Visceral Action, Toilet Humor

Hope (2026) - Na In a rural village of Hope, near the DMZ in South Korea, police chief Beomseuk (Hwang Jung-min) finds the town in total destruction and mayhem- it's as if a tornado tore through. There's talk of the Siberian tiger as the main suspect. But the trail of destruction suggests the largely unseen (at least the first 30 minutes of the film) predator(s) might be something bigger. And the thought of a smart large cat from the north wading through the minefield of DMZ is not very plausible. Various village hunting parties, armed with hunting rifles in beat up pickup trucks, are on its tracks, as well as Beomseok and his very capable, pretty deputy Sung-ae (Korean model Hoyeon, seen in Squid Games). It turns out that the monsters are not of this world but possibly the cosmic kind.

Hope is pretty much extremely visceral chase scenes strung together with iffy rural Korean humor thrown in. The film's many, unrelenting and prolonged car/horse chase sequences are truly impressive and need to be seen in theaters on the big screen. Director Na Hong-jin, if his two previous films (Chaser and Yellow Sea) were any indication, really has a knack for orchestrating big scale chase sequences. And this time, with the help of CG effects.

Hope is funnier and less fatalist, miserablist than Na’s last film, Wailing. But it suffers the same wayward, unfocused messiness. The garish creature design is a mix of the practical effects of The Thing and early 90s CG of The Lawnmower Man, where they put on the likeness of Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander and Taylor Russell. Why was this necessary? To appeal to the global audience because it's a big budget sci-fi and they got money to burn? But instead of slick sci-fi blockbuster, Hope is a Korean movie through and through- bumbling, incompetent police, buckets of totally inappropriate toilet humor, general messiness of the lives of common people; Their self-awareness made into a punchline- "I never been on an airplane, but I am inside of a spaceship!"

I have so many questions: why does it have to take place near a DMZ, if it never adds anything to the narrative or even plot point? What's the purpose of the aliens being there? Why is the mother ship going down? Maybe Hope's point is that all these unbelievable celestial events are happening to these rural Korean folks because it's more fun watching them dealing with it than more jaded city folks? There's more seeming humanity in common folks' lives than we give them credit for? Korean cinema excels in this, time and time again, emblematized by the films of Bong Joon-ho and countless K-Dramas, where everyday funny folks with their messy lives and misery are always the heroes of the story. I used to think it was a populist pandering, but lately I realize that this IS the heart (pun intended) of Korean storytelling.

Hope might not be satisfying narratively. But it's a cinematic experience. Go see it big.

Brotherhood of Wolves

Predator: Badlands (2025) - Trachtenberg A wise man once said that there are no bad Predator movies (yet there are, but generally batting average is indeed better as far as movie franchises go). And Dan Trachtenberg (Prey) continues this premise with Predator: Badlands. For the first time, the franchise is told from the alien trophy hunter's point of view with his hefty Shakespearean - or at least Black Panther-ean backstory with the Oedipal complex and brotherhood and betrayal and revenge and so on.

We open in Yautja Prime, the predators' home planet. With space ships and all their technology, the planet is pretty barren. There are no females to be seen and no hairdressers. It's all about hunting, killing, and bringing home trophy kind of culture. Very macho and very rigid, like the way of the samurai or something...but I digress.

Young Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is deemed a weakling and as the tradition goes, needs to be culled, because only the strong survives. After his merciless father slain his older brother for protecting him, Dek escapes and crash lands on a hostile planet where Kalisk, an apex predator creature lives. With the help of the marooned upper half of Thia (Elle Fanning) - an android among all synthetic armies in a specimen collecting mission from a Wayland-Yutani ship (nicely continuing the franchise's narrative thread). Thia convinces Dek that she can help him to hunt down Kalisk for his triumphant return and possible revenge, and in return, he can help Thia reunite with the other identical but bad synth Tess (also played by Fanning) and retrieve her bottom half (which proves just as deadly as the upper part).

The imagined world building is top-notch with great action sequences. With a little critter Thia names Bud who becomes a pivotal piece of the puzzle later on, becoming the welcoming comic relief in the relentless violence and mayhem. Trachtenberg, who has shown his ability to enliven and breathe a new life into the same old, machismo driven franchise in Prey, does it again with Badlands. Action sequences are cool, effects are aces, and Fanning's smudged up, cracked porcelain doll face is perfect as a conflicted synth.

By the end of Badlands, both Dek and Thia learn a thing or two, about hunting in a pact like that earth creature called wolves that Thia mentions and friendship. Badlands is superb entertainment and definitely worth seeing in this February movie desert landscape. It starts streaming on Hulu 2/12.

