The Apartment with Two Women (2021) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4): A mother and daughter stuck with each other

Posted on November 13, 2022 by kaist455

South Korean independent film “The Apartment with Two Women” is one hell of family drama to say the least. Mainly revolving around the toxic mother and daughter relationship between its two very different main characters, the movie often strikes us quite hard with numerous painful moments of searing emotional intensity, and it is undeniably one of the most impressive South Korean films during this year. To be frank with you, I happened to be quite exhausted when I watched the film during last evening, but my eyes and mind were soon galvanized by what was so powerfully presented on the screen, and I must confess that I often braced myself throughout its rather long running time.

At the beginning, we get to know how things are miserable for a young woman named I-jeong (Lym Ji-ho) as she lives with her mother Soo-kyeong (Yang Mal-bok) day by day in their cheap apartment. As a frequently self-absorbed woman of abrasive personality and attitude, Soo-kyeong does not care that much about her sullen daughter, and I-jeong has been accustomed to how insensitive and abusive her mother can be, but they cannot help but clash with each other over trivial matters, and there eventually comes a point where Soo-kyeong commits something quite serious shortly after her latest fight with I-jeong.

After this serious incident, I-jeong finally decides that enough is enough, but, despite some defiance, she still finds herself stuck with her mother as before just because, well, she does not have enough money to live independently. She does have a job, but her job is not that promising, and she is not even good at her job due to her apparent lack of social skills, though she manages to get better after receiving some advices from her boss.

The movie also pays attention to how Soo-kyeong reaches for a nice chance for better life. There is some widower guy who may marry her someday, and it seems that all she has to do is being nice to not only him but also his adolescent daughter, though that turns out to be not so easy at all. At one point, Soo-kyeong attempts to ingratiate herself with them via her special cooking, but she only finds herself quite embarrassed in front of them to our little amusement.

In the meantime, Soo-kyeong and I-jeong continue to clash with each other as usual, and that eventually prompts I-jeong to leave their apartment at last. Not knowing what to do next, I-jeong comes to depend on one of her co-workers, who generously lets I-jeong stay at her little residence for a while but then quickly becomes wary of I-jeong for understandable reasons. Still being an emotionally stunted kid craving for any kind of care or consolation, I-jeong cannot help but lean and stick more and more on her co-worker as time goes by, and that is certainly the last thing her co-worker wants.

As Soo-kyeong and I-jong struggle to deal with their respective personal issues besides their very problematic relationship, the screenplay by director/writer Kim Se-in does not make any excuse or compromise at all as clearly examining their persistent human flaws. Yes, there eventually comes a point where Soo-kyeong and I-jong confront their longtime emotional issues between them in private, but that does not lead to any kind of reconciliation or ventilation at all. As a stubborn woman who has been adamantly going her way for years, Soo-kyeong refuses to apologize for all those years of emotional and physical abuses inflicted on her daughter, and that makes I-jeong all the more despaired and frustrated than before. Yes, she does know that she should really get away from her terrible mother and her virulent influence as soon as possible, but their emotional bond still feels so strong that she may not be completely free from her mother during the rest of her life.

Under Kim’s unadorned but strong direction, the movie steadily carries the story and characters to the end without never losing its grip on audiences, and its two lead actresses give two of the best South Korean movie performances of this year. While Yang Mal-bok, whom you may recognize her for her small supporting turn in the first season of South Korean Netflix TV Series “Squid Game”, is simply astonishing in her utterly uncompromising performance, Lym Ji-ho is also superlative as her equal acting match, and it is constantly electrifying to watch how their characters dynamically pull and push each other throughout the story. Although the movie does not show much the past between their characters except one moment, Yang and Lym ably let us sense a long history of anger and resentment between them, and we come to understand their complex emotional issues more even though we often observe them from the distance.

Around Yang and Lym, Kim places several good main cast members, who are believable as real human characters to observe. While Kwon Jung-eun has a couple of nice scenes as Soo-kyeong’s best friend, Yang Heung-joo brings some humor to the story as Soo-kyeong’s hapless potential suitor, and Jung Bo-ram is also very effective as I-jeong’s co-worker, who may be not so different from I-jeong despite their personality difference.

In conclusion, “The Apartment with Two Women”, which is incidentally Kim’s first feature film, is a brutal but undeniably compelling piece of work relentlessly fueled by its two unforgettable main characters, and it deserves to be compared with Yang Ik-Joon’s “Breathless” (2008), a great South Korean film which is about another kind of virulent family relationship. This is indeed a very tough and challenging stuff, but it is surely a powerful film you should not miss, and I assure you that you will not regret in the end.

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First Child (2021) ☆☆☆(3/4): As she is cornered into motherhood

Posted on November 13, 2022 by kaist455

South Korean independent film “First Child” often feels like a social horror film. As calmly observing its heroine desperately struggling to balance herself between her career and motherhood, the movie makes some sharp points on how harsh and insensitive the South Korean society can be to many women like her, and it is often disheartening to watch her gradually pushed and cornered toward a role imposed upon her right from her pregnancy.

During its early part, the movie shows us how its heroine attempts to resume her career after raising her one-year-old daughter during last several months. While she has been absent for more than one year, Jeong-ah (Park Ha-sun) is ready to work again, and her supervisor does not have seem to have much problem with having her back, though he makes a rather insensitive remark on motherhood in front of her.

