Parasite (new Bong Joon Ho movie)

Kinda surprised there's no thread for this considering the director, that it won the Palme, getting considerable buzz, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isOGD_7hNIY

Anyway, saw it last night and it absolutely floored me. It's pretty much the movie that I wanted Us to be.

Is it too early to discuss the ending

yes

great movie, his best since MoM

high praise indeed, can't wait to see this.

Simon, how can I discuss the ending with you

lol let's just wait a couple months

yeah this was awesome and best enjoyed if you didn't know anything about it beforehand imo.

no spoilers, but while I thought the whole cast were uniformly good, Park So-Dam was particularly great as Ki Jung/Jessica.

the sheer level of craft on display in like every second of this thing just puts so, so much other shit to shame, even if there's some stuff near the end that faltered a teensy bit for me

even the "eccentric" ending that you aren't allowed to talk about wasn't enough to undo how fine this movie was. Best Bong Joon Ho since The Host.

It was actually the climax I took slight exception to; felt less inventive than the rest of the movie

there are a few things I didn't like about the last act, but just minor quibbles really, after seeing a totally ace director back on his game after making dross like Snowpiercer and that awful tv movie, I'm not going to criticise them.

Good interview/profile of Bong Joon-Ho: https://www.vulture.com/2019/10/bong-joon-ho-parasite.html

I totally agree with "Best Bong Joon Ho since The Host" but that's not much of a bar to rise to. This was good! It was not great.

Finding out that Bong storyboards the shit out of his films and then gives the actors the storyboards as scripts explained a lot to me. He's filming comic books i think and there's nothing wrong with that. Some of those shots (the "ghost" surprising the child rising from the downstairs in particular) feel indelible for it.

OK, it's out this weekend in most of North America. Let's go

Anyway, saw it last night and it absolutely floored me. It's pretty much the movie that I wanted Us to be.

otm. I didn't think it was a masterpiece, but close. pacing felt off in the finale, feel like some momentum was lost between the family suddenly coming home and the birthday party. I loved that ending of course, but was shocked that there were 30 mins left when the rich couple fucked on the couch.

I thought Burning was better but this is a more accessible movie about class/wealth stratification in South Korea. Glad it's doing such great business.

by Bong I've only seen this and The Host, which was fine but nothing special. did Okja ever come out on disc?

thought this was fine

burning was a lot better, on similar themes

This movie was just awesome. Kid wanted to see it (she’s into kpop so it made sense.)

This is something else.

as far as class warfare movies go, i would say

Burning=Shoplifters > La Ceremonie =Parasite >>>>Snowpiercer=Sorry to Bother You

still need to see Us, Ready or Not, Hustlers

It's pretty much the movie that I wanted Us to be.

Oh good, other people picked up on the doppelganger element. I liked it as a black comedy of inequality and the "problems" of one-percenter parents. The subsequent excursion into thriller/horror fits, but I agree that the film would have profited from a tightening up of the running time.

I loved Us! I think as much as Get Out

haven't seen Parasite yet but based on Okja, Snowpiercer I'm only somewhat hopeful

Parasite is so much better than either Okja or Snowpiercer.

never seen okja but snowpiercer is hot garbage.

Memories of Murder and Mother are both capital G Great films and The Host is a double capital G Great Genre film

i've avoided seeing Okja because he is sure as shit gonna make me feel for the big hippo thing and then kill it. i've played the last guardian; can't fool me again

I liked this a lot. The symbolism is club-you-over-the-head, but it works despite/because of that. And it's pretty funny through the first two-thirds. I didn't mind the ending, it felt like that was where it was always headed.

this was kind of a hot mess? it definitely shook me but i'm not sure i enjoyed the ride. idk so many "powerful" things leave me feeling exhausted these days.

Didn't really seem like a mess to me, I thought it was pretty tightly constructed.

oh no it was extremely tight of course (although maybe there were some pacing / pov issues near the end that could have been handled more carefully?), it was just too slickly constructed and hyper-meaningful for my tastes. like i think i respect that it's aiming to be a shakespearean tragedy about capitalism but it's also in the form of a 32 oz monster energy drink and it was all too much for me tbh.

i mean i definitely *felt* a lot during this movie but it was ultimately kind of exhausting. of course it was also funny throughout but the humor was also too frenetic for me. like i laughed louder when renee zelwegger pushed the bad sculpture off its pedestal in front of her ex's house in the otherwise very sad but also similarly profound judy garland biopic that i saw last weekend, maybe because the humorous moment had a bit more space around it and r.z.'s performance in that movie is extremely good.

there's several indelible images stuck in my mind from this film even now (the "ghost" shocking the boy eating cake, the kick down the stairs, shaving peachfuzz) but this isn't a super thoughtful or challenging movie... i'm fairly certain it was never meant to be.

the image stuck in my head is the dogs eating the meat on the skewer stuck in the corpse

yeah that's a good one

at least what it says about the trauma of capitalism is true. it may not be super challenging or whatever but it's otm, and in the form of a slapstick comedy/thriller. for instance, how the trauma of capitalism perpetuates itself across generations and how it's larger than any bogeyman character. idk these aren't exactly the easiest concepts to present in a mainstream film? but tbh i don't watch very many movies so.

quoting myself upthread but if you want to see some other films in the same vein that are as good/better:

Burning=Shoplifters > La Ceremonie =Parasite >>>>Snowpiercer=Sorry to Bother You

haha thanks though i'm not sure i have it in me to watch a film with similar themes for .. a while

it's also in the form of a 32 oz monster energy drink and it was all too much for me tbh.

haha, yeah that's a fair description.

Its central arguments and symbolism are super on-the-nose, but for me they landed with some oomph because the writing, acting and filmmaking were all sharp and often funny. (Until they weren't.) The long scene where they descend and descend and descend from the rich house to their semi-basement apartment, in a growing flood, only to find their home literally submerged in shit — on the paper that's grindingly obvious, but in the execution it was scary and heartbreaking.

I actually liked this more than Burning — or enjoyed it more, I guess. I liked Burning but it felt a little remote to me, unsurprising given its source material.

i dunno, there's so many moments in Burning that felt like pure honest complex dreams to me. it's a more mystical film i guess, don't think i'd say remote?
my sense is that a lot of folks who fell head over heels for parasite (and why it's so very popular) is that audiences are self-congratulating themselves on appreciating the complex class issues of what amounts to a cartoon. but maybe i'm being snobby i dunno.

i have at least four friends who basically never see movies who were raving to me about how brilliant this was and i feel like a total dorkus malorkus saying "yeah, i love the director and i saw this twice and it was... very good" and then they're all like "WHY DON'T YOU LOVE IT?!?!?" and there's no way to adequately explain that without referencing a lot of his films and other people's films that i know they haven't seen.

maybe the right answer to "why don't you love it" is to give them a thumb drive with Mother and Memories of Murder on it and ask them to check back with me in three months when they get around to watching it to see it they agree?

i was SO taken with those two movies and then host was such a great oddball genre film that i was psyched to go wherever this guy wanted to go and then, well, snowpiercer.
with parasite, i think i've come to the conclusion that Bong is an immense and great stylist but that he's not going to likely level up into something more highbrow and affecting now that he has more money and fame a'la Park Chan Wook or Lynch. Maybe you could make a comparison to Miike? Dunno.

Yeah he's definitely more of a populist/popcorn director than e.g. Lee Chang-dong. But he's an interesting and talented one, I think. I agree that Mother is probably his best movie, and it is surprising in a lot of ways — stylistically and narratively — that Parasite isn't.

i really like him! i'm just in the unpleasant indie fuck position of being unable to avoid saying "his earlier films are much better"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCqjR1gHyIQ
in any case your post made me realize i should see more Chang-dong, so thanks for that! recommendation for the best one to jump into?

Besides Burning I only know Secret Sunshine and Poetry, both good.

will try poetry and report back

mother was the one for me too

it's been a while but i remember thinking it was on par with great hitchcock

I liked this a lot more than Burning but I would never think to compare them.

I enjoyed the hell out of this movie.

Count me among those who haven't ever really gotten terribly into this dude's work up until this movie and fully embraced the crossover. Enjoy re-rewatching The Host to the rest of you, tho.

oh hey if you want another class warfare movie from this year (and one that will definitely be in my faves of 2019), try 'The Last Black Man in San Francisco'

Parasite was so good that I don't want to see any other class warfare movie from this or any other year ever again. If anyone puts on The Last Black Man in San Francisco while I'm in the room I'm getting up and leaving.

that's the spirit!

oh hey, here's another one you'll want to leave the room for that I just remembered that's not so much class warfare as an eco-comedy/drama with a lot of bong's penchant for comic bookish magic realism: Woman at War
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2v3_jHrvBQ

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/drqrii/im_bong_joon_ho_director_of_parasite_ama/

Parasite is the best move ive seen this year

Snowpiercer was also great craic

this was ridiculously entertaining, and powerful at the end. definitely preferred this to snowpiercer and okja (okja was similarly structured for maximum gut-punch), and the cast was incredibly charming.

i liked snowpiercer a lot, it's dumb but imo dumb things are good

this movie was excellent though. i would like to vigorously disagree with everyone upthread and say the climax is the best part

besides the ghost scene

i've avoided seeing Okja because he is sure as shit gonna make me feel for the big hippo thing and then kill it. i've played the last guardian; can't fool me again

― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Sunday, October 27, 2019 8:41 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

has anyone informed you that doesn't happen

though the ending *is* depressing in a fundamentally similar way

the flooding scene in this movie made me wanna die

okja is really bad imho but this is incredible, best dark comedy since get out

“Fundamentally similar” is close enough for me thanks

i did not enjoy okja but i'm glad i got to see that jake gyllenhaal performance anyway

Sister sitting on top of the toilet smoking in the flooding bathroom was an incredible shot, imo

is there a thread for the lighthouse yet?

arr it be The Lighthouse (Eggers, 2019) - Pattinson, Dafoe, sea shanties

saw this in the theater tonight. really really amazing movie

i have at least four friends who basically never see movies who were raving to me about how brilliant this was

this is me right now

Sister sitting on top of the toilet smoking in the flooding bathroom was an incredible shot, imo

― president of deluded fruitcakes anonymous (silby), Saturday, November 9, 2019 10:12 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Very otm

jeez i can't stop thinking about this movie lol

Watching The Host just cause of this movie. Loved it.

the comedy in the first half was amazing. when 1/4 of the pizza boxes are folded badly and they look at the father lmao

many xps back to tipsy but i watched chang-dong's Poetry and it was fucking devastating. i see what you mean about "enjoying" Bong's work more, it's certainly easier on the palate and the soul! both are master filmmakers tho and I'm looking forward to strapping on the emotional armor and trying again with another film.

I saw this tonight and thought it was great. It was so well executed that its heavy-handedness didn't bother me. Besides Snowpiercer and Burning I haven't seen any of the respective directors' stuff so I'm stoked now to explore their filmographies :)

liked this a lot, though one small moment that irked me (SPOILERS) was when Mr. Park turned over the basement guy's body to get the keys and then actually holds his nose. I get that it was the impetus for the dad to flip out and stab Mr. Park but there had to be a better way to get to that moment. I know Mr. Park was a rich asshole but it still felt very false to me that your son just got stabbed and you're frantically trying to save him and yet somehow, instinctively I guess, you take that extra second to physically hold your nose?

there's more than a few moments like that, played for theatrical clarity to the rafters, and they're among the reasons that I find the "BRILLIANT FILM DEMOLISHES THE ELITES" criticism a bit silly.

they should have included odorama scratch-n-sniff cards.

dude's been living in a basement with no shower or sunlight for like 10 years, he probably smells pretty awful

TBF he probably got to shower from time to time when his wife was the housekeeper. But he definitely hadn't bathed in several weeks by the time Mr. Park smelled him.

you guys may be focussing on the wrong point there

Tbh I actually got slightly distracted trying to figure out the plumbing of the bunker, bc when the housekeeper first goes down there she gives her husband that thermos and he drinks it as if he's been dying of thirst. But then in the final montage Mr. Kim is shown flushing a toilet iirc? Implying that theres running water down there, which would also make sense if it was built as a panic room/nuclear bunker.

lol xp

ok fair play, the bits about the stinky poors were OTT

I enjoyed this much more than Burning, which I didnt like very much tbh. Both heavy-handed allegories that arent really as deep or challenging as they first appear, but Parasite was at least more entertaining.