Hong Kong Mon Amour

2046 (2005) - Wong There is a train that goes to a place called 2046, a place trapped in memory, at least for characters in Wong Kar-Wai's filmography. Also the year 2046 is the eve of Hong Kong's supposed return to the control of mainland China. The end of an era marking the 50 years of self-governing after British Handover in 1997. Memories are nothing but trails of tears, the title card says. Once you get to 2046, you can't escape from it. So starts WKW's a sort of sequel to Days of Being Wild and In the Mood for Love.

Mr. Chow (Tony Leung), the same man who had a platonic relationship in In the Mood for Love and cultivated his gigolo status at the end of Days of Being Wild, is a hack writer for a newspaper in 60s Hong Kong. The film, in nonlinear fashion, traces his many encounters with various female characters who tread his pad, room 2047, in Hotel Oriental. The film is an observation of a gigolo from his room the goings on in the room next door 2046. Su Li-Zhen from in the mood for love, played by Maggie Cheung, is now played by Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi, with Cheung making a brief appearance as a memory/dream. Faye Wong of Chunking Express also makes an appearance as the hotel manager's daughter who is in love with a Japanese man (Takuya Kimura).

2046, like most of Wong's films, is about unrequited love and yearning. Chow, who is incapable of emotional attachment, is the only one who can observe the love's fickle nature objectively. He even creates science fiction to exemplify the unanswerable nature of love - the train to 2046 is attended by fembots that passengers shouldn't fall in love with. In 2046, everyone is a reminder of lost love or what would have been. Time and timing are the enemies.

In true WKW fashion, 2046 took 4 years to make, with three different DP attached. But it's stunning. Gorgeous costumes and beautiful actors unhurriedly go in and out of tightly held frames. Chow gets to consummate with Su Li-Zhen, who is now a high-priced call girl. Zhang Ziyi is at the height of her youth and beauty and thrives in Wong's astute melodrama. But again, I'm Chunking Express/Fallen Angels/Happy Together Wong fan, not In the Mood for Love fan. I find this revisit to the film since its initial release, overlong and tedious. If 2046 is a lamentation of a bygone era and a specific place, Wong has a funny way of (not) showing the place except for some heavily CGI shot of the neon landscape.

I rewatched Fallen Angels just before 2046 and the contrast can't be more obvious. It was his humor, light touch and Chris Doyle's handheld, intimate photography that made his 90s films so iconic. 2046 is more of an idea of the lamentation of a place that gave Wong much freedom to capture the place's spontaneity and vibrance. And the film marks the end of WKW supremacy.

Same As It Ever Was

L'empire (2024) - Dumont Bruno Dumont's cinematic stunt continues with a large-scale Sci-fi Star Wars/Dune parody L'empire. It's completely over the top and ridiculous, you wonder what happened to this once a practitioner of Bressonian way of filmmaking and lost his ways. For those who remember, Dumont's foray into absurdist comedies started with P'tit Quinquin, a 4-part TV mini-series taking place in his beloved Brittany featuring odd-looking locals and odder police pair Weyden (Bernard Pruvost) and Carpentier (Philippe Jore) investigating odd happenings in the windswept sand dunes of the provincial sleepy coastal community. That was a decade ago. Since then, the director's charade continued with Slack Bay, two Joan of Arc musicals, a sequel to Quinquin, a TV journalism satire, France. It's been 10 years of this funny/unfunny, French comedies. When would this end and when is he going to snap out of this cringe fest? Well with L'empire, not anytime soon.

Again, in a small windswept dune-y small French town, nothing is what it seems. The townsfolks are divided into the intergalactic forces of Ones and Zeros. Get it? Ones are the benevolent beings trying to defeat Zeros from taking over earth by siring a demon offspring called the Wain. Their spaceships are fashioned on a giant cathedral with stained glass windows (Ones) and a Marienbad inspired Palace (Zeros). Ones are trying to appeal goodness in humanity and Zeros are counting on bad, destructive impulses of humans. There's a local fisherman, Jony (Brandon Vlieghe) who turned into a black knight for the Zeros, protecting his infant son, the Wain who will bring out the apocalypse in the earth. Then there's Jane (Anamaria Vartolomei of Happening), a princess on the side of Ones. There's going to be light sabers battle, a black hole, dancing Fabrice Luchini in a funny costume as the ruler of the Zeros and of course, our clueless gendarmes Weyden and Carpentier too, oblivious to the dueling intergalactic empires in their backyard.

Jony and Jane hook up and have wild sex because Jony convinces prudish Jane that while they are in human form, they might as well enjoy. They are sworn enemies for eternity, but deep inside they are in love!

L'empire's ham fisted approach on colonialism - the European empires dueling for the 'heart of the people,' and its obvious parodying of Hollywood sci-fi epics, are funny for a while. But it’s also extremely silly and unengaging, save for the presence of Vartolomei and Lina Khoudri who plays Line, a selfie obsessed influencer who becomes a partner of Jony. I just hope someone talk some sense to Dumont and stop this nonsense. The joke has been going on for too long!

