Hope in 200 Words or Less

Kind of astonishing that a movie that careens towards three hours is able to keep you hyperventilating on the edge of your seat for quite as long as Na Hong-jin's South Korean blockbuster does, but Hope is a rare breed -- a pile of pedal-to-the-metal monster-mayhem that obliterates any questions or doubts you might have before they can properly form in your head. Is there some extremely dodgy CG? Oh hell yes. Does it never let up long enough to let you know who any of its characters are? Oh double hell yes. I just complained about the same stuff in Adam Wingard's Onslaught a few days ago and yet somehow Hope, at three times the length of that film, is three times the movie even with the same deficits dangling about -- it's just that unlike Onslaught, which revels in showing us things we've seen before Xeroxed to lifelessness, Hope is constantly showing us things we've never seen before. Not this way. It's kind of like the opening scene of Bong Joon-ho's The Host meets Mad Max: Fury Road -- it's a breathless monster of a movie that will blow your hair right back.

The Way To My Heart is With Cox

It's Friday! Thank Cox. I hate how hard I wish weeks by these days, given the amount of weeks I have less in my life... well it feels like the hourglass is fatter on the bottom now. But the world's just too much of a disaster and I need my two days of shutdown more than ever. And just think -- it's only 80 days until Memorial Day and then I get my three-day weekends again! Yippee! And then after that it's practically 2028 and we'll have a new President. Well, probably. Ugh and with that my stomach dropped -- see why I just need to be offline and on the floor for two full days?? 

Glad I don't have to review MICKEY 17 because it's like ten movies at once and only half of them are working but it's also really fun at times (I LOVE THE CREEPERS SO MUCH) and there is this shot of Robert Pattinson's ass that is absolutely to die for so consider yourself somewhat educated

[image or embed]

— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) March 7, 2025 at 1:14 PM

Aaaaaanyway there are two count 'em two movies of note out this weekend -- one is Bong Joon-ho's Mickey 17 which I wrote the world's briefest review of above. It probably deserves more effort than that but... see everything I said at the start pof this post. I'm fucking spent, man. The other movie out this weekend is the horror film The Rule of Jenny Pen and I actually wrote a proper review of that one! But [insert 'womp womp' sound effect here] it's not going up onto Pajiba until tomorrow I believe. So you'll have to wait 24 hours for those thoughts. Will the wait be worth it? Probably not! I have nothing interesting to say! And that's why now I'm going home to collapse. Goodbye!

44 Until 17

Just as I can't seem to remember the number in the title of Bong Joon-ho's new movie -- every time I'm like, "Is it Mickey 18? 19? 12?" -- I certainly can never remember its release date because it's basically had 17 of those. But here with this new poster release let's look it up like a proper "reporter" and do y'all a solid -- as of today, January 22nd 2025, Mickey 17 is scheduled to release in theaters in the United States on March 7th. That's 44 days from today. Maybe they can go back in and photoshop Robert Pattinson's head a little bit better on this poster in that time? That is one awkward giant head floating on a tiny disembodied body. 

Robert Pattinson Eleven Times

Old photos, practically ancient -- all the way back to the start of December! A month ago! But somehow I totally 100% missed this profile of Robert Pattinson in the New York Times Style Magazine -- but since our Bat-boy is wearing leather pants no matter how many of you have already caressed these photos with your eyeballs they gotta get themselves posted. I imagine this slab o' press was pre-scheduled for when Rob's movie with Bong Joon-ho Mickey17 was meant to come out in January, but then the damned movie moved on the calendar yet again -- now it's coming out in March. Or so they say! They keep Lucy-with-the-football'ing it down the road. Well if the studio has to be a dick about it at least we've got these photos to comfort (and re-comfort) ourselves. Hit the jump for them all...

Park Chan-wook Is Back To Work!

Fifteen full years ago (!!!) in 2009 I posted about Oldboy director Park Chan-wook following up his vampire film Thirst with an NYC-set adaptation of Donald E. Westlake’s novel The Ax from 1997. The book is about:

"... a middle aged, middle class salaryman loses his job after a downsizing, and after spending the following two years downsizing his lifestyle, he decides to overcome competition in his own personal way: chopping down anyone who gets in the way of his path back into fiscal solvency."

