2024 Thai Watch Challenge

(is this Isan? there's mor lam) very Thai nonsense, but centered around a very unlady-like young woman

This is so well done, both as youth work and as well-written television. Multi-layered, intense, compact five episodes looking at the damage social media enables. They clearly took great care over every bit of this, it's amongst the best-crafted work I've seen and articulating a powerful and important message.

The first half focuses on village life, Nak and Mak meeting and their early married life. The second half is a mix of comedy-horror, supernatural and tragedy. The copy I found to stream was (re)dubbed in Thai and included space-age sound effects and much later music.
The end, where they stopped speaking, I found more affecting. I'd very much like to see this with the original sound though that may no longer exist.
Overall though, it was worth watching as part of the history and glimpses into older Thai cinema and how, in 1959, they presented life in the previous century.

Slow, quiet coming of age focused on high school girls trying to find their way into adulthood. The visual story-telling is so strong I'm struggling to find adequate words. Patience required but highly recommend.

More of a traditional Mae Nak than I anticipated going in, quoting abundantly from Nang Nak. They threw in some fun twists to generate its own suspense.

The first four episodes are pretty perfect as sweet, gentle BL thanks to the leads. It goes rather odd in the last two as they have to explain things and tie up lose ends. The writer made it more difficult, and far weirder, than needed. Enough so my brain just sort of rejected that part as some sort of author's fever dream or an early draft which never made it into the story. So like it didn't happen as far as I'm concerned :D

High concept, high angst, high confusion.

Gentle, sensitive film about a kind boy who befriends a ghost. There are a couple of effective jump scares and good use of horror music around the students making fun of the new one but it's not horror. Perhaps the best coming of age film I've seen from Thailand so far.

It's an odd mix of serious and silly. The best parts were the traditional medicine. Leads aren't the best actors but they were well matched to each other. Interesting in how it emphasised the importance of women's medical knowledge and practice through food, whilst not dismissing the patriarchal hierarchy of the society they lived in.

Fluffy university GL which turns into something else, dark, sad, twisting and stressful. That shift came at the wrong time in my night and week, so I couldn't stay with it. The twists will make for powerful emotions if you can.

Closing monologue seems to make out it's about moral hypocrisy but it's more of a descent into madness. More psychological than horror, with small moments of black humour. I thought it was going to be a boiled frog one like The Medium but it was on a smaller scale and less graphic.

Sweet and more than a little goofy and doesn't take itself seriously except for the emotions. Those were real. Very enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours. Even if I did start it a bit late. I just meant to take a wee peek I swear.

Needed something gentle to offset a lakorn, searched for Nice Male Lead and found this... charisma and kindness, good music, and a sweet, beautiful, touching story which ignores physical reality but gently encompasses big emotions.

Liked the beginning, got bored for several episodes (3-6ish i think) and then it started to get better and better. Complicated impossible story well-explored. They did something I wish they hadn't, had a difficultly realistic wife managing a man's emotions situation for the parents, and left a main character redemption arc until late - which made some of its development feel like it was going to be unearned - but the story came through in the end. Writers and actors did a great job. My favourite was Jinny who loves as big as she whines :)

More staged violence than plot but the fighting was well done. Some Thai humour splashed about. Watched for the Challenge and because it kept coming up in algorithms so it seemed a good one to learn a bit more of the pop-culture with. Mission accomplished.

The parts of a lakorn I probably wouldn't like compressed into 4 hours. It was well done for what it is but too much for me and the conclusions meant to give meaning didn't hold up to the facts of the story. Now I have an idea what the Club Friday series are like and know to give them a miss.

Quirky fun but also touching. I like the balance they got with it all. Great use of music. Mai Davika channeling Audrey Hepburn channeling an 80 year old gran.

High production values carry it over the many plot holes but how the amount of abusive male bs didn't trigger me I don't know. The ending felt a let down, though some of that was because I only had auto-generated translations of auto-generated Thai subs for the final episode. Mixed feelings over all.

Watched this at some point this year and was so cross with it I didn't put it in the list. Its absence is messing up the count for the Challenge though since I'm using it for its one good thing, the OST.

How did the writers and director get Ayan so thoroughly wrong?

watched at beginning of year, before i got in the habit of this list. not moving it up 119 positions :)

Puppy swagger

Wasn't keen on the first half (too much boys creeping on girls type humour) but the second half was better when it shifted into coming of age/pulling together/friendship, with added ghosts. The goofy-deadpan humour in that (like Star and her fire extinguisher) appealed to me more.

Well-crafted unsettling suspense/mystery short episode series which makes good use of its format, especially in the first half.

