Breaking the Cycle review – meet the charismatic Thai politician striving to change his country’s history

Gripping documentary examines the Future Forward Party’s unprecedented 2019 election result, and its leader’s aim to break Thailand’s repeated military coups With his disarming good looks, pro-democracy activist and businessman Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit resembles an actor rather than a typical Thai politician. Heir to the country’s largest car manufacturer, he is blessed not only with personable charisma but also inexhaustible funds. His stunning rise into public consciousness is the beating heart of Aekaphong Saransate and Thanakrit Duangmaneeporn’s debut film, a thrilling documentary about an extraordinary political campaign that shook a nation. As founder of the progressive Future Forward Party (FFP), Juangroongruangkit’s central message cut through the noise of electoral politics: secure a brighter future by correcting the wrongs of the past. Since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932, Thailand has undergone a never-ending cycle of military takeovers, including 12 coups. Dur...

Please Baby Please review – Andrea Riseborough leads retro reverie of vamp and camp

Riseborough and Harry Melling play a couple who get off on violence in an oddball, over-saturated thriller with a surprise cameo from Demi Moore

A rocky-horror sexual awakening is promised in Amanda Kramer’s initially interesting but ultimately laborious queer reverie of 50s and 60s style, like a theatrical daydream as experienced by Anybodys, from West Side Story. The long dissolve fades and blue-lit nightclub scenes are amusingly Lynchian, as is the very stylish and all-too-brief cameo from Demi Moore as a mysterious and worldly neighbour called Maureen. But the film feels over-determined and self-satisfied.

Andrea Riseborough and Harry Melling play Suze and Arthur, a couple with liberal, bohemian tastes who live in a rough part of town and like going to beatnik poetry clubs. But passionate, slinky Suze is unsatisfied with her milksop husband Arthur; he rejects caveman masculinity and quotes Hamlet: “Man delights not me, no nor woman neither …” (Their apartment has the Shakespearean number 2B.) Then one evening they chance across a gang of murderous delinquents, led by Brandoesque tough guy Teddy (Karl Glusman) and something in his thrillingly criminal muscularity excites Suze and Arthur.

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