Thanks for the recommendation on Train to Busan to you and @Ginger_Yellow. A very nicely done movie. This is the second Korean movie I’ve watched now (that I’m aware of, maybe I saw a Korean movie in the past and didn’t realize it was Korean). The first one was a MST3K entry called Yongary, which I thought was way better than Godzilla. Maybe I should look more into Korean cinema.
I also really appreciated that it wasn’t just a zombie film. It had this very nice theme of whether you should try to help other people or just yourself during an apocalypse. The movie was very much preaching the “helping others” side of this. That’s actually quite new to me. When I started reading apocalyptic fiction it was with “Death of Grass” by John Christopher, and the overarching theme of that novel was that when it all goes to hell, you have to watch out for yourself and your family. If you try to help other people, it will only have bad consequences for you and yours. Train to Busan takes the opposite side of that argument.
Dude, totally. Park Chan-Wook would be a good place to start (surely you’ve seen Oldboy at least?). He has at least half a dozen fascinating films There’s also QT3 podcast favourite The Handmaiden, and, albeit working in the West, Bong Joon-Ho’s Okja and Snowpiercer (though I think the latter doesn’t ultimately work).
To be fair, that’s a pretty common zombie movie theme. See, eg, Ravenous recently.
Oldboy is on Kanopy. I’ve been meaning to watch it forever. I have a coworker who keeps asking if I’ve seen it yet. Same with Snowpiercer. I keep meaning to watch it, but something always comes up.
Looks like The Handmaiden is only on Amazon Prime streaming in the U.S. so that one will have to wait a while.
Well, the horror elements are, but I think it has much stronger narrative than most horror, enough that I think it has crossover appeal outside the genre.
Pretty cool fact about this is that the South Korean production company was so inexperienced with the foreign distribution market in 1969, that they sent all the master negatives and audio tracks to the Japanese company Toei, who handled international distribution. Toei didn’t know, or care, so they used that to edit the US version. The original South Korean version is a lost film as a result.
Also, there’s The Wailing, which is an interesting, uh, thriller. I find it hard to characterize - it’s part horror, part ghost story, but not really any of those things.
Park Chan-wook is probably the most well known Korean director outside of Korea. If you saw Stoker…that English language movie, that was also him. He also did a vampire movie called Thirst which is kind of an interesting take on the genre.
Park along with Kim Jee-woon kind of dominate the most popular Korean movies on display using English sources.
I saw the first half of Triple Frontier last night. So far I’ve really enjoyed it. Oscar Isaac brings his usual intensity, though he’s not given that much to do in this movie. The central character is really Ben Affleck and his beer gut. He got really convincingly overweight for this movie, and it really brings an authenticity to the role.
It’s a heist movie, and where I left off last night, they’re in the middle of the actual heist. And I’m impressed at how off it feels, since it’s not going according to plan, which is really important in a heist movie.
The Dawn Wall popped up on Netflix recently. I’m a rock climber so I found it especially great, but it is a very compelling story even if you don’t care as much about the climbing aspect of it.
I watched the whole thing, and where you are things haven’t really started going bad yet… I thought it was an OK movie. Good, not great. A little too predictable and by the numbers.
Overall I enjoyed Triple Frontier a lot. The helicopter sequence is really good from beginning to end. The scenery in this movie is really something else. I’ve never seen these kinds of views before. IMDB tells me the movie was filmed in Columbia, which explains it I guess. I found all the set pieces of action to be in really memorable places.
My only disappointment is that the start of the movie one of the team members gives lectures to new recruits and is telling them how the violence of military services changes you forever, and that there’s no going back from that. I thought the movie would be more about that. It is in a small way, but mostly it’s a heist movie. Still, I enjoyed it a lot.
Agreed with this. Enjoyed it, thought the filming was fairly well done. Knew that certain story beats, particularly Afleck eating it, the helicopter not making it, and then losing most of the money, we’re going to happen.
Basically a solidly executed, well shot version of a fairly by the numbers heist, elevated some by the cast and polished technical direction.
Just got done watching the documentary Free Solo(on Hulu now). About the first guy to free climb El Capitan. Just crazy watching him do that. Have to check this one out too.
I just watched this. Damn, this film was great. I actually think it’s a more compelling story than Free Solo, mostly because unlike Honnold, who seems a bit unhuman, Caldwell is a really relatable guy who is trying to exorcise his demons. I really really liked how it was about the two of them (Caldwell and Jorgeson) climbing the face, and not all about Tommy. It’s also interesting how it’s not about risk at all. Not in the slightest. They’re not doing something risky; they’re doing something extremely difficult. It’s a whole different focus than Free Solo. Free Solo is probably a better film (because Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi), but Dawn Wall had way more emotional impact and was a better human drama.
I found Free Solo more compelling because of the stakes and the psychological weight. Honnold isn’t a relatable protagonist, but it was seeing how people who loved him had to endure this that made the movie particularly fascinating. This is the extreme sports version of film making where even attempting to film Honnold’s achievement was an incredibly risky thing to do.
I agree with you that The Dawn Wall was a better story and a more of an emotional experience. I, too, enjoyed that it was more about hard work and relentless perseverance. Most of these “extreme sports” movies focus on adrenaline junkies doing extremely dangerous things. This was about people who do it for the love of the sport more than the thrill. The Dawn Wall is probably the best pure climbing movie I’ve seen and the dramatic arc of the story is so good.
Also, if you haven’t seen it (I assume it has been recommended for you by now), Valley Uprising on Netflix is another climbing movie that is very good. More about the history of the Yosemite climbing scene, which puts a lot of perspective on the feats of the guys in these other movies.
