Queen's Park Imperial Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 22. For more details, check the club's Facebook page.

Open Secrets– Documentaries by noted Thai filmmakers and visual artists will screen in an art-gallery setting from tomorrow night until April 10 at Chulalongkorn University's Art Center. Among the directors is Jakrawal Nilthamrong, a visual artist and experimental filmmaker. He just premiered his debut feature Vanishing Point to award-winning acclaim at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The Chula show will feature three more of his works from the past few years, including the mid-length effort Unreal Forest, which he made in Zambia as part of an African initiative by the Rotterdam film fest. Other directors are the trio of Kaweenipon Ketprasit, Kong Rithdee and Panu Aree, who make documentaries that focus on their Islamic faith and moderate Muslims. Among their works will be the electrifying Baby Arabia, a feature about a Bangkok-based Muslim rock band that performs songs in Arabic and Malay. In all, the exhibition will screen 11 films by seven directors. The others are Pisut Srimhok, Santiphap Inkong-ngam and Sutthirat Supaparinya. Friday night's opening will feature a talk by the filmmakers, “Documentary Films: Mirrors of Society”, at 5pm. The venue is The Art Center on the seventh floor of the Center for Academic Resources (the library) at Chulalongkorn University on Phayathai Road.

Take note

The Apex website is down. Hopefully they'll find that invoice for their Web host. For showtimes, call the Lido at (02) 252 6498 and the Scala at (02) 251 2861.

Movies will be opening a day earlier than usual next week, owing to Wednesday's Makha Bucha Day. Also because of the holiday, there is no free French film next Wednesday at the Alliance. If you have the day free, I suggest you visit the Thai Film Archive for the Memory! fest. See you next Wednesday!

Chappie

South African director Neill Blomkamp is having another moment. With his third full-length feature Chappie hitting cinemas, Blomkamp has been making the rounds of premieres and press conferences to promote the sci-fi thriller, but he's also talking about his next project, a sequel to Aliens, which will bring back Sigourney Weaver and also ignore the third and fourth entries in that sci-fi franchise.

Anyway, Chappie has Blomkamp touching on the themes of humanity, technology, machines and class differences that he explored in his previous efforts, his well-received debut District 9 and the more-ambitious Elysium, which bombed with critics, but Blomkamp accepts the blame.

In a future when rampant crime is controlled by an aggressive robotic force, one police robot named Chappie is stolen and has its programming changed so that it starts to think for itself. While one programmer (Slumdog Millionaire's Dev Patel) tries to help the friendly robot, an engineer (Hugh Jackman) who is violently opposed to artificial intelligence sets out to destroy the robot.

Sigourney Weaver also stars, as does Blomkamp's longtime collaborator, South African actor Sharlto Copley, who provides the voice of Chappie. Critical reception is just starting to percolate. Rated 15+

Also opening

Cat a Wabb! (แคท อ่ะ แว้บ! #แบบว่ารักอ่ะ , a.k.a. Cat AWOL) – A young woman takes an internship with a TV commercial director and develops on instant crush on the guy. Meanwhile, her company has to make a TV spot with a celebrity cat, a potbellied Burmese bronze named Johnny, who causes a panic after he goes missing. Popular young actress "Bae Fern" Pimchanok Luewisatepaiboon stars, along with this season's rom-com leading man, "Pe" Arak Amornsupasiri. TV comedy cohorts Pongsak Pongsuwan and Chusak Iamsuk add comic relief. A production by Workpoint Entertainment, it's directed by Narubodi Wechakam, who previously did a couple of the Saranae comedy films. Rated 13+

Mor 6/5 Pak Ma Tha Phe 3 (ตัวอย่าง มอ6/5 ปากหมาท้าผี3, a.k.a. Make Me Shudder 3) – Director Poj Arnon always seems to have a current-events angle with his movies. Here, he uses the recent 10th anniversary of the Boxing Day tsunami for the latest installment of his comedy-horror franchise involving around a dozen shrieking schoolboys. Previous entries were in 2013 and last year. Here, they are in for more scares when they head to Phuket and investigate an abandoned hotel that’s haunted by ghosts of the tsunami. Rated 15+

Also showing

The Friese-Greene Club– March is "directors' month" at the club, which will feature the work of France's Jean-Pierre Jeunet, China's Zhang Yimou, American siblings Ethan and Joel Coen, Italy's Giuseppe Tornatore and Britain's Sir Carol Reed. Tonight, fall in love with all over Gong Li again in Yimou's masterpiece Raise the Red Lantern. Tomorrow, it's the Coen Bros' debut, and still one of their best, Blood Simple. Memories unspool on Saturday in Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso. This Sunday is a special event, Welcome to the Machine, a 2012 documentary that promises to "reveal the secrets of the music industry". Director Andreas Steinkogler will be on hand for a talk afterward. Next Wednesday is Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's cult sci-fi The City of Lost Children. Shows are at 8pm. The FGC is down an alley next to the Queen's Park Imperial Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 22. For more details, check the club's Facebook page.

Alliance Française– There are two free programs at the Alliance this week. First up on Saturday is something for the children, a new adaptation of Belle et Sébastian, an adventure drama about a little boy and his giant Pyrenean Mountain Dog who aid resistance fighters in the French-Swiss Alps during World War II. It was previously made as a French TV series that inspired a cult following as well as the name of a band. It screens at 2pm on Saturday. And at 7pm next Wednesday is Respire (Breathe), a 2014 coming-of-age drama about the intense relationship of two teenage girls.

Cinderella

Disney continues its drive to do live-action remakes of all its beloved animated films with Cinderella, the fairy tale of a young woman who is forced into a life of servitude by her cruel stepmother.

Stage and screen actor Kenneth Branagh directs, helping to bring a tragic Shakespearean vibe to the Disney princess tale. Lily James is the young heroine Ella while Cate Blanchett is her cruel stepmother. Helena Bonham Carter is the fairy godmother and Richard Madden is Prince Charming. Chris Weitz (The Golden Compass, Twilight: New Moon) wrote the final screenplay.

