Monday Morning Movie Review: The Wailing (2016)

Lately I’ve been watching quite a few foreign-language flicks, some good, some disturbing.  The latest, the 2016 Korean film The Wailing, falls somewhere in the middle.

The plot of the film involves a mysterious illness or curse that enters a remote Korean mountain village when a Japanese tourist arrives to town.  The malady causes victims to develop glowing red eyes and dark skin, as well as odd contortions of their bodies.  Ultimately, sufferers kill their entire families.

It is near the beginning of this curse that Officer Gong-joo witnesses a naked, wild-eyed woman banging on the doors of his police substation during a thunderstorm.  Gong-joo and his partner hide behind their desks, debating about who will check on the naked woman, but the woman has fled by the time they muster the courage to investigate.  At a crime scene a short time later, they find the woman, along with her family, dead or raving violently at their burned out home.

It is established early on that Officer Gong-joo is a pitiful loser, but he loves his daughter, Hyo-jin, a predictably adorable little Korean girl.  Gong-joo cheats on his wife, shirks work responsibility, and is the laughingstock of his police precinct.  He is a coward and an utter failure, but he is—in spite of it all—a good father.

When his beloved daughter comes down with the strange curse, he has the opportunity to prove his courage.

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Lazy Sunday CXIV: More Movies IV: Movie Reviews, Part IV

We’re getting into that hot time of year, which for most people means going outside, doing yard work, and having fun.  For those of us that are of a lazier, doughier disposition, it’s a time to avoid the unpleasantness of Southern humidity with some good flicks and frosty A/C.

In that spirit, I decided to return to a retrospective of past Monday Morning Movie Reviews this Lazy Sunday, featuring a selection of three flicks spanning decades:

  • Monday Morning Movie Review: Young Frankenstein (1974)” – Another timeless comedy classic, Young Frankenstein is one of my favorite Mel Brooks films.  I re-watched it back in January, during those long, cold winter nights, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
  • Monday Morning Movie Review: Digging Up the Marrow (2014)” – This flick was one I’d seen on Hulu for years, but had always passed over.  I finally watched it, and really enjoyed its twist on the “found-footage” phenomenon.  The premise is that the “movie-within-a-movie” seeks to prove that monsters are real, with only an obsessed old man as their guide.
  • Monday Morning Movie Review: Witness (1985)” – A modern classic starring Harrison Ford as a cop on the run in Amish Country, Witness is a powerful story of a man whose principles, while out of place in the modern world, help him fit into the world in which he takes refuge.

That’s it for this weekend.  Happy Viewing!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Robot & Frank (2012)

Apologies to readers for the slightly delayed post today.  I returned late Sunday evening from a weekend trip, so I’m playing catch-up a bit this morning.

Robots:  do we fear their ultimate takeover of humanity, or are they amusing, neurotic pals, like C-3PO?  I remember receiving a LEGO R2-D2 with a programmable drivetrain early in high school, and in my doughy innocence, I imagined myself walking around with a three-foot droid serving drinks and quipping in 8-bit beeps and blips.  Instead, it was a twelve-inch-high kit that could turn in circles and emit a few beeps on a pre-programmed path (there was a way to program him to do more, but I lacked the intelligence and/or technological capability to do so).

That’s all to say that I find the idea of robot buddies fascinating.  One of my spoiled complaints about the modern world is that, while technology has certainly grown more useful—WiFi, for example, and thermostats that can be set remotely—it hasn’t gotten much cooler.  The optimistic sci-fi worlds of the 1950s and early 1960s, with helpful droids and interplanetary exploration, have been replaced with the dystopian sci-fi worlds of the 1970s.  The modern world feels less like Star Trek or Star Wars and more like Logan’s Run.

Needless to say, I was immediately drawn to the premise of Robot & Frank, a 2012 film that takes place in “the near future,” when friendly robot helpers are expensive but available, and smartphones have just become brighter and more transparent.  It’s a comedy-drama, but heavier on the comedy side, albeit understated.

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Tuesday Morning Television Series Review: Sasquatch (2021)

Thanks to Audre Myers at Nebraska Energy Observer and the documentary Missing 411, I’ve become interested in Bigfoot, Sasquatch, the Yeti, etc., etc.—cryptid humanoid megafauna of various stripes.  I’m not sure if they exist, but I’m open to the possibility.  Indeed, I want to believe they are out there, wandering in the deepest forests of North America, living their secretive, hairy lives.