Posthistory

Last Things (2023) - Stratman Deborah Stratman's new film, Last Things, composed mostly of found footage, is a Sci-fi non-fiction about the future imagined from the point of view of a rock. 16mm timelapse images of crystals forming, the living cell structures, 3D satellite footages of a distant planet, the sight of Petra in southern Jordan, Darwin's evolutionary trees, staging of 'star people', accompanied by great sound design and music, the film is an multifaceted, engaging, fascinating contemplation of time in the face of our environmental catastrophe. It's Based on the text of J.-H. Rosny (narrated by Valérie Massadian in English and French). And with the help of structural geologist Dr. Marcia Bjørnerud, the filmmaker lays down the vision of the future where all living things have died out and cyclical nature of how all things start and end and start again.

Dr. Bjørnerud talks about polytemprality. Everywhere you go, you see the remnants of the deep time. Your backyard could have been under shallow sea 400 million years ago, or the river valley that was carved into clay by a giant lake during the late ice age. The way Stratman goes about presenting the smallness of human existence within the deep time with a completely unsentimental eye is, above all things, refreshing. Clocking in short 50 minutes, Last Things is, as usual, an aesthetically, politically, intellectually invigorating work by Stratman. Please go watch on film print at Anthology Film Archives starting 1/12. Stratman will be doing Q&A in person on this Friday and Saturday.

Representation and Survival

Nope (2022) - Peele With his third feature, adroitly titled genre mashup, Nope, Jordan Peele is fast becoming the new original voice in American cinema dominated by sequels and franchises. And using the power of cinema - visual (under)represenation in more ways than one, he incapsulates historical, institutional injustices. It also counters the industry which preaches the most liberal tendencies, but seldom practices, especially in casting. With wit and humor, Peele is obliterating the notion that a message film, a Black message film to be precise, has to be always literal. The 90's Spike Lees of the world don't have the same appeal to the tik tok, BLM generation of now.

The Haywoods owns a California horse ranch, which has been supplying horses for Hollywood productions and commercial shoots for decades. After the old Otis Haywood (Keith David) dies in a freak accident (hit by random debris raining down from the sky - happens to be an old Indian Head penny), the less sociable Jr, OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) reluctantly takes over the business with his small time LA schmoozer sister Emerald (Keke Palmer). It would be hard to give up and sell all the beautiful horses and move on. There is a pride involved as a black owned business which is woven into the birth of cinema - the unnamed black jockey in Eadweard Muybridge's short moving picture of Man Riding a Horse in the early days of cinema was a fictional Haywood, an ancestor to OJ and Emerald.

There is another thread that Peele starts the movie with: Gordy's Home, a cheesy 90s sitcom featuring a chimp named Gordy. Things went horribly wrong when Gordy went on a killing spree on set and young Asian American co-star Ricky 'Jupe' Park (Steven Yeun) was spared. It was the friendly gesture, a fist bump, that saved the young Ricky. Now Ricky runs a UFO themed Western show near the Haywood ranch which supplies it with horses.

After some weird happenings - electronics, phones and power cutting on and off randomly around their ranch, OJ and Emerald suspect that there is an alien entity hiding in the static cloud nearby mountain range. They enroll the help of a nerdy CCTV installer, Angel (Brandon Perea) and a grizzled cinematographer (Michael Wincott) who's armed with a handcranked camera (to be immune to electrical storms), to record the Alien sighting and go 'Oprah' with it.

Nope is actually very much like a Spike Lee joint, packed to the brim with ideas and messages, but in a simple, breatheable, cinematic symbolist way. It has little to do with character development or backstory or the classic structure. Things go haywire with unexpected twists and turns. Its references range from Roy Rogers, Close Encounters, Phenomena, 90s TV sitcoms, reality TV, tabloids, even to Akira, not to mention all the other clever pop culture references. It speaks volumes about the notions of the untamed west, nostalgia, colonization, captivity and spectacle. And the gaze: one of the many brilliant moments comes in when OJ understands not to look at the predator in the eye, like many traffic stops POC faces everyday. Loved the unconventional design of the entity as well as hilarious use of the air balloon modeled on Steven Yeun as a weapon. There are many more details I am forgetting to mention here. Engaging, playful and original, Nope is one of the best films of 2022.

Kate Bush

After Blue (Dirty Paradise) (2021) - Mandico Named after a settlement somewhere in the universe after the (wo)mankind escaped our uninhabitable, post-apocalypse planet, Dirty Paradise is an extremely queer planet with oozing flora and fauna. All the men have died out and the new planet is only inhabited by female and proliferated only by insemination. Roxy (Paula Luna), a young blonde kid who relentlessly gets bullied by her peers because she is different, lives with her town's hairdresser mom Zora (Elina Löwensohn). Because of hormon imbalance the settlers of the new planet grows tufts of hair on their necks and this gives submissive Zora plenty of work.

