My Top Ten Movies of 2018

Another year has come and gone and quite frankly I am happy to see 2018 go. I spent the first half of the year wrapping up my cancer treatments and the latter half dealing with the emotional aftermath. If you ever end up knowing someone who goes through the big C or have to go through it yourself, prepare for the fact that the post-treatment is often worse than the actual treatment. My doctors warned me and I didn’t believe them until I began to live it.

That being such, I didn’t go to see that many movies this year. I missed a lot of big (and not so big) releases. In fact, most of last year’s Oscar contenders are still on my to-watch-list, but I did see enough movies that I feel like a list is still manageable. And fuck it, I want to write one, so I will. In fact, what I did see was actually rather interesting and this list is rather eclectic.

So, let’s lay some ground rules:
1. I am going after the American release date for the picks that have had premiers in that market. That means that many of last years Oscar favorites such as Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri, Wind River or The Shape of Water aren’t eligible for this year (and that last one wouldn’t be anywhere near this list either way), even though they came out in my market this year. If there isn’t an American release (or it was so limited I couldn’t find out what it was) I will go after country’s domestic release.

2. Umm… Actually, I think there is only one rule and that was number one.

Before we get to the Top Ten, some various other awards. Let’s start with the dubious awards:

Most Disappointing Film:

Halloween (Dir. David Gordon Green, U.S.A., 106 mins.)

Wow… Just wow. I was excited for this ever since it was first announced. A new Halloween movie? Produced by John Carpenter? Written by Danny McBride? With Jamie Lee Curtis back? That sounded like a recipe for greatness!
Then the reviews came out and they varied from fair to truly great. I got even more excited.

Then I saw the film and suffered through it. And the worst part? I can see what other people see in the movie. I really can. It pays tribute to the franchise’s legacy well enough portrays Michael Myers as a monster of high caliber, but something is missing and I attribute it to two points.
Firstly, when I was 14, I was obsessed with the Halloween-franchise. I watched the first movie probably at least 50 times and the others dozens of times. Those movies are burned into my memory till the day I die. I can’t escape them. Hell, I don’t want to. But when I saw the new movie, it was clear that the whole movie was essentially a giant love letter to the films that came before it. That sounds great, but considering the fact that it is a reboot that ignores every single one of the sequels, picking up directly after the first one, it doesn’t even make sense that it dedicates so much time to paying homage to movies that the movie canonically claims aren’t worth acknowledging. And more obviously; if your whole movie is a giant tribute to other movies, it prevents you from creating your own identity and that’s exactly what happened with this movie. I sat there throughout every movie thinking about how “that’s just like that time in Halloween___ when he___,” and after the fifth one of those thoughts it stopped being fun.
Secondly, throughout the series, there has always been these moments where Michael Myers for one reason or another doesn’t kill a person he comes across. Be it someone he bumps into, a woman who’s knife he steals or just someone who’s window he lurks outside of, sees them and then continues. It added suspense to the proceedings. Michael doesn’t kill everything he sees. There is a logic here. It may not make sense to anyone but him, but there is a logic.
Here there is no such thing. After about 30 minutes it became clear that if 2018 Michael Myers sees you, he kills you. There are no exceptions. All right, there is one, but it is such an awful moment that it is a lose-lose scenario no matter how it goes and the only way it would have worked is by simply cutting it from the film.
I thought this would be a triumphant return of the series. Instead it made me re-evaluate the worst movies in the series before this. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a true disappointment.

BEST SURPRISE

Peter Rabbit (Dir. Will Gluck, U.S.A., 95 mins.)

I grew up with the works of Beatrix Potter. I loved her illustrations, the simple, yet relatable stories of her tales and to this day have a week spot for the animated series it spawned. So, when the trailer for the new Peter Rabbit movie was released, I almost flew into a rage. The trailer was horrible. It wasn’t funny, didn’t even remotely look like the original and seemed to actively be trying to desecrate Potter’s creation. But when it came out, people I trust said they enjoyed the film for what it was. So, I went to see it and… I really liked it.
It’s not really a Peter Rabbit movie. It’s a traditional rom-com that just so happens to take place in the world of Beatrix Potter and has Peter Rabbit as a half of a Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner-esque whole and the Looney Tunes-like relationship between James Corden’s Peter Rabbit and Domhnall Gleeson’s Thomas McGregor is where the movie shines. Domhnall Gleeson is one of my favorite actors and this movie is a perfect example of why. His over-worked, nitpicky Thomas steals the show as he tries to restore a house in the woods while keeping all the wildlife out, whilst simultaneously trying to court the beautiful next-door neighbor, Bea (Rose Byrne).

