Amazing Stoner Movie Fest 2025
Amazing Stoner Movie Fest 2025 is back!!
20 – 23 November 2025
at Cinema Oasis in Bangkok, Thailand
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Amazing Stoner Movie Manifesto
What is a stoner movie?This was the Golden Ganja question as we watched the exotic entries one after another. It’s not just the dude stuff or the trippy images with disassociated dialogue. It dawned on us that what makes a film a stoner movie is its sense of reality, a certain observational distance—Zen detachment. They don’t all show ganja on screen or even touch on weed culture, but they all have in common the state of being stoned.The point being: If contemporary consensus reality with its abusive half-truths is clearly losing its mind, artists, filmmakers and cinephiles have the right—even the dharma—to subvert and shatter that cherished mirage.All we weed is love.
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Dr Alice Skinhead
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programmer
programmer
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Love Is All We Weed To Heal The World
Existential anxieties are peaking among some very angry women, vengeful men, raging artists, claustrophobic Thais and one very wronged Indian dwarf, according to this year’s 59 films from across the world. Crazed and silly many of them may be; their very silliness is an eruption of suppressed truth, to make us laugh, cry and sing out our pain, and so end our zombification.
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The music of the spheres is humming a dark note, and not just over Gaza. For Thai ganchachon, it’s the insecurity of our legal status. Heroic activists from Thailand’s Cannabis Future Network will address this confusion in a talk on
Saturday 22 November: ‘Thai Ganja: Boom or Bust?’
All points of view are welcome. To heal the world, Love is All We Weed.
>>> A Talk on ‘THAI GANJA: BOOM or BUST?’ <<<
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We’re screening movies in 2 areas :
Indoor and Outdoor.
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Indoor (in the cinema) :Ticket 160 THB
Day pass 420 THB
*Tickets Available at the cinema*
Outdoor (Screenings in Atrium Post-Sunset) :FREE !!!!
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In 2019, the Golden Ganja for Best Stoner Movie went to
‘SuperpsychoCebu’ by Filipino director Christian Linaban.
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In 2022, Brazilian Kung Fu movie
‘The Smoke Master’ by Andre Sigwalt & Augusto Soares
won the Golden Ganja.
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2023 saw the first Thai winner of the Golden Ganja,
‘Blood Rain’ by Achitaphon Piansukprasert.
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In 2024, The Golden Ganja went to
‘Bionico’s Bachata’ by Yoel Morales.
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Who will win the Golden Ganja and USD 1,000
at the 5th Amazing Stoner Movie Fest?
Who will win the Baby Golden Ganja and 5,000 Thai baht
for Best Stoner Short Film?
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Schedule
10 Features
Adhura Khvaab
India
110 min
Faizuddin Siddiqui
It doesn’t sound like it but it’s a total stoner movie because of the spectacular apparently True Story ending. Nasty mother-in-law from hell abetted by brat daughter browbeats daughter-in law Ruby “the barren girl” and urges her son to take another, fertile wife as his religion permits. But he loves her. Despite the life insurance commercial treacly piano, despite the IVF song, it keeps us watching, mesmerised by hysteria and intensity as grief piles upon outrage after outrage and Ruby is taken into the mafia mansion in full chador with only her eyes, in full panic, visible.
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BUGSYDER: The Crazy Hero
Thai
92 min
Theppanom Piriyaworakul
The humour, the anarchy, the glorious fun—its tagline says it all: “Of the Psycho Who Steals Underwear”. Total absurdity right off the bat, as a suited pervert harassing stewardesses in a white aeroplane suddenly finds himself dropped among buffaloes in a field in Isan. Iconic Isan farang movie star Martin Wheeler is the village headman who can’t live without inhaling his wife’s cleavage. Despite the cartoonish, sped-up and silly veneer, it has strong resonance, as in the psycho freak-out scene amidst ancient ruins. Plus the cast of great faces, the acting, the camera placement and editing in this shoestring movie outshine most big budget Thai films.
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Chainsaws Were Singing
Estonia
117 min
Sander Maran
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has spawned many exotic offspring, but this has got to be one of the best, plus it’s a musical. The shift from dialogue to verse to song is faultlessly done. The humour is black, brutal and disgusting; the 2 shitty cops are priceless. The lingering question: to a cannibal, does hippie meat really taste of weed?
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Dead White & Blue
US
124 min
Mike Davis
This sublimely inventive satire of propaganda film starts with black boys watching a KKK recruitment ad (“No more white sheets, the New Klan in active wear with style and technology..”) and blooms into a military plan to use a Sioux sacred ceremony to shrink a whole army to battle the KKK inside a dead black man’s body. Much of it is freely-dubbed old video tape footage, a pseudo-doc a la Pink Flamingo with deadpan dialogue and 1970’s clothes.
