southeast asian cinema Archives - Alternate Ending

Tam Cam: The Untold Story (2016)

Tim Brayton — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 05:18:26 +0000

The first and least useful observation I have to make about Tam Cam: The Untold Story is that it suggests that Vietnam has much better fairy tales than the rest of the world. Here's what I mean: the film, directed by Veronica Ngô Thanh Vâ...

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First They Killed My Father (2017)

Tim Brayton — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 04:03:14 +0000

The promotional subtitle of First They Killed My Father (as well as the subtitle of the 2000 memoir from which it has been adapted) is A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, and it's that last word, "remembers", that ends up being the k...

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Norte, the End of History

Tim Brayton — Thu, 29 Jan 2015 07:20:00 +0000

Having been shot in color and on media that doesn't look l...

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Ilo Ilo (2013)

Tim Brayton — Thu, 08 Jan 2015 03:48:00 +0000

Stories set in economic downturns aren't all that rare, but ones made with the subtle insight of Ilo Ilo are as precious and unique as it gets. And that's saying nothing about the film's perceptive, harsh study of human interactions, but sinc...

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The Raid 2 (2014)

Tim Brayton — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 02:41:00 +0000

The production backstory of The Raid 2: Berandal (the subtitle, which translates as "tough guy", "thug", or something like that, is present only in ad material and not onscreen, at least not in the U.S. release) is surprisingly useful in hack...

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V/H/S/2 (2013)

Tim Brayton — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 04:40:00 +0000

V/H/S/2 begins with a scene of a seedy private eye (Lawrence Michael Levine) recording two people about to have sex in a hotel room. This event does not inform anything in the rest of the movie; it doesn't even introduce us to the character o...

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The Raid (2011)

Tim Brayton — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 22:53:00 +0000

There are some movies that beautiful and true chiefly in their purity: they are, and they pretend to be, one thing only. Such it is with The Raid: Redemption, an Indonesian action movie written and directed by a Welshman, Gareth Huw Evans. An...

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Mekong Hotel (2012)

Tim Brayton — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Screens at CIFF: 10/12 & 10/21 & 10/19
World premiere: 18 May, 2012, Cannes Film Festival

After much consideration, and carefully reviewing the exact circumstances of its making, I still have no idea what Mekong Hotel

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Madame X

Tim Brayton — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 18:00:00 +0000

Screens at CIFF: 10/12 & 10/14 & 10/16
World premiere: 7 October, 2010, Indonesia

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Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)

Tim Brayton — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 16:37:00 +0000

Despite its gloriously fervid title, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (winner of the 2010 Palme d'Or, mainstay of last fall's festival season, but some of us just didn't get to be the cool kids last year) strikes me as being the mo...

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