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Category: Movie review

The Mother of All Thrills

I saw Bong Joon-ho’s MOTHER over the weekend and quite liked it. I thought perhaps I should write up a little review of sorts, so here you go.


Bong Joon-ho’s latest film, MOTHER, is a departure from his last two films, MEMORIES OF MURDER and THE HOST, lacking much of the humor and scope that made them so memorable. Instead, MOTHER is a much darker and more personal story; but it is without a doubt a Bong tale — smart, powerful and really engrossing.

MOTHER is the story of the mother of a retarded young man (Won Bin) who must save her son when he is arrested for murdering a high school girl. The police jumped the gun, arresting him on some pretty weak evidence, then pressuring the son Do-joon to sign a release he did not understand.

Determined to free her son no matter what, the mother relentlessly (even ruthlessly) pursues any lead she can. After a few false turns and a lot of apathy from the town officials, she begins to uncover a deeper story, involving a troubled young girl who had a really rough life.

Set in a small town and dealing with a murder investigation, MOTHER has some obvious similarities to MEMORIES OF MURDER. But the focus and style of MOTHER is really different.

The first half of MOTHER focuses more on Do-joon, setting up his character and his friend. There is an incident at a golf course that is one of the few light spots in the movie, but it felt a little unnatural and awkward. Only after Do-joon is arrested and the spotlight moves to his mother that the story really begins to get into gear.

But once it gets going, MOTHER is really good. Kim Hye-ja is great as the obsessive mother, and her desperation gives the movie much of its power. You never know quite what she is going to do, even while suspecting she might do anything. It adds up to create a kind of emotional claustrophobia that really hits hard.

Now, while I said this film is not as deep or analytical as some of Bong’s other films, there is evidently a lot going on anyway. There is plenty of psychology happening throughout. The relationship between mother and son especially is anything but normal. The mother’s recurring talk of an injection in the thigh to take away bad memories is quite suggestive.

Another thing that struck me was the age difference between Do-joon and his mom. Although never clearly stated in the film, Do-joon is played by the 27-year-old Won Bin, while the mother is played by the 67-year-old Kim Hye-ja. And while having a baby at 40 years old is not unheard of, it is still a little unusual.

In short, MOTHER is not without flaws, but it is the best Korean movie I have seen in quite some time. Maybe since THE CHASER. It is thrilling, scary, violent and unexpected … really a gripping combination.

Silly Sex Tale Limps Along

I went to see an early screening of A TALE OF LEGENDARY LIBIDO (Garujiki in Korean) last night. Man, it really reminded me of why I do not write more reviews and stuff about the movies themselves on this blog — because so many of them are so very, very bad. And I really do not want to spend my time slamming one terrible film after another.

LIBIDO is the latest retelling of a well known smutty song from the 19th century. It is the story of Gang-soe, a tteok-seller in a remote mountain town, famed for its libidinous women. Gang-soe is miserable, though, because he has such a small penis that the town’s women laugh at him constantly.

So one day Gang-soe drinks a magic potion that gives him superhuman virility. And he drinks waaaaaay too much of it. Comedy ensues, followed by the inevitable (for a Korean comedy) 30 minutes or so of crying and tragedy.

Seems like an easy set-up for some easy, sex-based laughs, right? Wrong. I think I half-giggled once and smirked maybe twice, but overall this movie is witless and dull. Director Shin Han-sol is remarkably incompetent, with no idea how to tell a basic story or a joke. The film shifts tones constantly, although remaining generally torpid throughout. On the rare occasions the movie is not lousy, it is actually offensive.

The Craptacular Spider-Lame

Okay, I am not a big fan of people (often on the web) who endlessly and cruelly pile on the insults and witty put-downs on movies they dislike. However, if I were such a person, I would be insulting and putting down SPIDER-MAN 3. Wow, it was bad.

I just watched it (it made its debut a few days early in this part of the world), and I was so disappointed. It was basically a two-hour talkathon soap opera, with a 15-minute action finish. Now, if the talky stuff was well-done and interesting, I would have been fine with it. But S3 was no Eric Rohmer film. Or a Tarantino. Or anything. It was comic-book deep (and I don’t mean Alan Moore), with endless cliches and silly melodrama.

As for the action, we had three villains this time, which was way too much for this movie. There just was not enough screen time to introduce each villain, show his origin, and create a personal conflict with Spider-Man.

Despite the excess of super-powered characters, there was surprisingly little action. And most of that action was completely random and disjointed, not organic to the flow of the film at all. But after 100 minutes, we were still sitting through endless exposition and platitudes and nonsense. My friend and I were crazy bored.

Basically, S3 feels like the studio had two or three ideas floating around and no one could decide which one to use, so they used them all.

Anyhow, I am dramatically downgrading my estimates on how well SPIDER-MAN 3 will do. Doubtlessly it will have a big opening, but it is going to crash hard and fast, especially once SHREK 3 is released in a couple of weeks. Here is Korea, I think it should still get around 1.5 million or 1.7 million admissions by the end of Sunday. But I doubt the film will pass 4 million. Definitely not pass 5 million.

Ugh. What a disappointment.

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