I don't think it's an allegory -- they're poor and they're smelly and they have no wifi!

also we're gonna burn down their greenhouses

Every once in a while a movie comes along I just know I'm going to love, so I somehow manage to avoid 100% of spoilers and reviews. This was one of those movies, which I've kept away from since its premiere. What a movie. I haven't seen "Joker" and likely won't ever, but this is the radical call to arms that movie (possibly) pretends to be.

Alternatively, this is the Korean "The People Under the Stairs."

watched Mother because of the favorable comments by Ulysses and others above. I liked it a lot and was surprised by the turn it takes in the last half hour. I still haven’t seen Memories of Murder and Parasite, but this is my favorite of the four Bong films I’ve seen

glad to hear!

damn this was extremely entertaining

can’t wait to see it again

can’t quite believe that house was a set - what an incredible piece of production design

Wow, it was? The basement part, that I can believe, but the yard and exteriors and stuff?

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/10/parasite-house-set-design-bong-joon-ho-1202185829

Holy shit. Between stuff like this, Ari Aster and Robert Eggers, we are clearly living in a golden age of elaborate production design.

can’t quite believe that house was a set - what an incredible piece of production design

and the half-basement and street outside was a set too! just amazing

another great interview with bong’s dp

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/11/parasite-cinematographer-hong-kyung-pyo-1202189824/

Bong Joon Ho's galaxy brain take on superhero movies. pic.twitter.com/vPjTMhYB9n

— The Film Stage 📽 (@TheFilmStage) November 19, 2019

i think this is his elliptical method of saying "i like comic books and the idea of comic book movies but not so much marvel"

OK, somebody get him a run of Bernie Mireault's The Jam.

damn cant believe he would torpedo his career like that, tragic

hee, that's kinda the perfect Bong property.
Also maybe Doop. Or Stig's Inferno.

that's hilarious

I was very intrigued by the trailer when I saw it before The Lighthouse. Had no idea it had won big at Cannes.

Finally saw this a couple weeks ago when it finally opened in my market at the local arthouse. Very very good. This may very well be the best film I've seen this year
And since then it's really spread via word of mouth I think. Lots of people talking about it in my circles IRL and on social media and starting to see articles in the mainstream media about it.

This film definitely has legs financially, too, which is impressive for a foreign (particularly a Korean) film. This time a month ago it was playing in ~30 theaters nationwide, bumped to ~400 at the start of November, currently at 620 locations; where it's pulled in a whopping $15 mil. That in and of itself is pretty impressive.

By comparison, in the recent indie flick world, The Lighthouse's wide release went to just shy of 1,000 theaters at its peak (made about $10 million domestic and unlikely to go much further). Of course, the breakout A24 hit of the year "Midsommar" had a HUGE promo push beforehand and opened in 2,700 theaters right out of the gate... hanging around bit by bit for about three months to gross about $27.4 in total domestically.

Would love to see this movie really cross over in the states commercially, and particularly, would be nice to see it get enough attention to make it a contender for stuff like the Oscars rather than the sort of boomer bait that usually sweeps.

Definitely a breath of fresh air in a year that, like no other, has been dominated by sequels, remakes, reboots, and other such cash-grabs of existing Marvel/Disney, etc. corporate properties clogging up screens.

Not that I'm inherently adverse to that stuff, but to be honest, most of the big flicks of late have been lacking creatively. It's always nice to walk into the theater and totally immerse yourself in a brand new set of characters/a different world, rather than "Oh, good this is yet another movie in the _____ franchise".

Went into this not knowing anything and with no familiarity with Bong Joon-Ho (I'm one of those "basically never see movies" people like crut). My favorite movie so far this year, out of like uh 5. It's unbelievable that someone can make a film like this feel cohesive - definitely need to see more of Bong's films

his more recent ones would not be described as cohesive, imo

Yeah, and tbf, the lack of cohesion of "The Host" - that is to say, its crazy tonal shifts from horror to family melodrama to comedy to satire and so on - I want to say was heralded at the time as one of its attributes. Which it is! As it is for "Parasite," too, except that "Parasite" is more, you know, cohesive.

Yeah I meant it more to say that it takes talent to make this at all cohesive, not that cohesiveness is the quality I am looking for. I think based on what y'all have said in the thread, I'll probably check out Memories of Murder or Mother next anyway

This was so much fun. I was cracking up.

Saw Memories of Murder tonight - excellent, possibly as good as Zodiac. Coincidentally, I was looking up the real-life cases after watching the movie, and it turns out the police finally solved them in the past few months!

Thinking about going to Atlanta in early December, hope it's still showing somewhere then.

This is the only thread in ilx history where I agree with Ulysses more than Brad Nelson

Good but found the second half idk ... somewhat arbitrary in parts despite its obvious straightforwardness ... not sure it delivered on the perfection of the initial premise. It wants to be get out but it’s more like black panther

But really it's like Us in some very obvious ways.

i mean this is also the kind of movie where i can understand people disagreeing with the second half. my main issue with this film is the last ten minutes or so felt a little loose, but i wonder if i'd feel that way rewatching it

also i have not seen memories of murder or mother so i do not feel like i'm speaking with the depth of knowledge ulysses has of the bong joon-ho oeuvre

It wants to be get out but it’s more like black panther

what

lol

Idk what’s so hard to understand about that ... it may not literally end w a community center in the slums but it’s vision ends up being similarly limited imo ... I honestly thought the film would take its initial premise to its logical conclusion and end w the family murdering and replacing the original one but instead his plan is to make enough money to buy the house his dad is trapped in ... kind of a depressing ending & not in the sense that it pointed out a depressing reality but that it created a depressing reality ...

Idk i thought lots of parts of this movie were good but it’s not “get out” or “gone girl” level as far as having the courage of its ideological convictions imo ... it also feels like it’s getting a substantial critical boost bc of proximity to the new socialist zeitgeist

Having the family kill/replace the other in the end would not have made it a better or "more courageous" movie, just a lazier and less resonant one.

but it's funny you should make a Get Out comparison 'cause this Outline piece ties it to Us as part of the "Revolutionary Gothic"

Interpreting Parasite and Us in tandem, regardless of their differences, helps us understand crucial and complicated elements they share. In both movies, the violence enacted by the subterranean specters is emotionally and morally fraught — exactly who deserves to suffer or die like this, and why? Is it doing anyone any good? Once we understand these movies as Revolutionary Gothic, it becomes clear that’s the wrong question. We’d have to start with: Why wouldn’t we expect spectacular violence to erupt from the hidden violence of forcing human beings underground? Why would we expect the ghosts we’ve created not to haunt us?

Such violence may not be successful in destroying the dominant order; it may not even be coherent. Parasite makes a series of intricate moves with its characters’ insurrectionary impulses: Geun-sae nurtures an unhinged love for the patriarch of the Park family, to whom he sends a series of increasingly deranged, wholly unreceived Morse code messages from his basement cell. When Geun-sae emerges from his dungeon, he genuflects to his idol Mr. Park, even as the circumstances that have led him to revere the man collapse all around him. In the end, it’s the father of the Kim family, Ki-taek, who stabs Mr. Park to death. There are many reasons that lead to this final murder, but the most immediate is the consuming rage Ki-taek feels when he sees that Mr. Park finds the body of Geun-sae — a man who died gasping out his respect for his perceived better — repulsive and stinky.

Here, violence is less a clean solution to oppression than a messy response to despair and desperation. The violence doesn’t even necessarily disrupt the hierarchies it responds to, as we see in Parasite’s catharsis-denying ending. Revolutionary Gothic is less about the inevitability of overthrow than the inevitability of rupture, of all that haunts us coming back for a reckoning. These stories don’t try to comfort us with victory; they unsettle us with the implications of ongoing defeat.

https://theoutline.com/post/8279/parasite-us-revolutionary-gothic?zd=1&zi=ojs7ot2u

Having the family kill/replace the other in the end would not have made it a better or "more courageous" movie, just a lazier and less resonant one.

― Simon H., Sunday, 24 November 2019 20:05 (fourteen minutes ago) link

Lol how is it lazier? Sincere question. There was never a moment I was really *surprised* by this film—despite not knowing the details of who was going to be stabbed or when from a symbolic POV it doesn’t matter; the entire story exists as documentation of a shared status quo that reaffirms its audiences understanding of the way things are rather than undermining or subverting those expectations

Coincidentally, I was looking up the real-life cases after watching the movie, and it turns out the police finally solved them in the past few months

It wants to be get out but it’s more like black panther

― ILX’s bad boy (D-40), Sunday, November 24, 2019 1:25 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

But really it's like Us in some very obvious ways.

― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Sunday, November 24, 2019 1:28 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

get out > parasite >>>>>>>>> Us >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> black panther

Simon H otm - the Kims replacing the Parks would have been a terrible ending.

The scene where they’re reunited again at the end is a fantasy and they all know it - Ki Woo was never going to be rich enough to save his father. They’re all stuck in the same place they’ve always been because late stage capitalism and the dream of upward mobility is a lie. Maybe that’s not a surprising ending but it is the logical one to me and which also underscores Bong’s aversion from making heroes out of the plucky poor family against the evil rich people. There are no such heroes in (t)his world.

he was a little disappointed in that the film is no longer relevant in the same way. Then quickly buttressed that with "well, obviously it's good they solved the murders"

Lol I understand feeling slightly annoyed in his position, but c'mon. Anyway I read the murders are past the statute of limitations so the movie is still very relevant: in both the movie and irl, justice can't be served!

There was never a moment I was really *surprised* by this film—despite not knowing the details of who was going to be stabbed or when from a symbolic POV it doesn’t matter; the entire story exists as documentation of a shared status quo that reaffirms its audiences understanding of the way things are rather than undermining or subverting those expectations

― ILX’s bad boy (D-40), Sunday, November 24, 2019 8:25 PM (yesterday)

Oh, I forgot a third: Geun-sae watching his wife die on the floor of the basement a few yards away from him, unable to move closer or offer her any sort of comfort in her final moments. (Almost too on-the-nose, at least as regards the United States.)

But anyway the point I am trying to make is that if I want to be challenged by a discursive presentation of novel ideas – I'll read an essay.

A film can have the most banal ideas in the world (Post-industrial capitalism pits poor people against one another for the opportunity to catch rich people's crumbs in degrading service positions??? You don't say!) and still move me with the force of its vision.

I also found the movie struggling to hold itself together in the second half fwiw

Gratifyingly, though, the normal non-critic people whom I've talked to also acknowledge it doesn't quite work but are thrilled anyway. In that respect, it reminds me of the Get Out era two years ago when a mass audience responded to a film that didn't condescend to them because it dared to work in populist terms.

this was great. why not have a popular, accessible movie that addresses class issues? I think it's great that a foreign film is doing this well at the box office in the US as well.

the most banal ideas in the world (Post-industrial capitalism pits poor people against one another for the opportunity to catch rich people's crumbs in degrading service positions??? You don't say!)

shrug

I saw this tonight and was very impressed by it. It's hard to say I "loved" it bc it's not really a loveable film, but it was an intense experience, visually excellent, and an unusual mix of tones and styles (which I found to be a strength rather than weakness).

