The Host

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So... The Host. I hate to be one of the few to piss on it; I'd like for us to get more movies like this getting better releases here. If you check out its rating at Rotten Tomatoes you'll see there are only two negative reviews out of twenty-one, but I do find myself agreeing more with one of the negative reviews then, say, the nearly hysterically positive praise given by some others.

Specifically reviewer Luke Y. Thompson, who says (this is his entire brief review I'm pasting here, because it's pretty spot-on):

"I don't know about you, but when I hear someone say something like, "Oh, this movie isn't REALLY a monster movie -- it's actually a family drama at heart!", I just want to tell them to fuck off. Who decided that family drama audiences and monster movie audiences were compatible in the least? I want to see the monster eat people, and I don't care what their issues are. Director Bong Jun-ho gives us a great monster movie in the beginning, as a giant carnivorous fish with legs walks out of Korea's Han river and starts eating people -- the early sequences with it chasing down crowds of potential victims are amazing. But then the monster disappears, and we get into a red herring plotline about how contact with it apparently causes disease, and the family of one of its victims are quarantined, where no-one listens to their pleas that the apparent victim is actually still alive. This is no drama, though -- the family are all a bunch of overacting dullards, and when all we want is to see the monster again, it takes forever to get back to it.

Some of the film is a lot of fun. The rest is way too long."

Basically.... yeah. I can enjoy and appreciate political and societal gravitas being ladled upon a horror film. The best ones do it - if you don't see, say, Poltergeist as an attack on middle-class apathy, then you're just not looking.

But here... the people in The Host - specifically the Park family upon which the story centers - tipped a bit far into cartoonishness for me to wholly appreciate their plight. And the story has so much back-and-forth, so many false starts, that by about 2/3 of the way through you begin to feel like months have passed and they haven't gotten anything done that they could get done if they weren't total bozos.

Bozo is the word the director, Bong Joon-ho, used to describe his own characters while introducing the film, by the way.

All this sounds like I hated the movie, but I didn't; the monster bits are thrillingly realized and on several ocassions jaw-dropping. The CG work on the monster is nearly first-rate - the seams showed here and there but Bong Joon-ho's defiant insistance in constantly showing his creature fully revealed in the frame and in broad daylight got to be unnerving because of its rejection of the Jaws "show a little bit of the monster at a time" school of thought that we've become so accustomed to. Like, right off the bat he throws the whole thing at us, and it's so suprising, to be given this view right away, that every time the monster does appear we're a little off balance because of it. And then the way this thing moves... it takes us some time to fully comprehend the range of it's movements, which throws us off balance as well.

So yes, the movie's fun. But the movie's too long, and the familial and political ideas it's trying to manage don't completely work. I'd personally say that Joon-ho doesn't manage the shifting tones nearly as deftly as some other reviewers have maintained.

What really got my brain going was the thought of the inevitable remake - what city should they set this thing in? Is the Hudson River a little too obvious?
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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

The Age of Shadows (2016)

Jung Chae-San: The early bird catches the worm.

Lee Jung-Chool: The early bird gets caught.

I was going to wish the actor slash living legend Song Kang-ho a happy 53rd birthday today by posting a quote from my favorite performance of his, which is as the priest in Park Chan-wook's 2009 vampire-flick Thirst, but then I did a search and realized I'd posted the same speech from Thirst twice before! Funny enough when I did this exact thing in January of 2018 I mentioned a little something you have maybe heard of lately called Parasite...

"This year is supposed to bring another reunion with his other (aka not Park Chan-wook) great collaborator Snowpiercer and The Host and Memories of Murder director Bong Joon-ho - they're supposedly making another horror movie called Parasite, which IMDb says is about "A man [who] gets infected with a parasite that changes his paradigm in unforeseen ways." IndieWire says the movie is about "a family going though a disturbance." Okay. Well I think these two could sure make something out of those ideas."

