Tag: review

All Aboard the Z Train! – Train to Busan Review

With Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite racking up Oscar accolades and bringing renewed attention to Korean cinema, it felt like the perfect time to watch another film that I’ve had my eye on. Like a good horror movie, Train to Busan explains its premise just enough for us to jump right into the story; an absentee father promises to bring his daughter to see her mother in Busan for her birthday, but not everything is as it seems. Tension begins to ramp up as a sickly woman flings herself onto the train just as it’s about to depart, only to be followed by a swarm of zombies rushing the train platform.

Like Parasite and Snowpiercer, Train to Busan delves deep into the struggles of class and politics while also telling a thrilling tale. In fact, the similarities between the two most popular train-based Korean films to break into the international market are hard to ignore. Both take place on a train and use the convenient separation of the train cars to both physically and metaphorically distance the characters from one another while taking full advantage of the limited space to create an unnerving sense of claustrophobia.

In terms of the zombies themselves, Train to Busan decides to take the World War Z approach of fast, mindless, and twisted undead who trample over one another in a mass of flesh and rapid hunger. This helps keep the characters and the audience on edge, but the world-building isn’t as internally consistent as it could have been. As the protagonist struggles to understand the situation, I also had a hard time stitching together clues to figure out the origin of the outbreak or even the terms on which the plot was progressing forward. For example, there is a scene that involves soldiers falling out of helicopters, only to rise as zombies a moment later and attack nearby civilians that left me wondering if the whole incident was an accident or a direct attack by weaponized zombies.

As the story and train get moving, plot points slowly fall into place and become a lot easier to predict. The occupants of the train are widdled down to a small cast of plucky survivors, including a baseball player, a cheerleader, a pregnant woman, and her husband, and a narcissistic COO of some corporation. Although they fit neatly into archetypal horror movie roles, each brings a personality and charm to the film that helps keep it from being just another zombie gorefest.

Where the story diverts from horror tropes, however, also happens to be the film’s weakest point. For a movie that otherwise left little room for sentimentality, I was surprised at the sharp left turn towards the end of the film that plays more like a Korean day-time drama than an apocalyptic horror flick. It suffices to say that Train to Busan desperately wants to tear at your heartstrings, almost to a melodramatic degree. The dragged out ending with borderline nonsensical character decisions and goofy sentimental moments only helped sour what would have otherwise been an outstanding film.

All that being said, the good aspects of Train to Busan are hard to ignore despite its obvious flaws. It’s a zombie flick with a fun premise, interesting characters, and a great sense of pacing that only falters towards the end, long after you’ve stopped caring about the plot. If you’re a zombie/horror fan or want to explore some of what Korean films have to offer, this would be a hard title not to recommend.

Train to Busan is currently streaming on Netflix.

February 19, 2020
1917 – Movie Review: The Best Movie from Last Year

(Universal Pictures)

I’m a sucker for a well-executed gimmick, especially films meant to look like they’re filmed in one long shot. Children of Men and Birdman both come to mind as great examples of this style, but rarely have I seen an artistic gimmick so perfectly match its story as with Sam Mendes’ latest creation, 1917. To call it a gimmick is actually a disservice to the emotional weight that it carries in terms of getting the audience intimately familiar with what the characters are experiencing.

Besides the opening scene, which is meant to introduce the single-shot idea as well as the main characters and the relatively simple plot, most of the movie takes place in tight, restrained environments that put the camera directly in the midst of the action. The film does an amazing job of capturing your attention and not getting too caught up in its own brilliance to tell a good story. That is to say, the film’s gimmick is in service to the story, not the other way around (I’m looking at you, Hardcore Henry).

To be frank, I was surprised to like 1917 as much as I did. I knew exactly what to expect going in, yet found myself in awe of the technical marvel unraveling before my eyes rather than trying to catch every hidden cut out of boredom. For a story that is almost entirely “spoiled” in the synopsis of the film, Sam Mendes shows that excellent writing, likable characters, and believable conflict are more important to a good story than subverting the audience’s expectations.

1917 takes very little time in cluing the audience in on just how awful it was being a soldier in the First World War. Although the “good guys” win in the end, the stakes rapidly escalate as our protagonists slog through trenches and into bunkers, facing death at every turn. With the introduction of every new character, you begin to wonder just how much the protagonists can trust them and where their motives truly lay, even those in British uniforms. The tension ramps up to a grand crescendo that both fills you with joy and also rips your heart out from your chest and makes you stare at it. War is hell, alright?

Is this the most important war movie of all time? That’s not for me to say, especially given that I rarely watch war movies outside of the star variety, but I can say that it is easily the best movie I’ve seen so far this year and I’m excited to see it again. Will I be as caught up in the commotion and forget that I’m watching a movie or will the cracks start to show when I’m not spending half of the movie watching over the character’s shoulders for potential threats? That’s hard to say too. What isn’t hard to say, however, is that you owe it to yourself to see 1917 in theaters.