As Jeong-ah is absent at her apartment, her dear little daughter is going to be taken care of by a hired nanny instead of a generous neighbor who has usually done that job, but there is one little problem. She wants a South Korean nanny, but the agency sends a Korean Chinese woman named Hwa-ja (Oh Min-ae) instead. At first, Jeong-ah considers simply sending away this woman, but, after seeing how Hwa-ja handles her daughter well, she decides to give a chance to Hwa-ja at least for a while, and Jeong-ah’s husband has no problem with that at all despite his prejudice against Korean Chinese people.

During next several days, everything looks like going pretty well for Jeong-ah at her home as well as her workplace, but, of course, there comes a sudden problem. On one day, Hwa-ja suddenly becomes absent along with Jeong-ah’s daughter for no apparent reason, and Jeong-ah is naturally thrown into panic. Not long after she returns to her apartment in the evening, Hwa-ja eventually returns along with Jeong-ah’s daughter, but she does not explain anything to Jeong-ah or her husband at all.

Quite angry about this incident, Jeong-ah fires Hwa-ja, and Hwa-ja leaves without any protest, but Jeong-ah’s daily life soon becomes quite messy. Because that generous neighbor of hers cannot take care of her daughter due to a personal matter, Jeong-ah naturally looks for any daycare center available to her, but there is not any daycare center which can accept her daughter right now, and that makes her all the more desperate and frustrated than before.

Meanwhile, Jeong-ah’s husband begins to suggest that she should be a full-time mother instead of trying to work again, and she also cannot help but feel more pressured at her workplace as her supervisor demands more from her in one way or another. There is a young female employee who was hired not long after Jeong-ah’s pregnancy, and it begins to look quite possible to Jeong-ah that this young woman will replace her someday if Jeong-ah does not work as much as expected by her supervisor.

Meanwhile, Jeong-ah’s problem with Hwa-ja becomes more complicated than expected. She subsequently discovers a possible sign of physical abuse on her daughter’s body, and her husband is certainly furious when he belatedly learns of that. When they eventually go to where Hwa-ja lives, it turns out that Hwa-ja has a very complicated situation behind her back, and that brings more conflict to Jeong-ah’s increasingly stressful mind. Seeing how Hwa-ja is not so different from her, she tries to make some amends, but Hwa-ja flatly reminds her of the considerable social gap between them, and that makes Jeong-ah all the more regrettable with more stress and doubt upon her.

The final act of the story will not surprise you much as Jeong-ah is thrown into more despair and frustration, but the movie continues to hold our attention under director/writer Hurjung-jae’s thoughtful direction. It does not have anything new to tell you if you are familiar with how many South Korean women have often been repressed and exploited by the patriarchy inside the South Korean society, but many of its key scenes are handled with enough realism and thoughtfulness, and we keep following Jeong-ah’s inevitable narrative course even though we wince more than once for good reasons. Around the end of the movie, the camera simply looks at her from the behind, but that is more than enough for us to sense the quiet emotional devastation below the surface.

Hur also draws the strong lead performance from Park Ha-sun, who ably conveys to us her character’s gradual mental implosion along the story. Park is also supported well by several main cast members including Oh Min-ae and Kong Seong-ha, and both Oh and Kong have each own moment to stand out while never overshadowing Park’s harrowing acting at all.

Overall, “First Child”, which is incidentally Huh’s first feature film, is a solid character drama mixed with some relevant gender issues, and it surely deserves to be mentioned along with many other recent notable South Korean female drama films such as “Kim Ji-young, Born 1982” (2019). Yes, this is surely not something you can casually watch on Sunday afternoon, but it is worthwhile to watch mainly thanks to Park’s commendable acting, and I assure you that you will reflect more on its gender issues once the movie is over.

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Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) ☆☆☆ (3/4): The ladies carry on

Posted on November 10, 2022 by kaist455

We can only imagine what would follow “Black Panther” (2018) if Chadwick Boseman had not died so early, but I am happy to report that its sequel “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” is much more than a mere next chapter. Although it takes a bit too long to build its story and characters, the movie really cares about what is happening among its main characters from the beginning, and that is more than enough for me to overlook its several notable flawed aspects including its overlong climactic part.

After the prologue sequence which is poignant as one last salute to Boseman and his character, the movie moves onto what is going on around Wakanda one year after his character’s untimely death. After Wakanda fully exposed its considerable hidden power to the outside world, many countries including US become all the more eager to get any chance for the access to its precious mineral Vibranium, and Queen Ramona (Angela Bassett), who succeeded upon her dear son’s death, has defiantly been standing on their way because she knows too well the potential dangers from spreading Vibranium all over the world.

Meanwhile, Shuri (Letitia Wright), who is now the queen’s only child, is still struggling with the anger and grief from her older brother’s death. Even though she tries to look all right on the surface, her mother knows better, and we eventually get a little tender mother and daughter moment as they talk with each other a bit on their common loss and grief in private.

However, there soon comes an urgent matter which threatens not only them but also everyone else in Wakanda. A mysterious figure named Namor (Tenoch Huerta, a promising Mexican actor whom you may remember for his notable supporting turns in “Sin Nombre” (2009) and “Tigers Are Not Afraid” (2017)) suddenly breaks into Wakanda, and this dude turns out to be the powerful ruler of a hidden underwater kingdom which has been hidden from the outside world for many years just like Wakanda once was. His kingdom also depends a lot on Vibranium, and he is not so pleased when his underwater territory is being violated by the US government, which has been covertly searching for Vibranium around the world outside Wakanda.

What Namor demands involves with a young but very smart adolescent girl named Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), who inadvertently invented something which came to assist the underwater search for Vibranium by the US government. Namor and his mighty marine warriors, who sometimes look like the distant cousins of those alien tribe people in “Avatar” (2009), are quite willing to eliminate Williams for protecting their underwater kingdom, but Queen Ramora does not like this at all, and she naturally comes to seek for any alternative less violent than that.