I don't know if this is an especially good moment to mention this, or if there is ever a good moment to mention this -- yes I am aware there is room in the world for two South Korean directors! -- but here goes: in the pantheon of current South Korean Gods, even with Parasite in all kinds of Oscar contention right now, I remain Team Park Chan-wook over Team Bong Joon-ho. 

Fairly certain I'm in the minority with this opinion but as much as I like Bong's movies they almost always get somewhat over-rated to me, while Park's get continually under-appreciated. If forced at gunpoint to choose I'd take Stoker and The Handmaiden and Park's Little Drummer Girl series over Snowpiercer and Okja and yes even Parasite any day. So now I ask...

free polls

Tilda Bong Park Bell

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Well what we have here is a movie in the making of my dreams, y'all. Remember the other day when I told you guys about Snow Piercer, the movie teaming up Korean super-directors Bong Joon-ho and Park Chan-wook (Bong will direct while Park's producing)? You might not remember the details of it since it was about Chris Evans singing on to the film and it was therefore put in the context of a bunch of half-naked pictures of him. I can forgive you for not reading my words when that sort of thing happens. But this time! This time! You must read the words, dammit! Via DH:

"Tilda Swinton and Jamie Bell are in talks to join Chris Evans in the indie drama "Snow Piercer" at Moho Films reports Variety.

Set in a world covered in snow and ice, the story follows a train full of travelers who struggle to co-exist. Korean helmer Bong Joon-ho ("Mother," "The Host") makes his U.S. directorial on the film."

You guys. You guys! Guys. Oh, you guys.
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Queer Kisses For Antonio & Co.

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When I posted my five favorite nominations yesterday for the Dorian Awards -- aka the annual prizes given out to movies of merit from the LGBT critic's guild GALECA, of which I am a member -- I knew the winners announcement was imminent, but it turned out to be really really imminent, showing up about half an hour after I posted that post. I'm glad I posted it beforehand though, since if I'd posted it after it might have seemed like sour grapes given nearly none of my picks ended up winning. Good things won! (Mostly.) We had plenty of love for Portrait of a Lady on Fire and I love that we gave Antonio Banderas Best Actor for Almodovar's Pain and Glory. 

And I very much like Parasite (my review), which strolled off with five prizes including Best Film and Best Director and Best Supporting Actor -- do I think Parasite is just a liiiiiittle overrated? I have said as much previously, yes. But far worse things can float to the top when it comes to consensus, and Parasite is nobody's bad movie. Anyway I'm the most happy we gave Florence Pugh an award, which was the one of my wishes that came true. Hooray for Florence! Hit the jump for the entire list of winners, and big gay congrats to them all...

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...

Animals & Okja In That Order

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Firstly a big new batch of photographs from Tom Ford's Nocturnal Animals have been released (via) and there are a couple of Jake standing around with Aaron Johnson that've got my heart and other hundred body parts humming...

There are a bunch more down below. But before that let me share this quote from an interview with Jake at The Playlist where he was asked about his upcoming film Okja with South Korean director Bong Joon-ho (you probably recall him looking crazy-pants with Tilda Swinton on the set a few months back):

"We tried for a decade to do something and then we were meeting up about another project, another thing he was producing. We were sitting in New York maybe a year and a half ago, maybe a little more. And I said, ‘What are you working on?’ And he tells me, ‘I’m drawing these drawings for a movie I’m thinking about doing’ and he shows me this picture of this… creature and this little Korean girl next to the creature. I asked, ‘What is that?’ ‘I’m thinking of making a children’s movie.’ ‘Is there a part for me?’ And he was like, ‘Hmmmm, I think maybe. Let me get back to you.’ And then he was like, ‘There is a part for you.’ I said, ‘I don’t care I’ll do it. I don’t even need to read it.’ And then I read it and it was so great. He’s like, ‘It’s this doctor and he’s a mad man and he has an animal show.’ And I was like, ‘I’m already in!'"

