POP AYE: Kristen Tan's original, delightful road-trip-cum-elephant opens in NYC and L.A.

If you have any interest in discovering what a male mid-life crisis looks like, Thai-style, or any intertest in elephants as traveling companions, or really just an interest in unusual, surprising, enriching new movies, then I would heartily recommend POP AYE -- which turns out to be all these things and more. Its writer/director, Krisiten Tan (whose first full-length film this is), has fashioned a parable about coming to terms with one's past, as well as with aging, guilt, life, work and love that takes the form of a road trip by a late-middle-aged man, accompanied by the elephant he knew and cared for as a child. Yes, this is a tale, the likes of which you will probably not have seen previously.

Ms Tan, shown at right, does a lovely job of plunging us into the midst of things via the immediate life of her hero, a fellow named Thana (played by Thaneth Warakulnukroh, shown above and below, with an elephant named Bong, who essays the title role here) and then slowly lets us learn the specifics of his life, his work and his desires so that, by the finale -- as rich and unexpected as much of it is -- everything we now know about him makes sense on several levels: realistic, symbolic, psychological. This is quite an accomplishment for any film, let alone a fledgling effort such as Pop Aye.

Among the things that we learn about Thana is that he is being phased out of his role as one of the top dogs at his architectural firm, as well as by his wife, who seems to want little to do with him, particularly in the sex department. One evening, as he drives around Bangkok feeling depressed, he sees an elephant that reminds him of -- and might in fact be -- the one he took care of as a child, and with whom he grew to young adulthood. (This sort of "elephant" thing can happen more often in Thailand than, say, here in the USA.). Thana stops the car, goes back for a look, and sure enough....

So begins a bizarre but surprisingly believable road trip in which Thana and Pop Aye wend their way toward the village where they spent their younger days. Along the way they get a lift from a truck driver, meet a poor but oddly contented man who pines a bit for his lost wife, become involved with some local police who try to escort the pair to an animal refuge, drink and sing Karaoke with a transgender lady of the night (below), and finally bond with some friends-of-new-friends and a relative who provide both surprising emotion and an oddball kick to this strange tale.

As writer and director, Ms Tan negotiates her storytelling with great visual beauty, humor, irony, unexpected yet heartfelt emotion, and finally the kind of surprise that, in retrospect, makes perfect sense. (The movie's funniest line sprouts from the mouth of a Buddhist monk regarding payment for cremation, while its most refreshing and lively visual comes as Thana attempts to climb atop his traveling companion.)

The journey turns out, of course, to be one of self-discovery, but this is neither telegraphed nor hammered home too strongly. It is also a film about learning what is and is not important in life. In its final section the film grows ever more mysterious and simultaneously all the more rich and resonant, as past and present merge, guilt is revealed and growth -- not a lot but enough -- is achieved. For a first film, Pop Aye is remarkably sophisticated.

From Kino Lorber, the movie opened this past week in New York City at Film Forum, and will hit Los Angeles, this coming Friday, July 7, at Landmark's NuArt and from there, over the weeks to come in another dozen or more cities. To view all currently scheduled playdates,, with cities and theaters listed, click here and then scroll down and click on PLAYDATES.

Anucha Boonyawatana's THE BLUE HOUR: gay dudes, spirits and a lot of ennui from Thailand

TrustMovies may simply not be well-attuned to Thai culture, if his reactions to too many of Thailand's movies are any kind of example. Though he very much enjoyed the recent How to Win at Checkers (Every Time), he has yet to climb fully aboard the Apichatpong Weerasethakul bandwagon. (He keeps trying to jump on, but by the end of the movie in question he's fallen off again.) This seems doubly odd to him because so many of the movies that make their way from Thailand over here are gay-themed -- either overtly or subvertly. The latest and very overt example is THE BLUE HOUR (Onthakan) from filmmaker Anucha Boonyawatana., whose early film Down the River I recall viewing and to some extent enjoying maybe a decade ago.

The filmmaker, shown at right, as both writer and director, has here concocted a tale of boys who meet on the Internet for sex, then bond via their need for physical closeness and caring as much as for climax. One is either an orphan (or self-orphaned), while the other has a less-than-welcoming family due to his homosexuality. The deserted public swimming pool where they meet is haunted by spirits who begin intruding on their lives in ways covert and overt. (Belief in ghosts and spirits of the dead seems even more prevalent in Thailand than does homosexuality.)