Cinderella premiered at the Berlin film fest, and critical reception is generally positive. Rated G

Also opening

Run All Night – Liam Neeson must never rest. He was just in cinemas with the punchfest Taken 3 and now he's back with Run All Night, an action drama in which he's an ageing hitman who has to take on his brutal former boss (Ed Harris) in order to protect his estranged son (Joel Kinnaman). Common, Génesis Rodríguez and Vincent D'Onofrio also star. It's directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, the Spanish helmer who has previously steered Neeson through the memory-loss thriller Unknown and the air-hijack drama Non-Stop. Critical reception is just gearing up. Rated 15+

Everly– Salma Hayek takes the lead in this ultra-violent action drama. She's working as a prostitute in order to infiltrate the organization of a Japanese mobster (Hiroyuki Watanabe). Against seemingly insurmountable odds, she fights back as her luxury apartment comes under siege from an endless array of hired killers. Interestingly, Kate Hudson was originally set to star in the role that went to Hayek. Joe Lynch (The Knights of Badassdom) directs. Critical reception is mixed, but if you're into action movies, maybe make this a double-bill with Run All Night (see above) or another female-led action drama, Bollywood's NH10 (see below). Rated 18+

Superfast!– As the seventh installment of The Fast and the Furious franchise races towards us for release next month, here's an extremely broad parody of the car-chase action series from Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, the same guys who've brought us such crude comedy knock-offs as Date Movie, Epic Movie and Disaster Movie. Critical reception is ... well, who really cares? Rated G

P.K.– Originally released in December, this record-setting Bollywood comedy is back for a wider release. Aamir Khan stars as an innocent stranger with a child-like outlook on life who arrives in the big city and causes those around him to rethink the way they see the world. It's in Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Major Cineplex.

NH10– Anushka Sharma stars in this rare female-led Bollywood action drama. She's a young woman on a road trip with her boyfriend, travelling along Punjab state's National Highway 10 near the Pakistan border. They run into conflict with violent criminals and eventually it's up to the woman to make a stand for survival. In Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Major Cineplex Sukhumvit, Rama III and Pattaya. Opens Friday.

Also showing

The Friese-Greene Club– Directors' month continues with movies by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Zhang Yimou, the Coen Bros., Guiseppe Tornatore and Sir Carol Reed. Tonight, watch Zhang Ziyi make her debut in The Road Home, the epic tale of star-crossed romance between a schoolteacher and a rural girl, and of their son, who must carry his father's coffin back to his remote village by foot. Tomorrow, Nicolas Cage takes on a character that would serve as a template for the countless other dimwitted hicks he's played in other movies. It's the Coens' hilarious crime caper Raising Arizona, also starring Holly Hunter, John Goodman and William Forsythe. On Saturday, an elderly Italian embarks on a journey to visit his five children in Gisuseppe Tornatore's Everybody's Fine. Sunday is the first of three movies by Sir Carol Reed this month – 1947's Odd Man Out, in which an Irish nationalist is pursued by authorities in Belfast. Next Wednesday, it's Jean-Pierre Jeunet's disarmingly charming romantic comedy Amelie. Shows are at 8pm. The FGC is down an alley next to the Queen's Park Imperial Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 22. For more details, check the club's Facebook page.

Alliance Française– A judge is surprised to find she's pregnant and the father is a violent criminal from her court in the 2013 comedy 9 Mois Ferme (Nine Months Stretch). It's in French with English subtitles at 7pm next Wednesday.

Take note

The Salaya International Documentary Film Festival runs from March 21 to 28 at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom and also from March 24 to 27 at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center. Highlights include The Look of Silence, which is a follow-up to the Indonesian genocide doc The Act of Killing. There is also National Gallery, the latest from esteemed "institutional" documentarian Frederick Wiseman and many others. I'll aim to cover it all in a special update tomorrow.

Just hours after last week's post went online, the Apex website returned to life. Long may it stay active.

Fairy tales, comedies, historical dramas and children's stories are set for German Film Week, which starts on Monday at Paragon Cineplex. Here’s the rundown:

March 16 – The Golden Goose– In this 2013 live-action made-for-TV adaptation of the tale, a peasant comes into possession of a valuable farm animal and wants to give it to a sad princess, but the road to her castle is paved with envy.
March 17 – West– An East German chemist enters into sham marriage in order to move to West Berlin, and the circumstances of her arrival make the CIA suspicious.
March 18 – Jakob the Liar – A Holocaust drama from 1975, this was the first East German film to be entered into the Berlin film fest (then held in West Berlin), and it won a Silver Bear for the performance by Vlastimil Brodsky. It was also the first East German film to get an Oscar nomination.
March 19 – Measuring the World – The 2012 drama is adapted from a novel about German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and geographer Alexander von Humboldt and their surveys of the world in the 1800s. Detlev Buck (Same Same But Different) directs.
March 20 – The Man Who Jumped Over Cars – A young man flees Berlin and sets out for southern Germany on foot, and is joined along the way by others looking to change their lives.
March 21 – Kaddisch for a Friend– A teenage Palestinian refugee with a strong hatred for Jews comes to Berlin to live with relatives, and finds himself in a position where he’s asking an elderly Jewish neighbour for help.
March 22 – Emil and the Detectives– This is a 1954 adaptation of the famous children’s book by Erich Kästner and illustrator Walter Trier. Based on an earlier screenplay by Billy Wilder, it’s the story of a boy who is robbed of his money, but rather than tell his mother, he enlists dozens of local children to get the loot back.

Shows are at 7 nightly (the opening film is preceded by a reception at 6pm). All films will be shown in German with English subtitles.

Tickets are free and can be booked by calling (02) 108 8231-32, e-mail programm@bangkok.goethe.org or check tinyurl.com/germanfilmweek2015. For more details, visit www.Goethe.de/bangkok.

In addition, there is the ongoing German Film Series, which since January has had screenings once a month at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center and the Thai Film Archive.