If Jake's been trying to do something with director Bong Joon-ho for a decade then he's been trying to do something with him ever since The Host came out in 2006, which means Jake has the proper idiosyncratic taste that I figured he might. I mean I'm not the biggest fan of The Host -- I think it's pretty overrated. But the two films that Bong made after it, Mother and Snowpiercer, are much more successful, and it's still a surprisingly sideways direction, off to South Korea, for a Hollywood dude to head for work. Aaanyway you may go ahead and hit the jump for eight more Nocturnal Animals pics...

The Zombies on the Train Go Argh Argh Argh

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I wasn't as enamored with the South Korean "Zombies on a passenger train!" horror flick Train to Busan as some of my critical counterparts were - I mean, it's not nothing (As Muriel Heslop once screamed, "I'M NOT NOTHING!") to make a successful genre picture, and Train to Busan is just that. It's perfectly fine! It has some rousing action and terrific set-pieces and it is totally well-paced and so forth. Lord love a duck you all know I will go to town for my genre movies. But save that excellent action the film doesn't add anything much beyond what I've seen in a dozen zombie movies before - the zombies don't mean anything.

Perhaps you could argue that we've all spent too much time asking our zombies to mean something since Romero turned them into symbols of mindless consumerism in Dawn of the Dead way back when, but I always want and always will want (dammit) all of my monsters to mean something. Vampires are AIDS or Addiction or Queerness or [fill in the blank with the dozens of things Vampires have meant over the years], and Zombies should always have to meet that bar too. Or anyway they should have to meet that bar for above the norm exceptional praise.

I suppose a broad case could be made that the zombies in Train to Busan are emotional barriers standing between the leading man Seok Woo (played by Yoon Gong, who we just totally lavished an abundance of googly eyes upon in a great big gratuitous post earlier this morning) and his daughter - it is their strained relationship that structures the movie, and the film pushes the emotions to the hilt. I'm sure that relationship touched some people but I personally found it a little bit rote. There's also some rigamarole about Seok Woo's job in Finance and how evil Finance is, so maybe Corporatism was the Zombie Target? But the writers can't even keep it straight (at least not with the subtitles I got) what it is that he does, and so that never congeals into anything of substance.

Anyway my point is Train to Busan is a good action movie that I feel has for some reason gotten wildly overpraised. It reminds me of the feeling I got with Bong Joon-ho's 2006 monster movie The Host -- another perfectly adequate genre film from South Korea that I think maybe got more critical attention than it deserved because it's easier for American critics to ascribe superiority to genre when it comes via subtitles. 

Sometimes the movies - like Bong Joon-ho's film Mother, which came right after The Host and was ten times superior the film, or anything by Park Chan-wook ever - deserve the attention. And sometimes they've made the commute from distant shores just because they're perfectly well-made fine things we should very much see, especially since Hollywood only gets around to making perfectly well-made fine things once or twice a year so, if they feel like it, and so they feel novel. Train to Busan is probably the best zombie movie that came out in 2016. But we can do better.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Okja (2017)
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Nancy Mirando: Fuck off! We're extremely proud of our achievements. We're very hardworking business-people. We do deals, and these are the deals we do. This is the tenderloin for the sophisticated restaurants. The Mexicans love the feet. I know. Go figure! We all love the face and the anus, as American as apple pie! Hot dogs. It's all edible. All edible, except the squeal. 

A happy 48th birthday to the director Bong Joon-ho, who's gone from being a director I found profoundly overrated (if I had seen Memories of Murder before I saw The Host, a film I don't like, I might not have felt that way) to one of my favorites in the span of a decade. 

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Bong Joon-ho Ranking:
MOTHER > SNOWPIERCER > MEMORIES OF MURDER > OKJA > THE HOST
(I somehow still haven't seen Barking Dogs Never Bite) pic.twitter.com/KyU8Dz7RYe

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) July 6, 2017

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I feel shitty that I never reviewed Okja properly - that fell through the cracks somehow - but don't let the above ranking fool you; I love all of those movies except for The Host and ranking the top four was a little bit laborious. Okja deserves to become a Classic Kid's Film and I hope every single one of you who is a parent or every single one of you who knows someone who is a parent encourages that. F-bombs and animal slaughter along for the ride, too - the best kid's movies don't sugarcoat the real world. I mean I'd eat my own left foot before I ever became vegan but Okja articulates its case beautifully with oodles of big boisterous and bouncing heart. (Also Jake is terrific in it, so shut up, haters.)