Instead of promptly going for action, the screenplay by director Ryan Coolger, who has steadily impressed us since his remarkable debut feature film “Fruitvale Station” (2013), and his co-writer Joe Robert Cole, takes a considerable amount of time for character development. While Namor is presented as a reasonable antagonist driven by understandable motives, Shuri’s struggle with her grief and anger along the story is handled with care and understanding, and her relationships with several other substantial Wakanda characters including her mother are depicted well with enough human elements to engage us.

Above all, the movie feels much more distinctive than other run-of-the-mill Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) flicks in terms of mood, style, and details. Costume designer Ruth E. Carter and production designers Hannah Beachler and Jason T. Clark are certainly having lots of fun here with mixing various cultural elements into the fantasy world of the film, and I was amused a bit by an underwater sequence showing Namor’s underwater kingdom (I notice that they can somehow speak and hear pretty well in water just like the characters of “Aquaman” (2019)).

In the end, the movie culminates to the climactic action sequence where lots of things busily happen, and that is where my attention dwindled a little. No, Coogler did a competent job of handling all those busy actions on the screen without getting lost at all, but this part is relatively less engaging than the real human moments observed from its main characters, and I do not think what is shown in the middle of the end credits fits that well with what is so powerfully shown from those brave feminist ladies of Wakanda in the film.

Anyway, the movie keeps rolling under Coogler’s deft direction, and he also draws the superlative acting from many of his main cast members. While Letitia Wright ably holds the center, Angela Bassett, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Guiria, and Dominique Thorne have each own moment to shine, and Bassett is simply indomitable during her several key scenes including one particular dramatic moment later in the story. Around these marvelous actresses, Winston Duke and Martin Freeman are solid as before, and I will let you be surprised by the crucial cameo appearance by some other certain main cast member of the previous film.

In conclusion, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” wisely takes a new direction, and the overall result is fairly compelling even though it does not surpass its predecessor, which is the best thing from MCU in my humble opinion. I have been getting tired more and more of those MCU products for the frequently glaring lack of individual personality and style, but “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” demonstrates here that there are still interesting things to watch, and I am actually having expectation for whatever may come next.

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Wendell & Wild (2022) ☆☆☆(3/4): Henry Selick’s new stop-motion animation film

Posted on November 8, 2022 by kaist455

Animation feature film “Wendell & Wild”, which was released on Netflix a few weeks ago, deserves to be welcomed for a number of good reasons. Henry Selick, who gave us “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993) and “James and the Giant Peach” (1996), has been rather quiet since his previous work “Coraline” (2009), but “Wendell & Wild” shows that he has not lost any of his dark wit and artistic sensibility yet, and you will willingly overlook its several shortcomings if you admire Selick’s works as much as I do.

At first, the story, which is based on the unpublished book of the same name by Selick and his co-author Clay McLeod Chapman, is mainly about Katherine “Kat” Koniqua Elliot (voiced by Lyric Ross), a feisty juvenile delinquent who, as she admits to us at the beginning of the film, has had some personal demons to deal with for several years. When she was a little kid living in one small town named Rust Bank, her loving parents, who had run a big local brewery together, died at one dark and stormy night due to an unfortunate car accident, and Kat still feels guilty and angry about what happened at that time.

After her parents’ death, Kat were moved around here and there outside Rust Bank without anyone to lean on, and then she is sent back to an all-girl Catholic dormitory school in Rust Bank as a part of its rehabilitation program funded by some wealthy local couple. Right from her first day, she surely shows others around her that she is not someone who will get along well with them, but then she comes to befriend Raúl Cocolotl (voiced by Sam Zelaya) a bit because, well, he is a loner just like her as a trans kid (The level of diversity shown from the characters of the film will put many of recent American major animation films to shame, by the way).

And then something strange happens to Kat on one day. During a class supervised by Sister Helley (voiced by Angela Bassett), she happens to acquire a sort of magical mark which somehow connects her with Wendell (Keegan-Michael Key) and Wild (voiced by co-producer/co-writer Jordan Peele), a couple of frustrated demons who have been hopelessly stuck in their underground world along with their big boss. Having been so eager to build their own amusement park, these two demons certainly welcome Kat because she can open a portal for their escape as a “hell maiden”, and they soon have her make a questionable deal with them.

Of course, their arrival leads to nothing but troubles, and it is fun to see how the film throws lots of various story elements into its plot. Besides Kat’s longtime struggle with her guilt and anger, there are also 1) a sleazy business scheme involved with privatized prisons to be built on the Rust Bank sooner or later, 2) a small but defiant local protest against that deplorable business scheme, 3) a bunch of old corpses to be revived by Wendell and Wild, and 4) a subplot involved with Sister Helley and one cranky disabled school janitor, who turns out to have a little twisted collection in his private place.

All these and other elements do not mix that well together at times, but Selick and his crew members steadily provide good moments to enjoy for style, mood, and, above all, personality. As shown from “Coraline”, Selick does not flinch at all from dark and unpleasant stuffs, and “Wendell & Wild” surely has a fair share twisted amusement for us. For instance, some of the main characters in the film look not just broad but also grotesque, and the film has a lot of naughty fun especially when those corpses are revived to become your average walking dead later in the story.