So I was quite interested to watch the Hulu series Sasquatch, a three-part true-crime documentary about an alleged Bigfoot attack in Northern California in 1993.  The attack left three Mexican migrants dead on a pot farm, with their murders unsolved to this day.  Indeed, it seems (from the documentary) that the murders were never actually reported to the authorities.

Let me say up front:  while the documentary was quite good, it was incredibly disappointing:  an egregious example of bait-and-switch.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Aniara (2018)

What happens when a luxury transport ship on a routine voyage to Mars is thrown off course, set adrift on an endless voyage across the cosmos?  That’s the premise behind 2018’s Aniara, based on the 1956 Swedish epic poem of the same name.

The answer, ultimately, is quite bleak.  Aniara fits fully into the nihilistic ennui that Scandinavians—materially prosperous but spiritually adrift—relish so stoically.  Seriously, the Swedes seemed obsessed with existential crises and a sense of meaningless in life.  At its best, that gives us the likes of Danish Christian existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard; at its worst, it creates the kind of mindless pleasure-seeking the passengers of the film’s title ship indulge in here.

For all the film’s depressing messaging about the futility of life (to be fair, being trapped on an endless voyage in space, eating only algae to survive, would be a fairly depressing and psychologically destructive experience), it’s a fascinating look into how a society might develop, survive, and perish in the depths of outer space.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: The Housemaid (2016)

Link to IMDB Entry for flick:  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5860084/

Foreign-language films can be a mixed bag.  They can require the viewer to come into the plot with some foreknowledge of the culture and its history; lacking that background can make appreciating the film difficult.  The reliance on subtitles also requires intense focus, so multi-screen viewing isn’t really possible.

Those can also be strengths, though.  Forcing audiences to stay glued to the screen increases immersion into the story.  Further, figuring out the cultural and historical context is fun and rewarding, and deepens our knowledge of the world.

Such is the case with the Vietnamese horror film The Housemaid (2016), which takes place during the First French Indochinese War in 1953 (that is to say, the First Vietnam War, before the Americans butted our ways into a French colonial struggle).

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Suburban Gothic (2014)

The Hulu-based deep dive into cinematic obscurity continues this Monday with 2014’s Suburban Gothic, a film broadly in the “comedy horror” genre.  It’s roughly in the same vein as 2020’s Love and Monsters, but it’s much quirkier, a la John Dies at the End (2012).  The presence of Kat Dennings as the sidekick/love-interest—a latter day, gloomier Zooey Deschanel, and a prefiguration of Aubrey Plaza—further drives home the hipster credentials of this oddball little flick.

Needless to say, I loved it.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Still (2018)

Here it is—the long-awaited first day of Spring Break!  I’ll be reviewing some short stories throughout this week, continuing the tradition I began last year, but I’m kicking off the week with another Monday Morning Movie Review.

I’ve been watching a lot of flicks lately, and there was one excellent movie I wanted to review—but I’ve forgotten what it was called!  I suppose it wasn’t that memorable after all.

Instead, this post will review 2018’s Still, a movie that is difficult to review without giving away the “twist” ending.  That might explain why there aren’t many reviews of it online.  Like many obscure films with limited audiences, Still is on Hulu, which is proving itself a depository of hidden gems.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: High-Rise (2015)

Lately Hulu’s algorithm—in the bleak future math problems determine our entertainment choices—has been suggesting tower-based movies to me.  Yes, it is a genre:  films that take place in the claustrophobic confines of apartment buildings, like the 1993 thriller Sliver, starring Sharon Stone and William Baldwin.  That flick was so-so, and the character motivations didn’t really make sense, especially the dashing computer nerd Baldwin portrayed, but it was one of several Hulu has recommended lately that depends upon a high-rise for its setting.

So it was the Grand High Algorithm suggested 2015’s High-Rise, a film both set in and an homage to the 1970s, specifically the dark sci-fi flicks of the decade.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: The Ghost Writer (2010)

Roman Polanksi is a sexual weirdo and a fugitive from justice, but, dang, he makes good movies.  A couple of weekends back I stumbled upon The Ghost Writer (2010) on Hulu, more evidence that the streaming service is upping its game.

The Ghost Writer is a product of the Bush Era, when Hollywood was obsessed with Bush Derangement Syndrome—a psychological condition akin to Trump Derangement Syndrome, but which now seems quaint and cute by comparison.  The plot involves a ghostwriter (Ewan McGregor) hired to punch-up the boring, windy memoirs of a Tony Blair-esque former British Prime Minister.  The former PM is facing prosecution for war crimes for his alleged role in illegally torturing terrorists during the War on Terror, and while he is considered a “world-historical” figure, his pro-war stance while PM has made him deeply unpopular.

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