12/09/2025

LYFE FRIDAY | SEPT 12, 2025

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Colin Farrell shoots new movie in Macau casinos

COLIN FARRELL plunges into an intoxicating fever dream among the high-stakes baccarat tables of Macau casinos with Ballad of a Small Player , a rare major Western film shot on location in Asia’s gambling capital. The surreal, dark and twisty drama co-stars Tilda Swinton as an investigator in pursuit of Farrell’s velvet-suited conman and gambling addict. It was filmed over 33 days in various Macau casinos, including scenes shot on live gaming floors while surrounded by real-life high rollers. Farrell said he had spent a crazy eight weeks living in hotels “in the middle of the gambling strip... which I can’t imagine I would ever do” otherwise. “It was all-hands-on-deck. It was a bananas shoot,” he said at the Netflix film’s Toronto film festival premiere on Tuesday. Macau is the world’s top casino hub by gross gaming revenue, roughly four times that of Las Vegas. The tiny Chinese-controlled territory has a skyline dominated by sprawling, luxurious casinos, many themed with replicas of global landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and canals of Venice. While gambling is banned in China, it has been legal in the former Portuguese colony since 1844. “It’s never been really shown such as that on screen in a Western film. So it felt like an adventure to me,” director Edward Berger said. Macau has appeared more fleetingly in Hollywood films like 2016 heist flick Now You See Me 2 . Berger’s new movie is the journey of “a fragile soul in a loud exuberant place... Macau is over-the-top so we wanted to capture that,” he explained. “It’s the most vibrant, most exuberant, colourful place I’ve seen.” Hungry Ghost The movie takes place during the Hungry Ghost Festival – a traditional celebration rooted in Chinese folk religion where the spirits of the deceased are free to roam – which lends the film a

Farrell plays a gambling addict and a conman in Ballad of a Small Player . supernatural air. Several key scenes are also shot in nearby Hong Kong. The film borrows the colourful and kinetic trappings of Hong Kong cinema, including the films of Wong Kar-wai, Johnnie To and Hou Hsiao-Hsien. Berger discovered novelist Lawrence Osborne’s book of the same name back in 2018. The director kept the project on the back burner as he enjoyed smash success and multiple Oscar nominations for World War I drama All Quiet on the Western Front and Vatican-set thriller Conclave . As vastly different as those two films were Ballad of a Small Player represents another seismic shift in tone, genre and location for the chameleonic director. Berger said he gets “burnt out by the subject matter” after spending up to three years on each film, and wants to “just make something different”. “I focus on the next. And it turns out it’s the opposite of what it was before.” Baccarat Berger insisted he and his cast spend time at Macau’s baccarat tables, learning the wildly popular game that is key to his movie’s plot. “Absolutely, we had to learn! We didn’t lose any money, though,” he said. So Farrell was never ever tempted to drop the sort of giant bets placed by his character? “No, not for me, man. One affliction I never got, gambling. Not for me.” – AFP

Together is a beginner-level body horror film.

Love, horror, sacrifice H OW far would you go to be with the one you love? Would you donate your organs to them? Would o Together closer to dark comedy than horror Ű BY MARK MATHEN VICTOR MOVIE REVIEWS 0 Cast: Dave Franco, Alison Brie, Damon Herriman 0 Director: Michael Shanks

careers through comedy television series and films, power-couple Franco and Brie are a force of nature in Together . Being married in real-life certainly helped the duo add a layer of depth and believability to the complexity of Tim and Millie’s relationship.

refuge until the downpour is over, they are forced to spend the night and drink the water from a pool inside. In the following days after climbing out, Tim and then Millie begin experiencing bodily and psychological changes. It may be too early to claim that last year’s The Substance has kicked off a renaissance for body horror films, but Michael Shanks’s Together is certainly carrying the torch confidently. However, like the 2024 film, it is best to keep expectations in check here. Together is closer to a dark comedy than the typical horror film with 100 jumpscares. The few disturbing scenes involving Tim’s parents notwithstanding, Shanks keeps the film hiking through the weird body horror trail with a great mix of practical and special effects. Known for how they built their

you take a bullet for them? Would you take “together forever” literally, in body and mind, bound eternally by bone and flesh? As their relationship continues to stagnate with no progression, Tim (Dave Franco) and Millie (Alison Brie) move out of the city and to the countryside. An elementary school teacher, Millie hopes to get married to Tim, but her boyfriend is too traumatised by the bizarre death of his parents. Not long afterwards, the couple decide to take a hike in the forest around their new house. As a rainstorm hits the area, they inevitably get lost before falling into an underground cave. Seeking

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The quality that Together has as a directorial debut is not rare in the indie horror realm but the way Shanks has written his characters with mature and complex ideation is certainly not common. It is more than enough to elevate the film above the genre’s modern mediocrity.

From left: Farrell, Chinese-US actress Fala Chen and Berger attending the world premiere of Ballad of a Small Player at the Princess of Wales Theatre during the Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto recently. – PICS FROM AFP

Brie (left) and Franco are married in real life. – PICS BY NEON