Furthermore, the film distinguishes itself via its distinctive qualities from stop-motion animation. While you can clearly see that Selick and his crew members also used a considerable amount of CGI for making the characters and backgrounds look more realistic and dynamic, they did put lots of painstaking efforts into every frame as shown from a series of video clips inserted into the end credits (Netflix thankfully lets us watch the movie to the very end this time, by the way), and you will come to appreciate more of their efforts.

I must point out that the film juggles a bit too many things and loses its narrative momentum as a result. Perhaps, it could be tighter and more focused, but this weak aspect is just mildly distracting as the film keeps hoping from one good visual moment to another, and the film has a bunch of good cast members who did a commendable job of bringing enough life and personality to their respective roles. While Lyric Ross holds the center with her plucky voice acting, Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele click with each other as well as they did in their acclaimed TV comedy sketch show “Key & Peele”, and several other cast members including Sam Zelaya, Angela Bassett, James Hong, and Ving Rhames are also solid in their respective supporting part.

Overall, “Wendell & Wild” is an enjoyable animation film packed with enough dark goodies for your autumn night, and it is surely a nice treat for anyone looking for something different from those run-of-the-mill digital animation flicks. It does not reach to the level of “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993) or “Coraline” (2009), but this is still a fun stuff on the whole, and you should not miss it in my trivial opinion. Yes, a good animation film is not just for kids but for everyone, and the boundless spirit and imagination of “Wendell & Wild” prove that undeniable fact again.

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The Stranger (2022) ☆☆☆(3/4): As he becomes close to his suspect

Posted on November 7, 2022 by kaist455

Australian Netflix film “The Stranger”, which was released in last month, is a chilly psychological drama which is incidentally based on one true crime story. I have no idea on how much the movie is actually close to its real-life story, but I can tell you instead that the movie works as a nice showcase for the talents of its two very good lead performers, and their uneasy interactions throughout the screen still linger on my mind even at this point.

The movie opens with the introduction of a low-life ex-con named Henry Peter Teague (Sean Harris). When he is riding a bus at one night, he is approached by some dude who happens to sit near him, and, after coming to see that Paul Emery (Steve Mouzakis) is not so different form him as your average ex-con, Teague helps Emery a bit when Emery comes to have a little document problem. Some time later, Emery contacts with him for returning the favor, and Teague does not say no although it is clear that a job offered by Emery is not so legal to say the least. After all, he desperately needs to earn some money for his living right now.

Emery introduces Teague to a guy named Mark Frame (Joel Edgerton), who in turn introduces Teague to several criminals working above him. It seems that they are the members of some powerful local criminal organization, and they are interested in hiring Teague for some dirty jobs – if he is trustworthy enough without any problem to notice.

What follows next is how Teague slowly gets the confidence of Frame and his criminal associates. For example, when Paul subsequently happens to get himself into some big trouble and needs to go away right now, Teague willingly takes care of getting rid of everything left by Paul along with Frame, and that soon leads him to more jobs and more “promotion”.

However, there is something Teague did not tell Frame and others from the beginning, and they already know, because, this is not a spoiler at all, they are actually undercover cops assigned to Teague. Several years ago, Teague was suspected of abducting and murdering a young boy, but he had to be released because there was no strong evidence to convict him. Besides that the police still cannot locate where the body of that young boy was buried, there is also a big alibi problem which has been another obstacle for the police investigation, and the movie pays some attention to how Detective Senior Constable Kate Rylett (Jada Alberts) struggles to solve this alibi problem with her partner in addtion to digging more into Teague’s rather suspicious past before the incident.

Meanwhile, Frame comes to befriend Teague more as “working” with him more, and he finds himself going back and forth between pity and repulsion. As a longtime undercover cop, he knows too well that he should be distant from Teague no matter what happens, but he cannot help but feel conflicted as observing how pathetic Teague is in many ways, even though he is also quite chilled by the dark and disturbing sides occasionally shown from Teague. As a matter of fact, his target’s creepy aspects even influence Frame’s subconsciousness somehow, and that also affects his relationship with his young son, of whom he occasionally takes care whenever his ex-wife is not available.

Frame’s supervisor is naturally concerned about Frame’s mental condition, but he and Frame have no choice but to go on as before because it looks like they and their colleagues are almost close to the finishing line. All they need to do is pushing their target a bit for making him confining to them on how he covered up his murder, though, as pointed out later in the film, they will still need to find the body of the murdered boy even after that.

The mood accordingly becomes more tense as Frame and his colleagues are pushing Teague to the final stage of their covert operation at last, but the screenplay by director/writer Thomas M. Wright, which is based on Kate Kyriacou’s nonfiction book “The Undercover Operation That Caught Daniel Morcombe’s Killer”, stays cool and detached as usual. We surely get to know a bit about Teague’s certain horrible past, but the movie wisely restrains itself instead of resorting to unnecessary sensationalism, and it maintains its restrained attitude even when its two main characters are finally not hiding anything from each other anymore.

The two lead performers of the film give a subtle but intense duo performance which strongly carries the story to the end. While Joel Edgerton, an ever-reliable Australian actor who also participated in the production of the movie, ably conveys to us his character’s growing mental toil along the story, Sean Harris, who has been one of the most intense British character actors since I noticed his solid supporting turn in Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus” (2012), deftly handle his elusive character without making any excuse, and he and Edgerton are also supported well by a number of good cast members including Steve Mouzakis, Matthew Sunderland, Fletcher Humphrys, and Jada Alberts, who effectively functions as providing another perspective to the story.