One question, though - will it ever get a blu-ray release? Will any Netflix titles ever get released that way? I really prefer having hard copies of things. You know, for when the apocalypse comes and I need something to decapitate the zombies with.

Beautiful Monsters

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Oooh the first teaser for Okja, Bong Joon-ho's new movie

starring Tilda Swinton and Jake Gyllenhaal, has arrived!

Watch:

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First off I don't think I knew this was set to come out on June 28th -- that's much sooner than I anticipated. What a thrill! We can totally make it to June 28th without Trump getting us all murdered right? Fingers crossed. Okja has an official synopsis now too:

"From visionary Director Bong Joon Ho, this grand global adventure follows a friendship too big to ignore. Meet Mija, a young girl who risks everything to prevent a powerful, multi-national company from kidnapping her best friend – a massive animal named Okja. Following her across continents, the coming-of-age comedy drama sees Mija’s horizons expand in a way one never would want for one’s children, coming up against the harsh realities of genetically modified food experimentation, globalization, eco-terrorism, and humanity’s obsession with image, brand and self-promotion."

There's no sign of Jake in that teaser but I'm sure you all remember those pictures of him snapped on set - we're in for some real nuttery, it seems. Okja also co-stars Lily Collins and Paul Dano (who I photographed on the set when I visited) and Steven Yeun and Giancarlo Espisito, among others. Stay tuned!

I Heart The IFC Center

Okay, so they don't have the greatest screens, and their seats really sorta suck (I am tall! My knees need room!), but the IFC Center here in NYC has the coolest effin' programs in this whole damned city.

See, not too long ago I got to see (with Nat) INLAND EMPIRE with star Justin Theroux (swoon) there in person answering questions.

And now, thanks to a heads-up from my pal Steven at The Horror Blog, I just got tickets to see the Korean monster-movie-smash The Host (Gwoemel) on February 27th - that's 2.5 weeks before it opens here in the city - and the director, Bong Joon-Ho, will be there fielding questions! Eee! A geek's wet dream. They're also doing a whole mini-festival of all of Joon-Ho's films.

So I'm at their site, looking for tickets, and seriously - look at their schedule for upcoming special events. They're got the Buffy musical episode sing-a-long going on like once a month, and this weekend coming up their Midnight movies are Park Chan-Wook's Vengeance Trilogy (that's Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, and Lady Vengeance).

I mean, somebody there at IFC loves me. They love me deeply. And I love them back.

You complete me, unknown IFC Center schedule person.
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Show Us What Ya Got, Chris Evans

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This post actually had a purpose other than ogling some pictures of Chris Evans in What's Your Number? that I simply had missed posting last time, but then when I went looking for a picture, emphasis upon the singular there, to go along with this story and I saw all these other pictures and figured hey, what the heck, let's toss it all together! Hooray! So first, the actual news story that inspired it all, via Slash:

"Chris Evans has just entered talks to star in Snow Piercer, from The Host director Bong Joon-ho. That’d be enough to pique my interest already, but it gets even more intriguing from there: The film was co-written by Bong and Oldboy helmer Park Chan-wook, who’s also producing.

... Adapted from the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige, Snow Piercer unfolds in a post-apocalyptic world covered with ice and snow. The plot centers around a train full of survivors who struggle to co-exist as they continue to cling to their old ways."

We first heard about this film back in October, but since the only acting name attached at that point was Song kang-ho, who's been in films by both Bong and Park before, I guess I'd assumed it would be made  in Korean. Unless Chris Evans already knows Korean or learns it very quickly, I am not thinking it will be in Korean anymore. Anyway I was excited for this movie before and would've absolutely been seeing it and blogging about it even without Chris attached - add him to the mix and wham, we have lift-off.

