My Six:
1) Red Wine in the Dark Night (Thailand: 2015); 2) Children’s Show (Philippines: 2014)
3) Waterboyy (Thailand: 2015); 4) How to Win at Checkers (Every Time) (USA: 2015)
5) Butterfly (Korea: 2015); 6) Speedwalking (Denmark: 2014)

More below the jump

Taking another break from writing up Love Sick recaps and two reviews, I thought it would be a good time to find out what you are looking forward to in the next few months. My list is actually quite long. I was thinking about the movies that I want to see: the big blockbusters like the Fantastic 4 or Inside/Out, or the highly anticipated foreign and independent releases like The Tribe or Dope and decided to limit my wish list to those films that I know that I am going to have a difficult time tracking down. They either won’t ever be released in the US,, when they are released will be in languages I don’t speak without subtitles, or are mired in the film festival circuit currently so who knows when I’ll find them streaming on Amazon or Netflix. One is probably never going to be released theatrically in its own country. But if there is a film genie, perhaps I’ll be granted a few wishes and these will be available for me to legally view with English subtitles at a reasonable cost either in my home or close enough to my home that I don’t have to buy a plane ticket to Wellington, New Zealand to see them. I know, I’m hard to please. I don’t expect all of these to be great films, but I’m looking forward to them for various reasons.

Red Wine in the Dark Night looks like a bit of gay-themed Gothic horror from Thailand. Directed by Tanwarin Sukkhapisit (Insects in the Backyard-another film that I wanted to see but could never find), the main draw for me are actors Fluke Pongsatorn (My Bromance) and Mild Suttinut (Love is Coming). Probably not going to make any “Top of the Century” lists, but let’s hope that they plan to accommodate the small army of international Fluke fans and release the film outside of Thailand.

Children’s Show,Derick Cabrido’s film about a child fighting ring in the Philippines, has been floating around some of the smaller film festivals for the past few months after debuting at the Cínemalaya film festival last year. I’m waiting for it to wind its way to New York. I don’t think it has picked up a US distributor yet. The main draw for me is Buboy Villar, who I watched and liked in Kid Kulafu earlier this Spring.

Waterboyy – well, I’m not exactly certain what it is about and why there are two ‘Y’s at the end of the title, but it is a star vehicle for Ngern Anupast  (Earn from Love Sick the Series). I’m guessing that Apichatpong Weerasethakul is not worried that this film will displace him as Thailand’s most recognized international filmmaker. But if I don’t at least give it a passing mention on my site, the dozens of Ngern fans who drop by will let me know about that oversight.

(Sorry, no teaser or trailer, yet).

How to Win at Checkers (Every Time) has a unique pedigree. It is a US film set in Thailand based on Rattawut Lapcharoensap’s short stories from his excellent collection, Sightseeing.  Director Josh Kim needed to learn Thai to bring the film to fruition. The main story involves two friends from different social classes who have to deal with the national draft lottery. The film debuted at the Berlin film festival this Spring and found a distributor. Now I need to find out when it will wind its way to a theater near me.

Butterfly is the second release from the Korean film collective, 99Film. I reviewed their first release, Queer Movie 20 a few months back. Not the grandest of shorts, but promising enough to add the feature to my list. Their first feature will deal with a young man working in a Korean host club. It looks like it will be a direct to DVD and Vimeo release. In a country where gay-themed theatrical output is very limited, a group like 99Film that is striving to build a regular channel for those films is very important. It looks like they are trying to build something similar to Demon666 (Thailand) and Queeriosity (Philippines) without the soft-core porn arm to finance their more mainstream feature films.

Brother, if you can spare a dime – it looks like they could use a little help with funding. At least as of June 8, there are a few more days left in their indiegogo funding drive.

Finally, we have another movie that has been out for awhile for which I can’t seem to find a DVD or streaming version. Speedwalking (aka Kapgang) was released last fall. Niels Arden Oplev’s (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) film about a teenager dealing with familial loss and sexual growing pains had a short release in its native Denmark, where it recieved good reviews, and then seems to have disappeared. It can’t disappear forever, can it? I’m hoping that there will be some kind of home market release sometime before the fall.

So what are you looking forward to seeing?