It doesn’t deserve a place on my list, but for somehow taking Peter Rabbit and mixing him with Home Alone and Notting Hill and making it work, it deserves a mention as a damn good surprise.

Bumblebee (Dir. Travis Knight, U.S.A., 114 mins.)

I’ve hated every single Transformers-movie besides the first one. I left the first Michael Bay-helmed film thinking that if only they fixed the sophomoric and racist humor and made some of the designs less busy, they had a pretty solid formula going. Then Revenge of the Fallen came out and I realized that all the things I disliked must have been what Michael Bay liked about the movie, because now the whole movie was basically nothing but racism, sexism and incoherent action with robots that were so bland and over-designed they were basically impossible to distinguish from one another. The three sequels beyond that didn’t do much to improve that, even though I still maintain that Revenge of the Fallen is the worst of the bunch.

So, when they announced that they were giving series star Bumblebee is own spinoff, I gave a disgusted scoff. These people couldn’t give us a decent mainline Transformers-movie and now I was supposed to believe that they could handle spinoffs.
Well, once they announced that it would be set in the 80’s and Hailee Steinfeld would star I kind of just went “shit,” and accepted that I would have to at least give the movie a chance. I like both of those things enough for that. And… I really liked Bumblebee. Its robot designs are more in line with the 80’s cartoon, it never dips too far into the nostalgia-barrel and Hailee Steinfeld is a breath of fresh air so strong it makes me hope that Hasbro and Paramount take this chance of simply ignoring the main series and continuing forward with a new continuity that involves Hailee Steinfeld.

Because there is no way that would make this series go anywhere but up.

 Worst Movie

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (J.A. Bayona, U.S.A. 128 mins.)

*SPOILER WARNING*

I have to admit, I didn’t like Jurassic World much at all. I tried to convince myself that it was as good as everyone was saying and that truth be told, it probably is the best movie in the franchise besides the original. Too bad that doesn’t mean much too much. The Lost World: Jurassic Park is a boring overly long mess of a film filled with unlikable characters that tries to redeem itself with an awesome final half hour, but the slog to get there drags the whole film down too much to care. On top of that, I hate the color the stock gives the forest in that film. The first film is so lush and green, but The Lost World: Jurassic Park is just… flat. It feels like they exchanged Hawaii for the forests of Oregon.

Jurassic Park III is a 90-minute joke. A joke I actually sort of appreciate, but still just a joke.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom does not have me in on the joke. It is God Awful.

It takes Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard’s characters Owen and Claire and puts them into a plot involving relocating and preserving the dinosaurs (a plot that worked so well the last time you used it) and adds a ton of characters that have no reason to be here except to act as comic relief. BAD comic relief. On top of that the movie’s villainous characters are so cartoonish in their villainy that it stops being funny and just becomes frustrating.

When Isla Nublar, the island of the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World begins to blow up, it leads into a giant cacophony of idiocy with dinosaurs who would never be interested in eating trying to feed on our “heroes” and once the island succumbs to the lava swallowing it, there is this sad moment where a Diplodocus is swallowed by ash and screams. I cried in the theater. Not because the film had an effective moment, but because I was so angry. I just thought “Colin Trevorrow, you are not even near a good enough writer to have earned this moment. You don’t deserve to destroy an island that has meant so much to me.”

And that is the heart of the issue. This movie wants to, much like its predecessor, live off the legacy of the series it is cribbed from whilst working toward the next movie. The movie that Jurassic World director and Fallen Kingdom-screenwriter Colin Trevorrow has said is the movie he’s “always wanted to see”. Despite setting up so many batshit and idiotic concepts the movie feels bizarrely like it’s on auto-pilot most of the time. Existing as a justification for Trevorrow to get the world in a place where he wants to see it be so he can tell a story he really cares about.

If his current work is any indication of his talent, then I am so glad that he got fired from directing Star Wars for Disney.

I’ll end this with two final thoughts: firstly, the movie would have been more interesting if they placed the relationship between Owen and Blue more center stage, because the few scenes between them are the only ones that truly work for me.

Secondly, the one thing the movie improves is the character of Claire. It doesn’t really make sense how she is basically an entirely different character now, with none of the same mannerisms, style or anything, really, but the first movie seemed so determined to make her unlikable the having her not be that is a definite improvement.

It still doesn’t mean you should pay to see this trash, though.  

MY TOP TEN MOVIES OF THE YEAR

Honorable Mentions:

Ready Player One (Dir. Steven Spielberg, U.S.A. 140 mins.)
A movie that I surprisingly enjoyed enough to have seen it seven times as of writing this. Funny, fast and its pop culture references aren’t as annoying and hindering as those in the book it is based on.