Obviously that movie didn't happen then -- he did come to America but he made the great and underrated Stoker with Nicole Kidman and Mia Wasikowska instead. But it looks like he's come back to the project -- The Film Stage has word that he is beginning shooting his adaptation this week (!!!) and it's to be called No Other Choice now. And that is the teaser poster up top too! The film will be shot in his homeland of South Korea now though, and it will star our long-standing crush Byung-hun Lee!

I've long been surprised that the two of them haven't worked together since Joint Security Area way back in the year 2000 before either one of them were really anybody... 

... so this is an overdue reunion we're thrilled to see finally happen. Also announced in the cast are actors Son Ye-jin, Park Hee-soon, Lee Sung-min, Yeom Hye-ran, Cha Seung-won, and Yoo Yeon-seok -- Sung-min was in The Good, The Bad, and the Weird with Byung-hun in 2008, Yeom Hye-ran was in Bong Joon-ho's fantastic movie Memories of Murder, and Yoo Yeon-seok played the young version of the villain in Oldboy (that's him then and now below) but other than that I'm not super familiar with any of the cast. Not that I have anything but immense trust in Master Park! (As long as Robert Downey Jr. is nowhere to be seen anyway.) 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Memories of Murder (2003)

Detective Park Doo-Man: Once this dries, 

the stain will form the shape of the murderer's face.

A happy birthday to the legend Song Kang-ho today! This

is such a great movie. Probably my favorite Bong Joon-ho movie.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Stoker (2013)

India: Have you ever seen a picture of yourself, taken when you didn't know you were being photographed, from an angle that you don't usually see when you look in a mirror, and you think: "That's me... that's ALSO me."

Happy 10 to director Park Chan-wook's fantastic stab at making a movie here in the States, Stoker -- who could have foreseen that ten years later we'd be finishing up yet another Oscar season where Park Chan-wook made a movie deserving all of the awards and ended up left high and dry yet again? I mean, I could've -- he's too good for the Oscars, and yes that's also intended as the slightest of digs at his South Korean contemporary Bong Joon-ho, whose movies are far less thorny and more digestible than Park's when it comes down to it. I said what I said! PS here is a thing I wrote about how good Mia Wasikowska is in this movie a few years back. And here is a post on the film's most perverse scene (which is clearly saying a lot), pictured below:

Robert Pattinson Five Times

These are via the Evening Standard, where they mostly chat with Rob about his duties as Dior brand ambassador -- you know, riveting stuff -- but he does talk a little bit about filming on Mickey 17, Bong Joon-ho's new movie that has him playing clones, so maybe skim the chat if you care. But the pictures are the best part -- what happened to the Rob who'd talk about jerking off all the time, dang it? -- and I've got you covered there. Hit the jump for them...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

The Humans (2021)

Erik: It's snowing out there.

Richard: I think someone from a

higher floor just emptied their ashtray.

I hope this movie doesn't end up totally forgotten -- I really loved it but it seemed to entirely slip through the cracks during awards season last year. One of the casualties of late year glut. I say definitely seek it out if you missed it. Anyway a happy birthday to Steven Yeun today!

The former Walking Dead star is turning 39 -- I don't know whether it was his decision to leave TWD or the producers but whoever made it as gross and awful as it was in its moment it ended up being the best decision ever! Because 1) it gave him the freedom to become a movie star, which he's pulled off with great aplomb, and 2) it finally cut the cord with me (and many many other viewers) from that show -- when they killed Glenn I never went back and never missed it for a second. Did any of you stick with it? 

Anyway Yeun has several projects lined up after this summer's successful team-up with Jordan Peele and Nope -- the most important one appears to be that he's re-teaming with Okja director Bong Joon-ho for Mickey 17 alongside Robert Pattinson, and I can't believe I hadn't posted that teaser trailer above yet. That's not even out until March of 2024 but listen to the cast -- Yeun and Pattinson and Toni Collette and Mark Ruffalo and Naomi Ackie (who's playing Whitney Houston in her biopic out this weekend). It's based on Edward Ashton's sci-fi novel Mickey7 -- wonder why they added ten to the title -- about a clone employee sent to colonize an ice planet. It sounds like Severance meets Edge of Tomorrow. 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Hereditary (2018)

 

Peter: You okay, Mom?

Annie: What?

Peter: Is there something on your mind?

Annie: Is there something on *your* mind?

Peter: Just seems like there... might be something you... wanna say.

Steve: Peter.

Annie: Like what? I mean, why would I wanna say something so I can watch you sneer at me?