With an abiding focus on Southeast Asia, as well as filmmaking and cultural preservation, the Salaya International Documentary Film Festival returns for its fifth edition from March 21 to 28 at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom, and from March 24 to 27 at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre.

Opening film

The Look of Silence– Director Joshua Oppenheimer continues to examine genocide in Indonesia with this follow-up to his Oscar-nominated The Act of Killing, which rounded up the lethal men behind Indonesia’s anti-communist purges of the 1960s. The Look of Silence centers on an optometrist who uncovers the identity of the men who killed his brother. Winner of the Venice fest’s grand jury prize and awards at many other festivals, The Look of Silence has been much acclaimed, and has even been made required viewing for Indonesian military troops.

Closing film

Y/Our Music– Unusual figures at the fringes of Thailand’s music scene are featured in this indie doc by Waraluck “Art” Hiransrettawat Every and David Reeve. It journeys through the Isaan countryside and hidden pockets of Bangkok to survey an array of musicians, from the amateur maker of bamboo saxophones to veteran performers of traditional songs. The documentary premiered at last year’s Busan fest, and this week makes its North American premiere at the music-leaning South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas.

Special screenings

Southeast Asian Cinema – When the Rooster Crows– Italian director Leonardo Cinieri Lombroso interviews four of the region's cinema talents: Cannes-winning best director Brillante Mendoza from the Philippines, Singapore’s Eric Khoo, Indonesia’s Garin Nugroho and Thai auteur Pen-ek Ratanaruang. It is generously sprinkled with clips from all the directors’ films, and has interviews with producers, critics and behind-the-scenes talents. I reviewed it at last year's Luang Prabang Film Festival.
Flowers of Taipei: Taiwan New Cinema– Here's a look at the influential stalwarts of Taiwanese cinema, among them Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien, and how they aided Taiwan’s transformation from a hub of cheap plastics manufacturing to a cultural and technological powerhouse. Artists and filmmakers from other parts of the world are interviewed about how Taiwanese cinema has shaped their work. They include Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul invoking his “film is memory” mantra, along with Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Jia Zhangke, Wang Bing, Ai Weiwei and others.
Love is All: 100 Years of Love and Courtship– Rare footage from the British Film Institute and Yorkshire Film Archive covers this history of romance in film, from the very first kisses ever caught on film, through the disruption of war, to the birth of youth culture, gay liberation and free love. It's directed by Kim Longinotto directs, and Richard Hawley, formerly of the British rock band Pulp, provides the soundtrack.
No Word for Worry– Norwegian director Runar Jarle Wiik looks at the fast-fading culture of Moken “sea gypsies” in Myanmar, and one young man's efforts to preserve it.
The Wages of Resistance: Narita Stories– This is a followup to the series of classic documentaries by Ogawa Shinsuke about the farmers who opposed the building of Tokyo's Narita airport in the 1960s. They haven't given up, and are now fighting airport expansion. It's directed by Daishima Haruhiko with Otsu Koshiro, who served as cinematographer on Shinsuke's earlier docs, which I saw at the 2011 edition of Salaya Doc.
National Gallery– And the festival continues to fete the esteemed 85-year-old “institutional” documentarian Frederick Wiseman. Last year the festival featured his At Berkeley and this year it's an exhaustive three-hour look behind the scenes of the revered London art museum.

Asean competition

The Storm Makers– Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh, whose Oscar-nominated The Missing Picture screened in Salaya last year, produces this work by French-Cambodian director Guillaume Suon. It's the story of Aya, a young woman who at age 16 was sold into work as a maid in Malaysia, where she was exploited and beaten for two years without receiving any pay. “I should have died over there”, she says. The director then has a chat with Pou Houy, the notorious head of a recruiting agency who shamelessly admits he doesn’t care what happens to the women he hires, and that he’s only interested in profit.
Die Before Blossom– Indonesian director Ariani Djalal focuses on two families during a decisive period of their daughters’ schooling in Yogyakarta, just as public education in Indonesia is coming under political pressure to include more Islamic teachings in its formerly secular curriculum.
Lady of the Lake– Yangon Film School student Zaw Naing Oo directs this examination of Myanmar’s “cult of the nat” – spirit worship – in a village on Moe Yun Gyi Lake, in the country’s southcentral Bago Region.
Echoes from the Hill– In northern Thailand, a village inhabited by the “Pgaz K’Nyau” – simple humans – is under threat. Their sacred belief is to remain in harmony with nature, even as they come into conflict with the Thai government’s attempts to build a dam and make their ancestral forest lands a national park. Jirudtikal Prasonchoom and Pasit Tandaechanurat, students King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang direct.
Madam Phung’s Last Journey– Ageing drag queens lead a transgender carnival troupe around Vietnam. At each town, a pattern is repeated. Locals are at first enchanted by the entertaining visitors, but later at night, after the drinks have flowed, the scene turns ugly, and the troupe has to beat a hasty retreat. Nguyen Thi Tham, who spent around a year embedded with the troupe, directs. I reviewed it at last year's Luang Prabang Film Festival.
03-Flats– Lei Yuan Bin seeks to dispel the dull and drab image of Singapore's public housing program with help from three single women who have made their flats into spaces that can truly be called homes.

Please note that the screening schedule had not yet been completed when I last checked, and that this is only a tentative lineup. I'll aim to have further information in time for my usual update next Thursday. For more details, check www.Fapot.org or www.Facebook.com/SalayaDoc.

Lupin the Third

Lupin the Third, the live-action adaptation of a long-running manga series gets a limited release following its local premiere at last month's Japanese Film Festival.

Ryuhei Kitamura (Versus, The Midnight Meat Train) directs this adventure tale about the gentleman thief Lupin III (Shun Oguri) and his colorful partners in crime. While trying to stay a step ahead of Lupin III's dogged nemesis Inspector Zenigata (Tadanobu Asano), they come to a fictional Southeast Asian land that looks a lot like Thailand. There, they face a powerful enemy while trying to retrieve the priceless Crimson Heart of Cleopatra. There's a host of Thai talent in the cast, including Rhatha Pho-ngam, Vithaya Pansringarm and Nirut Sirichanya.