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Duck Rabbit
US
116 min
Michael Lee
After drinking psychedelic tea, 3 women take forever to deliver a prop sofa to the village playhouse, ruled by a pompous wannabe Shakespearean. The lemonade kid is one nasty character. Some excellent stoner scenes including The Lost Chicken crossing the road to Ride of the Valkyrie.
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Kuppan
India
137 min
Sasikumar S.
A low-cast dwarf street drummer—lowest of the low, is accused of raping and beheading his own angelic daughter. Sort of Tamil Masala Western with Bollywood villains and powerful songs, this disturbing witch-hunt of a moral-horror movie is not stylish-slick but has visual power and many unforgettable scenes. Plots, subplots, twists and turns; the English subtitles are too quick, but we don’t care as we take in the intensity—the brutality, the insanity, the tyranny. The songs are wonderful, especially the monstrous Pigeon Dance Man’s macabre pre-rape signature tune.
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Next
US
98 min
Brad Cook
The brainworm guy finds a camera at the bus stop and with his fat woman friend (lovely chemistry; great hotdog eating scene) decide to save people by filming them, thereby capturing their pain which they bless and bury in the ground along with the memory card. But in the woods they also find cash tied to bits of corpses—tossed from a celebrity artist’s studio full of spooky hooded mannequins. Mum issues on steroids.
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Pariah to Profit: Accepting the Power of Marijuana
US
63 min, documentary
Jesse Tunison, Natec Linda Penn
Marijuana is the least toxic substance in all pharmacology; the longest available medicine that we know of from prehistoric times, says one doctor from Harvard Medical School. “That is not a drug. It’s a leaf,” says California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s a very technical but utterly absorbing lecture that really makes you feel the total obscenity and absurdity of banning and demonizing the Kind Medicine. The end credits over weed being ground down is very appetizing, shall we say. (BB: “The best medical marijuana documentary I’ve ever seen.”)
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Transference
US
102 min
Zeph E Daniel
The screening notes drip with blood: “Sex and gore fest, interesting. Everyone in the film seems to have uncontrollable sex drives.” An oppressed Hispanic immigrant nurse looks after a sick rich woman, bringing her back to life from near-death. Class rage, sex rage, abusive ex-husbands, lesbian menage a trois in an ocean-view house in Hawaii, as lives, and perhaps bodies, are taken over in disturbing ways.
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Whiskey Dixie & The Big Wet Country
US
114 min
Amanda Richards
“An over-the-top sex-positive musical comedy,” is how the film’s director, composer and star Amanda Richards describes it. Yes, it’s another crazy musical. Woman in red dress driving a red open sportscar with a dildo inside her sings the opening number: “Coming at high speed!” While it projects itself as a tacky porno movie, the songs, including the one about premature ejaculation and the love theme ‘Fuck this night!’ are so amazing that we buy it totally, even if the dialogue scenes and the DP can’t measure up.
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[All reviews by Dr Alice Skinhead unless otherwise stated]
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Short programs
SHORTS 1: FUN WITH GANJA & SHROOM
(Total R/T 134 mins)
Herbie
US, 19.11 min, Mekko Toretto
Beautiful and very moving love story between traumatised homeless war veteran William and ‘Herbie’, his pet ganja plant, his cherished baby, who turns his life around after healing his PTSD. The main actor is astonishing.
Panic Switch
US, 5.18 min, animation, Cameron Red Howe
A bag of weed is found in the classroom and handed in to Teacher. Whose weed is this? Simple and clever puppet animation.
Operation Tui
Thai, 10 min, Satta Bunchaisiri
Two guys finally get their wish to get really high after finding a huge bag of mushroom. Lovely trip sequence includes walking into oneself and people in blue sateen togas dancing on a hillside. They wake up blue-skinned, side by side.
Rolled With Care
US, 22 min, Shaindel Brodie
Instagram Girl (“I can’t roll a joint to save my life..”) shows how to roll one and takes us through quick history of marijuana use. Cannabis Influencers teach needlessly creative and complex ways of rolling a joint, apparently to “change the stigma with high-end products” such as Yoda-shaped joints. The joint gurus are so stoned they speak slow-ly.
La Savoir-faire du Cannabis
Canada, 14.15 min, Jonathan Gaudreau
A tour of the Canadian cannabis industry highlights the fact that humans have evolved alongside cannabis and every living thing has cannabinoid receptors. So why the stigma, man?