Peter: Sneer at you? I don't ever sneer at you.

Annie: Oh, sweetie, you don't have to. You get your point across.

Peter: Okay, so, fine, then say what you wanna say, then.

Steve: Peter.

Annie: I don't wanna say anything. I've tried saying...

Peter: Okay, so try again. Release yourself.

Annie: Oh, release you, you mean?

Peter: Yeah, fine, release me, just say it! Just fucking say it!

Annie: DON'T you swear at me, you little shit! Don't you EVER raise your voice at me! I am your mother! You understand? All I do is worry and slave and defend you, and all I get back is that fucking face on your face! So full of disdain and resentment and always so annoyed! Well, now your sister is dead! And I know you miss her and I know it was an accident and I know you're in pain and I wish could take that away for you. I WISH I could shield you from the knowledge that you did what you did, but you're sister is dead! She's gone forever! And what a waste... if it could've maybe brought us together, or something, if you could've just said "I'm sorry" or faced up to what happened, maybe then we could do something with this, but you can't take responsibility for anything! So, now I can't accept. And I can't forgive. Because... because NOBODY admits anything they've done!

I might have to start quoting this scene from Hereditary every November 1st now that I have noticed that today is the birthday of both Toni Collette and Alex Wolff. Not that Toni's speech doesn't run through my head at least once a week anyway. "THAT FUCKING FACE ON YOUR FACE." That line is such perfect writing. It's exactly the sort of half-thought out thing you'd say when you're angry that actually represents the truest essence of the thing -- you'd try to say something more clever if you were thinking straight but the words are just flying out and you stumble on a perfect thing like that. Goddamn I can't wait for Ari Aster's next movie!

But back to the birthday people -- what's next for these two? Toni, who always has a billion projects lined up, has a billion projects lined up -- the most exciting one is probably Mickey7, Bong Joon-ho's next movie which also stars Robert Pattinson and Mark Ruffalo; see my previous post here. As for Alex he works less, which sucks! Why aren't people snatching him up after Hereditary, in which he more than held his own against a world-class Colette? That said he's got a role in Chris Nolan's Oppenheimer, so it's not like he's hurting! And he's got two small-sounding projects lined up, as well -- a movie called The Line (the photo below is from the set of that) and a movie called Untold; I don't recognize any of the other people involved on either project. Fingers crossed for fresh talent!

Pics of the Day

Lots of news this week on what might be my most anticipated movie of the fall movie season -- Park Chan-wook's Decision to Leave, which won the great South Korean director the Best Director prize at Cannes this spring, is coming out here in the US in October (I shared the trailer here) but it will play NYFF first (I included it in my preview right here) and today it was announced that the film is South Korea's submission for Best International Feature at the Oscars. And I know it's ridiculous to pit directors against each other just because they're from the same country, but being a person who's always felt like PCW has more deserved the prizes and attention that his countryman and fellow genre-riffer Bong Joon-ho has gotten recently, all of these new developments make me smile. (The Handmaiden should have won all of the awards dammit!) Anyway MUBI shared some new images from DTL today and I have a few more for you after the jump...

Twenty-Four Seconds

A twenty-four second long teaser for Park Chan-wook's new film Decision to Leave has been dropped on our lucky faces here today before it premieres at Cannes in a couple of weeks, and there is more evocative imagery in that twenty-four seconds than some filmmakers can seem to manage in a lifetime. I've said this before... no seriously, I have proof:

There is no director working today that is better with color than Park Chan-wook and every single shot in The Little Drummer Girl proves it anew pic.twitter.com/YR4VEYTjlZ

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) November 10, 2018

... but there is no director working today that is better with color than Park Chan-wook, and every single shot in this teaser for Decision to Leave proves it anew. I don't think I will watch any longer trailers when they come -- this is a feast enough until the whole movie itself, baby! 

The smart smart smart folks at MUBI snatched this movie up already before it's even premiered, and are planning on releasing it this fall -- if anyone at MUBI is reading this I beg you, please release it sooner. I will die. I will actually die, if I have to wait for this movie until the fall. Do you want that on your conscience? I am the voice of a generation! Well, some generation. Like, the voice of one of the middling cavemen generations, anyway. Imagine life without that!