Critical reception has been mixed, mostly negative. But to me, it looks more interesting than the major Hollywood release this week. You can read more about Lupin III in an article at The Nation. It's at SF Cinemas, with the original soundtrack with English and Thai subtitles SFC Terminal 21 and SFW CentralWorld. Rated 13+

Also opening

The Way He Looks – Blind teenager Leonardo struggles with independence, and spends most of his free time with neighbor girl Giovana. Their friendship takes a turn with the arrival of a new boy at school whom Leonardo feels instantly connected to. Directed by Daniel Ribeiro, this Brazilian coming-of-age gay romance won the Fipresci critics prize and the Teddy Award for LGTB-themed features at last year's Berlin International Film Festival. Critical reception is generally positive. This picture comes to us through the singlehanded efforts of indie film enthusiast "Ken" Thapanan Wichitratthakarn, who saw The Way He Looks at a Hong Kong festival and loved it so much, he just had to acquire the Thai theatrical rights for it. You can read more about that in an article in The Nation. It's in Portuguese with English and Thai subtitles at Apex Siam Square, House on RCA and SFW CentralWorld.

Insurgent – Just let me see if can contain my excitement for this week's big Hollywood tentpole release, the second entry in the latest adaptation of a series of best-selling young-adult science-fiction novels. Following the first entry Divergent, the story has young heroine Tris (Shailene Woodley) and her guy pal Four (Theo James) living as fugitives in a dystopian post-apocalyptic world. While they are hunted by the power-hungry Erudite faction, Tris must confront her inner demons and continue her fight against a powerful alliance that threatens to tear society apart. Kate Winslet, Naomi Watts and Octavia Spencer also star. Critical reception is mostly negative, but movie critics aren't who this movie was made for. It's in fake 3D (why bother?) in some cinemas including IMAX. Rated 15+

2538 Alter Ma Jive (2538 อัลเทอร์มาจีบ) – It's Back to the Future for a young Thai guy who discovers a message on an old pager belonging to his parents. He first tries to call the number on his smartphone, but, in the way things always go with cellphones in movies, the battery is dead. So he finds a still-working old-fashioned phone booth to call the number, and is transported 20 years back in time to 1995, altering the events in which his parents met and fell in love. Danarun Ramnarong and Pimchanok Luevisadpaibul star. It's directed by "Sua" Yanyong Kuru-angkul. Rated 13+

Feel Good Roosuek Dee The Me Kan (Feel Good...เพราะรู้สึกดีที่มีกัน) – Three stories are depicted in this indie Thai romantic comedy. They involve a pair of newlyweds, two college kids and a young man who uses a science to win over the girl he loves. Ratcd 15+

Zhongkui: Snow Girl and the Dark Crystal – The anti-hero of Chinese legend Zhong Kui (Chen Hun) is forced into a battle among the realms of Heaven, Earth and Hell as he attempts to save his countrymen and the woman he loves (Li Bingbing). It's Thai-dubbed in most places, except for SFW CentralWorld and Paragon. Rated 13+

Also showing

German Film Week – As covered in a special update last week, German films are screening at 7 nightly until Sunday at Paragon Cineplex. Tonight, it's the adventure yarn Measuring the World, about German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and geographer Alexander von Humboldt and their surveys of the world in the 1800s. Tomorrow is the road movie The Man Who Jumped Over Cars and Arab-Jewish relations are covered Saturday's Kaddisch for a Friend. The closing film is the 1954 adaptation of the famous children's book Emil and the Detectives. Tickets are free and can be booked by calling (02) 108 8231-32, e-mail programm@bangkok.goethe.org or check tinyurl.com/germanfilmweek2015. For more details, visit www.Goethe.de/bangkok.

The Friese-Greene Club – A barely literate 13-year-old girl (Wei Minzhi) is left in charge of a rural schoolhouse and pluckily rises to the challenge of stopping the school's loss of students in Zhang Yimou's 1999 drama Not One Less. Tomorrow, it's the Coen Bros.' Barton Fink, which they dashed off while experiencing writer's block on the screenplay for Miller's Crossing. Actually, they say, Barton Fink is about wallpaper. Saturday, Tim Roth is an enigmatic piano player born aboard an ocean liner in The Legend of 1900, another of the films of Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore. It features a score by the great Ennio Morricone. Sunday is another of Sir Carol Reed's film-noir thrillers, 1948's The Fallen Idol. Based on a Graham Greene novel, it's about a butler (Ralph Richardson) who is implicated in a murder by the towheaded boy who idolizes him. And next Wednesday is the final entry in a series of Jean-Pierre Jeunet films, the epic World War I romance A Very Long Engagement. Shows are at 8pm. The FGC is down an alley next to the Queen's Park Imperial Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 22. For more details, check the club's Facebook page.

Salaya International Documentary Film Festival – The schedule is now complete for the fifth annual edition of Salaya Doc, and seats can be booked online. The opener is at 1pm on Saturday at the Thai Film Archive with The Look of Silence, the follow-up to The Act of Killing, which probed genocide by the Indonesian military in the 1960s. Weekend highlights include Asean competition entries plus a pair of films about film, Flowers of Taipei: New Taiwanese Cinema and Love Is All: 100 Years of Love and Courtship. Frederick Wiseman's National Gallery screens at the Archive on Monday. The screenings then shift to the Bangkok Art and Culture Center from Tuesday until next Friday. Among the highlights are the films of this year's director in focus, Dutch-Indonesian auteur Leonard Retel Helmrich, who is known for his "single-shot cinema" technique. His films are Eye of the Day, Shape of the Moon, Position Among the Stars and Promised Paradise. More details of the festival are covered over at that other blog and in a special posting from last week.

A scene from No Word for Worry, screening on Tuesday at the BACC as part of Salaya Doc and on Thursday at the FCCT.

Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand – In addition to Salaya Doc, more documentaries are on offer at the FCCT, which has Life and Death at Preah Vihear, director David A. Feingold's examination of the conflict of the disputed territory around the 11th century Hindu temple on the Thai-Cambodian border. That's at 7pm on Tuesday, March 24. And next Thursday is a Salaya Doc entry, No Word for Worry, Norwegian director Runar Jarle Wiik's look at the fast-fading "sea gypsy" culture of the Moken people in Myanmar's Mergui archipelago. For more details, please see the FCCT website.

Alliance Française – This month's films have featured stories of women going through major life changes, and the final entry next Wednesday is the 2013 comedy-drama Elle S'en Va (On My Way), starring Catherine Deneuve as a 60-year-old woman who is dumped by her lover and left with a financially troubled family restaurant. She gets in her car and just starts driving. It's in French and English subtitles at 7pm on Wednesday, March 25 at the Alliance.

Sneak preview

Home– A fugtive member of an invading race of space aliens is befriended by a plucky teenage girl in this new feature from DreamWorks Animation. It's winning praise for voice work by Rihanna as the girl Tip. Jim Parsons (Big Bang Theory) voices the alien named Oh. Jennifer Lopez and Steve Martin are also featured. Critics are mixed. It's in sneak previews from around 2pm in most cinemas from Saturday until Wednesday before opening wide next Thursday. Rated G

Take note

Apologies for omitting several film events from last Thursday's update. I belatedly found out about German Film Week and quickly put up a special post. I wonder if there's anybody at the Goethe-Institut who can tip me off to the German film events? I only seem to find out about them after they'e already started. Other quickie updates of things I missed earlier, such as for the BACC's Cinema Diverse series last Saturday and yesterday's screening of Song of the Lao Elephant at the FCCT, were handled on my Twitter feed, so please keep on eye on that for late-breaking #BangkokCinemas updates.

Paddington

British expat readers have been pestering me for months about this one. "When is Paddington coming to Bangkok?" they have asked repeatedly.

Well, please stop bothering me. He's here now.

The marmalade-loving "rarest of bears" of British children’s literature comes to the big screen in this tale that explains how he came to arrive in the big city. Discovered at a London railway station, lost and alone with a note around his neck, Paddington is taken in by the kindly Brown family, however a sadistic museum taxidermist has other ideas.

Ben Whishaw (the new Q from the Bond series) is the voice of Paddington. Colin Firth was originally supposed to do it, but he didn't fit. Plunging into the depths of the uncanny valley, the bear was created for the screen with a combination of computer-generated imagery and animatronic puppetry. His human saviors are Hugh Bonneville from Downton Abbey and Sally Hawkins (Blue Jasmine, Happy-Go-Lucky), with Nicole Kidman as the evil museum lady.

Paul King wrote the screenplay and directs. Michael Bond, the author of the books, was also involved.

Critical reception is mostly positive. Rated G

Also opening

Home– A fugitive member of an invading race of space aliens is befriended by a plucky teenage girl in this new feature from DreamWorks Animation. It's winning praise for voice work by Rihanna as the girl Tip. Jim Parsons (Big Bang Theory) voices the alien named Oh. Jennifer Lopez and Steve Martin are also featured. Critics are mixed. This opened last week in a sneak preview run and how moves to a wider release. It's in 3D in some cinemas. Rated G

X+Y– An autistic teenage math prodigy (Asa Butterfield) discovers new confidence and friendships when he lands a spot on the British squad for the International Mathematics Oympiad. Rafe Spall and Sally Hawkins also star. It's directed by Morgan Matthews as a fictionalized follow-up to his documentary about teen math geniuses Young Beautiful Minds. Critical reception is generally positive. Rated 13+

Robot Overlords– With Earth conquered by robots from a distant galaxy, a teen discovers a way to sneak past the cyber sentries and form a resistance group with other youngsters. Hot on their trail is an ex-teacher and robot collaborator. Callan McAuliffe, Gillian Anderson and Ben Kingsley star. Critical reception isn't really a thing. Rated 15+

Citizenfour – This year's Academy Award winner for best documentary feature comes to Bangkok in an extremely limited release as part of Doc Holiday, which in recent months has organized a series of screenings of acclaimed documentaries at SF Cinemas. Citizenfour is directed by Laura Poitras, a noted documentary filmmaker who began receiving encrypted e-mails from someone named "citizen four" who leaked information about the US National Security Administration's illegal wiretapping. This prompted her and a team of journalists to fly to Hong Kong to meet the source, who turned out to be fugitive former NSA computer administrator Edward Snowden. Critical reception is overwhelmingly positive. It screens from tomorrow until Sunday at SF World Cinema and SFX Maya Chiang Mai. Advance bookings are recommended. For details, please check the SF Cinemas website.

Also showing

Salaya International Documentary Film Festival– Entries in the Asean documentary competition are screening from 1pm today and tomorrow at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center. Special screenings include Position Among the Stars from the fest's "director in focus" Leonard Retel Helmrich at 5 today followed at 7pm by Love Is All: 100 Years of Love and Courtship, which weaves together home movies and historic footage to survey romance, from the first kiss, to mixed-race pairs and homosexual love. Tomorrow at 3, there's a one-off screening of Diving Bell: The Truth Shall Not Sink with Sewol, a controversial account of last year's South Korean ferry disaster, followed at 5pm by Frederick Wiseman's three-hour opus National Gallery. On Saturday, the fest moves back to the Thai Film Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom, and wraps up with The Wages of Resistance: Narita Story, Helmrich's Promised Paradise and the closing film, the new Thai documentary Y/Our Music, with an after-party and live music. It's not a bad idea to reserve your seats, and you can do so online at bit.ly/booking-for-salayadoc5.