On the whole, “The Stranger” is a dry but engaging genre flick with considerable haunting qualities, and I admire its solid technical aspects including the cinematography by Sam Chiplin, who did an impressive job of filling the screen with palpable gray atmosphere. It may be a bit too slow for you, but it will be a rewarding experience once you give it a chance, and it is surely one of the better offerings from Netflix in this year.

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Hot in Day, Cold at Night (2022) ☆☆☆(3/4): Things are not so bad for them…

Posted on November 6, 2022 by kaist455

South Korean independent film “Hot in Day, Cold at Night” is a little modest character drama about one young couple who try to live one day after another despite their apparently difficult economic status. Although it is a bit too slow and dry at times, the movie is often engaging and even humorous while never overlooking their hard daily struggles, and you may admire it more if you come to learn more about how it was made under its tight production budget.

The early part of the film gradually establishes how Yeong-tae (Park Song-yeol) and Jeong-hee (Won Hyang-ra) live day by day in their small residence. While Jeong-hee is a schoolteacher currently unemployed, Yeong-tae has earned their meager living via a part-time driving service job, but things do not look bad for them because they are still happy to be together even while recognizing their economic hardship at present.

Naturally, you may expect something bad to happen to them sooner or later, but the movie simply focuses more on their strong relationship for a while. While often sharing the increasing frustration with their lack of money, Yeong-tae and Jeong-hee also enjoy having some little comfort together from time to time, and they sincerely hope that everything will be fine for them in the end once any chance for a good job comes to them.

However, such chances do not come easily. Via a friend of his, who incidentally borrowed a video camera from him, Yeong-tae comes to have a seemingly good job interview, but he later gives up just because he has a bad impression from his interviewer. When she subsequently comes across a chance to work as a substitute teacher instead of a friend of hers, Jeong-hee does not hesitate at all, but she makes one big mistake on the day when she is supposed to go to a school where her friend works.

And there are also some potential dangers around them. At one point, Yeong-tae has a meeting with some other old friend of his, and it does not take much time for him to realize that this friend is attempting to lure him into a pyramid scheme of his. As their lack of money becomes more evident day by day, Jeong-hee finds herself tempted about getting some necessary money via a local loan shark mentioned by her friend, and she becomes all the more tempted than before when she and Yeong-tae visit her mother’s residence for her mother’s birthday along with her several siblings and their respective spouses. All of her several siblings are clearly much more affluent than her and her husband, and they are certainly embarrassed when they belatedly see that they do not prepare anything in contrast to her siblings and their respective spouses.

In the end, Jeong-hee contacts with that local loan shark, but, to our little surprise and amusement, the loan shark turns out to be a bit more generous than expected. Besides gently and thoughtfully explaining what Jeong-hee will have to do in exchange of the money she is going to get, the loan shark even shows a little generosity just because Jeong-hee is deemed trustworthy on the whole, and Jeong-hee is confident that she will soon take care of this matter without telling her husband at all.

Of course, the situation subsequently becomes more problematic for both Jeong-hee and her husband. While they continue to be short of cash everyday, Yeong-tae remains stuck in his part-time job, and he also comes to have a problem with that friend who borrowed his camera but has not returned it to him yet. When the time to pay the interest comes, Jeong-hee tries to handle this problem as soon as possible, but, alas, there comes a point where she cannot possibly hide it from her husband anymore.

Nonetheless, the screenplay by director Park Song-yeol and his wife Won Hyang-ra, who also assisted her husband in several other parts besides appearing along with him in front of the camera (They previously worked together in Park’s feature debut film “Can We Just Love” (2018), by the way), does not resort to more misery and conflict even at this narrative point. While it is rather amusing to see how the matter between Jeong-hee and the loan shark is resolved in the end, the subplot involved with Yeong-tae’s untrustworthy friend has a nice comic payoff later in the film, and, above all, the movie keeps its leisurely spirit intact as its two main characters struggle to keep going together via their mutual affection and respect. No matter how much they will be frustrated again and again, Jeong-hee and Yeong-tae will still have each other at least, and there is a little poignant moment when they come to restore the trust and love between them around the end of the story.

Due to its small production budget, “Hot in Day, Cold at Night” frequently looks cheap and shabby on the screen, but its low production quality somehow fits with its story and characters, and it is also supported well by the unadorned chemistry between Park and Won. Even when they seem to be merely occupying the screen together, their plain but earnest interactions throughout the film convey to us a lot about the long history between their characters, and their good acting is surely one of the main reasons why the movie is worthwhile to watch. In short, the movie is one of better South Korean films of this year, and, considering their considerable potential shown here in this film, it will be interesting to watch what will come next from Park and Won.

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Walk Up (2022) ☆☆☆(3/4): Another Hong Sang-soo film of this year

Posted on November 6, 2022 by kaist455

Hong Sang-soo’s latest film “Walk Up”, which is another film of his of this year after “The Novelist’s Film” (2022), exactly gives us what we can expect from him. Like many of his previous films, the movie simply observes a series of comic conversations among its few main characters, and it is often playful as they drink and talk more and more in front of the camera.

In the beginning, the movie opens with of a middle-aged filmmaker named Byeong-soo (Kwon Hae-hyo) and his young adult daughter Jeong-soo (Park Mi-so) arriving at one four-story building located somewhere in Seoul. The building belongs to a middle-aged woman named Hae-ok (Lee Hye-young), and, as an old friend of his, Hae-ok gladly shows him and his daughter here and there in the building after meeting them in front of the building.