Speaking of lift-off, let's get to those pictures from What's Your Number? that I somehow still hadn't posted. Every single frame of Chris' screen-time in the film is pretty much worth capping. As I keep proving. We've already gotten a bunch here and a bunch here... well here's several more after the jump. They're big, so click 'em to grow.

I Am Link

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--- The Bitter Tears Of Timberlake - I have no doubt that Ryan Gosling is an active participant in situating his hot-ass hipster image into the endearing little space it now inhabits, but that still doesn't mean I won't read this tidbit from an interview with Justin Timberlake as the sourest of grapes about his own "acting" career not quite reaching the heights of his former Mouseketeer buddy. Because I can! Stuff a dick in it, Justin.

--- Lil' Ladies - Saving this to read later: Rich at fourfour got to judge a child beauty pageant! Holy mother of crap that is awesome.

--- Scots Free - Saving this to watch later: The trailer for Pixar's Brave is now online. After not liking about half of Up and liking Toy Story 3 but not loving it and then not having any desire at all to see Cars 2 (even though I liked the first film more than msot people did, there's no way I'm encouraging the scourge of Larry the Cable Guy thank you very much), I am ready to love a Pixar movie again, so I really want to love this. The fact that it's got their first female lead character and that she's voiced by Kelly MacDonald instills a lot of positivity already.

--- Criss Cross - Some pics and a poster for Kristen Wiig's next movie Imogene showed up online today and I wrote about my feelings about that or whatever over at The Film Experience earlier this afternoon. I will take this opportunity to post that picture of Darren Criss from Glee since he's in the movie and otherwise I don't get to speak of him. Or that is, to gawk at him.

--- Fairest Of Pharoahs - David Fincher is still maybe gonna make a Cleopatra movie, and now it will maybe be written by the writer of his worst movie to date, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

--- Come On Ride It - Bong Joon-ho, the director of The Host (blecch) and Mother (not blecch), is prepping his next project called Snowpiercer, about a society that resides on a train after some kind of apocalypse. It's based on a French graphic novel, and will be filmed in the Czech Republic. It's gonna be produced by Park Chan-wook, and it'll feature Song kang-ho, who starred in several films for Bong and Park, in a "Han Solo-like" role.

--- Ten Gallon Testosterone - Is there any look that doesn't immediately become fetishized just by having Hugh Jackman wear it? Because after seeing this shot of him dressed up like a ridiculous cowboy car salesman for his new movie Butter, now I immediately have a cowboy car salesman fetish where one never existed before.

--- Must Be Bunnies - The 10 year anniversary of the "Once More, With Feeling" musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer just happened, which is so insane I can't even believe it. How is that possible? TEN YEARS? Anyway while I'm over here feeling ancient, you should check out The Film Experience top ten relating to the episode, and then see if you can stop yourself from immediately seeking out the episode to watch. I couldn't.

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Sucked Dry in South Korea

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I always defer doing a list of "Movies I'm most looking forward to this year" until it's too late and the year's half over, because I know there'll be one I'll forget about and hate myself for forgetting and I hate myself enough already, thank you very much -- like, I know if I'd done one of those posts for 2019 by now I'd probably have forgotten that Snowpiercer director Bong Joon-ho has a new flick coming out, and a list without that would've been a useless list.

The film, which we have mentioned previously at least, is called Parasite and it hits South Korea in mid-June (and will probably play Cannes too) so they've started releasing promotional materials -- the very pretty and intriguing poster you can see up top, and down below we've got the first trailer (I don't believe there are any English subtitles though). The film, which stars Bong's previous collaborators Song Kang-ho and Choi Woo-sik among others, is about the class struggle turning violent between a rich family and a poor boy.