The Marxist allegorical stuff *is* on the nose, but I can't say it was *too* on the nose at all -- if anything I thought the film had a lot of fun with the class tropes by blending in just the right amount of absurdism.

subtlety is overrated

The reality of class is so blatant that I'm not sure depicting it subtly would be a good thing

Something about the moment the basement vault is first opened felt very, idk, Terry Gilliam? I liked that part of the film a lot, the sort of fissure in reality that happens.

I thought this was great. The descent into surreal absurdism that veered into violence was really well done and thrilling IMO.

I told my date when the family was getting drunk in the living room "this is going to blow up spectacularly" but I thought it was going to be more along the lines of the dad actually punching the mom

Yes the way that went down was great -- the set up is obviously leading to some kind of farcical moment where you find out the Parks are on their way back and everyone has to hide or sneak out (they're going camping and it's pouring rain!), but then the movie just smacks you over the head with a mallet.

this was really good but it bothered me that they let the old housekeeper in - why would they have done that? other than to move the plot forward, of course.

Because it was late and raining and she was begging and she seemed harmless and they had been drinking and the rest of the family figured they could just hide.

can I say the frottage sex scene was super hot?

Yeah and I agree, felt very real too.

can I say the dog eating skewered meat off the corpse was super hot?

that was super sexy

Someone remind me — who wound up jabbing the skewer into that dudes leg? I lost it in the whole melee.

This is pretty good -- I like the way the family careens around their employers' mansion -- til the last third, when Bong's approach is as blunt and heavy as that big rock. The social message, whatever it is, becomes a muddle.

Lots better than those last two annoyances he made tho.

I like the way the family careens around their employers' mansion

this was my fave part too. lots of crouched runs and slithers and silent hurrying up and down staircases. rapid rock-steady tracks along the x-axis. the bourgeois privilege of space

dog eating skewered meat struck me as a blue velvet rip, just the lil angle it's cocked at

loved the ghost scene

kind of had map's reaction to this for some reason--

it definitely shook me but i'm not sure i enjoyed the ride. idk so many "powerful" things leave me feeling exhausted these days.... like i think i respect that it's aiming to be a shakespearean tragedy about capitalism but it's also in the form of a 32 oz monster energy drink and it was all too much for me tbh.

--(despite tanking a 24oz monster as recently as 4:00 this morning) but it's fun to talk about w people it thrilled, which... is a real trick tbh

don't mean to sound so detached, it def thrilled me; i guess i mean people who had a rly good time being thrilled

Someone remind me — who wound up jabbing the skewer into that dudes leg? I lost it in the whole melee.

It was his side; that's why dude died. The mom did it.

I think it's too angry to work as a tragedy. That's why the violent conclusion worked for me. After a couple of hours of more or less black comedy, it suddenly descends into outright bloody rage.

well yeah. I prefer black comedy, which also has plenty o' rage

tbc, it definitely left me unsettled, idk if I'd say I "enjoyed the ride." I was extremely tensed up when the credits rolled.

i was giggling p much the entire time

Before all the screenings at the Lincoln Center movieplex, they're showing a NYFF clip where the cast brought out peaches to give the audience before the Q&A.

I couldn't imagine watching this again, in part because of the last third.

On the other hand, I'm glad it's a hit, and people were laughing at my screening.

ppl are speculating on getting AA *nods*

also I didn't like Snowpiercer at all.

This is a great audience movie! And it's funny! Until it's not.

I felt like the weird guy who was laughing a lot more than the rest of the audience in my very full theater.

Finally saw it this morning. Aesthetically I do think it's on another level from Bong, and more original than Burning, tbh. The conversation with Min in that crooked street is amazing. The way everything is so neat and liny in the rich house, so fussy and illogical everywhere else. The clothes hanging in front of the little window. Thematically, it's just another variation on The Housemaid, the fifth one I've seen I think. So I never really doubted it was going to go as crazy as it always does, and I do think it's less graphic than im Sang-soo's version from 2010. I think it has a lot of other things on it's mind than capitalism, tbh, the differences between people are more post-feudal, post-colonial and post-educational policy fuck up.

I don’t know if I’m alone in thinking Mother is his masterpiece?

Mother and Memories of Murder remain my favorites

It's not that I dislike them, but I don't get all the hoopla either. Like Lee Chang-dong's Oasis, they are just basically fine arthouse cinema for me. For years, it was just Hong Sang-soo or fuck off. I like both Burning and Parasite, though.

Finding out the house was designed and built from scratch blew me away.

His films are so compassionate, it kills me.

I don't know anything about the Korean higher education system, but one of the themes I got from the movie was that the brother and sister were more than qualified for school, but just ... couldn't afford it? Couldn't get in? I wasn't clear. Is that just a setup to satirize the bourgeois rich mom, who can't tell a not formally educated pair of imposter tutors from the real thing? Or is it sticking it to the schools, who are just an extension of class and wealth entitlement? If you are impoverished in Korea, are there scholarships and the like to help you through school? Or can you be more than qualified but still be excluded by the higher education system?

I think Min mentions that Ki-woo has taken the exam a couple of times after his military service: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_Scholastic_Ability_Test. I think the problem is that they can't get into the universities where it would make any sense to go, as Ki-taek says, there's 500 graduates ready to take any security guard job that comes up. And note that Ki-jeong wants to study arts (like the protagonist in Burning, who came from a farmer background but studied literature). The thing is, I'm really not sure how working class they are supposed to be, the mom is an accomplished athlete, the dad a somewhat good driver.

The feeling I get is just that South Korea is still a very new society - colonized until 1945 at the least, probably more accurately to say sometime after the Korean war, then governed by military dictatorship until 1992 - and films like Burning and Parasite show the rules of the society is still kinda up in the air. The idea that you'd do what your dad did, and stay in the same class as him, doesn't really apply. It's stratifying right now, as the first post-dictatorship generation is growing up.

the dubious distinctions btwn ppl based on the presence or absence of a formal education translates pretty universally (as we've seen by the movie's reception)

I honestly disagree completely, lol. I really think people are misreading it.

they're folding-up-pizza-boxes wifi-stealing class!

I don’t know if I’m alone in thinking Mother is his masterpiece?

It's hard for me to decide between Parasite, Memories of Murder, and Mother (which I just watched). All three are masterpieces to me. Can't believe I've missing out on Bong Joon-Ho all this time. I think the consensus is less strong on his other movies but I'll see The Host next

i live in South Korea and find this analysis iffy

pretty cool imo!

Barring a total anomaly, PARASITE will end 2019 with the highest US per screen average of the year: $131,072, the 6th highest of all time for a live-action film. #Parasite pic.twitter.com/JWSUPqR66i

— Erik Anderson (@awards_watch) December 22, 2019

wow

watched this for the second time the other day, still slightly in awe of it tbh

Fred B in botched class analysis shocker

This French poster of PARASITE is something else. pic.twitter.com/WJ8QF8SOJI

— ㅤnαkul.ㅤ (@itsNaCool) January 6, 2020

that poster is rad. is it for sale anywhere?

Someone in the twitter thread links to a shop that is supposed to have it soon -- the website is new and says it will be selling stuff as of next week

def a better film with the same class vibe

Parasite (2019): I'm overdue a rewatch of La Cérémonie (1995)!

— 𝕮𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝕲𝖊𝖙 𝕸𝖊, 𝕮𝖔𝖕𝖕𝖊𝖗𝖘 (@NickPinkerton) January 7, 2020

Sooner than I expected.

Per THF: Adam McKay (Anchorman, The Big Short, Vice etc) working with Bong Joon-ho on a Parasite miniseries for HBO.

The sequel for Parasite has a new trailer out.

Adam McKay is a menace.

Hard disagree!

sorry let me rephrase, Important Issues-Driven Filmmaker Adam McKay is a menace. Silly Comedy Director Adam McKay was fine.

Caring about shit is so weak.

caring is cool! Vice is however one of the worst movies of the last decade

I missed that one. I liked The Big Short, though!

The thought of watching a movie about Dick Cheney makes me nauseous.

the thought of a Parasite mini-series by anyone other than Bong does not fill me with hope

finally watched this movie and thought it was excellent

the way everything cohesively goes by the numbers as the art teacher, driver, and housekeeper are replaced is so tight. genuinely was surprised by the sub-basement twist

the difference between this plot and some of the "by the way, this movie is about CLASS" pictures I've seen in recent years is the muddied relationship between the Kim family and the former housekeeper and her husband that eventually culminates in the stabbing

very weird

PARASITE Black & White

"The film felt more realistic and sharp - as if I was being cut by a blade." Bong Joon Ho

New York
Walter Reade Theater, January 30
Francesca Beale Theater, January 31 - February 6

Los Angeles
Egyptian Theatre, January 31 https://t.co/HhRmyRrlJI

— NEON (@neonrated) January 23, 2020

He did a black-and-white version of MOTHER as well? Almost entirely black and white – there are maybe two minutes at the end that are in color.

had dinner last night with someone who told me they only saw one film last year and it was parasite but it was the best film they saw all year.

can’t argue with that logic tbh

I can't imagine watching this movie in black and white, I actually liked the color palette. I tried watching the "chrome" version of Fury Road some months back as well, and just couldn't get into it. Yet when Steven Soderberg converted Raiders of the Lost Ark into black and white, I thought that worked pretty well.

I don't really understand the purpose of these versions

Isn't the colour palette fairly important to this movie? The green of the lawn, the interiors like out of a glossy catalogue, the paintings.

Yeah ime particularly with modern films I feel like just switching a color film to b&w, no matter how well shot, almost never works. Its not just about color - if you knew you were shooting for b&w all kinds of different choices get made, different compositions, shot choices, editing. B&w Mother was not improved and I thought the 'chrome' Mad Max was an incoherent mess. Agree that the soderbergh b&w Raiders might be the only example I can think of where it was a good & interesting alternate take on the film.

I kinda agree; I thought color was one of the narrative tools delineating upstairs and downstairs. “The purpose,” I imagine, is selling tickets, feels comparable to a b+w comic variant.

Can’t even be mad about it tbh tho given that any bone I have to pick with Parasite has to do with its depth and not it’s memorable and beautifully composed visuals. I imagine most people will enjoy a rewatch... I know I did!

I tried watching the "chrome" version of Fury Road some months back as well, and just couldn't get into it

the chrome version of fury road is fucking amazing imo, makes the movie even more painterly

i don't see the point of this one though

loved this so much. the class warfare stuff worked very well. but ultimately i loved the jarring and abrupt shift in tone, even though from having read about it in advance, I knew it was coming.

definitely worth a rewatch. the last 5 minutes were heartwrenching.

the differing architectures of the neighborhoods might pop more depending on how they handle the contrast. texture is a lot more noticeable in b&w when it's kind of subsumed by color

i thought this was great, and then i went home and read this thread and i watched woman at war (h/t ulysses) and that was also great so i had a good saturday

woman at war is streaming on hulu btw!

glad you liked woman at war; i think it's highly underrated, especially given the outsize USA love and structural similarities to parasite.

the selfish giant is another, even more heartbreaking take in the same general world, bring your tissues.

there was an interesting parallel in the use of flooding (and expanding police/state surveillance) in both films that i thought was very otm

yep. both end with a very ambivalent "we are good and fucked but the human spirit might prevail?" message

i got more of that vibe from WAW, parasite has a note of hopelessness at the end

yeah I detected no optimism from the end of Parasite

I took the ending to be the revolutionary dream: to seize power and pull up the poor. The fact that it only exists in the mind of someone who is brain damaged isn’t great.