Joint Venture
US, 38.43 min, Caleb Turner, Kyle Fauber
Bored stoner dudes in COVID lockdown: “We need weed.” The weedseeking odyssey takes them to scary crow dealer and white blond angel not all she seems. Classic stoner movie starring stoner movie megastar Tommy Chong as the Ganja Godhead who brings forth weed.
The Magic Seed
US, 4.20 min, Chris Chappell
Stoner Sesame Street with stoner Kermit-green muppet but not a frog, who tenderly nurtures his special seed.
Space Christmas
France, 20 min, Oscar Barrouyer
The dire consequences of getting the munchies and eating the Christmas yule log that Tyrannical Dad has expressly forbidden.
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SHORTS 2: FILMS TO TRIP BY
(Total R/T 110 mins)
Adjudicators’ Pawn Part 4
US, 9.32 min, animation, David French
Through a wormhole we enter a nunnery under demonic possession and hysteria. Hooded crusader monk performs a mass exorcism and confronts Satan. Utterly mesmerising.
Adjudicators’ Pawn Part 5
US, 8 min, animation, David French
Shape-shifting hooded crusader monk tracks down The Hunter decimating wildlife and chopping down trees. He brings holy vengeance upon him in a lake of gore. Wow.
PPX
Japan, 16 min, animation, Yoshi Max
Like a boy playing with his toy monsters, another trip with Bergus Chan to Yoshi Max’s parallel universe of our psychic detritus.
The Screenwriter
Belgium, 5 min, Laurent Cliquet
Screenwriter ordered to write an extra scene, alternates between the ‘real world’ and the script, both manipulated to look like a Mad Maxish graphic novel. A creative’s AI anxiety.
Solar Neighbour
US, 10.44 min, animation, Austin Cole
This charming handmade plasticine animation shows that cling film is not just for lesbian safe sex and leftover food, but can actually depict beautiful water. Happy trippy hippies, cryogenics, post-apocalypse and human extinction.
Stone Being/Steinsein
Germany, 14.30 min, Luca Storch, Moritz Goebel
Earth worshippers know stone has soul and vibrates with charisma: the crystal cave, the rock pool, the lava tube, the definite presence of the looming cone-shaped rock in the woods, all eerily and indisputably alive in this loving cinematic stone caress.
The Dunwich Horror & Other Stories
Japan, 46.24 min, animation, Ryo Shinagawa
HP Lovecraft is God to many stoners and cinephiles, and it’s all gloriously here: monstrous dollhouse, laughing demons, cannibals, even the Necronomicon makes an appearance. The camera moves through gothic tableaux of beautiful art, psychic landscapes, spooky woods. As the master says, no creature can live without having known darkness, and neither can we.
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SHORTS 3: SOULS LOST & FOUND
(Total R/T 136 mins)
Taxidermist
Iran, 15 min, Behzad Alavi, Sousan Salamat
The taxidermist is the epitome of heedless living with no sense of empathy for any living being but himself, and it is a ruthless spiritual portrait. Lovely cast of animals: the scorpions, the turtle, the caterpillar as a wondrous agent of karma, and the nice dog at the end.
Foliage
China/Spain, 16.26 min, Faye Shu
Beauty is truth, truth beauty. A beautiful Oriental woman professor tells how the Buddhist saint Padma Sambhava transformed the nature spirits into Buddhist deities.
Mianmar
Iran, 17 min, Hananeh Daliri
Mum has gone on pilgrimage to Mecca and the family debates the decision to turn off the ventilator on their teenaged brother, comatose after a motorcycle accident. Eerily, they argue over his organs. Dad: “I have sold the heart to another family for a higher price.” Macabre and mercenary, the ruthless obscenity of greed on shocking display.
Catch You Later
Portugal, 18 min, Michael Joaquim Matias
A man goes into the woods with a rope to hang himself. But the solitude of the holy moment of death is disturbed by the intrusion of another would-be suicide of an extremely irritating and needy kind. Lovely black humour.
Gary’s Garage Band
Australia, 11.27 min, Bill Calder
A bunch of grey-haired amateur musicians get together to “Have fun, make a bit of noise” in Gary’s garage. This friendly doc is sincerely healing, plus the old boys’ Hot Jam Band is really good. Gary himself can play guitar without missing a beat while walking through mangrove!
I’m Not Work Any More
Turkey, 24 min, Gernas Islam Abiska
A shepherd spies on a stray sheep and sees something that deeply changes him. A magical Sufi tale in which organized religion doesn’t come off too well.
The Writer’s Horror
Thai/Ukraine, 10 min, Sergiy Pudich
Creature of ill omen the tukgae gecko calls out its warning as a writer resorts to AI to cheat-write a script.