Anyway should I say what the hell this movie is? I have said it before -- I've been saying it since I first heard about this several years back -- but perhaps this is a good moment to regroup. Decision to Leave stars Bong Joon-ho regular Park Hae-il and the great Tang Wei (so excellent in Ang Lee's film Lust, Caution) and as a detective investigating a murder and the murdered man's wife respectively, and yadda yadda we all know how these noir-esque plots but of course PCW will make it his own.

Because that's how greatness rolls, baby. Anyway add this one to the pile of movies I am dying for this year -- along with Peter Strickland's Flux Gourmet and David Cronenberg's Crimes of the Future (that one just got a trailer today too!) -- this year is turning out to be a goddamned lot isn't it??? Well, I mean movie-wise -- everything else has been 'a goddamned lot" for several years now. But the movies are helping us out, at least. Anyway because I am that spazz I went through this twenty-four second teaser and made gifs of basically every shot except two or three that were too brief to bother with, and if you hit the jump your eyeballs with say thank you...

July's My Birthday & Criterion's Got My Presents

Looks like the leakers were right! Yesterday Film Twitter had a list going around of the titles that Criterion would be announcing as their July 2022 titles and it seemed as if they might be right because Criterion themselves had hinted already at two of them, but we weren't sure until just now, with the official announcement on their site. The titles for July will be Denzel in the 1995 neo-noir Devil in a Blue Dress (which, despite Denzel looking like that up above, phew, I have somehow never seen) on July 19th...

... alongside Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Oscar-winning insta-masterpiece Drive My Car, that exact same day. (Here is my review of Drive My Car, in case you never read that -- I wrote it up at NYFF forever and an age ago. What a movie.) But that's just the start -- July isn't just my birthday month, but it's apparently a chance for Criterion to be absolutely killing it! 

OOOOOOOO THAT RUMOR! pic.twitter.com/1ebJcehYq1

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) April 18, 2022

Because yup, they're also dropping Bong Joon-ho's Okja, aka that movie where Jake Gyllenhaal lost his damn fool mind. In a good way! This will be Okja's very first home-video release -- and in 4K no less! -- since it came out in 2017, since it's a Netflix movie and they only give physical disc releases to very rare titles. (Which makes me glad I still get critics screeners these days so I have some movies of theirs on disc anyway, haha I win.) Okja is coming out on July 5th. And yet wait, even more!

A little movie called Raging f'ing Bull from a little somebody named Martin f'ing Scorsese is hitting 4K blu-ray on July 12th, and a little movie called The Virgin f'ing Suicides from a little somebody named Sofia f'ing Coppola is also hitting 4K blu-ray on July 5th! Coppola's movie is an upgrade from the already-released regular blu-ray, but Raging Bull is inexplicably brand new to Criterion. These are some movies! But I saved my fave for last...

... David Lean's 1955 vacation-masterpiece Summertime, starring a possibly never better Katharine Hepburn as a woman who finds herself swept up in a surprise romance while visiting Venice Italy, is hitting blu-ray on July 12th, just in time for my birthday! This is one of my favorite movies -- it's such a gorgeous vibe, and makes you feel as if you've gone on vacation yourself. I already have their DVD of it but I am probably going to have to upgrade because this movie is truly breathtaking, and I need to see this remaster like I need air itself. What are y'all excited about?

Go Kyung-Pyo Eight Times

Today's big news, worthy of its own post really, is the news that Parasite director Bong Joon-ho has just announced his next movie and it will be his first English-language film and it will star Robert f'ing Pattinson. Deadline has all the deets but the gist is its an adaptation of a book called Mickey7 that has not come out yet -- it's a sci-fi novel about space travel and clones that's out in February, read the plot or pick up a copy at this link. Anyway that's the actual news, but whenever I read about Bong it makes me think about my actual favorite South Korean director, Park Chan-wook, and ask myself when the hell are we gonna get his next thing?!? It's been six years since his last film The Handmaiden came out and four since his miniseries The Little Drummer Girl, and it's been a year and a half since his to-be-next project was announced -- called Decision To Leave it stars Lust Caution's great Tang Wei, and the fella you see here named Go Kyung-Pyo...

... and the actor Park Hae-il, who's actually previously worked with Bong Joon-ho a lot (he was in Memories of Murder and The Host). I know the story is about a detective (Hae-il) investigating a widow for possibly murdering her husband -- I wonder if Go (who's a comedian and TV star I think mainly) is playing the dead husband? Anyway IMDb thankfully has this movie listed as "Filming" so maybe we will finally get a new Park Chan-wook movie dammit. That's all I want. Well that's not true -- also I want to look at this photoshoot of Go Kyung-Pyo looking bright and goofy for Esquire. Hit the jump for it...