Hae-ok has worked as an interior designer, and Byeong-soo wants her to take his daughter as an apprentice. Although it is clear that Jeong-soo still does not know well what she really wants to do for her life, she is at least eager to try new things under Hae-ok, and Hae-ok enjoys talking with this young lady – especially after Byeong-soo suddenly leaves the scene for some personal reason. As Jeong-soo talks a lot about her father, Hae-ok responds with some amusement while sharing more drink with her, and we are all the more amused as wondering how much Byeong-soo is actually overlapped with Hong in real life.

After that, the movie promptly moves onto its second act. Byeong-soo and Hae-ok meet again in front of the same building, but the situation between them is a bit different than before. After working and studying under Hae-ok for a while, his daughter eventually left, but there is not any hard feeling between him and Hae-ok, and Hae-ok later takes him to a little private restaurant in the building, which is run by a woman named Seon-hee (Song Seon-mi).

While Hae-ok and Byeong-soo casually talk with Seon-hee, we get to know a bit about Seon-hee’s life. She initially wanted to be a painter, but, mainly because she did not have much talent despite her passion, she eventually gave up, and she is now happy to run her little private business. As talking more with her, Byeong-soo finds himself attracted to Seon-hee, and we are not so surprised when we later see them living together in the building at the beginning of the third act.

On the surface, Byeong-soo and Seon-hee seem content with being with each other, but we gradually come to sense some tension between them. Due to an unspecified health problem of his, Byeong-soo is doing some diet, and Seon-hee has willingly gone along with that as his partner, but they soon come to have a sort of passive argument when Seon-hee is about to go outside for seeing somebody both of them know. As their argument goes on, Byeong-soo becomes quite petty just like many other heroes of Hong’s films, and we later get a humorous scene as he imagines how he and Seon-hee may argue with each other again once she returns.

Compared to this, the last act is relatively milder in comparison. We see Byeong-soo being with a new girlfriend, and they enjoy cooking and eating some meat together on the balcony of their residence because he is not on diet anymore. As they eat and drink more, she comes to talk about a little about her religious belief, and Byeong-soo phlegmatically listens to her without much objection.

This part is less engaging than the previous three acts of the film, but then there comes a little nice surreal moment around the end of the film. I must confess that I do not know how to interpret this moment, but it surely adds some extra amusement to what we have seen during 90 minutes, and the movie eventually comes to us as a melancholic but playful autobiographical portrayal from Hong, whose personal life has been rather messy due to his recent extramarital affair with his frequent actress Kim Min-hee (She participated in its production a bit although she does not appear on the screen, by the way).

Anyway, Hong drew good performances from his small cast as usual. As Kwon Hae-hyo, who has settled as Hong’s new screen persona as steadily appearing in his several recent films including “The Novelist’s Film”, dutifully holds the center, Lee Hye-young, Song Seon-mi, Cho Yun-hee, and Park Mi-so have each own moment to shine around him, and Song is effortless during her several key comic moments with Kwon.

In conclusion, “Walk Up” will amuse and entertain you if you are familiar with many of Hong’s previous works, and I will not be surprised at all if both of them are included in the annual lists of numerous local critics around the end of this year. Personally, I think “The Novelist’s Film” is more interesting and enjoyable in comparison, but “Walk Up” is still good enough for recommendation, and I will not deny that I chuckled more than once as observing how some of its most amusing moments often resonate with Hong’s private life outside. Yes, many of Hong’s films are still a sort of acquired taste to me, but I still admire nonetheless how he has diligently kept going for more than 25 years since his first feature film “The Day a Pig Fell into the Well” (1996), and I will probably continue to follow his ceaselessly prolific filmmaking career to the end just like many other local arthouse movie theater audiences out there.

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Alcarràs (2022) ☆☆☆1/2 (3.5/4): A summer in their peach orchard

Posted on November 6, 2022 by kaist455

Carla Simón’s latest film “Alcarràs”, which was recently selected as the Spanish entry for Best International Film Oscar, is an intimate family drama mixed with some social commentary. As leisurely rolling along with its various main characters under its vivid summer atmosphere, the movie effortlessly generates one genuine human moment after another, and, around the time when it eventually arrives at its very last scene, we come to understand care about its main characters more than expected.

The story is mainly set in one big peach orchard located in Alcarràs, Catalonia in Spain. It belongs to one big family living there, and things look all right as we watch three kids innocently playing together in an abandoned car outside, but the mood is soon changed as the movie shifts its focus to what the adult members of the family are facing right now. Although they have been allowed to live and earn their living at the orchard for many years thanks to an old verbal deal between their old patriarch and their previous landlord in the past, the new landlord, who is the son of their previous landlord, is now going to use all of the orchard for his solar panel business, and the family becomes quite frustrated as realizing that there is no way to stop this sudden disagreeable change.

Anyway, the time for peach harvest has come, and Quimet (Jordi Pujol Dolcet), who has been the de facto leader of his family business instead of his aging father, and several other family members start to work on those peach trees of their orchard. While they harvest lots of peaches as usual, the mood becomes a bit more cheerful than before, but Quimet and other adult members of the family know too well how things have been not so go for them and other orchard farmers out there. They and many other local orchard farmers have supplied their peaches to some big local supermarket company, and the company has unfairly demanded them to sell peaches at a lower price than they wanted. As a result, many of local orchard farmers begin to consider quitting their business and then selling their land, but Quimet adamantly tries to keep going even though he and his family will have to let their orchard go regardless of how much they harvest this year.

And that is why the current landlord’s recent offer looks like a good alternative for some of Quimet’s family members. Because they can still live in their house in the middle of the orchard as they legally own it, the current landlord suggests that they can instead take care of those solar panels which will replace those peach trees sooner or later. At one point, Quimet’s wife attempts a bit of sensible persuasion on her husband, but Quimet remains stubborn as before, and there is a little amusing moment when he lashes out at a small solar panel installed in their residence.