Or perhaps not. I guess he gets there within the system. (Sorry, baked)

(Ignore that, makes no sense)

i think parasite's ending is a massive bummer (the kid is never going to actually get the money to buy the house and the proletariat will never seize power from the bourgeoisie) but there's the hint of "if you can dream it, it's not impossible" in both. I mean, we do actually see them getting back together again!

yeah I took that scene to be a hallucination - "the best plan is no plan" and all that.

And I haven't seen it mentioned much but I also think Jessica/Ki Jung's death just underscored the hopelessness of it all. If there was anyone in that family that was going to make it, it would have been her.

the ending is a bummer because even if it's not a daydream, the entire movie has been about how a lifestyle like the park family's can only be achieved through the exploitation of others - if ki-woo does buy the house, it's a sign that he's become a more effective parasite, nothing more

agreed with all that.

idk anything about korean (or specifically s korean) culture but is the genuflection to the park family part of a commentary on a cultural block against collective action by the working class against the rich? (similar to american exceptionalism/bootstraps ideology)?

genuflection seems like it's required in these types of jobs for these types of people - when you work directly for someone who can fire you on a whim, better to err on the side of genuflection, particularly when you're working paycheque to paycheque

mr park being impressed by mr kim's ability to 'not cross the line' seems instructive

thinking more on the ending, it also highlights how difficult it is for people to think their way out of the system - all ki-woo can do is dream about being a beneficiary of the system rather than envision an alternative

Yeah, after all that's happened and all that he's seen, he's been conditioned to embrace capitalism and materialist aspiration.

That was exactly my reading of it, which plays into the doppleganger idea as well.

wrt the genuflection, I'd need to watch it again but there might be something there in terms of the previous owner being an architect (a great man who builds solid but beautiful things) and Mr Park being...well, I'm not sure what, I might have missed it but I thought he was some kind of executive at a firm called Another Brick. I couldn't decide if that name sounded more like tech or real estate, both would be apt

when we see him in his office he's looking at some kind of vr headset with his colleagues so i assumed tech

The elitist inscrutability of the Park’s work, thoughtless consumption, emotional fecklessness and their general stupidity are all intended to show the lack of meritocracy in the system i thought

I'm not sure I'd describe them as "generally" stupid, but I'd have to think about it. Min's emphasis on Mrs. Park being "simple" kept popping into my head throughout.

I do think there's a pretty basic "stages of capitalism" metaphor in the house being built/owned by a genius architect and then by a guy who makes VR

And then pretenders literally occupying the space!

the basicness of the metaphors are one of the best aspects of the movie imo - like yeah it's a great twisty morality tale, sure, but its underlying message is as subtle as a rock specimen to the back of the head

loved the cold read scene when 'Jessica' asks if something happened to the kid in first grade

the flooding scene was well done too.

that was amazing and it's wild that it was a big set!

lol at this wildly misleading french poster

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EKSMJR0XUAAXnlR?format=jpg&name=small

"oh, so it's like a generation family comedy, like Family Matters!"

Min's emphasis on Mrs. Park being "simple" kept popping into my head throughout.

I wonder about the word used originally. ‘Simple’ is a complicated word.

target audience for goop products imo

I first thought he meant 'simple' as in 'dumb', but as she developed later, I just took it more to mean "gullible and naive".

she's not a dumb woman, but way too willing to fall for ruses.

but right, the translation might also impact that

uncritical acceptance of anything that speaks to specific class markers

i like that it's never really explained why mrs park is slumped across the garden table unconscious when ki-woo goes to visit for the first time - just a weird unsettling little detail

I guess she’s not allowed to be a real person, to the point of inaction when her husband isn’t around.

presumed it was cause she was drunk?

or sure: just valium-era US housewife not there

she's doing something that a rich person would do: sitting in her beautiful garden while well dressed

it's the first clue that she doesn't really have anything to do, and when it's shown that her role is to make sure the right people are doing the right things for her children, it's all signifiers

yeah, it's most likely some kind of quiet substance abuse but it seemed a bit more strange on my first viewing because it comes right after she's been described as 'simple' - like what's really going on here

I figured it was equally possible she's just incredibly bored

I thought it was supposed to indicate she was struggling with depression or possibly mental illness.

i thought drunk and passed out at first, but that didn't really jibe with her character the rest of the movie.

could have definitely been tranquilizers, after all, she had to fill a tutor position, and an art teacher position and her husband may have been giving her shit about it (we never saw them much without the 'help' around, who knows what they were really like)

apparently they liked handjobs

i kept wondering if their kid was going to walk in from his tent while that was happening

no time to be horny when you're the underclass

when you're rich you can just be horny whenever

the mock disgust about their driver having sex in the car (and in THEIR SEAT) followed by a fantasy about that scenario!

which reveals that their earlier speculation + dismay about the scenario was in fact a personal sexual fantasy

One of the things that stuck with me was the little tease of the possibility of class solidarity, when it’s revealed that both husbands had worked at the same failed business. there were a few seconds where I thought there might be a mutual understanding, and then it all descends further into chaos.

I thought that was possible, but that was a trend in SK — there were a ton of cake shops of that type that saturated the market then went bust. And the original basement guy had borrowed cash from loan sharks to start a business, while Kim had only worked in one in his series of ephemeral jobs

the fact it isn’t followed so the fact there’s no follow-up means it likely was a different shop


https://blog.lewislee.net/2019/10/parasite-understanding-underlying-tragedy-of-taiwanese-cake-shop/

Fascinating.

sorry for zing malformatted post. I was eating lunch

I'm not sure if I agree with the blogger that Kim was aspiring to own something necessarily -- he seems like he's just working to make ends meet. Basement guy definitely was striving with his loan shark deal

yeah, it's most likely some kind of quiet substance abuse but it seemed a bit more strange on my first viewing because it comes right after she's been described as 'simple' - like what's really going on here

When Mr. and Mrs. Park were canoodling on the couch, she chants "Buy me drugs!" My theory is that she had been a bar girl when they met. She's not necessarily damaged by such a past, but she probably had not been very well educated and lucked into a good marriage.

it's a little hazy now but i thought that was her roleplaying being a lower-class woman?

yeah, they were speculating earlier in the movie about why a woman would have sex in the car and surmised that such a person would *have* to be on drugs

entire imaginary idea of their driver picking up a drug-addled loose woman or sex worker who he then had sex with in *their seat*

they were trying to figure out how one ends up leaving their underwear behind rather than like an earring

lol at this wildly misleading french poster

Mubi column on Parasite movie posters: https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/movie-poster-of-the-week-the-posters-of-parasite
On that "misleading" french poster:

Of all the French variants, however, this one got the most attention on social media until the French distributor—the aptly named The Jokers—revealed that the poster was made as a parody of French comedy posters, citing this montage as evidence: https://assets.mubi.com/images/notebook/post_images/29838/images-w1400.jpeg?1579571205

blue_and_yellow.xls

that's wonderful

i like the poster even more now

Genius. Now I need someone to mock up a red and white one for America.

i like that it's never really explained why mrs park is slumped across the garden table unconscious when ki-woo goes to visit for the first time - just a weird unsettling little detail

Apologies j.lu got there first

she’s role playing in that scene!!

Parasite being re-released in black-and-white is a process I refer to as Logan-ing, and further evidence that Bong Joon-ho is a James Mangold tier filmmaker.

— 𝕮𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝕲𝖊𝖙 𝕸𝖊, 𝕮𝖔𝖕𝖕𝖊𝖗𝖘 (@NickPinkerton) February 1, 2020

lol what? I strongly disagree, he's infinitely better than that hack.

Although I thought Snowpiercer and his tv thing were both total unwatchable dog-shit .... i still wouldn't go that far bearing in mind his previous greatness!

Film critics in that habit of reminding audiences that THIS movie can't be better than THAT movie made by another filmmaker twenty years ago. Why this is my preferred response:

I disagree. For a lot of people, Parasite is probably their first taste of both Korean cinema and Bong Joon-ho. The enthusiasm is genuine and I personally haven't seen any positive reviews or reactions that struck me as inauthentic. It's a good fuckin movie with broad appeal.

— Equespionage (@TheBrooksening) February 1, 2020

Ford vs Ferrari is a stronger indictment of capitalism than Parasite. Except Mangold holds back. But the story, yikes, fuck Ford forever.

downloaded a screener of that over xmas, but still haven't motivated myself to watch it. But I suffer from an allergy to motorsport.

It's not bad, and it will make you hate capitalism even more.

Pinkerton kinda making a joek there

Hey everyone

Just checking in

Haven’t checked this thread since I started it but I assume everyone has uniformly praised this movie and there is no backlash here

Insane sweep! Don't know if anyone saw that coming. Congrats!

haven't cared about the Oscars in years but they did good this time.

long overdue recognition too for South Korean cinema, which has been producing some of the best films of the past two decades.

Was just saying the latter to my friend

this is how bernie wins

by teaching art to a rich kid?

the art is marxism and the rich kid is the united states of america, do u see

(if the joker won best picture it would have guaranteed a second trump term btw)

Trump issues Executive Order declaring JOker best picture

damn the cheeto-in-chief has gone too far this time

please enjoy this gif of bong joon ho giggling at his oscar pic.twitter.com/6ErVC8NEef

— Kathryn VanArendonk (@kvanaren) February 10, 2020

hah! that is so charming

bernie should neg the electorate into voting for him by calling them a bunch of locals

I saw this for the second time last night and I went from loving it (first time) to thinking it was an absolutely flawless masterpiece. So wild that it won BD and BP oscars!

I watched Parasite last night. Really enjoyed it, and I continue to get more out of it the more I consider it--although I feel a little let down because of the hype cycle (and watching it so late in the cycle).

I have this idea stuck in my head that the structure of the film mimics the sort of flowing structure of their house. The screenplay moves you from scene to scene the way a Louis Kahn building might guide you through blended spaces--and it hides a lot of the functional story scaffolding with tight writing, the way the house (and Kahnian structures) hides away all its functional bits. Both the architecture of the house and the relationships between characters have "served" and "servant" spaces.

long overdue recognition too for South Korean cinema, which has been producing some of the best films of the past two decades.

btw Scorsese has played no small role in championing SK filmmakers, and I think he wd've looked happier about this at the Oscars if his film hadn't been shut out.

tbf parasite was shorter

good architectural take, Unctious

Hiding away all the functional bits:

https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2019-10/8/22/asset/33868f2ff72e/sub-buzz-2027-1570575066-1.png

The 2nd floor was CGI and added in post. Individual rooms were separate sets on soundstages. So, no visiting the Parasite home, unless its this miniature (6 parts):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvdpE1YSzYg

Hasn't Tarantino done a lot more to champion SK film?

Bong thanked Tarantino in his speech too, specifically for years of talking up his early films before anyone else in America paid him any attention.

(More recently Tarantino had a one-off 35mm print of Okja commissioned, and screened it at his theatre as a first-run engagement for a week after it first came out on Netflix. Then brought it back for a week the next month as the back half of double features with King Kong, Free Willy, Razorback and Babe: Pig In The City. And changed the vegan hot dogs at the snack bar to "Okja dogs.")

I think the Tarantino-led jury giving Oldboy the Grand Prix in Cannes is a milestone too.

Watched it today, finally.

This movie is absolutely incredible, and deserved all the awards and more.

Saw this again and liked it a lot more the second time

Here's a fun thing I learned a lot from

https://zenkimchi.com/featured/cultural-details-you-missed-in-parasite

cool, thanks

we saw this last night and loved it, not much to add here though.