The Friese-Greene Club– Top talents of Hong Kong and Chinese cinema converge in Hero, Zhang Yimou's vivid martial-arts fantasy starring a terrific Jet Li as a lawman who tells of his fights with warriors who attempted to assassinate an emperor. Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Zhang Ziyi and Donnie Yen also star, with cinematography by Christopher Doyle. Tomorrow, head to the pancakes house with the Coen Bros. and their critically acclaimed 1987 black comedy Fargo. Saturday has the final entry this month from Italian director Guiseppe Tornatore, the 2000 drama Malena, in which a beautiful woman disrupts life in a village. And Sunday is the third offering in a tribute to Sir Carol Reed, with the film-noir thriller Our Man in Havana. Based on a Graham Greene novel, it stars Alec Guinness as a hapless vacuum-cleaner salesman caught up in an espionage scheme. Shows are at 8pm. The FGC is down an alley next to the Queen's Park Imperial Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 22. For April's schedule, check the club's Facebook page.

Alliance Française– Free French films continue in April with Les garçons et Guillaume, à table! (Me, Myself and Mum), an autobiographical comedy-drama from actor-director Guillaume Gallienne, who adapts his one-man stage show about his sexually confused upbringing and his love-hate relationship with his domineering mother. It's in French with English subtitles at 7pm on Wednesday, April 1 at the Alliance.

Fast and Furious 7

Thailand's multiplex operators had put their eggs into one basket for this week's opening of Fast and Furious 7, positioning it as the sole major release of the week, a major tentpole roped up by tomorrow's fifth-cycle birth-anniversary celebrations for Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn. In other words, the Princess, affectionately referred to as Phra Thep, is 60. There's also a huge new mall opening in Bangkok.

As in other territories outside the U.S., Fast and Furious has been an immensely popular franchise in Thailand, with fans drawn by the fast cars, gyrating women, over-the-top action scenes, Vin Diesel's gravelly voice and the muscles of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

This seventh film in the car-chase series is extra-special because it is the last one featuring star Paul Walker, who died in November 2013 in a car crash that took place during a break in filming. He's been with Fast and Furious since the beginning in 2001, only taking a break for the third part, Tokyo Drift.

And making Fast and Furious 7 even more special for Thailand is the casting of martial-arts actor Tony Jaa in a small supporting role as a villain. Jaa is making his much-anticipated Hollywood debut, after toiling for years in the Thai studio system, where he made such movies as Ong-Bak and Tom-Yum-Goong.

But a week before today's release, Jaa's former employer Sahamongkol Film International got the Civil Court to issue an injunction to temporarily ban Fast and Furious 7 in Thailand, legal action taken because of a contract dispute with Jaa. Sahamongkol contends the actor is still under contract and by going to work for other studios, he's in breach of that. Jaa insists the contract is not valid, and he's moved on to pursue his long-held dream of working in Hollywood.

Anyway, on Monday, the movie's distributor UIP managed to get the temporary ban lifted, with the court reasoning it was unfair to the other actors in the film. I mean, poor Jordana Brewster!

And all along, it seemed like the injunction wasn't really having any effect, as the movie was still being promoted and if you didn't know anything about the injunction, you'd assume everything was proceeding as normal. The whole ordeal is covered in a post on that other blog.

So what's the movie about? Does it matter? Well, sure. Why not? Dominic Torreto (Diesel) and his gang of car-racing high-stakes thieves have settled into comfortable lives following their last caper. But they are forced to fight back when they are targeted by a highly trained British black-ops assassin (Jason Statham), who is out for revenge for the death of his brother. It is basically Die Hard 3, but with cars that fly.

James Wan, who previously helmed sickenly raw horror movies like Saw and Insidious, takes over as director. The bulk of the series has been directed by Justin Lin, who has moved on to Paramount's Star Trek, captaining the Simon Pegg-penned entry that might actually save the rebooted sci-fi marque. Furious 7 also features Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris and, hey, Lucas Black.

Critical reception is crazily positive. At least when I last looked. It's in fake 3D in some cinemas, including IMAX and IMAX Digital. Rated 15+

Also opening

Outcast– Nicolas Cage and Hayden Christensen star in this made-for-China historical action fantasy as a pair of Westerner warriors who seem weirdly out of place in the ancient Eastern realm. They come to the aid of an heir to the throne and his sister who are targeted for assassination by their older brother. Yifei Liu and Andy On also star. Nick Powell, who has overseen stunts on a wide range of movies including the action-packed Hot Rod and slick-as-heck Resident Evil: Retribution, directs. This was supposed to open last Thursday, but didn't appear on the schedules when I checked, but by Saturday Outcast had been added to the roster, so now I'm listing it here. Critical reception is mostly negative. But come on! Nic Cage! Rated 15+

Ode to My Father – South Korea's second-highest-grossing film of all time is a historical epic covering three tumultuous decades, from the 1950s Hungnam Evacuation during the Korean War, to the government's decision to send nurses and miners to West Germany in the 1960s, and South Korea's mostly unsung participation in the Vietnam War, as seen through the eyes of a man named Deok-Su. Yoon Je-kyoon (Sex Is Zero) directs. It was well received on the festival circuit, but as with all things Korean, it's been contentious. Critical reception is mixed, with some viewers turned off by an idealized view of authoritarian South Korean regimes of the past. Sounds familiar. It's in Korean with English and Thai subtitles. Rated 13+ Opens Thursday.

Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! – In wartorn 1940s Calcutta, a young private detective takes on his first case, which pits him against an evil genius who is out to destroy the world. Sushant Singh Rajput, Anand Tiwari and Swastika Mukherjee star. Super stylish, it's adapted from a series of detective novels by best-selling Bengali writer Saradindu Bandyopadhyay. It's in Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Major Cineplex Sukhumvit, Rama III and Cineplex Pattaya. Opens Friday.