A Quiet Place (Dir. John Krasinski, U.S.A. 90 mins.)

John Krasinski impresses with this horror/thriller set in a world where hyper sensitive aliens have killed most of humanity and those left live in constant silence. Tense as all hell, well-acted by Krasinski, his real-life wife Emily Blunt and child actors Noah Jupe and Millicent Simmonds it makes for a great 90 minutes that has you on the edge of your seat, as you creep toward an incredibly satisfying conclusion.

Isle of Dogs (Dir. Wes Anderson, U.S.A., Germany, 97 mins.)

We Anderson’s second stop motion outing isn’t as good as the masterpiece that is Fantastic Mr. Fox, but it is still a pretty great film about abandoned dogs on a Japanese island and the insane adventure that they embark on. Had it not been for it feeling a little too simplified a version of Japanese culture and history and for a certain character being a little too white-savior-y, it might have made the list.

Ant-Man and the Wasp (Dir. Peyton Reed, U.S.A., 118 mins.)

A sequel on par with the original, we are reacquainted with Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang as he is under house arrest for having aided Captain America in Captain America: Civil War. Soon, however he is swept away by Evangeline Lily’s Hope Van Dyne and Michael Douglas’ Hank Pym and a new adventure starts. Just as funny as the first one, the likeable cast and the addition of Evangeline Lily’s Wasp to the action gives this movie a great pacing that I have found myself returning to several times. If I were to rank these honorable mentions, this is definitely the one I would put as number 11 on the actual list. I loved this movie and I am not ashamed about that.

Aquaman (Dir. James Wan, U.S.A., 143 mins.)

It’s like diet Black Panther. Which isn’t a bad thing. Aquaman is charming, pretty exciting film which I must admit maybe got a clear advantage from being shown in 4DX Screen X here in Seoul, where I currently reside. Which meant that whilst the movie was playing, wind and water effects whirled around me and my seat shook like crazy and whenever something really awesome happened the movie expanded out on the theater wall’s, immersing you entirely.

If this movie holds up at home on Blu-ray remains to be seen, but for now I feel comfortable saying that Aquaman belongs with Wonder Woman as the DCEU movies which are straight up enjoyable.

Border (Original Title: Gräns, Dir. Ali Abbas, Sweden, 108 mins.)

Based on a short story by John Ajvide Lindqvist, the same author who wrote Let the Right One In, this story of a troll working as a border agent is both dramatic, horrifying and beautiful. Doing what Swedish cinema does so well, it shows the dull realism of life and infuses it with a bit of Nordic folklore for a truly unique experience. It’s the first Swedish film I have thoroughly enjoyed since… well, Let the Right One In to be honest.

And now to the actual top ten list.

10. TWICELAND (Dir. Park Jin-young, South Korea, 110 mins.)

I honestly can’t believe that I am putting this on the list, but I can’t bring myself not to. My love of K-pop has been a known quantity between me and my friends for half a decade now, but I’ve always tried to sort of make peace with what I honestly felt I was too old for by trying to view it from an ironic perspective. 2018 was the year when I threw that stupid concept out of the window. I love K-pop (or at least certain groups in the genre) more passionately than I do any Western acts in the current pop music climate and that’s where Korea’s currently biggest girl group TWICE comes in.

Last time I lived in Korea, three years ago, TWICE debuted with their single Ooh-Aah하게, an inescapable earworm I only managed to escape through embracing and buying their first mini-album. And ever since then I have picked up every single Korean album they have released in one form or another. It sounds insane even to me that TWICE has sort of become the soundtrack of my life, but it is true. I remember vividly that in October 2016 they released their single TT and how I immediately got addicted to listening to it. At the time, my grandfather was unbeknownst to us, dying from a cancerous tumor in his intestines and on Halloween afternoon he had gotten stuck at home and couldn’t get back to bed. I was forced to run over to my grandparent’s house to help the only father I have ever known back to his bed. I remember running there, TT blaring in my headphones, me singing along, fighting back tears in the darkness.

It was also the song I listened to when I walked up the hill to the hospital to visit him the last time I would see him alive. Till this day, when I hear TT I think of him.

And when I began working again after my own cancer bout their 2017 single Heartshaker was the song I would use to get prepared to pretend that I was all right.

My point is, my love for TWICE, or indeed any of the K-pop groups I follow is ironic and the final straw of irony was immediately incinerated when I went to see the 4DX Screen X experience TWICELAND. It’s a concert movie which uses the gimmick format to the greatest effect I have ever seen. Mostly because unlike Aquaman or Bumbleebee which added effects onto the sides of the theaters as a bonus for people paying for the format, TWICELAND was filmed fully intended to be seen with the whole theater acting as the screen and the result is beautiful to behold. The concert projects all around you, the nine members of the girl group signing their biggest songs as the camera allows you to be immersed in the concert and the various interactions the members have with the crowd.