Meanwhile, the screenplay by Simón and her co-writer Arnau Vilaró also pays some attention to the kids of Quimet and one of Quimet’s younger sisters. Often oblivious to what is happening around her, Quimet’s little daughter Iris (Ainet Jounou) always looks for any opportunity for fun along with her twin cousins, and this sometimes annoys Quimet a lot, but he usually tolerates them nonetheless just like his aging father and the other adults in the family. At one point, the kids hold a little entertainment show for the whole family, and the other family members sincerely encourage them to do more, especially when Iris sings a song which her loving grandfather taught before.

In case of Quimet’s two older kids, they have some small issues behind their back. Although his father frequently tells him to study more instead of working outside, Roger (Albert Bosch) is more interested in orchard farming, and he even has a little private spot in the orchard where he secretly grows a certain kind of plant of which his father will not approve at all. While usually occupied with her preparation for the upcoming dance competition, Glòria (Berta Pipó) becomes more aware of the growing conflict between her father and her aunt, and that eventually leads to one petulant moment of defiance later in the story.

Due to its slow pacing and free-flowing narrative, you may become a bit impatient from time to time, but the movie will gradually immerse you into its vibrant ambiance once you go along with that. Thanks to cinematographer Daniela Cajías, the movie is constantly filled with palpable local atmosphere, and that is particularly exemplified well by the sequence involved with a local festival attended by the main characters and many other local people. Although it will take some time for you to discern the relationships among its main characters, all of these characters will eventually come to you as real living people you will not forget easily, and the same thing can be said about a few immigrant workers at the fringe of the story.

The main cast members in the film, who are mostly non-professional local performers carefully selected via a long period of audition before the production, are uniformly good in their unadorned ensemble acting. While Jordi Pujol Dolcet is the most prominent one in the bunch, the rest of them are also wonderful in their respective parts, and young performer Ainet Jounou often steals the show with her irrepressible spirit.

Overall, “Alcarràs”, which deservedly won the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin International Film Festival early in this year, is another commendable work from Simón, who previously drew my interest with her enjoyable debut feature film “Summer 1993” (2017). With “Alcarràs”, she surely demonstrates again that she is a talented filmmaker with her own distinctive style and touches, and I will certainly look forward to watching whatever will come next from her.

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The Good Nurse (2022) ☆☆1/2(2.5/4): A clinical true crime story

Posted on November 5, 2022 by kaist455

Tobias Lindholm’s latest film “The Good Nurse”, which was released on Netflix in last month, is rather disappointing despite a considerable number of talents gathered for its production. While its true crime story is often chilling to say the least, the movie does not delve much into its main subjects as flatly moving from one narrative point to another, and that is a shame considering the two charismatic lead performers at its center.

Jessica Chastain, who recently won an Oscar at last for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” (2021), plays Amy Loughren, a hard-working nurse who works at Parkfield Memorial Hospital in New Jersey. Although she is actually a cardiomyopathy patient, Loughren keeps working nonetheless for supporting her two little daughters without telling anyone at the hospital, and she hopes that she can work long enough to acquire the insurance which will cover the expensive cost of her heart transplant.

All Loughren needs to do is working hard for another four months, but, of course, that is not so easy at all for her. Her doctor warns that she should be more careful about her serious medical condition, and he even suggests that she should stop working while waiting for her heart transplant. Her two daughters are taken care of by a kind old neighbor while she is working, but she sometimes cannot pay that old neighbor well, and her older daughter has been resentful about her frequent absence.

And then there comes a little change in Loughren’s workplace. A male nurse named Charles Cullen (Eddie Redmayne) begins to work at her emergency ward, and it does not take time for him to befriend Loughren as he comes to help her a bit in more than one way. Besides, he is a mild and amiable dude, so Loughren subsequently lets this guy into her daily life more, and he even comes to babysit her daughters instead of that old neighbor.

However, as already shown to us via the chilly opening scene set in some other hospital where he worked seven years ago, Cullen is actually not a good nurse at all. Not long after he starts to work at Loughren’s emergency ward, one of the patients in the ward suddenly dies for no apparent reason, and that is followed by several similar incidents during next several weeks. Around that point, the hospital administrators contact with two local police detectives due to the belated investigation of the first incident, but these two detectives soon come to realize that there is something fishy about not only the incident itself but also the behavior of the hospital administrators. If they do not have anything to hide from the beginning, why do they insist that their hospital lawyer should accompany them during their meeting with the police detectives?

As these two detectives delve more into their case, they happen to talk a bit with Loughren in private, and both Loughren and the detectives soon come to realize a horrible truth. It is clear to them that somebody has been killing patients in the hospital, and the detectives eventually come to focus on Cullen, who has moved from one hospital to another under suspicious circumstances during last several years. When they later ask for more information from his previous workplaces, all of those hospitals refuse to do that, and Cullen’s current hospital remains uncooperative as before.

The screenplay by Krysty Wilson-Cairns, which is based on Charles Graeber’s nonfiction book “The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder”, does not tell directly to us, but its big dark picture feels and looks clearer to us as the detectives keep getting frustrated during their investigation. Needless to say, all those hospitals knew about what Cullen had been doing behind his back, but they quietly let him go in one way or another for avoiding any scandal to tarnish their public image, and the hospital administrators of Parkfield Memorial Hospital are certainly ready to do the same thing without any hesitation at all.