Roxy accidentally digs up a notorious killer/agitator named Kate Bush(!!)(Agata Buzek) on the beach who grants her three wishes. This turns into the death of Roxy's tormentors and Kate Bush escaping, running up the hills. The town's elders orders Zora and Roxy out of the confines of their cozy settlement and hunt for Kate Bush. This sets up After Blue as a sloggy western, where the mother and daughter pair needs to survive in an unforgiving and weird environs while tracking down to kill Kate Bush. The psycho-erotic telepathy that Roxy and Kate Bush shares keeps the film going forward, providing the its slight tension in the film.

Bertrand Mandico, known for his dreamy, neon colored queer fantasy films (Prehistoric Cabaret, Wild Boys), treads lightly in After Blue, rather uncharacteristically. It's a coming of age tale with sexual awakening themed sci-fi. There is no discernable message or strong metaphor or anything. But Mandico still knows how to have fun. But it's a tad bit long to sustain any kind of momentum. After the initial kitchy retro vibe of the production design, glow-in-the-dark paints and glitter wear off, there is nothing much to do for the cast, other than looking like being stranded in a darkly lit muppet show episode. I wish Mandico went all out and created over-the-top camp touching upon our desire and curiosity and gender politics.

Inner Space

Solaris (1972) - Tarkovsky Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) is tasked to go to a space station orbiting an ocean planet Solaris, to check on its remaining crew and determine if their probing mission is still valid. During the briefing, Burton, a former cosmonaut in the station, reports strange phenomenon going on, on the surface of Solaris, that the planet generates physical manifestations from the crew's memories. Once he gets there, he finds only 2 crew members still remaining: Snaut (Jüri Järvet) and Satorius (Anatli Solnitsyn) and the body of Gibarian who just killed himself and left Kelvin a taped message warning him about the 'visitors' that Solaris sends out. Soon enough, Kelvin's dead wife Hari (Natalia Bondachuk) turns up in front of him and any of his scientific research is out the door. Is she just a manifestations conjure up from Kelvin's memories of her? It doesn't matter to him. It is Hari and he will love her. But she begins to doubt her existence. She kills herself by drinking liquid oxygen only to be violently revived.

'Sculpting time' seems very appropriate in Solaris than any other film I can think of. With the series of long shots with slow zooms where actors quickly change their places around just outside the frame to take different positions within (and using multiple stand-ins in some cases), and repetition of images (in the beginning then later on), Tarkovsky invites audience to experience past, present and future at the same time. Loosely connected images such as reeds in the water and Tokyo traffic are just as striking as the famous bone to space ship transition cut in 2001 Space Odyssey but with more time devoted to percolate naturally in viewer's mind instead of visible edits. There are many notable scenes, but the most striking is perhaps Hari contemplating time, while watching Bruegel's Hunters in the Snow in the library of the station and them briefly experiencing weightlessness in embrace. Time is highly subjective so are our perceptions of the world.

Memories, dreams and fantasies all mingle in Solaris. How much do we know about other people? Is our existence just compounded memories of others? Tarkovsky is using the Sci-fi genre as a fodder to question our reality and contemplate human existence in perhaps the loneliest place we can imagine- outer space. Solaris is a deeply humbling experience.

Extinction, Evolution or Devolution

Super Mario Bros. (1993) - Jankel, Morton Since I am not a gamer and didn't spend my childhood in the 90s, perhaps not a good judge of the faithfulness of this movie adaptation based on a famous Nintendo game. But what I can say is that for big budget children's movies go, Super Mario Bros., directed by commercial/MV directors couple Annabell Jankel and Rocky Morton, is bonkers for Hollywood standards.

The movie concerns an alternate universe where dinosaurs are not extinct from the Asteroid hitting the earth some 66 million years ago. In this universe, people who inhabit there are evolved from reptiles. The earth is a vast desert except for uh, Mushroom Kingdom (New York City Doppelganger). The resources is running out and King Koopa (Dennis Hopper), wants to merge the two universes with the help of princess Daisy (Samantha Marthis) who possesses a necklace made out of a fragment from the asteroid. Then he wants to devolve our population to apes with his mobile devolving machines with his reptilian army.

This set up manifests the most cyber-punk dystopian production design since Blade Runner. Mario (Bob Hoskins) and Luigi (John Leguizamo) are hapless plumbers from Brooklyn who get somehow thrown into the situation to save the world from King Koopa. It spouts some snappy dialog, environmental and animal rights messages, among others.

The aesthetic is kitchy and bright, but definitely not Nickelodeon. With commmited performances from Hoskins, Leguizamo, Hopper and Fiona Shaw, as Koopa's evil henchwoman, Super Mario Bros. is an entertaining, twisty game adaptation worthy of its cult status.