Noy Thrupkaew

North Country is a nasty bait and switch, a film with feminist aspirations that suddenly goes all Lifetime lunatic. You feel safe at first. At the Washington, D.C., screening, people from Ms. Magazine and a domestic-violence-prevention organization are on hand to cheer the film and hand out promotional junk. You sigh with anticipation, ready to […]

Early on in Ellen Perry’s jaw-dropper of a documentary, Fall of Fujimori, the controversial former leader of Peru is seen applying his makeup, dabbing on foundation with a sponge and peering into a mirror. It’s a disarming and curious moment, made all the more incongruous by the information that has preceded it: Alberto Fujimori is […]

There is no way to ignore Chris Rock — irate man-boy, the voice a squall of gleeful outrage, the eyes bugging out in disbelief. He’s so put-upon, and so happily so, that he just has to share all of it: Can you believe this? Unlike comics who try to draw audiences into their private worlds, […]

Andrew Niccols’ latest film rolls out the carpet for its supposed antihero, illegal arms dealer Yuri Orlov (played by Nicolas Cage). When Yuri first appears onscreen, he’s standing on countless glistening bullets, so many of them that they gleam like a sumptuous, golden rug. He’s a true Lord of War , the image says, a […]

The scene is picture perfect: a magical pinkish twilight, a gentle hill, the fairy spire of the Eiffel Tower rising in the distance. Then an old Chinese man — bedraggled, stooped under a huge basket of trash — steps into the frame, transforming the scene into the exquisite inverse of a classical Chinese landscape painting. […]

The director and I are pattering away in a bizarre mélange of Thai and English, often within the same sentence. “Thai films can really have a sang son quality, that textbook preachiness, sometimes,” director Apichatpong Weerasethakul muses. “I didn’t feel like papayon should be like that.” The linguistic switch-hitting is apt, considering Weerasethakul has a […]

Criticizing the latest Hayao Miyazaki movie feels evil, like passing up cupcakes made by children to sup on puppies. Miyazaki is, after all, the grand master of animation, gifted with an unparalleled and deeply humanistic imagination, the creator of rapturous worlds and complex heroines that Walt Disney could only dream of. So why the grumbles? […]

McDonald’s turned 50 this year. And, like many 50-year-olds, Ronald is in the thick of a midlife crisis. Yet, in contrast with the pencil-pushing, righteous-living ways of many who feel the urge to indulge their inner adolescents, McDonald’s has gotten all the play out of the way. The Happy Meal lifestyle couldn’t last forever, much […]