Tag: Bong Joon-ho

When The Count Stops at Mickey 17, Could The Next War Concern Eugenics?

Dealing with life is never easy, but for Mickey 17, he finds the answer to it and there’s a lot more to it than to be reminded about Toni Basil’s song.

Mickey 17 film_posterNot everyone is going to interpret Bong Joon Ho‘s Mickey 17 the same way as the novel. When I went in not knowing the book, what I found is a story concerning Mickey (Robert Pattinson) looking to escape his past. And when he signs up to be an Expandable for the industrial evangelist Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), life will not be easy. Instead of a soldier, he’s a replicant. That is, he’s a guinea pig. Whether that’s for medical tests or ordered to walk into a minefield, he’s there!

When this film is deviating from the source material, just what happens next is anyone’s guess. When this narrative mixes up elements from Edge of Tomorrow and Starship Troopers, I’m already hooked! And for the star to be geeked to resemble Steve Rogers before becoming Captain America results from some excellent makeup design.

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Parasite lands Everywhere Following the Academy Awards!

Parasite DVD Slip Cover
Available to purchase on Amazon USAParasite Picture Still

By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

Congratulations to Bong Joon-ho for taking home four awards at the 92nd Academy Awards! This dark comedy deserves all the wins. The use of classical background music gives more than a change of atmosphere to the South Korean character drama. Ultimately, I feel it’s a Shakespearean play that constantly shifts genres. Just how this film ends, it’s tough not to feel for the main protagonist.

The scholars rock is a macguffin which kept me curious about when it becomes important to driving this tale forward. It can mean anything. For a moment I wondered if it’s a philosopher’s stone, a transformative device. When the last film I saw from this director includes Snowpiercer and Okja, I knew he’s not going to make this change come easy. When this story is about the lower class infiltrating the home of a wealthier clan and watching how they feed off each other, the importance is with who holds the power instead.

The Kim clan is led by Ki-taek Kim (Song Kang-ho). Nobody is really doing well, not even Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin), Ki-jung (Park So-dam) and Ki-woo (Choi Woo-Shik). When Ki-woo’s wealthy friend Min-hyuk gifts them a this stone, supposedly imbued with magical properties, just what happens next is with how they pretend to be skilled workers when they are not–just so they can work at the Park home.

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