so you seen
The Chaser, right? I think it belongs firmly on any list of the best thrillers of the last ten years. Hong-jin Na's followup,
The Yellow Sea was a big disappointment to me though, after its great first half (really, it's almost exactly at the halfway point) the film begins to shit the bed pretty hard. But still, 1 1/2 great films out of two is still pretty good. Hong-jin Na raises his average even further with the pretty good
The Wailing, which is just the right kind of crazy. Mixing lots of genres that really shouldn't go well together and an epic running time (when was the last time a horror anything was two and half hours plus?), and still pulling off a satisfying yet still intentionally confounding film. Explaining the plot would be a fools errand, and half the fun is seeing where the hell things end up anyway and how they get there, but suffice to say there's some gruesome and seemingly random murders plaguing a small village and a local cop gets in waaaaaaay over his head trying to figure things out. Its almost an ungainly film, excessive in so many ways, but its also very effective at what it does (scary parts are scary, thrilling parts are thrilling, funny parts are funny), and the sheer ballsiness of it all is pretty winning. Not the least of which, gangster (seen
any Korean crime film, you've probably seen him) film mainstay Jung-min Hwang shows up in about the last role you'd expect from him.
at the very least, I got to see with an AARP-ready crowd and very much enjoyed seeing the cardigan and NPR set squirm in their seats
a lot (a few walked out). Gotta take your fun where you can find it.
