Seven years from festival circuit to US theatres, this candy-coloured confectionary ode to the golden age of Thai cinema is nothing shy of a kaleidoscopic chromaticism of brilliantly pasteled tableaux. Now I really know nothing of the golden age of Thai cinema, which probbaly puts me in the same proverbial boat as just about every other western film critic out there, but from what I have read on the subject, Sasanatieng's latest is indeed a true labour of love. Probably not unlike the cinematic stylings of Quentin Tarantino, where his love and ardor for both the highs and lows of American and Asian cinema alike, Sasanatieng too plays the homage card to near ridiculous, yet glaringly enjoyable heights.

But not to worry faithful readers, for one certainly needs no primer in Thai cinema in order to be bowled over by the visual eye-candy and blatantly absurd melodrama that is Tears of the Black Tiger. Wasted in limbo for close to seven long years (thanks Miramax!) finally out of its proverbial closet, this film eschews everthing that a potential cult classic should and devours everything else in sight as if it were a Powdered, flowered, and confettied Bangled, tangled, spangled, and spaghettied Pac-Man gobbling away at the ghosts of cinema past. Bright and brilliant, at least on a visual plane, and camp-obsessed on every other plane, this film surely belongs in a realm that also includes the likes of House of Flying Daggers, Kill Bill and Far From Heaven. Perhaps not as heavy but certainly just as heady. [01/08/07]

Mainstream British cinema, at least in this day and age, can be grouped into two definitive camps. The one is a cutsey-pie attempt at adult humour, such as The Ful Monty, Saving Grace or Calendar Girls and the other is an in-your-face bully-wannabe gang with the likes of Guy Ritchie and all his pals. Either way you go, you end up down. Indeed, the cinema which once boasted Carol Reed and Tony Richardson and Joseph Losey and even Czech ex-pat Karel Reisz as its vanguard, now has fallen to the lows of Ritchie and a rather laughable state of affairs. Sure, we get the occasional Ken Loach production and even Danny Boyle ain't all that bad, but eegads, what a crest-fallen cinema to behold.

All that said, things could very well be looking up, for betwixt the Lock, Stock Snatches and Two Smoking Barrels is a small gut-level cinema building its base and growing its muscles. Andrea Arnold's Red Road is a recent example and so is Shane Meadows This is England. Hah, you thought I'd never get to the point didj'ya? Anyway, Meadows film, set in 1983, is about a twelve year old hooligan-in-waiting who has just lost his father in war, and the older kids who take him under their collective wings, transforming him into a budding adult skinhead. Now, by skinhead, I - and Meadows - am talking about the true original idea of skinhead, formulated by blacks and whites alike to fight the establishment and powers-that-be. Unfortunately for this movement it was warped into the white power hate group that it still is today.

In Meadows film we see this happen as interlopers try to coax young Shaun, played with a terse giddiness by Thomas Turgoose, into their Nationalist way of thinking. Perhaps a bit on the sentimental side and never quite surprising its audience (though a make-out session between Shaun and the much older object of his affection does surprise a bit at its intensity) This is England may indeed take a rather naive look at England's skinhead problems, but with such passion given forth by each and every cast memeber, and it's probable curtain cal ode to Fellini, the cons are certainly outweighed by the pros. [08/08/07]

Even without prior knowledge of the original (which I have still not seen as of this writing) the obvious outcome of James Mangold's remake of 3:10 to Yuma is nowhere near a surprise. In fact the third act metamorphosis of Russel Crowe's bad-to-the-bone Ben Wade comes about this close to coming off as complete and utter horse hockey, yet it is this very moral ambiguity of an ending that plays perfectly, however ridiculous, with the psychological crux of what Mangold (and author Elmore Leonard and original director Delmore Daves before him and many a western revisionist in-between) is trying to say about the genre-specific battle between right and wrong, good and bad.

Full of gutsy bravura performances by Crowe, Christian Bale, Ben Foster and a grizzled nearly unrecognizable Peter Fonda, 3:10 to Yuma is a latent spark in the history of the revisionist western that not only leaves plenty of room for its stars to work their acting chops but also heralds the possibility of a new auteur on the horizon. Mangold, after early uninspired chick flick flotsam such as Girl, Interrupted and Kate & Leopold (following the surprisingly taut Sylvester Stallone drama Cop Land) has managed with the one two punch of Walk the Line, a better than expected biopic, and now Yuma, to prove that perhaps he isn't just your typical studio gun-for-hire after all. Dark and sobering films both (as was Cop Land), Mangold unfolds an artistic stamp (or is that stomp?) that is not entirely unlike that of Peckinpah or Rafelson back in their heyday. Of course this is merely the well-crafted appetizer in what may yet prove an exciting and delicious meal. [10/21/07]

Kim Ki-Duk, part of the so-called Korean New Wave that came to international attention in the mid to late 1990's, sure can paint a pretty picture. The question still remains though, can he put any pop into the palette like his fellow new wavers? Less brazen than Park Chan-wook (though equally enthralled by style over substance) and less aloofly cinematic than Hong Sang-soo (though with an equally inspired taste for filmic history) Kim Ki-Duk is the middle ground of Korean cinema. A film artist who plays at pretension, teases us with zeitgeist, the whole time driving his cinema right down the proverbial middle of the road. I suppose that makes Kim the Steven Spielberg of Korean cinema.