Really liked how this review dealt with the film as critique and it's awards success

"What, if anything, can we make of the fact that a film ostensibly dedicated to satirising the rich has been praised so extensively by the very individuals and institutions who uphold this order?"
Rebecca Liu on Bong Joon-ho’s 'Parasite'https://t.co/LWqyxBN2hS

— Another Gaze: A Feminist Film Journal (@anothergaze) February 13, 2020

I do recommend this read:

https://variety.com/2020/film/news/parasite-bong-joon-ho-interpreter-oscars-sharon-choi-1203505571/

That’s beautiful. As a bilingual who has also done work as a translator/interpreter, I really relate to her feelings about having to choose between languages and I think I feel the same way about music as she does about film.

Hey I finally saw this!

it was pretty good

do they have Miranda rights in South Korea? that was weird

welcome to parasite club

xp i think they have those rights, but cops aren't required to recite them. seemed to me like a kind of subtle character joke about the detective, that he loved to watch american crime shows and relished the opportunity to read rights.

Similar to the What's App / KakaoTalk thing, it may just be a localization/translation choice.

that's what I suspected - I mean it seems entirely plausible that the Korean legal system would incorporate such rights, wildly implausible that they would use the American term tho

I liked this overall but was a little put off by ultimately how sympathetic every character was. I'm sure that's appealing to the Academy and yr average viewer, but it leaves the class analysis a little toothless, very "welp that's just the way things are, everyone's trapped in it!" which I don't find particularly enervating or insightful.

just caught this over the weekend as well. i really loved it! Can't get over some of the amazing shots. I'm definitly going to watch it again .

I liked this overall but was a little put off by ultimately how sympathetic every character was. I'm sure that's appealing to the Academy and yr average viewer, but it leaves the class analysis a little toothless, very "welp that's just the way things are, everyone's trapped in it!" which I don't find particularly enervating or insightful.

This is an extremely weird criticism to me. Why should the class of any of the characters have made them inherently unsympathetic?

Yeah, I wonder if one of the things that made this such an across-the-board appealing movie was that it refused to be drawn into the narrative that class inequality necessitates one (or the other) class being maladaptive if not downright evil.

sorry you didn't find it more enervating!

yeah it's good. There were a bunch of moments where I was trying to place what they specifically reminded me of (Hitchcock? Haneke?) and I was failing

Why should the class of any of the characters have made them inherently unsympathetic?

it obscures who really benefits in a very real way from the existing class structure, for one thing. Because, look, the rich suffer too, and are not mean people! But it also engenders a kind of apathy/helplessness - without a villain, or someone either articulating or exemplifying why the class structure is how it is in the first place - it just makes the class system seem insurmountable, something that cannot be fought against or changed. Which, admittedly is tempered a little bit by the delusional hopefulness of the conclusion, indicating that some kind of aspirational hope (even if it is just to become a rich family again) still exists, no matter how unrealistic. But of course poor people having unrealistic dreams of becoming rich is one of those things that helps to keep the class system functioning.

xps

oh I see Eric already said it better :)

xps

like, "Society" this is not. It's portrayal of aspirational poor people is nuanced and insightful (I lol'd at someone calling this Crazy Poor Asians), and probably novel for the Academy, since Hollywood has generally stopped making movies about real people.

this was basically The Class System as a Series of Unfortunate Events

I would be extremely down for someone to remake and improve upon "Society" tbh

film is not without its flaws but omg I love it so

I really just want someone to give it a real ending. keep in the wonderfully revolting practical effects and cartoonish class commentary obv

in the era of rebooted everything/current political climate I could see it working really well but I don't think it's a "property" that has much cachet, unlike other horror franchises, unfortunately.

it's funny to read American reviews of it at the time (ex. Variety) that are all aghast at the disgusting effects and yet curiously make no mention of the sledgehammer obvious class politics. I give Yuzna a huge amount of credit for not pulling any punches in either department.

Idk I could see a Blumhouse type crew picking up the rights for cheap, getting some up and coming arty horror director to gussy it up a bit and leverage the insane premise in advertising--you know what fuck it I'm just gonna write the thing on spec brb

cool, will cobble together a few mil from my production company for ya

quick who's a cheaper tom holland equivalent for the lead

it obscures who really benefits in a very real way from the existing class structure, for one thing. Because, look, the rich suffer too, and are not mean people! But it also engenders a kind of apathy/helplessness - without a villain, or someone either articulating or exemplifying why the class structure is how it is in the first place - it just makes the class system seem insurmountable, something that cannot be fought against or changed. Which, admittedly is tempered a little bit by the delusional hopefulness of the conclusion, indicating that some kind of aspirational hope (even if it is just to become a rich family again) still exists, no matter how unrealistic. But of course poor people having unrealistic dreams of becoming rich is one of those things that helps to keep the class system functioning.

It's established pretty clearly that while the rich family has their own set of issues, they are an entire universe away from the things that both poor families are dealing with. There's nothing threatening the existence of the rich family in the story until the confrontation at the end and their danger is completely driven by the rich father's actions/lack of empathy.

You are treating one of the strongest aspects of this movie (its treatment of all its characters as recognizable, relatable human beings whose motivations were driven as much by personality as by circumstance) as if it was a negative.

that's true, but only because personalized drama tends to not be very useful when it comes to class analysis. So I have no problem praising this movie for the sympathy of its characterizations, which it does very well, just also noting that that kind of emphasis undercuts any meaningful class commentary.

(and that concludes this episode of Stalinist Film Criticism)

For once, a recipe post where the introductory story is in fact crucial.

https://thetakeout.com/recipe-how-to-make-ram-don-noodles-from-parasite-movie-1841769317

Also, along the lines of a couple of pieces posted recently upthread:

https://tropicsofmeta.com/2020/02/17/reading-colonialism-in-parasite/

that's true, but only because personalized drama tends to not be very useful when it comes to class analysis. So I have no problem praising this movie for the sympathy of its characterizations, which it does very well, just also noting that that kind of emphasis undercuts any meaningful class commentary.

Making this movie more like a Haenecke film would not improve it.

no disagreement there, I can't stand Haneke

Outis, your response is interesting - it's funny tho, I feel like most of the negative reactions i've heard on the movie (which are not numerous obv) have been to do with finding the class analysis sledgehammer-y in the sense of "poor good, rich bad."

what's fascinating to me is how clearly it's the system which creates the poor/rich gulf that's evil here, and how we see the ways it infects people (parasitically) based on their relative class positions. so yeah, everyone is bad, but the ways they're bad and the kinds of harm they do are specific, and not symmetrical.

"poor good, rich bad."

dunno what movie these people watched tbh! Seemed very nuanced to me. The poors do some shitty things (get people fired, perpetuate fraud, struggle with/murder other poors), the rich do some shitty things (primarily acting snooty and entitled), but every character is given some shading to indicate that there is never much in the way of malice on anyone's part.

Uh, I would say there is a good amount of malice all the way around. The poor families are fully prepared to stomp on each other to get the opportunity to leech off of the rich family and the rich family, aside from the son who is really in his own hyper kid bubble, literally couldn't care less about the humanity or well-being of any of the people working for them; even the relationship between the poor son and rich daughter is shaded by the fact that she had the exact same relationship with the poor son's best friend and was obviously using her tutors as interchangeable relationship bots (which is partially due to the fecklessness of youth but also tied to the fact that she knows it's a temporary dalliance, while the guys in the tutor role are clearly looking at it as "this is my future wife whose inheritance will lift me into the social stratum where I naturally belong")

I didn't read any of that as malice so much as opportunism. There's no cruelty involved, the motive is never to hurt the other - it's to get them out of the way or use them to one's advantage.

Characters that are capable of making poor choices, wanting to do the right thing, being upset at the hand life has dealt them, and being inured to their own privilege. What a shallow cartoon this is!

which is a function of the class system and central to its design and hierarchies - decisions or actions that harm others are framed through the lens of self interest (something everybody is expected to identify with, no matter what their position), and not from an explicit desire to harm others. So when people suffer as a result there's this "don't blame me, I was just looking out for myself, just like you would've done!" excuse.

But up until the mayhem at the end, none of the characters are shown doing anything explicitly to hurt another just for the sake of hurting another.

xps

There's no cruelty involved

The poor family gets the driver fired and triggers a potentially-fatal allergic reaction in the housekeeper so they can take their jobs
The rich father has a protracted conversation with the rich mother about how much the poor father smells like a lower-class person
The poor family's reaction to discovering the old housekeeper's husband in the basement is to try to imprison him down there with his wife
Then there is the aforementioned "love affair" where both parties are blatantly and opportunistically using each other

I'm not sure how any of this goes by on screen and doesn't register to you as even the tiniest bit cruel and malicious.

The poor family gets the driver fired and triggers a potentially-fatal allergic reaction in the housekeeper so they can take their jobs means to an end
The rich father has a protracted conversation with the rich mother about how much the poor father smells like a lower-class person garden variety entitlement
The poor family's reaction to discovering the old housekeeper's husband in the basement is to try to imprison him down there with his wife again, means to an end. they're surprised and desperate
Then there is the aforementioned "love affair" where both parties are blatantly and opportunistically using each other yeah, idk if this counts as cruelty, this is kind of how a lot of relationships function sadly. It's not like there's rape or abuse involved.

My point is that you seem to be the one handwaving and making excuses for the bad behavior, not the movie. In fact, I'd argue that the violent escalation at the end is intended to highlight the passing cruelty everyone was slinging around up to that point of the movie.

xp plug-n-play Morbs' assertion that marriage is an economic institution and nothing at all more here

it's definitely bad behavior, I'm just saying the movie makes it believable and relatable! No one's portrayed as a sadist or a psychopath. Nor is the bad behavior limited to one side of the economic divide or the other.

Even the violence at the end - the audience has been led by the hand to understand what led up to that moment, that the characters that lash out snap out of grief and frustration and desperation. These are not Haneke's sociopaths from Funny Games or the upper class predators of "Society".

So... why does making it believable and relatable undercut the social commentary about class disparity? You are making an assertion and not really providing any argument beyond "because it does"

the class system clearly benefits the upper class and is explicitly designed to do so. A more polemical film would have emphasized this by painting a more traditional "poors good/rich bad" dichotomy. But as Doc Casino notes, ultimately the *system* is revealed as the true evil, rather than the people who are at the top of it. And the filmmakers were clearly not interested in a "eat the rich" sort of screed. Making everybody on either side of the divide believable and relatable means that no single group (apart from the Americans, who are implicated more by our absence and the use of English) comes out as deserving blame for the situation.

So in the sense that a class-conscious film involves motivating people to undo the class system... this doesn't really do that. There's no villain, there's no readily identifiable obstacle to be overcome, everyone's just kinda trapped.

just like real life

you could behead every capitalist and not end capitalism!

stop bumming me out!

I'll try to dig up some of the recent writing on the film I ran across but it's amazing how the one thing that's taken for granted by most audiences in these parts is how much American imperialism permeates the film's atmosphere and there's subtle and not-so-subtle commentary on it!

good piece linked by Ned upthread about that

you have nothing to lose but your heads

Understandable, he can't read.#Parasite #BestPicture #Bong2020 https://t.co/lNqGJkUrDP

— NEON (@neonrated) February 21, 2020

He hasn't seen Gone With The Wind (too long) but his Klan Dad rated it.

Gotta love how all of Trump's cultural reference points seem to be from the 1930s.

Anyway, it's interesting to see the breadth of reactions people have had to this movie. I for one did not find the Parks sympathetic at all. They're not cartoon villains, but they're clearly characterized as cluelessly entitled (the wife) or callously manipulative (the husband). The brilliant thing is that Bong makes the Kims sympathetic even though they're ruthless to the point of near-sociopathy. You want them to succeed, even though their success must be predicated on the dispossession of others.

this remains an exceptionally strange and bewildering timeline

Gotta love how all of Trump's cultural reference points seem to be from the 1930s.