The Phantom Book
US, 24.15 min, Bill LiPera
A social loser finds a magical book that turns him into life of the party. The ‘money to burn’ moment is pretty amazing.
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SHORTS 4: THE BIG PICTURE
(Total R/T 91 mins)
The Tender Ones Will Triumph
Poland, 15 min, Francisco Bassignana
Ukrainian model Anastasia is trying to survive as a refugee in Poland. Benefiting from a photographer’s boycott of Russian models, she glides to work past war protesters, seemingly unconcerned. But her flawless Spring Goddess face hides a wealth of pain.
Collection Title: Turtle
Iran, 12.31 min, Ehsan Majoumi
Very brave depiction of nudity in an Iranian film, done with painting, sculpture and body-paint. Then comes the devastating Big Reveal. The art is potent and high-calibre.
Adas Falasteen
State of Palestine, 7.55 min, Hamdi Khalil Elhusseini, Samer Taher Lulu
A Palestinian chef in peacetime runs a central kitchen in wartime against the odds, feeding vats of lentil soup to the starving of Gaza. Instead of losing heart, it has inspired him to cook with more passion: “It’s indescribable the moment someone gets your food and they pray for you.” Amidst the hellish misery, we also see the beauty of the land of Palestine, and the love.
No
Italy/Serbia, 1 min, Ahmed Alameldeen
This one-minute film packs a punch: UN Security Council votes for ceasefire in Gaza, but one monstrous country blocks it.
Dark Room
Iran, 8.31 min, Mobin Hajilooie
As dark as it gets. A would-be creative writer faces a stark choice: freedom or survival.
Rose
Iran, 17.50 min, Amirhossein Hashtroodi
A snowy mountain pass is frequented by smugglers and refugees. The border checkpoint is run by a bastard boss who, like most evil arseholes, tries to force a kind-hearted underling to become as evil as him.
Temple of Theseus
China/UK, 27.34 min, Qiu Cheng
Razed by the Cultural Revolution’s red guards for the crime of being ancient, a Mongolian Buddhist monastery renown for traditional medicine has been replaced by a chemical factory. But times have changed and the past is being resurrected as a Tripple-A Tourist Site, including a Little Potala Palace Buddhist theme park complete with giant gold Buddha donated by the factory.
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SHORTS 5: SIAM-MAZE
(Total R/T 113 mins)
Call Center Ghost
Thai, 13 min, Nuttorn Kungwanklai
A woman consults an exorcist after moving into a flat haunted by a ghostly phone scammer. Holy objects are useless because the ghost has no religion.
Look Closely Enough
Thai, 27 min, Warat Bureephakdee
Nothing is sacred in this glorious self-satire. Star of the show is clearly the chorus or ‘background dancers’ of crazed university students who roll and writhe on the grass, jabbering and moaning with self-pity like infants in a crib. The foreground set-piece is a bench with bronze statues of democracy icons where two dudes worship (“Long Live Puay Pridi Thammasart Apichartpong!”) by slapping and then kissing the idols like a Thai TV soap love scene but much more shocking.
The Spirit Level
Thai, 20.28, Taiki Sakpisit
Beautiful transitions, dissolves and sound design with potent images take us into contemporary Thai superstitions and psychoses, both mentionable and off-limits.
ANAM
Thai, 21 min, Thanakorn Panjapaphawin
A total mish-mash of contemporary historical events, with October 6 massacre, Black May 1992, Red Shirts’ City Burning and military coups in a confused stew that clearly reflects Thai frustrations over the manipulation and suppression of the Thai experience of history. Best dialogue, which has to be put in the mouths of actors in the film within the film: Boy: “I can’t live like this. Someone must do something!”/ Girl: “What will I do if you’re killed?”
Colombe
Thai, 32 min, Jakkaphat Songpolnopajorn
Witch-hunts and online bullying, the true pandemic of our time, are personified by school prefects with red arm bands who ride roughshod over anyone they decide to hate, including ideologically suspect teachers. It’s a bit crude but that very lack of art and subtlety is indicative and revealing. There’s a cameo of Pisarn ‘Macbeth’ Pattanapeeradej as the epitome of tyranny, in a shot exactly replicated from the once-banned ‘Shakespeare Must Die.’
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SHORTS 6: GIRL POWER
(Total R/T 94 mins)
Women At Home
Indonesia, 12.11, Megan Winowidjoyo
A woman dwarfed by crockery and household appliances, a Thumbelina wife and mother of two, is swamped by endless chores. Dad is always away somewhere more exotic, pursuing his dreams. Dusted with fairy magic and the fragile beauty of inane floral tea cups, never was drudgery so enchantingly portrayed to blow us away. Meticulous and immaculate, by the director of ‘Home Sweet Home’.