Telling the Morpheus stripped story of a girl who thinking herself too plain for her boyfriend's attention disappears only to reappear months later, new face in tow, to see if she can win back the very man she left in the first place, Kim paints his canvas with the broad colourful strokes of an expert painter. These quick, flashy brushstrokes sure do concoct a beautifully stylized film d'art, but at the same time they show that Kim has nothing to say about anything once the paint dries. There is always the Bohemian attitude of art for art's sake - and that certainly has its merits, which is why Time is not the poorly judged mistake it might have been - but in the end, being a film with such ample room for a psychological thesis on beauty and the importance of appearance (sort of a modern take on some of the themes in Vertigo) it is a shame all we get is a pretty picture. [07/11/07]

When one first thinks Romanian cinema, one automatically and surely thinks hotbed of comedy. No? One doesn't? Oh, my bad. Seriously though, Romanian cinema may not bring thoughts of comedic tidings (although we know not what the future holds) but this little known national cinema could very well be the next big thing in world cinema. Like Taiwan, Hong Kong, Iran, Mexico, Hungary, Brazil, Argentina and the Czech Republic before it, this possibly burgeoning new wave is surely at the doorstep of cinephilia, and with three year's running of taking home prizes at Cannes, the knocking is getting ever louder.

Following Cristi Puiu's Un Certain Regard Award winner The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and preceeding this year's Palme d'Or winner Cristian Mungiu's 4 months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Corneliu Porumboiu's Camera d'Or winning 12:08 East of Bucharest, is indeed one of the funniest films I have seen in many a year. Telling the story of a mirror-happy cable access talk show host who tries - to hilarious results as mentioned before - to put together a televised roundtable discussion on whether the revolution against communism actually took place in their small Romanian town or was it all just an afterthought to events elsewhere. Able only to get the town drunk and a possibly senile part-time Santa Claus, the show, of course, goes awfully awry.

Juxtaposing this rather broad comedy with the mundane washed-out world that is Eastern Europe (at least in a visual sense), makes the film work as more than just comedy, but as social commentary as well. The gray squat buildings of Huxley's "Brave New World" are the landscapes of this brave new world of post-Soviet cinema - and boy is it ever funny (or at least this one is). [06/20/07]

Perhaps more theatrical spectacle than insightful biopic, La Vie en Rose can only benefit from such a directorial decision considering Piaf's penchent for revisionist biography. Then again, what artist, dead or alive, hasn't fudged a factoid or two in order to make their star shine a little brighter or a bit more distinguished? Telling the rags-to-riches-and-nearly-back-to-rags story of teenage guttersnipe turned chanteuse, Edith Piaf, Dahan takes the long way around, by cutting back and forth from street urchin to pretentious diva over and over again so much that Piaf's life seems a lightning bolt of insanity - which I suppose it most likely was if one is to believe the tale weaved in this film.

With a portrayal that can only be compared to a rabid crazy-eyed lemur (and I do mean that as complimentary), Marion Cotillard, who transforms from adorably impish waif to glamourous goddess to cancer-hunched gargoyle, gives about 1000% in the role, and then adds a bit more on top of that. In the best scene of the film (where she finds out about the death of a lover), Cotillard goes even beyond that. Told as a life in constant turmoil (but then what biopic is not), Dahan's film, with Cotillard at the wheel as if channeling the lunatic bonkersness of Klaus Kinski at his maddening most, may not work entirely as informational biography (Piaf's questionable French Resistance stance is completely glossed over) but as a pure moonstruck cinema - brava! [07/14/07]

With its camera manipulations and bizarre antics, Wild Tigers I Have Known starts out somewhat like the proposed bastard love child of David Lynch and Stan Brakhage. Unfortunately for us and for Cam Archer, his film ends up nowhere near either one of these great and innovative auteurs.

Instead we get an overly stylized teen angst journal entry of a film. Go to any poetry reading across the country and sit there and listen and you will inevitably come to hear some gothy pouty teenager reciting some tear-drenched entry from their sticker-layered diary, trying desperately to pass it off as real poetry, when we all know damn well that is nothing of the kind and we can perhaps even feel the Earth tumble a bit as every dead poet, from Rimbaud to Ginsberg to Byron to Yeats to Ezra Pound and Emily Dickinson roll over in their respective graves. That very feeling is what I got after watching this superficially artistic, ultimately immature piece of pop poetry pander.

Perhaps not as audaciously rotten as some more high profile attempts at cinema coming out of Hollywood these days - Archer does at least try for art - but one indeed wonders at the future of a cinema that allows any Tom, Dick and Cam to go on their laptop and produce a movie using prearranged software and their own fucking diary. You know, just because you can make a movie does not mean that you should. [04/09/07]

Catherine the Great. Caligula. Marlon Brando in The Missouri Breaks. Okay, okay, but it is extremely hard (pun sort of intended) to take a film such as this seriously while writing about it. Man sees horse. Man loves horse. Man dies from perforated colin. Wow. If I hadn't seen the reports on CNN I would have thought Robinson Devor had made the whole shabang up. But that is not what Robinson Devor does. His last film, the blueishy sublime Police Beat, took actual police reports and fashioned them into one of the most intriguing films of recent memory. This time he again takes actual police reports and fashions, just as tenderly as last, a story of a group of lonely(?) men who bond a friendship around their love for horses.

Now we are not talking the kind of love one normally sees between cowboy and mount in the westerns of our youth. This ain't your daddy's Lone Ranger. But one still wonders at the supposed abuse these animals underwent (one of them was actually gelded just in case these men, or others like them, ever came wandering back to the farm). How exactly does one "force" a stallion to mount a naked man and ride him like he was Kemo Sabe's bitch? One must at least take a moment to ask whether these horses were actually abuse in the first place. Sounds to me like they got the better end of the deal - except for that one poor bastard that got his balls chopped to bits. Ah well, a man does, I suppose, what a man needs to do, and too I suppose does a horse. It certainly will make me look at Roy Rogers a little differently from now on. [05/22/07]