Sunset Blvd (1950) mentioned last night...

about a lone megalomaniac who used to be big, and DOES get arrested when she shoots somebody near her swimming pool.

It's tempting to think about what Billy Wilder would say about him.

Caught this last night - in the cinema, which is a rare treat at the moment. I've seen a few Jong-Ho films so had a bunch of references but I'd managed to avoid any spoilers at all (apart from that it had a 'gory ending'). I loved it.

My initial feeling was that it was a caper film and that the Kims were veteran con artists: even with the pizza box shambles, there was something so slick about their performances that they must have done this, or something like it, before. It wasn't really until the visitation from the former housekeeper that it became apparent they were grifters and from there it all started to come apart. I did find the ending a little chaotic but I felt expertly corralled and was egging on the Kims and dungeon guy.

I keep thinking about the suseok and its grand metaphorical resonance. One way of thinking about it is as an avatar of the old ways; a remnant of real nature. Nature's only presence in the film is as a part of the grand architecture of the house - and is only experienced in a spectacular form, through the massive screen of the window. It seemed to be part of a grander narrative of capital supplanting and commodifying nature. Even the rain seemed allegorical and couldn't eradicate the 'real' of the suseok.

Anyway, ill-thought-through babble aside, what a film to win the Oscar.

the more i think about it, the less unlikely i find its oscar win to be--as a domestic drama of sorts that tragically boils over into violence, it doesn't feel like it's part of an unfamiliar prestige cinema mode beyond how stylized it is.

it's a pretty good movie. i wish it had more breathing room but my sense is that bong wants his movies to be sewn up pretty tight as far as what you're supposed to get out of them. there were some scenes in the back half of the middle that dragged. the epilogue stuff sucked if i'm being honest. but the characterizations were great and it was well-acted and well-observed.

I think it is astonishing that Parasite won the best picture oscar

I loved the epilogue! doom-laden and affecting. I don't quite get that you thought it needed to breathe more but also found it draggy

xp not sure I understand your point exactly, but I didn't think it was sewn up at all, beyond the initial premise it seemed chaotic and completely unpredictable to me

the dragging comment is just about pacing; it got a little slow at times. the breathing room comment is about ambiguity, of which this movie had none.

I've seen all of his movies since MoM and I really just do not think he cares for ambiguity whatsoever

went back, watched Mother and loved it, but haven't seen Memories of Murder yet

"parasite isn't political" is still the most mind-boggling stupid take i've read on this site in a while pic.twitter.com/cAvL9VSzL2

— 红色娘子军🌹 (@detachment_red) February 23, 2020

That second quote is kind of enlightening, actually

In terms of informing us about...certain sorts of minds

she admitted in the next tweet that she hadn't yet seen the movie.

I feel like she's infamously said other stupid shit though too, looking to see if it's the account I think it is.

Simon otm

Probably useless on an English language board, but I did a deep dive into the Korean film archive and made a list of ten films to see from Korean film history, with legal youtube-links to them all. Google translate might be your friend: https://pov.international/koreansk-film-er-mere-end-parasite-10-film-du-kan-finde-pa-youtube/?fbclid=IwAR3iwQpVQCmC1ZJZsXKV500BsYNhQHrskLW0A0Ih71cCS70aW-JAyZ52k6U

*sic voice* fbclid=IwAR3iwQpVQCmC1ZJZsXKV500BsYNhQHrskLW0A0Ih71cCS70aW-JAyZ52k6U

Outsourcing done right

who will be the first to quietly sneak in routing FROM text as a secret message

https://pov.international/koreansk-film-er-mere-end-parasite-10-film-du-kan-finde-pa-youtube/?fbclid=IhweAyRs3iicwiQkpnVoQwCymoCu1aZrJeZrseXaKdVi5n0g0tBhsiYsNbhaQbHarbsokoLeWy0bAa0bIahb7o1oceCy

I posted a few referrer links a while back in the hopes that sic would notice but he didn’t bite

the text was “sic is gonna love this” base64 encoded iirc

In Opinion@MaureenDowd writes, "It’s funny that Donald Trump doesn’t like a movie about con artists who invade an elegant house and wreak chaos. He should empathize with parasites."https://t.co/ceHxQIwbdI

— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 23, 2020

what's fascinating to me is how clearly it's the system which creates the poor/rich gulf that's evil here, and how we see the ways it infects people (parasitically) based on their relative class positions. so yeah, everyone is bad, but the ways they're bad and the kinds of harm they do are specific, and not symmetrical.

― Doctor Casino, Wednesday, 19 February 2020 bookmarkflaglink

I think there would need to be a bit more work on part of the audience to go from this really effective dramatization of the hurt caused by inequality -- which is done in all sorts of ways: from the party you are invited to by the back door, to smells of clothing, the judgement of behaviour, all the microaggressions scattered along -- to a conclusion of systemic failure. Part of why this was so successful (though who could've predicted it would be as successful as this) was surely the humour (lots of laughter by the audience I was at throughout) and a deployment of a Carrie-like shock finale (although it wasn't the very ending of the film) to carry the audience around those tougher undercurrents.

It was rare to see something so successful where everyone is so unlikeable (this is very much dour Euro arthouse territory) (although the son turned out to be somewhat likeable with the scene in the gym showing a love for his father that is there right at the end in the letter).

“Unlikable characters” is a fake idea and banned.

So weird how people keep referring to the family in this as 'con artists' they are all clearly very good at the job they were hired to do. She's amazing with the kid, he turns corners incredibly smoothly and is nice, gentle company. The house is spotless.

I think the script cut a corner on showing how effortlessly good they were at everything they put their hand to (including the con artistry, of course)

The con part is in their credentials, which is simply a gatekeeping mechanism to keep undesirable people out

The dad frequently takes his eyes off the road while driving

“Unlikable characters” is a fake idea and banned.

― Swilling Ambergris, Esq. (silby), Sunday, February 23, 2020 5:17 PM bookmarkflaglink

Nah

I don't massively care about likeability -- and almost never think of it if I go to films by myself -- but the person I was with didn't much care for it because of this.

whom amongst us is truly likeable

Think it’s weird to want characters to be “likable”

I'm trash!

I don't care about films being likable, but there is a growing sect of folk who seem to conflate character POV with filmmaker POV

The lack of niceties among the family is kind've the point, they have to focus 24/7 on the game because they have no safety net. Added to the urgency of the film for me.

xp I call this the Nomi Malone effect.

So weird how people keep referring to the family in this as 'con artists' they are all clearly very good at the job they were hired to do. She's amazing with the kid, he turns corners incredibly smoothly and is nice, gentle company. The house is spotless.

― plax (ico), Sunday, February 23, 2020 5:22 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

The con part is in their credentials, which is simply a gatekeeping mechanism to keep undesirable people out

― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Sunday, February 23, 2020 5:30 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is almost a good point but it's not just the credentials; they poison the cleaning lady and frame the driver!

i found everyone likeable except Mr Park. even then, he wasn't like evil, just a haughty dork

in a way i kind of agree with the twitter dumbasses screenshotted upthread tbh. it's not that the movie is "apolitical" but the characters are not themselves politicized. the Kims, though likeable and charismatic, aren't noble and have no solidarity with the other working class people they encounter. the Parks are aloof but pay their workers well and care about their kids; Ms Kim seems to feel genuinely bad about letting go of the driver and cleaning lady. a leftist who watched the movie would probably root for the Kims throughout (i did) but a less political person probably wouldn't; they might even except their comeuppance. the level of inequality is deplorable but not everything the Kims do is necessitated by circumstance, they aren't fully absolved by their position in the system. i suspect part of the reason people don't like the ending is because they don't feel Mr Park deserved to be murdered in front of his kids.

the ambiguity stands in p sharp contrast to okja and snowpiercer which are much more allegorical. i think BJH wanted to critique social inequality but not in a way that was too obvious. the best critique is just to accurately portray it, making all the different dimensions of class palpable and cleverly incorporating them into plot points.

Something I was struck by in the movie is that there's a huge lack of class solidarity between the various working class people. What inspired you to write the relationships that way?

You point out something very important. You know, in Mother, you see the have nots and the needy clawing at each other and hurting one another. On the other hand, in The Host, you see the solidarity between them, they save each other and they gather their strengths together. And you could say Parasite is closer to Mother, where the weak and have nots are fighting one another. And that's sad, but it's also realistic. And from those moments, you get this element of sadness, but also the comedy, as well.

the murder of mr. park is prob the moment where the script comes closest to tipping over.

From a dramatic perspective one thing that works really well is the number of times it seems like they're going to get found out, but they don't. The kid saying they all smell the same, the blackmail/hostage by the former housekeeper, hiding under the coffee table, the kid seeing the morse code.

"it's not that the movie is "apolitical" but the characters are not themselves politicized. the Kims, though likeable and charismatic, aren't noble and have no solidarity with the other working class people they encounter."

I think this kind of fracturing of class solidarity was very well done where work either isn't available or where it's precarious.

Haven't read but leaving it here:

I wrote a (very long) analysis for @TropicsM about reading colonialism and war in Parasite, and why a vision for Korean peace that encompasses decolonization in North America + US unincorporated territories is necessary. https://t.co/9AWcFCDj9s

— Chosun Chillbo (@hermit_hwarang) February 17, 2020

Ned posted that earlier. Worth the read.

Sorry not in the last 50

The fact that his “Dear Leader” is none other than Dong-ik, paragon of South Korea’s neoliberal and neocolonial present, raises the question of which side of the DMZ is the true dystopia.

Um...

All due respect to the writer, but I really don't think Bong Joon-ho meant for the film to be read as pro North Korea propaganda

lol

Fucking hell @ a reading of this article on Parasite as North Korea propaganda.

lol

pvmic

"Bong has left the task of dreaming up to us. Division and war are not Korea’s destiny, and the path to reunification and peace will only become clearer the further we walk it."

Sounds like a love letter to Dear Leader to me

loooooool. did you just literally quote where you were in the article?

"Da-song, the Park’s rambunctious young son, first appears when he fires a plastic arrow at Ki-woo."

Sounds like propaganda to me

I think you need to read this another five times. Or maybe do a Google translate into Danish?

Hey, anything is better than wasting more time on you

Looool

this is a movie about the excellent grift that is personal tuition tbh

Someone told me they were talking about it with a client, who thought the house was lovely but it was a shame about all the violence. I suspect this would be a common view among the kind of people you don't really know.

please check your basement https://t.co/6X2rfkmv3p

— ponyo fishy in the sea (@niazahraaa) March 19, 2020

👍

Finally seen this (working my way through the ILX top 20 movies of 2019) and agree it is brilliant. Watched the first two thirds one night and it felt like two incredible stand-alone episodes, third part was also excellent, was never going to survive being watched separately, but it wasn't a let-down.
My extra thought was: this premise would not work in the UK, they would be found out as non-U immediately, which is kind of telling and a bit depressing. Also the rich mother reminded me of so many of my adult students in China.
My wife knows a lot about feng shui and she says the house seemed like it was constructed to have the worst feng shui possible, so interesting to find out it was made for the film.

I'd be interested in a critique of the Parasite house from a feng shui perspective. Mind, I know little and consider it mostly BS, but this would be a really good teaching example. No one seems to have done this (in English), all I've learned from Google is that the Pyeongchang neighborhood of the Park residence has overly powerful feng shui.