The Blue Hour is being billed (see poster above) as "a supernatural love story," though by its end the movie seems much more of a supernatural horror story or maybe a supernatural murder melange. Even so, this may be the slowest, most ennui-inducing movie dealing with bloodshed and death that I've seen in a long while.

There are, at most, half a dozen points the filmmaker wants to present here, but they take just-about-forever to unfold. Plot-wise the movie's a hash, and as lovely to look at are its non-heroes, there is a limit to our patience.

All these said-to-exist spirits are presented as creepy looking forms on the walls of the swimming pool, and since we never really see them in action (it's all in our, and/or the protagonists' mind), this makes for very low-budget, use-your-imagination filmmaking. I suppose that Boonyawatana was going for atmosphere above all. Atmosphere is indeed achieved -- but at the expense of just about everything else we might want.

From Strand Releasing and running a far-too-long 98 minutes, the movie opens today, Friday, April 8, in New York City at MoMA, in the Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters. So far as I know, no other theatrical playdates are in the offing, but according to the IMDB, you can stream the movie via Amazon for $3.99. 

Thailand's choice for BFLF Oscar: Josh Kim's HOW TO WIN AT CHECKERS (EVERY TIME)

If you listen to our cultural guardians, you might think that the only films from Thailand worth knowing about would be those of Apichatpong Weerasethakul (or, "Joe" to his friends), the fellow who has given us any number of impenetrable movies, including the famous Cannes prize-winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. Turns out there are other films worth knowing about from Thailand, too, one of which -- HOW TO WIN AT CHECKERS (EVERY TIME) -- was this year's submission from that country as Oscar's Best Foreign Language Film. Though it did not make the shortlist, not to mention the finale five nominees, it's a movie very much worth finding and viewing.

The film's writer/ director, Josh Kim (shown at right) is a Korean-American born in Texas who has based his movie on two stories by the writer Rattawut Lapcharoensap, another Asian-American of, I would guess, Thai ancestry. (I am assuming this because of his unusual, Thai-sounding name.) Checkers... is Kim's first full-length film, after writing and directing several short ones, and it combines two distinct genres: coming-of-age and the GLBT movie.

Both of these genres have been, over the years, pretty much done-to-death by enough movies of inferior quality that, when you hear the mention of either genre, you can't be blamed for wanting to take a pass. It is a pleasure, then, to be able to tell you that Mr. Kim's Checkers combines the two genres into something quite beautiful, heartfelt, poetic, occasionally funny and finally very moving.

This is the tale of a boy named Oat, who we see both as a youngster (above, left) and as a young man (below). We watch as Oat grows from one to the other, with the help of his adoring and adored older brother, Ek, his aunt, and various friends of the family and co-workers of Ek -- as well as Ek's lover, played by a gorgeous newcomer named Arthur Navarat (shown center, two photos below)

Filmmaker Kim weaves into his tale -- based of two of Lapcharoensap's short stories entitled Draft Day and At the Café Lovely -- much of the life in Thailand today: it's economics, politics, social classes, and work environ-ment, along with the manner in which society handles GLBT characters.

As shown here, at least, the life of the gay and transgendered may be less fraught than it is in the USA. (In one telling scene, it is only the "fat kid" who is made fun of in public. Some things never change.) The character named Kitty (played by Natarat Lahka, above left), in fact, is a gorgeous, curving chick who also sports a dick and proves to be the movie's most beautiful, interesting and sought-after character.

We also meet a young man named "Junior," and his crime boss/businessman dad, for whom Ek works. Power, we note sadly, is as corrupting here as it is anywhere else. Evidently, when young men in Thailand turn 21, they must take part of a draft/lottery (shown above) that ensures a certain number of them serve in the military, and the movie smacks us, along with several of its characters, into the middle of this "draft day" and its consequences.

All of this is shown us in relatively quiet, simple manner. But the movie's simplicity never computes as merely simple-minded, while the beauty of face, figure, landscape and color we see here is often exquisite enough to take your breath away (the cinematographer, Nikorn Sripongwarakul, has done masterful job).

The movie begins with a bad dream that our hero remembers and that we head slowly toward as the film progresses. Yet Kim and Lapcharoensap have a surprise or two up their sleeve, so that things do not turn out entirely as we expected. How they evolve provides one of the most quietly thoughtful and thoroughly moving entrances into male adulthood you will have experienced on film in a good, long while, in the process transcending both the coming-of-age and GLBT genres.

How to Win at Checkers (Every Time), from Wolfe Video and running 80 minutes, makes its DVD and VOD debut this coming Tuesday, February 2, for sale and rental.