A compelling thriller by a debutant director and a delightful comedy from an unlikely place compete for the attention of Hong Kong cinema-goers this weekend. If you are staying in, stream a Korean romantic comedy series, season two of a top-tier melodrama, a children’s TV gem – or all three. “Forgetting is a gift,” purrs Channing Tatum’s oily tech billionaire Slater King in actress Zoë Kravitz’s compelling directorial debut, Blink Twice .
The story follows cocktail waitress Frida (Naomi Ackie) and her friend Jess (Alia Shawkat), who meet King at a fundraiser and get sucked into his orbit as he invites them to join his crew to party in his luxury mansion on his private island. Blink Twice opens in cinemas today. In 2006 the isolated, landlocked Kingdom of Bhutan took its first tentative steps towards democracy, just a few years after finally allowing access to television and the internet.
King Jigme Singye Wangchuck announced that he was abdicating the throne and transferred all his powers to a democratically elected government. The Monk and the Gun , from writer-director Pawo Choyning Dorji, unspools in the aftermath of the king’s announcement, as a mock election is organised to educate the kingdom’s scattered population of around 750,000 about how to vote. The Monk and the Gun opens in cinemas today.
As the season unfolds, the family must contend with cataclysmic events such as the dropping of the atomic bomb that devastates Nagasaki and, later, the Korean .