Film picks: Macbeth: Ralph Fiennes & Indira Varma, Italian Film Festival

Macbeth: Ralph Fiennes & Indira Varma (PG)

123 minutes, limited screenings at The Projector (Cineleisure) from June 1

English actor Ralph Fiennes is synonymous with Shakespeare. Since the 1980s, he has been associated with stage productions of everything from Julius Caesar to Antony And Cleopatra to The Tempest.

In 2011, he made his directing debut with the tragedy Coriolanus, in which he played the title role.

In 2023, Fiennes took the stage in London and Washington D.C. to play the lead in Macbeth. Director Simon Godwin’s version of the tragedy about the Scottish king places the action on the modern-day battlefield.

The Guardian says the adaptation has been “retooled as a history play about the corrupting effects of war, with violent conflict at the fore”. British actress Indira Varma, who plays Lady Macbeth, is described by The New Yorker as having an “exquisitely deft touch with language”.

The filmed version was shot at a performance at Dock X, a London warehouse converted into an auditorium.

Italian Film Festival 2024

Presented by the Embassy of Italy in Singapore in collaboration with the Singapore Film Society and The Projector, the 22nd edition of the festival features six recent releases and two classics.

The list of newer releases includes the 2023 drama Io Capitano (rating to be confirmed, 122 minutes, June 16, 5pm). Directed by Matteo Garrone (Gomorrah, 2008), the survival drama follows Seydou (Seydou Sarr) and Moussa (Moustapha Fall), cousins from Senegal who leave for Europe in the hope of finding a better life as undocumented migrants.

To reach their new home, they risk exhaustion, extortion, torture and imprisonment. The screenplay was written by Garrone based on reports and interviews with African migrants.

At the Venice International Film Festival, Io Capitano earned Garrone the Silver Lion for Best Director. It was also Italy’s entry to the Best International Feature Film category at the 2024 Academy Awards, where it made the final shortlist.

Where: Golden Village x The Projector at Cineleisure, 8 Grange Road
MRT: Somerset/Orchard
When: June 7 to 16, various times
Admission: $16 standard, with concessions
Info:

str.sg/tLz4

How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (PG)

126 minutes, now showing
3 stars

Thailand’s biggest box-office smash of the year to date, with more than $12 million earned so far, tells the story of teenage university dropout M (Thai-Chinese pop idol Putthipong “Billkin” Assaratanakul), who quits his game-caster gig to care for his grandma (Usha Seamkhum) when she is diagnosed with end-stage cancer.

The slacker ingratiates himself with Amah, moving into her Bangkok Chinatown tenement home.

M has competition for the inheritance in the form of her two adult sons, a married upstart broker (Sanya Kunakorn) and a ne’er-do-well (Pongsatorn Jongwilas). M’s struggling single mum (Sarinrat Thomas) is the daughter and the sole decent character.

This credible slice-of-life story, inspired by contemporary true events, is a knowing account of Confucian family dynamics that covers norms about filial piety and the consequences that follow the tradition of bestowing the inheritance to male heirs first.

It reminds the young of their obligations to the old, while asking the dying to consider what they owe the living.