Spider-Zan
Iran, 12.45, Maryam Khodabakhsh
Spider-Zan is a pink acrobatic doll of Spiderman/woman that Little Sis dreams of becoming in its agility and freedom. But here’s Stark Reality in the form of Mum who frets endlessly over what people say. She’s summoned her elder daughter, a nursing student in Tehran, back to the village for an arranged engagement. A pragmatic/magical almost horror tale with an interesting happy ending.
The Fight
UK, 8 min, Antony Petrou
A girl boxer dreams of making it into the ring, but no boy would fight her. Nicely shot and edited, with wonderful sound design.
Red
Iran, 8 min, Shahoo Ahmadi
A lesson in how to talk about eroticism without judgement or nudity; how to be extremely violent without gore. It’s not so much a Sufi tale as a mirage in the desert: Boy and Girl climb up to a cave and still cannot escape the world.
Call Me…DokThong
Thai, 3.45 min, Beam Tawan
It might have been made to celebrate sex toys, but turns into an act of feminist defiance a la Female Eunuch 2025, with its happy sincerity, its proud whoredom, The Girl (played by Primmy Wipawee Patnasiri, director of ‘Purple Dalha’)’s orgasmic delight; the vibrating flower petals.
Witness
Iran, 15 min, Aida Tebianian
The choice: to bear false witness against your murdered mum to save your murderous dad, or be truthful and lose everything except your soul? Which is the happy ending? It’s a gut punch to learn that in Iran law courts one male witness equals 3 female witnesses. Interesting and intense.
Amida
Iran, 25 min, Majid Mirhashemi
Dad’s just died. The funeral is over and the little brother is coming out as a girl in a heart-warming gender affirmation ceremony organized by her indulgent, liberal siblings. But all is not what it seems as conservative Big Brother turns up unwanted and uninvited. This is one strange and brave feminist film from Iran.
Tie Your Hair
Iran, 10 min, Sheyde Makaremi
It’s the first thing we hear: Tie your hair. Little girl with huge backpack obeys Dad each time they embark on an ‘adventure’. Like their father-daughter act, the cute surface underlines the explosive oppressiveness. Don’t stop running, little girl!
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SHORTS 7: FUCKED UP LOVE
(Total R/T 78 mins)
Violenza
Thai, 30 min, Kasidid Kangkarn
It’s not just the blood-spattered man-tits and fast food belly, the machete on rubber Hallowe’en decorations or the self-mutilation that mesmerise in this broken-heart revenge. The hair scene is quite something.
8 Minutes Of Us
Thai, 8 min, Kirana Sujacharee
More trippy break-up therapy, in arty monochrome and scarlet, though the most violent thing to happen is the snipping of a red thread and a pair of Siamese fighting fish.
Intervention
Thai, 30 min, Kamonkam Samutratanakul
Goth Thai lesbians meet in a bar and smoke a bonding joint. They try too hard but they’re very cute-looking, and their kiss, when it finally happens, is so sweet it uplifts the film. But the joint seems more like smack than weed, giving it a whiff of War on Drugs propaganda. It could’ve gone another way: when the goth tells the Catholic girl to take off her crucifix, pity she doesn’t turn into a vampire and bite her neck.
Don’t Bury It
UK, 10 min, Kristian Fitsall
The compulsion of inevitability. An undertaker who’s just lost his job reads a Dear John letter in bed. Of course he starts digging a grave in his backyard.
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SHORTS 8: VERY ANGRY ARTISTS
(Total R/T 97 mins)
Ode to Tzong Ward
Thai, 36.13 min, Michael Showanasai
The first bitter V/O lets us know we are in for a treat: “Your work is not daring/too sentimental/not good enough to be enough!” Arrogant art curators Lisa Liu and Susy Something talk pseudo-profound tripe very well and it’s all in Tinglish, the language of Patpong and director Michael’s legendary Iron Pussy. Highlights include the handbag worshippers in ‘E’ masks and sacrilegious burning of books including the Bangkok Art Biennale catalogue. But composer ‘Cookie’ Somtow Sucharitkul steals the show, conducting music in all his naked glory, personifying the tortured artist alone in his cave to chilling effect.
Blood On The Canvas
Thai, 61 min, Karnthi Phothidara
The Artist’s hair is annoying, the start is slow and the art sucks, but things vastly improve once we get to Bangkok and he is commissioned to paint the portrait of a very controlling client, possibly a psycho-killer vampire rapist/lizard demon cross. Good knife chase through the empty building.
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[All reviews by Dr Alice Skinhead unless otherwise stated]
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