Before seeing TWICELAND I tried to only view the members as pieces in a machine. They were cogs bringing me happy, corporately manufactured pop music. But after having seen the movie I have gained a profound respect for them as performers and the insanely hard work that they clearly put into what they do. On top of that, when the concert comes to an end and tears start to run down members’ faces, it is hard not to feel a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.

And the funny thing is, that feeling kind of hasn’t vanished for me. It’s still there when I hear any of my favorite TWICE songs, which you do a lot here as you walk down the streets. 2018 was a hard year for me, but one of the easiest things I did all year was pulling off the irony-suit and fully admitting that I love K-pop and that more importantly; I love TWICE.

9. Be with You (Original Title: 지금 만나러 갑니다, Dir. Lee Jang-hoon, South Korea, 132 mins.)

A remake of the 2004 Japanese film of the same name (or the book by Takuji Ichikawa) Be with You tells the story Woo-jin, a widower busy raising his son Ji-ho. Before passing away, Woo-jin’s wife Soo-ah promised her husband and son that she would “return when the rain season starts” and Ji-ho eagerly awaits when he’ll be able to see his mother again.

When the rainy season starts, much to Woo-jin’s surprise, they find a woman who looks just like Soo-ah in the woods, but she can’t remember either of them at all. Despite this, she comes with them home and over the next couple of days begins to care for the two deeply and that care reflects positively on the Woo-jin and Ji-ho’s lives.

But how is any of this possible and what will happen when the rainy season ends? Will Soo-ah vanish once again?

The story of Be with You captivated me when I saw the Japanese version back in 2014. It was simple and slow-paced, which allowed the quiet country atmosphere to envelop you fully and it is a rare thing for a remake manage to recapture that kind of magic, but this slick Korean production does really well at doing so.

So Ji-sub is good as the stoic Woo-jin who struggles with being able to communicate with and control his son while also dealing with his own health issues. However, for me, the heart of the movie belongs to Son Ye-jin’s Soo-ah, who has to play essentially two different characters as we see her a mother and then as a blank slate, confused and slightly frightened by the claims her would-be husband and son make about her life.

On top of all of this, the movie shows flashbacks throughout, telling us the story of how a teenage Woo-jin tries to win the heart of the girl he’s always loved and how despite all the obstacles they somehow end up together.

Be with You is a simple but effective romance movie that I thoroughly enjoyed. It’s calming, dreamlike atmosphere makes it into a movie I know I will return to often and a movie I will recommend to friends and family as often as opportunity allows. Consider yourselves recommended.

8. Black Panther (Dir. Ryan Coogler, U.S.A. 143 mins.)

I cried as the credits rolled on Black Panther. Not only because it is certainly one of Marvel’s most engaging films to date, but because unless you have reason to think about it, it is still so rare to see movies with predominantly black actors that isn’t about race. Say what you want about the fact that the society portrayed in the film still operating on antiquated tribalism, it still is one of few movies where the entire main cast is black and race isn’t driving the narrative.

But that isn’t the only reason why I really loved Black Panther. It wraps itself up in an intrigue based in monarchical conflicts and regicide that give the proceedings a Shakespearean flavor with some really refreshing hip-hop-swagger infused with it. On top of that, the film has really good characters portrayed by great actors and you almost have to feel a little for Chadwick Boseman, who despite doing an excellent job playing T’Challa gets overshadowed by a supporting cast that not only sees him going up against Michael B. Jordan’s truly despicable Killmonger, but sees him standing next to Letitia Wright’s Shuri, T’Challa’s genius little sister and Danai Gurira’s Okoye as the head of the king’s guard.

I don’t really feel like much more needs to be said about this one. It’s well-acted, well-directed and shot coherently. It added some much-needed change in setting and tone to the MCU and really proved that there is a future here beyond the current cycle of characters and actors.

On top of that, one of its action set-pieces is set in South Korea, which is always a plus for me.

7. Mission Impossible: Fallout (Dir. Christopher McQuarrie, U.S.A., 148 mins.)

It’s almost inconceivable that the Mission Impossible-series continues to impress as much as it does. The first was good, the second bad, taking one of Asia’s most prolific action directors and clearly only caring about having his name on the marquee rather than his actual strong suits as a director and the third was a step up, beginning J.J. Abrams trend of pulling struggling franchises out of the mud. But it was with the fourth, directed by veteran animation director Brad Bird that the series found a new voice and direction and truly took a step up in quality. Suddenly, this relatively serious action series began to develop something special; a repour between its audience and its characters. And when Christopher McQuarrie took the director’s chair the fifth film in the series; Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation the pattern was cemented: these movies, are the odd series that has the sequels getting better with very iteration and the sixth entry, Mission Impossible: Fallout is no exception. It is the best of the lot so far.