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Jake Hits Up Bong

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I feel as if there have been an inordinate number of movie projects announced lately that are so exciting, so right in my wheel-house, that they've reduced me to inarticulate blubbering -- I know I know, "inarticulate blubbering" is basically being vomited from me 90% of the time, how are you supposed to know the difference, yadda yadda. You're a dick. My point is for all of the complaints and think-pieces calling cinema dead, there are nifty spouts poking outta the cemetery dirt, if you know where to look. 

Like perhaps today's news that South Korean director Bong Joon-ho, who last gave us Snowpiercer (and before that The Host and Mother). is getting set to make another English-language flick (or at least mostly English-language), it will be a "monster movie," and he is definitely re-teaming with Tilda Swinton for it, but on top of that, "in talks" as the parlance goes, is Jake Gyllenhaal. Oh and also Paul Dano, Kelly Macdonald (hooray!) and Bill Nighy. And they're all great but... Bong, Tilda & Jake, together and making one great big monster movie??? CUE INARTICULATE BLUBBERING.

I Am Link

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--- Snow Good - Once again I yell a hearty fuck you in Harvey Weinstein's general direction - despite glowing reviews as it was released in its home country, Weinstein is ordering South Korean director Bong Joon-ho to cut 20 minutes from Snowpiercer before he'll release it here in the US. And thus he guarantees I will download it off of the internet instead of paying to see it in the theater. Good work, douchebag!
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--- White Death - It's less than a week until Breaking Bad is back for its final eight episodes and I don't know whether to be excited or sad - I wish I'd started watching the show earlier than this year, in one big mad marathon, so I could have drawn the enjoyment out over a longer period. To commemorate the beginning of Walter White's end, head over to Rolling Stone where our pal Sean is listing the ten most memorable murders from the series. Spoilers, obviously.

--- Prison Break - I can't remember which came first, me knowing that it was the 50th anniversary of The Great Escape this week - which Alexa is paying tribute to over at The Film Experience today - or me moving the movie to the top of my Netflix queue to watch, but whichever it was I have the film coming to me tomorrow, so I can finally watch it. I have a serious Steve McQueen deficiency in my seen movie pile.

--- Bad Eagle - The second new Muppets movie, now called Muppets Most Wanted, isn't out until March, but they've just gone ahead and released a teaser trailer and some pictures - it's shocking, shocking I say, how electric and giddy that picture of Sam the Eagle got me. I love the Muppets so much.

--- Dakota Man - I guess I knew that FX was making a Coen-approved limited-run series out of Fargo, but I guess I'd blocked it because what's Fargo without Frances McDormand waddling around? Nothing, if you ask me. Anyway Billy Bob Thornton has just taken the lead role, which... well, he's no Frances McDormand waddling around.
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--- Joon No - The only reason I'm linking to this trailer for the new rom-com from the director of Benny & Joon - who the fuck has thought of that movie in twenty years? - is because it has Ryan Kwanten in it looking absolutely fucking adorable. Oh it has Catherine O'Hara too, and that matters.

--- Post Ha - Noah Baumbach's next next movie (he already has a Gerwig-starring follow-up to the perfect movie Frances Ha in the can, apparently) is about one middle-aged couple (played by Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts) and one twenty-something couple (played by Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried) and the frission betwixt them. Charles Grodin has just joined the cast as Naomi's father; this is his first acting gig in years.

--- Ghost Dad - It was two weeks ago that we heard Rosemarie Dewitt was taking over the role of Suburban-Mom-Nearly-Raped-By-An-Evil-Spirit from JoBeth Williams in the Poltergiest remake; now comes word that Sam Rockwell is in talks to play Sexy-Dad-Who-Keeps-Saying- "Didntcha???"-At-The-End from Craig T. Nelson. I hope Sam wears sweatpants, is all I'm saying.

--- Muse On This - Right here I am reminding myself personally that I need to read this article over at Sound On Sight about the greatest pairing of Director and Actress in film history - I keep meaning to but haven't done so yet, and any list that starts with Shelley Duvall and ends with Tilda Swinton demands my most enraptured attention.