Also showing

The Friese-Greene Club– April's schedule features Werner on Wednesdays, Woody on Thursdays, cult indies on Fridays, great westerns on Saturdays and French classics on Sundays. Tonight, Klaus Kinski is an explorer in the rugged epic Aguirre, the Wrath of God, the first of several collaborations between Herzog and his volatile muse. Purple Rose of Cairo is this week's Woody. Friday's cult indie is Miracle Mile, a 1988 film that captures the coming apocalypse in Los Angeles in real time. Saturday, it's the most epic of the epic spaghetti westerns, Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, with Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach searching for a hidden cache of Confederate army gold. Equally epic is Sunday's French film Playtime, Jacques Tati's ambitious look at alienating modern architecture. Leone blew up bridges, Tati built an airport. You decide. And next Wednesday is another Herzog, Nosferatu, the Vampyre, in which Kinski really is Count Dracula. 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 free French offerings this week. First up on Saturday is something for young (and old) viewers, the highly influential animated feature Le Roi et l'oiseau (The King and the Mockingbird), directed by Paul Grimault, who took some 30 years to realize the project to full fruition, finally bringing his definitive version to the screen in 1980. It's in French with English subtitles at 2pm on Saturday, April 4 at the Alliance. Next Wednesday's offering is geared for more mature audiences, L'amour est un crime parfait (Love is the Perfect Crime), starring Mathieu Amalric as a university professor with a reputation for sleeping with his female students. It's in French with English subtitles at 7pm on Wednesday, April 8 at the Alliance. Please take note that there will be no free French film on Wednesday, April 15, owing to the long Songkran holiday, from April 13 to 15.

TakEM EMnotEM

As statEMd at the top of this piEMce, thrEMrEM is aEMn EMMENSE EMnew shoppiEMng EMall iEMn BaEMngkok, thEM EMQuartiEMr oppositEM thEM EMporiuEM at PhroEM PhoEMng EMBTS statioEMn, iEMn what is bEMiEMng toutEMd as thEM "EM District".

I will stop now.

Along with the usual high-end boutiques, coffee shops and gourmet pretzel stands, this huge new mall has an ultra-luxurious theater operated by Major Cineplex, the Quartier CineArt, which opens today. According to a story in The Nation, the Quartier CineArt is aimed at the well-heeled expats who live in the pricey neighborhood, and has the same higher prices that you'll find at Paragon. There's yet another Em-themed EMall to go up across the park on the site of the former Washington Square, with more of the same. But here's a suggestion: put in a fair-priced cinema (and/or cabaret show) to replace the one that was ripped down there.

An eight-screen multiplex, the CineArt has the Toyota IMAX, which is yet another of the mini-IMAX screens that have cropped up in Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Hat Yai in recent years. Do not be fooled by these "IMAX Digital" screens as they are called – the only authentic full-size IMAX screen is the Krungsri IMAX at Paragon, an important distinction if you want the true IMAX experience.

###

This was set to be a weird week even without the legal brouhaha over Furious 7.

Fast and Furious 7 opens a day earlier than usual, then adding to the confusion is one more film opening tomorrow, the South Korean offering Ode to My Father, which looks to be at Major Cineplex. And there's a Bollywood movie, opening on Friday as they usually do.

I am just going to post this today and hope the movies will materialize as advertised, and that no other unannounced movies will suddenly crop up. I will keep an eye out for changes, and will note them on Twitter. See you here EMnEMxt Thursday.

The Legend of King Naresuan Part VI

After years of struggle that eventually bankrupted his studio, director MC Chatrichalerm Yukol brings his epic historical-drama franchise to its logical conclusion with Tamnan Somdet Phra Naresuan Maharaj 6: Awasarn Hongsa (ตำนานสมเด็จพระนเรศวรมหาราช ภาค 6 อวสานหงสา...อ้างอิง, a.k.a. The Legend of King Naresuan Part VI: The Fall of Hongsa.

With resplendent costumes, elaborately staged scenes of palace intrigue and plenty of action, King Naresuan, portrayed as always by Royal Thai Army Lt-Colonel Wanchana Sawatdee, leads his loyal Ayutthaya troops into battle against the forces of Hongsawadi, and the vengeful disfigured King Natabureng (Jakkrit Ammarat).

Temfah Krisanayuth joins the cast as a Mon warrior woman who becomes allied with Naresuan's forces. Noppachai Jayanama and Grace Mahadumrongkul also star. Rated G.

Also opening

Little Forest: Summer and Autumn– A young woman moves from the big city back to her small hometown in the mountains. There, she gains new energy from nature and a healthful, self-sufficient lifestyle. Ai Hashimoto stars. Based on a monthly manga by Daisuke Igarashi, a sequel Little Forest: Winter and Spring, was released in February in Japan. It's In Japanese with English and Thai subtitles at Apex and House.

Also showing

The Friese-Greene Club– Tonight, Woody Allen famously breaks the fourth wall in one of his first and arguably still his best films, Annie Hall. Tomorrow it's Static, a rare screening for a 1986 feature by Mark Romanek, an inventive helmer who is known for his many music videos. Saturday's western has Gary Cooper keeping an eye on the clock, waiting with dread in High Noon. And stuff blows up real good in Sunday's French film, the gripping 1953 trucking yarn The Wages of Fear. Next Wednesday, celebrate the end of Songkran with an unusual offering from Werner Herzog, his 1970 comedy Even Dwarfs Started Small. 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 preview

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water – Totally in the ridiculous spirit of Songkran, TV's Spongebob Squarepants and his pals from Bikini Bottom break out of their cartoon world to make a freakish appearance in our dimension. Antonio Banderas is among the talents in this second feature film based on the hit Nickelodeon cartoon series. Critics love it. It's in sneak previews from around 2 daily before going wide next Thursday. It's in real 3D with 2D offered as well. Rated G.

Take note

Owing to Songkran, the water-soaked and powder-clouded Thai New Year holiday that is celebrated annually from April 13 to 15, there is no free French film next Wednesday at the Alliance Française.

Following the holiday, events include a Portuguese film festival from April 19 to 25 at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center and the Thai Film Archive, and the Swedish Film Festival from April 23 to 26 at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld. I hope to have more details on those soon.