However, despite these compelling story elements, the movie is somehow deficient in narrative momentum. Yes, there comes a point where Loughren needs to be more active for exposing Cullen’s crime, but the following part does not have much tension in addition to being pretty predictable, and the finale does not have enough dramatic impact to linger on us even though we are chilled by the darker possibility beyond what Cullen eventually admitted around the time of his arrest.

Anyway, Chastain and her co-star try as much as they could with their respective parts. As one of the most versatile actresses working in Hollywood at present, Chastain surely does not disappoint us at all while fully embodying her character’s growing weariness along the story, and she and Eddie Redmayne, who is equally effective with understated chilliness, keep holding our attention to the end. In case of several other notable cast members in the film, Nnamdi Asomugha, Noah Emmerich, and Kim Dickens acquit themselves well despite their underdeveloped supporting parts, and Dickens manages to suggest some emotional conflict behind her character’s unflappable façade.

In conclusion, “The Good Nurse” is a bit too clinical and impersonal without generating enough human interest for me, and the overall result is two or three steps down from Lindholm’s previous films “A Hijacking” (2012) and “A War” (2015), which was incidentally one of my favorite films of 2016. It is not entirely without good things to watch besides Chastain and Redmayne, but it could be better in my trivial opinion, and that is all.

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All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) ☆☆1/2(2.5/4): All Grim and Intense Here

Posted on November 4, 2022 by kaist455

Netflix film “All Quiet on the Western Front”, which was recently selected as Germany’s submission for Best International Film Oscar, is relentlessly grim, muddy, and intense throughout its 147-minute running time. I surely understand that this is not supposed to be entertaining from the beginning as your typical anti-war film, but the movie feels not only grueling and but also rather hollow in my inconsequential opinion. As a matter of fact, I was often bored and frustrated during my viewing instead of becoming engaged a lot in its story and characters, and I felt empty and disappointed when the ending came at last with lackadaisical whimper.

The story, which is based on the 1929 novel of the same name by German novelist Erich Maria Remarque, mainly revolves around a lad named Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer), who eagerly joins the German Army along with several friends of his in 1917 at the beginning of the story. Their country is being in the middle of the World War I, but Paul and many other lads are motivated a lot as hoping for glory and honor, and we soon see them being sent to the western front not long after their enlistment.

Of course, it does not take much time for them to confront the hellish reality of the war, and the movie already prepared us for that via its prologue sequence, which shows where the “new” uniforms for Paul and other young soldiers come from. The situation has been quite bad in and around the western front, and the movie gives us a series of strikingly grim moments as these lads struggle to adjust themselves to this extremely harsh and dangerous condition. While they frequently face the immediate possibility of death everyday, their hope for glory and honor is quickly gone, and there are only despair and disillusionment for them with more deaths around them.

At least, things are not always bad for Paul mainly thanks to Stanislaus “Kat” Katczinsky (Albrecht Schuch), a seasoned senior soldier who becomes a sort of father figure for Paul. During Paul’s first several days on the western front, Kat kindly takes Paul under his wings, and Paul willingly assists Kat when they attempt to steal a goose from a nearby French farm at one point. They and several other soldiers later enjoyed the cooked goose in private, and that is one of few cheerful moments in the film.

However, the horror of the war keeps coming to them and many other soldiers as usual. There is a chilling scene where Paul and his comrades come across a horrific scene of mass death caused by poison gas, and this and other brooding moments in the film are often accentuated by the calm but bleak landscape shots provided by cinematographer James Friend. Whenever they are demanded to fight against their enemies, Paul and his comrades always have to throw themselves into sheer peril, and the movie naturally goes all the way for showing us all the bangs and guts around them.

The technical achievement of the movie is surely as impressive as many other recent war movies such as “Hacksaw Ridge” (2016), but it was somehow difficult for me to care about what was happening on the screen. As occupied with so much with striking us as hard as possible, the movie seems to forget developing its story and characters enough to engage us, and I must point out that Paul and several other young soldiers are often indistinguishable from each other – especially when they are on battlefield. In addition, they are more or less than bland archetypes, and Paul is also not a particularly interesting hero to observe except functioning as a blank canvass onto which the horror of war is projected.

The screenplay by director Edward Berger and his co-writers Ian Stokell and Lesley Paterson also spends a little too much time on the subplot involved with German politicians and generals including Matthias Erzberger (Daniel Brühl, who also served as one of the co-producers of the film), a real-life politician who participated in the truce negotiation with the Allied. Their scenes feel curiously flat and perfunctory as politician and generals solemnly interact with each other, and the movie does not have much to tell us besides how politicians and generals are usually distant and detached from soldiers struggling to fight and survive out there.

Some of more engaging moments in the film come from Kat, who is relatively more colorful than Paul and several other main characters in the film. I especially enjoyed his warm and humorous moment involved with a letter from his dear wife, and it is a shame that the movie does not focus more on the developing comradeship between him and Paul along the story. Not so surprisingly, Albrecht Schuch often steals the show from Felix Kammerer and several other main cast members in the film, and he certainly brings some life and spirit into not only his role but also the movie.

On the whole, “All Quiet on the Western Front” is admirable to some degree for putting lots of efforts on reminding us that war is indeed hell, but I am still hesitating to recommend it. While I appreciate its gritty mood and muddy details, I remain distant to its overall result due to its glaring lack of substance, and that takes me back to the 1930 American movie version, which incidentally won the two Oscars for Best Picture and Director at that time. Yes, that film is relatively tame these days, but it was a fairly good film at least as far as I remember, and now I am considering whether I should revisit it just for comparison.

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