My attitude to feng shui is that it's technically bs, yes, but also that it works as a post-factual rationalisation of some solid underlying rules which make spaces feel better or worse to be in. As someone who usually dreams about buildings and spaces rather than people or images, I feel like feng shui generally makes places feel better for whatever reason. I am fascinated by films which use trick architecture - The Shining and Rosemary's Baby of course, but also some otherwise bad films like Dream Demon and various mediocre Agatha Christie adaptations.

Heading to Criterion with extra stuff, including a B&W version of the film

https://www.criterion.com/films/30619-parasite

still love this movie but this mini trend of "B&W versions" as supplements (see also Fury Road) is awful

unfortunately boring cover art as well

Agreed, especially considering just how many striking images there are in the film.

Only just finally caught up with the film, btw. Unsurprisingly for me, I thought it worked far better in terms of craftsmanship than message. I do think the final ten minutes (everything post-birthday party) could have been summed up in one or two poignant shots, but whatever--I'm glad this was the hit that it was and that Bong Joon-Ho can probably do whatever he wants to do next.

The cover art for their new Pierrot Le Fou is boring af as well.

The Fury Road was IIRC Miller working specifically to create something detailed rather than going "LOL run it through a filter" but who knows.

the b&w Fury Road was discussed in advance as Miller wanting to do a new cut that also removed as much dialogue as possible, but afaict from a cinema viewing, was just a conversion - but it's definitely a sensitive and careful conversion, not just "turning the colour down"

Fury Road is also a pretty explicit tribute to Buster Keaton and the visual language of the silent era. Parasite otoh has so many specific detailed lighting & color choices that carry so much thematic weight, the idea of intentionally taking that stuff out is almost perverse.

Don't forget Logan Noir in terms of B/W versions.

One Eye Open otm, it seems to work against so many of the the most gorgeous shots in the movie.

Incorporating morse code into the cover art is one of those "better in concept than execution" things, imo. Too subtle I guess.

This was about architecture, right

m/l

Kang-ho song's portrayal of various extremes of injured shame and hopeless optimism are what will stay with me, jesus he is a wonder

the flooding scene in this movie made me wanna die

― american bradass (BradNelson), Sunday, 10 November 2019 00:31 (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

As always, after reading through a movie thread after catching that movie, i have to question just how bad loads of ppl are at following movies, rly

No offence to anyone above who missed loads of stuff, like, x

i also watched this last night!

this was the last movie i saw in a theatre before pandemic :(

Mine was memories of murder!

this was the last movie i saw in a theatre before pandemic :(

omg same! I think? I did go to the ballet the day before lockdown

also same. had just seen uncut gems around the same time.

Invisible Man was mine. well, I did make it to Tenet in the theater (as it was a low period of transmission and it was limited seating), but I haven't been since.

considering going to the movies was a 2x/week hobby for me, it's incredibly sad to have lost that. I used to pick showings at times that would be less attended, and just enjoy the peaceful evening alone in the theater vibing to the movies while drinking comically large sodas.

uncut gems was my second to last

Parasite and The Lighthouse were my last 2, on my last trip to Atlanta, Dec 2019.

Our local film festival was right before the first UK lockdown and I saw lots Inc Parasite, Lighthouse and JoJo Rabbit but the last thing I actually saw on the big screen was Black Narcissus in a church.

We went to a few things at GFF last year as well and it's strange thinking back now. The last things I saw were Bacurau, which was utterly packed out in a hot cinema 2, and Children Of Men.

My last was Portrait of a Lady On Fire which, bizarrely, was mentioned in Coronation Street last night using both the French and English titles.

I've been making Jjapaguri (a combination of Chapagetti and Neoguri), consisting of two different types of ramen and flavored with black bean sauce and shrimp broth. It is not made into a soup but eaten with less liquid as a savory noodle dish.

It was featured in that scene where Jang Hye-jin as Chung Sook the replacement housekeeper/cook was frantically making up a dish to satisfy the lady owner who was coming home. She made it by adding big sauteed chunks of sirloin

Just watched this over the weekend with my 19 year old son, at his recommendation. The entire cast is a treasure.

After seeing this a little while ago, I watched Memories of Murder and the short film Influenza last week. They're all powerful and feats of impressive control; maybe he's yet to make (or I've yet to see) the film that really connects in a deeper way.

So guys

This film is pretty good fyi

Well done.

I got there in the end!

But have you seen The Host?

I've scheduled that one for 2034

you should also check out Memories of Murder before the end of the century

otm

I tried watching this recently and for whatever reason, it gets way too suspenseful for me. There's a certain kind of suspense that has always caused me enormous levels of stress - that in which the protagonist is about to get caught doing something they shouldn't be. That scene seems like a masterful take on that, but unfortunately, fight or flight kicks in for me and my response is to turn the TV off and run out of the room. The first part where I shut it off was...

...when the Park family is coming home when their camping trip gets rained out and everybody is hurrying to hide. Ki-jung sliding under the coffee table as the family came walking up the stairs was just nightmarish levels of suspense for me and I noped out.

Then I left the movie off for about a month. I had allowed myself to come to terms with action of the movie and it had mellowed a little in my mind. I had thought that the suspense probably couldn't get any higher and it would taper off quickly, so I made another attempt at finishing it in the last week or so. And I got just a few minutes until...

...Mrs. Kim kicks the old housekeeper down the stairs (and might have broken her neck???).

I kinda would like to finish the movie (and last time I watched it, Hulu said it was on it's way out, so I might have missed my chance), but it also might just not be for me.

...at which point I couldn't deal with it and had to shut it off again.

the tension is masterfully delivered

yeah, scenes like that are tough for me also! i remember an INCREDIBLE feeling of tension in the theater in those parts; the coffee-table scene is what my brain goes to when i picture this movie. i also remember a really vivid sense that i was sharing this same nightmare with a couple hundred other people. i think that made it easier to bear, in a way?

i rewatched the host recently for the first time since i saw it in theaters and i did not love it as much as i remembered loving it. but i also saw memories of murder for the first time and that one is amazing. anyone who loves zodiac should also watch memories of murder, they are very similar conceptually in a lot of ways.

I’ve been wanting to watch MoM for so long but my wife is incredibly squeamish so might need to find a solo night

its such a tonally rich and strange and playful movie but when it wants to hit you, oof

You do what you must, but I've started anticipating Mickey 17. If the trailer can be trusted, the film leans way in to the comic potential. (The basic premise sounds rather similar to Moon (2009), which I thought was as grim as it was good.)

What happened to that project of making a series spin-off of Parasite?

xpost I was looking forward to it, too, because the trailer is good, but there are a couple of red flags that I don't know what to make of. The first is all the delays. The second is talk of fights over final cut, which Bong apparently had but which may have led to distribution conflicts. The third is this (final) January/winter release. Given the movie has a recognizable star, comes from a now globally known Oscar winning director, and seems darkly funny (or at least theoretically commercial), I wonder if there's more (or less) to the movie than it seems? Reportedly the completed film was submitted back in December 2023. There have been rumors that the various guild strikes caused delays, or that they wanted to release it for the Korean lunar New Year, or were waiting for IMAX space, but ... who knows. Honestly I'm shocked they didn't just dump it to streaming.

it's coming out in March, not January

I was about to say, it's not in the dump month any more.

i'm a little pissed because I started writing a short story about meeting (and being horrified) by one's own doppleganger, only to see the trailer for this about three days later.

lol it's moved so much that I totally forgot that March is its current final resting place. is it still scheduled to open up in Korea first?

I started writing a short story about meeting (and being horrified) by one's own doppleganger

There's a jesse eisenberg doppelganger movie that also inexplicably cameos J mascis, but the whole time I was thinking they could have saved so much trouble with having eisenberg play both roles if they'd also cast michael cera.

this looks strenuous! and wacky. wacky hair. sometimes people see the future as wacky.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA1s65o_kYM

Any time rpattz makes an accent choice I am here for it. Let’s fkn go etc

otm

also rpattz + director bong = solid press tour material: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFKObiLNW_D/?igsh=bDRtZ3gzeHdtenVl

how DID he come up with that voice? i wonder how long it took. he's a weird one.

read somewhere voices are part of his method, he’s never once used his actual accent in a movie since Harry Potter afaict

his voice work in The Boy and the Heron is fantastic and completely unrecognizable

looks like my kinda movie! maybe.

mickey 17 is pretty disappointing. the story is a mess, the script is not that great with a couple of extremely cringe moments, some questionable performances (especially ruffalo), just seemed to have a broad sense of 'wtf' running through it. maybe if you were in the mood for something extremely broad & unsubtle & daft you'd get something out of it.

as an Okja apologist/lover, I did not hate this, but still prob the worst Bong movie to date admittedly

your enjoyment of it will largely hinge on whether "Mark Ruffalo doing a terrible Trump impression" is an enticing proposition to you, the zoomers next to me were having the time of their lives

I mean, "extremely broad & unsubtle", you do know you were walking into a Bong Joon Ho movie, right

I know... I was thinking of parasite, which ok could be described that way but is also layered and complex and smart. this is not those things.

Disappointing to hear but not too surprising. I've only seen a handful of his films, and while none of them have been bad, only Memories of Murder and Parasite really connected as great films. Mother was interesting, I still liked that one even if I can barely remember much of it outside of the ending. Snowpiercer and The Host were entertaining, but they were pretty good examples of "broad and unsubtle" - very blunt ideas with little depth that were at least put across with style.

very blunt ideas with little depth that were at least put across with style.

That's what I want from him!

Gonna watch in 90 minutes. I actually found a 9 a.m. screening.

hmm weird, i loved this. the "messiness" felt like infinite possibility, i was buzzing at the end in that Parasite / Host way

*the movies that is, not like i was the host :)

as usual I want to drink prosecco with Steven Yeun prefatory to wild sex.

your enjoyment of it will largely hinge on whether "Mark Ruffalo doing a terrible Trump impression" is an enticing proposition to you

Definitely the most wearying element. I did like the film well enough, though.

Interesting. I thought Pattinson way more annoying.

first time I was ever disappointed by a BJH :(

from the guardian review:

a pivotal scene in which Naomi Ackie delivers a profanity-laden onslaught of truth to power is as galvanising as anything I’ve seen in the cinema so far this year.

^yes, that part was awful. I believe that's the same scene in which Ruffalo's character calls the baby alien a "shitgibbon".

In 2025 I find the crudeness of her speech a tonic like I wouldn't have in 2015.

This was great fun. Loved Pattinson's cartoony performance. I'm almost certain that Jean-Pierre Jeunet will see this and put Patsy Ferran on his casting wishlist, she looks just like one of his actors.

no to all of this, not for me

satire is dead btw

I feel like there's some parallel or lesson here regarding BJH and Ari Aster following up what are arguably all time great movies (Parasite and Midsomar) with self-indulgent messes

I don't think this film is satire -- it means exactly what it says.