I'd rather give my time to stories but it was alright as a break between heavier things. The lads go to different places to try out different activities and cook.

The sort of looking back youth movie which feels like it had to come from personal experience.

Sometimes a story doesn't need to be complicated, just real.

And sometimes a story is made so complicated it gets in its own way.

This didn't work for me. Very women's historical romance fantasy, just cast with boys. It's from Violet Rain so no surprise there. The story worked so hard at being confusing though, it took me too long to have enough emotional investment and the Meaning and Poignancy, when it finally arrived, felt forced, unearned and cliched.

Frivolous of course but fun enough to fill some time.

Despite the dips into exaggerated FL reticence regarding physical intimacy for the shorter man in each couple, the space this slow lakorn gives to love, grief, trauma and friendship is everything.

This is a very strange movie. It's possible that it might be marginally less strange if I had more Thai or subtitles but only marginally.

Solid high school sports lakorn, with the usual themes of friendship, teamwork and over-coming adversity. Two good women characters in something very boy-orientated.

First attempt with something I hadn't heard of before for the Challenge was a dry, boring, tedious Netflix series (The Believers) I dropped at ep 4 for its lack of Thai spark and cynical use of homophobia as a plot device (maybe to show how low some of the characters would go?). Tried again and ended up with an hour and twenty minutes of OTT ladyboy madness mixed with mor lam. The humour is low-brow with no pretensions to anything else, it's loud and mildly outrageous and overflows with spark and energy. It was the perfect antidote.
"Sometimes winning isn't about defeating others but defeating our own obstacles."

Short film, atmospherical and metaphorical. Not Me director Anucha Boonyawatana's graduate film project.

The last episode changes everything.

Wanted something from Isaan for the watch challenge, found a sparse and misleading page for it on MDL and went in knowing next to nothing.

This may be my favourite Thai film now.

This is a lot. It's long, too long in my opinion and could have been tightened up. I did go in with very high expectations though, given director Fon's stunning work in The Comments (which she also wrote) and Home School. The story here meanders more (perhaps because it's an adaptation?) and is (to me) an awkward combination of lakorn and high school series. There's lakorn-level stress but without the exaggeration to give it some lift. It will probably be more appealing to most western viewers because of that.
The young actors are FANTASTIC. Namtan as Mind is a sweetheart, my heart breaks for Sing's Pete, Jan nailed Tida's complexity, Krist shone in scenes which gave him substance to work with, and Kay was a revelation as cheeky, funny, vulnerable, complicated Gun.
But there are so many times I've had to say no more and seek out something else because of choices which were made for the story. 10/10 for the young actors, 6/10 for the story.

Focusing more on those involved, with much from the boys and coach themselves, rather than the drama of it all. Respectfully done.

Several of the things I've come to love about the Thai way of telling stories - unhurried pace, slice of life, silly start which gains depth, and so much generosity of heart, with kindness and acceptance of our imperfections.

Fairytale set in a fictional state in India named after a four star Pattaya resort where everyone including rural children speaks fluent Thai and English is the stand in for the written language. The commitment to this alternate reality by all involved make this work. There's a ghost, magic spiders, a critique of corrupt capitalists exploiting a nation woven in, and one of the best Why they can't be together and how it's resolved. For all the exaggeration and nonsense they use to get there, the emotions are strong and true.

This was just stupid. Tedious, unfunny rom "com" where lazy characterisation makes for a ML who parallels the early stages of an abusive partner. Or maybe beyond the early stages as there's physical restraint and he laughs (to himself so the viewers are in on it too) after manipulating her into apologising for something he's not actually bothered about.
There's plenty of room for light and silly. Just put some effort into writing better characters. Such a waste.

With Ananda Everingham and Jennis Oprasert my hopes were high. If nothing else, I'd learn a bit about a Muslim community in Thailand.

It was better than that. Unhurried, - it refuses to rush anything, just layers on the what is going on until it's ready to tell us - atmospheric and creepy. Less horror, and more a particular Thai theme.

The first Thai movie I saw, when an international film festival in India (We Are One) put their offerings on youtube during the first Covid summer. I didn't intend it this way, but it feels fitting that this will complete the watch challenge.

Very slice of life coming of age. Understanding Thai context better certainly helps.

they accepted my entry and i've actually been given credit on the main page :D :D :D

now when did i watch this and where did i stash my summary notes :)

Foreigners to the rescue. Paternalistic, very male and perhaps cavalier with some details like the anaesthetisation. Trapped 13 is much better. This one's in a mix of English and Thai. I went on visuals, vibes, having Trapped 13 fresh in memory and everything I've picked up in this year and a half of watching Thai and didn't feel like I was missing anything.