It’s alive!

Doomsayers will have to hold out a little longer. Cinema — as in people sitting in the dark taking in a communal experience of audiovisual sensations — is still breathing, moving, enlightening.

In many places around the world, filmmakers still put out fine works, sometimes great works, that intend to be seen in theatres and that swat away the tired cinema-is-dead negativism like sick mosquitoes: Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria (coming to Thailand soon), Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car (still showing), Jane Campion’s The Power Of The Dog (cinemas elsewhere, streaming here), Paul Verhoeven’s Benedetta (still showing), Julia Ducournau’s Titane (not coming here), Tsai Ming Liang’s Days (showing at the Taiwanese Film Festival here), Taiki Sakpisit’s The Edge Of Daybreak (still showing), Kamila Andini’s Yuni (showing earlier at a festival here).

In…