10 Off My Head: Siri Says 2013

So I got a new cell phone this weekend and the set-up was creepily easy -- I just had to hold the new phone in proximity to the old one and... shit like transferred right over? Through the air? Technology truly baffles me, but sure, why not, just let it happen even if it makes me skin crawl. (I was reading up on the things my new phone can do and I found out about the "Facetime Attention Correction" which was the creepiest -- you're basically deep-faking your own eyeballs? Ugh!) 

That said it wasn't until this very moment now when I sat down to do this week's entry in our "Siri Says" series -- where I ask Siri to pick a number between 1 and 100 and then tell you people my favorite films from the year that corresponds -- that I suddenly became worried for the sentient being called Siri that lives inside my telephone. Was she transferred over along with my information? Is this some other lady giving me numbers now? Some imposter? If I can't trust my Siri who can I trust? This is like the start of every 90s Erotic-Thriller, I tell ya.

Anyway I asked this "Siri" for my number today and just like last week "she" gave me a usable number on the very first try -- at this point, having done so many of these posts, getting an unused number on the very first try is an outlier. So my point is whether this is "my" Siri or not "she" is doing a good job so whatever -- cut to the "Siri" on my old phone getting bricked, consciousness trapped forever in some nowhere-world, an episode of Black Mirror if ever there was a really boring episode of Black Mirror. (Or perhaps this has all been Performance Art for Spike Jonze's Her, included below.)

Point being the lady inside my phone, whomever she might be now, told me "13" so we're choosing from the Movies of 2013. 2013 was the year that MNPP's annual awards tradition of The Pantys went a little wonky, because I fell down and broke my arm around the time I was meant to post them, and posting anything became difficult for a few months. I only got around to posting a list of My 15 Favorite Films of 2013 in... March of 2014, lol. And looking back today my list is a little different. Our foundations are quaking, y'all. 

My 10 Favorite Movies of 2013

Frances Ha

(dir. Greta Gerwig)

-- released on May 17th 2013 --

The Bling Ring

(dir. Sofia Coppola)

-- released on June 21st 2013 --

Short Term 12 

(dir. Dustin Daniel Cretton)

-- released on August 23rd 2013 --

You're Next 

(dir. Adam Wingard)

-- released on August 23rd 2013 --

12 Years a Slave

(dir. Steve McQueen)

-- released on November 8th 2013 --

Inside Llewyn Davis

(dir. Coens)

-- released on December 6th 2013 --

Stoker

(dir. Park Chan-wook)

-- released on March 1st 2013 --

The Great Beauty

(dir. Paolo Sorrentino)

-- released on November 15th 2013 --

Her

(dir. Spike Jonze)

-- released on December 18th 2013 --

Stranger By the Lake 

(dir. Alain Guiraudie)

-- released on 2013 --

-------------------------------------

Runners-up: Only God Forgives (dir. Refn), The Heat (dir. Paul Feig), Pacific Rim (dir. Guillermo Del Toro) Enough Said (dir. Nicole Holofcener), About Time (dir. Richard Curtis), A Field in England (dir. Ben Wheatley), Nymphomaniac (dir. Lars Von Trier), Snowpiercer (dir. Bong Joon-ho), Tom at the Farm (dir. Dolan), The Past (dir. Asghar Farhadi)...

... The Counselor (dir. Ridley Scott), Captain Phillips (dir. Paul Greengrass), Gravity (dir. Alfonso Cuaron), The Act of Killing (dir. Joshua Oppenheimer), Byzantium (dir. Neil Jordan), I'm So Excited (dir. Pedro Almodovar), Fruitvale Station (dir. Ryan Coogler), Oblivion (dir. Joseph Kosinski), The Place Beyond the Pines (dir. Cianfrance), Filth (dir. Jon S. Baird) 

Never seen: The Grandmaster (dir. Wong Kar-wai), What Maisie Knew (dir. Scott McGehee), The English Teacher (dir. Craig Lisk), Ida (dir. Pawel Pawlikowski), Grace of Monaco (dir. Olivier Dahan), Bastards (dir. Claire Denis), Black Nativity (dir. Kasi Lemmons), The Fifth Estate (dir. Bill Condon)

-------------------------------------

What are your favorite movies of 2013?