February 5, 2020
Knives Out Review

Rarely am I as excited for a whodunit murder mystery as I was after watching the trailer for Rian Johnson’s latest film, Knives Out. As revealed in the trailer, the story loosely revolves around the death of a famous murder mystery writer after his 85th birthday. His family was visiting over that night, leaving each of them as a potential suspect. To make things more interesting, the detective who is on the case has been hired by someone anonymously to find the killer.

With a star-studded cast, including Daniel Craig, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Chris Evans, Knives Out takes a slightly lighter heart approach to the genre, leaving you laughing just as much as trying to piece together the puzzle or watching the legendary Detective Blanc at work. The characters are perfectly cast, giving added credibility to each of them as potential killers.

Although the genre is known for its twists and turns as clues are discovered, Knives Out takes this formula to whole new level and managed to thrill me despite my best efforts to stay ahead of the plot and potential foreshadowing. This is the kind of script that caused me to spend much of Knives Out’s run time wishing I was clever enough to write it.

Without spoiling too much, Knives Out knows exactly what you think it is and will pull you along for a wild ride that borrows cues from several other types of stories to create something surprisingly unique and memorable. I’d suggest a watch, even if you’re not the biggest fan of whodunit stories to begin with. You will not be disappointed.

Check out the trailer below:

December 25, 2019
The Boys – Season 1 Review

(The Boys – Amazon Studios)

As apprehensive as I was to give Jeff Bezos another dollar, Amazon’s marketing campaign for their latest origin series, The Boys, worked like a charm. After watching the trailer (where a Flash-esque superhero accidentally runs into a citizen at Mach-speed, turning her instantly into jelly), I was immediately intrigued. The theme of superheroes pushed to the brink and forced to contend with real-world consequences may not be new, but The Boys treads familiar ground in a way that both pays homage to classic comic book stories while also exploring lots of new ideas due to a significant change in perspective and a much darker tone. That same tone and focus on adult situations may also be a deal-breaker for a few, but anyone who can wince through the gory special effects is in for a thrilling and thought-provoking ride.

The Boys quickly introduces us to its main character, Hughie, who is as goofy and awkward as his name suggests. A traditional fish out of water story quickly ratchets up the stakes as our protagonist’s girlfriend is accidentally killed right before his eyes (remember that girl I mentioned earlier?), which sends him on a quest for revenge against the most popular superheroes of the city, The Seven. Hughie ends up joining a group of criminal vigilantes called the Boys who collectively seek justice against the superhumans. This comic book adaptation could have easily been another “what if Superman was bad?” story beat-for-beat, but instead, it took plenty of opportunities to explore just how brutal and bizarre the world would actually be with superheroes flying about.

Like any good ensemble superhero story, the characters are the core of the plot in The Boys. There is no giant laser beam in the sky or evil alien empire menacing Earth. It turns out that superheroes would be total dicks if they were real, and The Boys pulls no punches in explaining just how corrupt they would become in modern-day corporate-run America. The fact that this series was released in 2019 is no accident, and the political and philosophical overtones are both pertinent to today’s issues and expressed eloquently enough to not be patronizing.

Homelander, this story’s amalgamation of Captain American and Superman, is a perfect poster boy for a series intent on exploring complex topics such as nationalism, morality, war, religion, sexism, and corporate greed. He’s the asshole that you love to hate, but that doesn’t mean that our protagonists are much better off. Hughie’s mentor, played by Kyle Urban, is the quintessential foul-mouthed anti-hero. We’re clearly meant to cheer for the namesake group of vigilantes, but The Boys rack up quite a body count as well. Frenchie and Mother’s Milk round out the rest of the crew, making for a large range of interesting characters who each get their own room to breath in the complex world that the show presents. Out of all of them, however, Hughie ended up being my favorite given his propensity for transforming his own incompetence into a form of superpower when things start to go south.

As is expected of a modern show with significant financial backing, The Boys doesn’t wrap up all of the questions it poses by the finale, expecting the story to continue through for another season. What we do get, however, is a satisfying ending that made me want to rewatch past episodes to find any clues I might have missed. If the goal of the show was to make me want to immediately read the comics, it’s done its job in spades. The fact that I was already knee-deep in Wikipedia articles before I finished the last episode should tell you something about how far I’ve fallen into the rabbit hole.

If you’re looking for a raunchy, gory, thoroughly adult-themed superhero show to binge and you already have an Amazon Prime subscription, I recommend you take the time to watch the series from beginning to end. The Boys won’t be for everyone, but those who can stomach what it has to offer will enjoy its complex and dynamic characters, thrilling plot, and twists and turns that will keep you smashing “Next Episode” after every shocking cliffhanger.

November 21, 2019