--- Gangster Squat - Similarly I've been meaning to read this article blaming The Godfather for all of the woes in all of the world or whatever, but haven't done that either. Hey gimme a break, I had to spend hours looking at pictures of shirtless Bollywood celebrities, alright? Speaking of, shirtless people of foreign stock that is, hey look it's our favorite recent Almodovar acquisition Miguel Angel Silverstre with his top off, hooray! (via; thanks Christian)

Bong Joon-ho 's Mother in 150 Words or Less

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The first half is plagued with the sort of bizarre storytelling quirks that I felt railroaded The Host - there's a thin line between making your characters quirky and making them so off-putting and stupid we wish they'd die, apparently, at least where Bong is concerned. But the second half, once the terribly annoying son recedes into the background and Mother herself takes over, is mostly very good. Some people praise Bong's films for their wildly shifting tones - one second it's melodrama, the next straight up horror, then suddenly slapstick - but it leaves me less on edge than it does get on my nerves. It gets in the way of me caring. That said, the last 40 minutes or so of Mother, I cared. Mostly due to Hye-ja Kim as Mother - she's as terrific as everybody's been saying. And it's beautifully shot.
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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Thirst (2009)

Priest Sang-hyeon: Grant me the following in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Like a leper rotting in flesh, let all avoid me. Like a cripple without limbs, let me not move freely. Remove my cheeks, that tears may not roll down them. Crush my lips and tongue, that I may not sin with them. Pull out my nails, that I may not grasp nothing. Let my shoulders and back be bent, that I may carry nothing. Like a man with tumor in the head let me lack judgment. Ravage my body sworn to chastity leave me with no pride, and have me live in shame. Let no one pray for me. But only the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me.

A most happy 51st birthday to South Korean superstar Kang-ho Song today! This year is supposed to bring another reunion with his other (aka not Park Chan-wook) great collaborator Snowpiercer and The Host and Memories of Murder director Bong Joon-ho - they're supposedly making another horror movie called Parasite, which IMDb says is about "A man [who] gets infected with a parasite that changes his paradigm in unforeseen ways." IndieWire says the movie is about "a family going though a disturbance." Okay. Well I think these two could sure make something out of those ideas.

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.

I Am Link

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--- Today's Must Read - The only thing more comforting than coming home after a long week and putting my feet up and watching Female Trouble is coming home after a long week and putting my feet up and watching several episodes of The Golden Girls, and tonight has comfort coming because I just whizzed through Frontier's great big Oral History of the show, wherein they interviewed several writers and producers of the classic sitcom, and my nostalgia for all things Sicily Slash St. Olaf is off the charts.

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--- Today's Second Must Read - Friend of MNPP Matthew Eng wrote up a glorious ode to the wonders of Kristen Wiig for Tribeca Film that is very long (I only say that so you're prepared) and worth every single word. I still sting when I think of the fact that I have still so far missed her work in Zoolander 2; I am dying to watch the silly nonsense she came up with in that movie, even if the rest looks played the eff out.

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--- Here's To Your Fuck Frank - This year marks the 30th anniversary of David Lynch's masterpiece Blue Velvet, and I guess it's gotten a total restoration, which will be playing here in NYC at Film Forum at the end of this month! You can watch the trailer on their website; meanwhile The Playlist shares that attractive poster you see to the right there. I love Film Forum for hosting things like this, I really do, so don't take me as ungrateful, but god I wish they had a better actual screen on which to watch such things. I want to watch Blue Velvet on the Ziegfeld's screen dammit.

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--- South Korean Superstars - Well this is helpful of them - Variety rounds up what South Korea's three geniuses are lining up next, after coming to America and, uh, now returning back home: Oldboy and Stoker helmer Park Chan-wook's got The Handmaiden, his adaptation of the "lesbian crime novel" called Fingersmith (we previously posted on that here) -- speaking of, Amazon just bought the US rights to that movie. I think we might see it this year? Then there's Snowpiercer director Bong Joon-ho who has got Okja, that monster movie with Tilda Swinton and Jake Gyllenhaal we told you about here. That should film this year. And then there's Kim Ji-woon, the director of the phenomenal I Saw the Devil, who's re-teaming with his usual actor Song Kang-ho on Secret Agent, a noir thriller, which should also film in 2016.