And the FCCT's Contemporary World Film Series starts back up on April 20 with Hong Kong director Peter Chan's musical Perhaps Love.

Manoel de Oliveira, a titan of Portuguese cinema who died at age 106 on April 2, and who was still making films well into his 100s, is paid tribute during the Week of Portuguese Cinema, which is organized by the Thai Film Archive, Cinamateca Portuguesa, the Bangkok Art and Culture Center and the Camões Institute.

The selection includes de Oliveira's first feature, 1942's Aniki-Bóbó, about a gang of street children in the director's hometown of Porto. There is also his 1990 drama, No, or the Vain Glory of Command, which covers Portugal's military history as seen through the eyes of a soldier in colonial Africa.

Other entries include The Eyes Of Asia, a 1996 drama about a Roman Catholic missionary in Japan; the 1963 coming-of-age drama Os Verdes Anos (The Green Years), which is the debut feature of Paulo Rocha; and 1989's Recordações Da Casa Amarela (Recollections of the Yellow House), a Lisbon waterfront drama directed by and starring João César Monteiro.

There's also the sweeping 2012 romance Tabu, which recalls star-crossed love among expats in colonial Africa, uniquely toggling back and forth between the modern day (in color) and the 1960s (in old-timey black-and-white). This screened at last year's World Film Festival of Bangkok, and was among the must-see selections of that fest's programmers.

And there's the 2013 documentary E Agora? Lembra-me (What Now? Remind Me), in which HIV-positive filmmaker Joaquim Pinto looks back at his life; and Capitães De Abril (April Captains), a 2000 drama that recalls the 1974 coup that overthrew a right-wing dictatorship.

Notably, some of the films will actually be screened with 35mm prints, which doesn't happen much anymore in this digital age. Here is the schedule:

April 19, Thai Film Archive (35mm film screening)

1pm – Aniki-Bóbó, Manoel de Oliveira, 1942, with introduction by José Manuel Costa, director of Cinamateca Portuguesa
4pm – Os Olhos Da Ásia (The Eyes Of Asia), João Mário Grilo, 1996
6pm – Non Ou A Vã Glória De Mandar (No, or the Vain Glory of Command), Manoel De Oliveira, 1990

April 21, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre

6pm – Os Verdes Anos (The Green Years), Paulo Rocha, 1963

April 22, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre

6pm – Recordações Da Casa Amarela (Recollections of the Yellow House), João César Monteiro, 1989

April 23, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre

6pm – Tabu, Miguel Gomes, 2012

April 24, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre

6pm – E Agora? Lembra-me (What Now? Remind Me), Joaquim Pinto, 2013

April 25, Thai Film Archive (35mm film screening)

1pm – Capitães De Abril (April Captains), Maria De Medeiros, 2000
3.30pm – Non Ou A Vã Glória De Mandar (No, or the Vain Glory of Command), Manoel De Oliveira, 1990
5.30pm – Aniki-Bóbó, Manoel de Oliveira, 1942

Admission is free. All films will be shown with English subtitles. And, here's a cool thing I wish the other "free" film fests in Bangkok would do – you can book your seats online at the following link: bit.ly/portuguesefilmthailand.

Eight recent films will be screened in the Swedish Film Festival from April 23 to 26 at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld. Here is the line-up:

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared – A centenarian dynamite expert escapes from an old folks home, embarking on a journey that leads to murders and suitcase full of cash. Felix Herngren directs this 2014 black comedy, which has won audience awards at festivals.
Ego – A 25-year-old hard-partying womanizer is forced to re-examine his life when he suddenly loses his eyesight. Lisa James-Larsson directs this 2013 romantic comedy.
Belleville Baby – Director Mia Engberg reflects on a past romance in this 2013 autobiographical drama, in which an old flame calls and says he's spent many years in jail. She then recalls the tumultuous spring when she met him in Paris.
Stockholm Stories – Multiple plots are strung together in this 2013 comedy about five young urbanites whose paths cross during a few rainy days in November.
Shed No Tears – In Gothenburg, a young man dreaming of making it with his music embarks on an emotional journey to find inspiration. This drama was nominated for 10 Guldbagge Awards last year, Sweden's equivalent of the Oscars.
Hotell – Alicia Vikander, the young actress who is featured in the current hit Hollywood scary robot movie Ex Machina, stars in this 2013 drama. It's about depressed young folks find a way to shake off their dissatisfaction with life by checking into hotels in order to reboot their personalities.
The Reunion (Återträffen) – Swedish artist Anna Odell makes her directorial debut with his 2013 drama, which was inspired by her not receiving an invitation to a class reunion. She then sets out to imagine what it would have been like if she'd gone and confronted the classmates who bullied her. It was nominated for four Guldbagge Awards, and won the top-prize Best Film last year.
A Separation (Att skiljas) – Not to be confused with the award-winning Iranian drama with the same English title, this Swedish Separation is a tragic-comic documentary that chronicles the break-up of a marriage – that of the director's own parents.

This is one of those "free" film festivals, so you know the drill. Tickets will be made available 30 minutes before the show, but the queue for the precious little slips of paper starts forming long before that. Enjoy. For the schedule, please see the SF Cinemas website.

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening January 8-14, 2015

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening January 15-21, 2015

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening January 22-28, 2015

Bangkok Cinema Scene special: Japanese Film Festival, January 30-February 8, 2015

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening January 29-February 4, 2015

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

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

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening February 12-18, 2015

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening February 19-25, 2015

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening February 26-March 3, 2015

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening March 4-11, 2015

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening March 12-18, 2015

Bangkok Cinema Scene special: German Film Week 2015

Bangkok Cinema Scene special: Salaya Doc 2015

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening March 19-25, 2015

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening March 26-April 1, 2015

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening April 1-8, 2015

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening April 9-15, 2015

Bangkok Cinema Scene special: Week of Portuguese Cinema, April 19-25, 2015

Bangkok Cinema Scene special: Swedish Film Festival, April 23-26, 2015