It's much closer to a crowdpleasing blockbuster, that's my only real complaint other than being a bit on the nose. But Bong's version of Movie-Movie: The Movie is still very good.

ruffalo was hilarious in this i thought. very fun movie about being really exasperated with the self you were five minutes ago. not self-indulgent in the least imo

i liked this a lot, its not subtle but i think subtlety would be the wrong move for this kind of movie, its a really nice sledgehammer

I was disappointed by Mickey 17. A good premise that ends up getting buried by way too many sidequests which in turn get abandoned before they get properly explored. The satire is in-your-face but ultimately isn't saying anything particularly new or interesting. And it all just gets upturned into a boilerplate Avatar-style alien movie. Some good performances from Ruffallo and Collette, but even they fell foul to some nonsensical plot directions

I felt like a right grump in this because everyone around me was laughing their socks off at pretty much every line, and someone even attempted a clap at the end

the descriptions sound right in line with Snowpiercer and Okja, I think this broad and unfocused zaniness is just his brand and Parasite somehow managed to be a bit more focused and serious

I'll say that Parasite kind of suffered for similar reasons for me. I enjoyed it more, but I would have preferred both these films if they'd stuck to the core ideas set up in the first half. Parasite wobbles for me once they discover the couple living behind the walls.
Similarly, I'd have preferred Mickey if it was just a film about a guy who meets his clone and has to deal with the situation. There are characters, like Kai for example, who get introduced and then barely show up again. It was frustrating as I really like the premise and he could easily have made a whole film about that. Similarly I'd have been happier with Parasite if it were just the family atritionally worming their ways into the rich people's house

Parasite absolutely has all these qualities, but just manages to dial them back ever so much

a pivotal scene in which Naomi Ackie

https://img.ifunny.co/images/b878f6c3179ddef06759c1f504bcc9000fff54c29af0bf35c116bfc9a96b655f_1.jpg

is as galvanising as anything I’ve seen in the cinema so far this year.

I've seen tons of people making fun of Wendig but I'm not getting the comparison here

The big speech has the word “shitgibbon” in it

Fair enough

Or maybe not, haven't read his books, I just know the reputation

Loved Pattinson's cartoony performance.

a trivia tidbit before the film mentioned that he was heavily inspired by ren & stimpy while preparing for his role(s)

I seen him say anime and that worried me before watching (I've seen a lot of bad acting that looked that way) but I thought it worked really well

oh, i thought he was great. ren & stimpy are great influences. i didn’t care for the film but i have started to audibly groan whenever learning that the latest movie is, once again, produced by A24

Does A24 make films worse than they would otherwise have been?

i thought this was fun. it's not much more than fun, but at times it's really fun.

Never really understood the hate / coolness towards A24 really. I like their films on the whole

there were three a24 trailers before mickey 17, at least one of them looked like complete pish (death of a unicorn) - it gave the impression they're going for quantity over quality.

i think theyre going for a process/vibe rather than either and thats not really much use either

I've only seen a fraction of A24's slate, but I can't say I've seen a recurring aesthetic pattern that makes me want to especially like or dislike them. Obviously they're known for the way they market films and they clearly take on many films that major studios sadly no longer do, but C'mon C'mon, The Florida Project, The Brutalist, The Zone of Interest, Under the Skin, Uncut Gems, First Cow, Showing Up, The Souvenir I & II, The Eternal Daughter, First Reformed, Lady Bird, Moonlight, High Life, Stars at Noon...I don't think they're all great films, but if this is what they distribute, long may they run.

midsommar! hereditary! i saw the tv glow! love lies bleeding!

i'm as pro-a24 as i can be toward a production company. they throw their money at a lot of things i end up loving

great physical media releases as well

huh I only notice entertainment companies when I get sent a batch or something during awards season. I couldn't distinguish Sony Picture Classics from A24, for example. Their box sets are lavish, though, in the best way.

I loved Funny Pages so much

i think of A24 as like, the dream of 90s indie is alive in horror

A24 has become a cool brand for a lot of young cinephiles, in the way that an indie music label like Matador or Sub Pop was in the 90s. Sony Picture Classics puts out a lot of good movies but doesn't have its own merch or dedicated subreddit.

It's the only one my students recognize, which surprised me.

In a way, they've taken Oscilloscope's original blueprint and became much more successful. To be clear, Oscilloscope remains a success (and they may have been Kelly Reichardt's first notable distributor before A24), but for various reasons, I don't think they were ever going to blow up the way A24 has. Part of it sadly has to do with Yauch dying - it was always his baby and some time after he passed away, it felt like the company became comparatively quiet for a while. Also, IIRC it was mainly funded by the money he made with the Beastie Boys, which gave it a lot of independence, but it also meant they couldn't be reckless with their spending either. (It's a lot of money, but not, say, the Oracle money Megan Ellison had.)

I went to a panel with someone from A24 (I think it was around the time Room came out, which was their first big Oscar-winning movie) and I think he said that the company really needed every film they did to succeed because one bomb would have been enough to sink them completely. This was presented as a common reality among indie companies of that size. But they definitely took some calculated chances, and he used Spring Breakers as an example. I don't remember all the details, but they said they purposely marketed it in misleading fashion because they realized they could make much more opening weekend than they were accustomed to if they attracted a crowd looking for an MTV teen comedy, enough that they would break even right away. The catch was they'd get a huge backlash, and indeed that's what happened (the audience scores were really low), but they also banked on critical word-of-mouth attracting the arthouse crowd, which would probably trickle in after the first week.

A24 has some great merch.

https://shop.a24films.com/collections/collectibles

Yup. Again, not unlike Oscilloscope (who still offer Shortbus lube!)

I liked Parasite, but I thought this was just a complete mess. So much expository voiceover, pantomime baddies, narrative all over the place, characters you don't care about and are hardly characters, a conceit that's been done many times before and done much better, attempts at humour that fall flat...

It really does feel like a whole bunch of stuff was cut out of this m. But that doesn't explain why they decided to leave so much in. I keep thinking about the nightmare dream sequence at the end and what purpose it served. And the whole Kai/love-rectangle storyline that gets set up but gets totally dropped. And how Narsha's whole character and way of being seems to switch constantly throughout the film, from being friendly and easy-going, to aggressively possessive, to wildly irrational and irresponsible, to being fiercely defiant and upstanding - it's very inconsistent, and I wasn't sure even what to think of her as a person for a lot of it

Idk I kinda liked how uh fluid many of the character personalities were. 18 wasn't a total villain, Kai wasn't fully a partisan or a revolutionary, Nasha obv had a lot of facets. You could say its sloppy writing or weird editing, or that it makes them feel less one-dimensional and that your (my) imagination fills in the gaps.

my friends walked out of this and claimed it was 'bad terry gilliam'. I see their point, but I still found it enjoyable.

I saw it last night and it was a very fun theater experience. But yeah, it's a bit weird in that it's already long and I didn't want it to be longer, but it felt like there was a lot left to be explored. Especially with the expendables/human printing (I think the nightmare at the end was meant to bring it back around thematically, but it felt tacked on for sure).

The way the human printer printed out humans did make me laugh though, just like a paper printer

At the end, was it meant to be implied that they'd reprinted the girlfriend who died earlier?

I thought that too, but no, my friends confirmed that was a different character (shown early on in the first cafeteria scene looking skeptical of Ruffalo). Good because it wouldn't have made much sense with the way they set up the technology.

Bong Joon Ho season at BFI kicks off in April.

maybe if you were in the mood for something extremely broad & unsubtle & daft you'd get something out of it.

had a great time!

i didn’t care for the film but i have started to audibly groan whenever learning that the latest movie is, once again, produced by A24

A24 did not produce this film.

If you want to argue with the A24 aesthetic as perceived through theatrical experiences, this is probably a complete list of narrative and documentary releases: Moonlight (2016), The Lovers (2017), It Comes At Night (2017), Lady Bird (2017), Hereditary (2018), Eighth Grade (2018), Mid90s (2018), Midsommar (2019), The Farewell (2019), The Death Of Dick Long (2019), The Lighthouse (2019), Waves (2019), Uncut Gems (2019), Minari (2021), The Green Knight (2021), C'Mon C'Mon (2021), Red Rocket (2021), X and Pearl (2022), EEAAO (2022), Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022), Funny Pages (2022), God's Creatures (2022), Aftersun (2022), The Inspection (2022), The Whale (2022), When You Finish Saving The World (2022), Showing Up (2023), Beau Is Afraid (2023), You Hurt My Feelings (2023), Past Lives (2023), Earth Mama (2023), Dicks: The Musical (2023), Priscilla (2023), All Dirt Roads Taste Of Salt (2023), Dream Scenario (2023), The Zone Of Interest (2023), The Iron Claw (2023), Occupied City (2023), Problemista (2024), Love Lies Bleeding (2024), Civil War (2024), I Saw The TV Glow (2024), Tuesday (2024), Janet Planet (2024), MaXXXine (2024), The Front Room (2024), Look Into My Eyes (2024), A Different Man (2024), Heretic (2024), Y2K (2024), babygirl (2024), On Becoming A Guinea Fowl (2025) and Opus (2025).

it gave the impression they're going for quantity over quality.

They've built gradually over a decade to about a film a month; I probably see a little over half of that slate in theatres (almost never knowing the production company beforehand) and certainly don't feel I've been shovelled makeweight looking back at that list, regardless of how much I've liked individual films.

Nah that is a fecking list of bangers imo

Only seen about half a dozen. Midsommar and The Zone of Interest were really thin portraits of fascism.

Favourite one of these was Uncut Gems.

I saw the TV Glow, Moonlight and Past Lives were somewhere in between. Solid.

Was Midsommar a portrait of fascism?

it wasn’t

Kind of what I picked up on anyway it sucked

Beau Is Afraid / Dicks: The Musical makes a for a good-time double-dong-feature

I liked Midsommar quite a lot for many reasons. Not sure where the fascism bit comes in - it had a lot of different themes but I really don't think that's what they were exploring at all.

Zone Of Interest was pretty good, I thought. It had one trick, but it did it well in exemplifying the banality of evil; but having one trick didn't make it thin

loved Midsomar, don't see anything in it related to any sort of totalitarianism, it's about cults and wanting to belong

Different readings: let's have them and be happy.

yeah it would help if the reading had any fucking thing to do with the movie

ah, I get it. you get to immolate your boyfriend if you join fascism

sorry, that was what popped into my head and I was giggling

I enjoyed this except for Ruffalo and Colette, who were supremely unfunny. Ruffalo in “comedy mode” is rarely a good thing. Thought Pattinson was excellent.

I disliked Ruffalo in this in the same way I disliked him in Poor Things.

But I quite liked this movie! Surprised by RPatz's comedy chops. He had a vibe not unlike Tim Blake Nelson. In fact for some reason it was making me think of Slaughterhouse Five (not that Ive ever seen a film of that!).

Are y'all qualifying? I love Ruffalo when he's loose and crinkly, not when he's self-consciously playing funny?

Ruffalo isn't one of my favorite actors out there in any case. Like Pedro Pascal and a few other contemporary favorites I find the guy to be a bland presence, merely serviceable. But when he extends himself into doing comedy it's kind of embarrassing. "Cringe", if you will haha

Also, what happened to the Kai character? One minute she's negotiating with Nasha and then she's gone. Anamaria Vartolomei...my heart stopped a little when she was onscreen.

There are characters, like Kai for example, who get introduced and then barely show up again...

― DLC Soundsystem (dog latin), Thursday, March 13, 2025 7:16 PM (three weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

I see DL already made this point way upthread, oops. Overall, it's the kind of well-made, "zany" (sci fi) flick I'd normally run away from if a less skilled director had tackled it.

aye, if i had to pick just one frustration with this film it was this. Baffling that the film forgets about almost everything that happened in the first part to make way for a limp Arrival / Avatar pastiche

I was mostly enjoying this until the last half an hour or so when it seemed to fall to pieces completely

I enjoyed this while I was watching it but it hasn't left much of a lasting impression. Way too much of a sense of studio interference in the script (whether this was the case or not), leading to a dog's dinner of a storyline. "We need cute aliens!" etc. Would have worked better as a smaller scale black comedy if you ask me, which they didn't.

The only thing I liked about this was RPattz, basically.
It all just kind of washed over me.

However I did enjoy the physicality & visuals of the “human printer”, the way it judderingly prints ppl like a laser desktop printer & they keep forgetting to set up the tray so the printed Mickey just flops lifelessly onto the floor

i think if i enjoyed edibles i would like this a lot more maybe