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--- Kanye's Got No Dignity - You will probably never ever see me linking to a story about Kanye West again, but I couldn't really resist this one - he recently tweeted out a screengrab of his computer screen showing that he is planning on sampling a Sufjan Stevens song! (He got in a bunch of trouble because he was torrenting it, ha.) Anyway it's a wonderful song of Sufjan's - the one called "Death With Dignity" off of his latest album slash masterpiece Carrie & Lowell. Kanye, having recently lost his own mother, probably feels a kinship with C&L, which is about Sufjan's own mother's recent death. Anyway it's a shame Kanye's such a shithead; he can sometimes show good taste.
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--- Shooting The Future - This news is about a week old but it's been shamefully long since I've done one of these link round-ups so I am behind - Sam Raimi is turning George Friedman's non-fiction hypothetical book The Next 100 Years, which tries to guess what will happen here on Earth politically, economically, so on and so forth, over the next century, into a movie called World War 3... so I am guessing that Mr. Friedman has some dire prognostications? Just guessing. Anybody read the book? No word on if Raimi's making this or his remake of A Prophet first.

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--- And Speaking of week old stories about big time directors adapting books I haven't read, Steven Spielberg has cast the leading man (uh boy?) for Ready Player One, his adaptation of the book by Ernie Cline, and it is Tye Sheridan, adorkable Tye Sheridan. RPO is about a teenager who has to navigate a treasure hunt inside a virtual reality world. The film had already cast the great Ben Mendelsohn. And I ask again: anybody read this book?

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--- Farewell Farrell - Since I saw Dogtooth director Yorgos Lanthimos' latest deranged delight The Lobster (starring Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz) last fall (here's my review) I will probably always consider it a 2015 film, and I keep forgetting it hasn't even come out here in the US yet! And now all y'all have got longer to wait -- for some unexplained reason the studio A24 just delayed its release to times unknown, even though it was supposed to come out in just one week. (thanks Mac) I'll make sure to keep track of it though since I am dying to see it again myself. Anyway at least I have Olivia Colman (who gives a terrific performance in The Lobster) giving a fascinating, weirdly funny performance on The Night Manager (which I am totally digging) right now to keep me warm...

Happy 10 to Thirst

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I was really hoping I'd get around to re-watching Park Chan-wook's fantastic 2009 vampire priest flick Thirst before it hit its 10th anniversary today, but that thirst, it goes unquenched, I let time slide away. But that doesn't mean I don't have things to say! I can always find things to say, as, you know, displayed by this massive monument to be my verbal ego called This Website. Anyway, Thirst! Here is my really far too brief review from 2009 at this link, which isn't even really a review -- all I said was I liked it the least of his films so far, which seems insane to my eyes here 10 years later. It's grown so far in my estimation in the decade since that I called it one of my 13 favorite movies of 2009 just a few months ago. 

Lead actress Kim Ok-bin seems to have done mostly TV work in South Korea ever since, which is a shame as she should've become a great big movie star -- I never did get around to seeing the 2017 flick The Villainess, which she was in (that's her above), did any of you? Thirst's leading man Song Kang-ho was of course already a huge star in SK when Thirst happened but he's done some killer work after it too, especially with director Bong Joon-ho in Snowpiercer and the upcoming supposedly revelatory Parasite (see that trailer here). 

In related news Kino Lorber has a massive sale going on right now on their website and you can get the blu-ray for Thirst for just 14 bucks at this link. That's six bucks less than Amazon! If you'd like to check through our archives on the film there're are a surprising lot of other things we've written over the years -- that's how a movie goes from a tepid review to becoming a favorite. It got stuck in my brain!