After an arms deal goes wrong, Tom Cruise’s Ethan, Simon Pegg’s Benji and Ving Rhames’ Luther find themselves in front of the CIA’s gun barrel. Having to once again justify the IMF’s existence as well as finding themselves tasked with finding three stolen plutonium cores that could cause unthinkable devastation on the world should they be utilized.

For me, the main reason why the Mission Impossible continues to engage me isn’t the well-crafted spy plots or Tom Cruise’s willingness to do death-defying stunts. No, it’s the fact that unlike any other action series that has lasted this long, the fact that the characters are clearly so invested in each other’s survival is such an important detail. Mission Impossible: Fallout’s entire story only plays out the way it does because Ethan Hunt refuses to sacrifice one of his friends in order to secure a weapon of mass destruction. James Bond for instance would make the difficult choice with little hardship, but that is where this franchise differs. Ethan Hunt isn’t 007, he is a human being. A Human being with connections, affection for his colleagues and fear of what lies. When fear spreads across Ethan’s face it creates investment in the audience and doesn’t let go of that investment until the credits roll.

Mission Impossible: Fallout is the miraculous best in its series, taking characters we already love and setting them up against new foes and obstacles. I don’t want to elaborate too much about the plot of this well-directed and choreographed action-thriller, but rest assured that if a seventh entry rears its head in a few years, I will be there on day one. Because at this point, this is my favorite action franchise. A mission I’ll choose to accept, every time.

6. Mirai (Original Title: Mirai no Mirai, Dir. Hosoda Mamoru, Japan, 98 mins.)

Hosoda Mamoru is one of animation’s grat visionaries. Not just within animation, but through all of animation as a whole. And with films such as The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars, Wolf Children and The Boy and the Beast under his belt, it should say something about the quality of Mirai that only Wolf Children can compete with it.

Mirai tells the story of Kun, a toddler who is suddenly has to share his parents’ and grandparents’ love and attention when his parent’s come home from the hospital with his infant sister Mirai (the Japanese word for future). Kun is angry, frustrated and sometimes even violent as he tries to understand how this new world, no longer revolving around him functions.

Soon, however, Kun begins to experience weird visions. He meets Mirai as a high schooler, who berates him for how he treats her as a child and takes him on adventures, a creature that claims to be the human embodiment of the family dog and several other figures across the films’ running time, all of which help Kun on his journey to grow out of toddler-hood.

And that is what Mirai is really about. Developing into a more complex mind. If Pixar’s Inside Out was the embodiment of the human mind beginning its journey into adulthood, Mirai is its journey from toddler into proper childhood. Kun starts the movie entirely unaware that a situation can exist where he isn’t the focus of every single moment, only to receive a heavy slap across the face that makes him realize that his world has forever changed, but through his meetings with these characters (who can’t be simple figments of his imagination for several reasons) Kun becomes a more independent, understanding and mature child.

Mirai is a visually stunning, heart-warming experience that like many of the best animé films out there is so well-crafted and relatable that it manages to make every day moments emotionally impactful. Without saying too much, there is a moment in the film where Kun is learning how to ride a bicycle that was, due to what had come before along with the presentation, so powerful that it actually made me teary-eyed and proud of a character I had known for less than 90 minutes.

Hosoda Mamoru continues to impress and prove why he is one of animation’s greatest living directors and deserves to be more well-known than he is. Mirai is living proof of why.

5. Shoplifters (Original Title: Manbiki Kazoku, Dir. Kore-eda Hirokazu, Japan, 121 mins.)

I was studying film theory when Kore-eda Hirokazu fist came to my attention. We had to watch his 1998 film After Life during one of the courses and I knew immediately that I was a fan. In fact, when I took a course in Japanese Film History, I was overjoyed to see it again. Most movies I had copies of at home or had seen recently enough to remember the gist of, I would skip and sleep in on (this was before I realized that life was basically movies and nothing else), but not with After Life.

When I was studying acting a few years later, whilst concurrently dipping into the Asian cinema-well for the first time I came across it again in a box set bearing his name and started delving deeper into his filmography. To this day Still Walking, his Ozu-esque family drama is my favorite of the films of his I have seen, but Shoplifters, his 2018 film stands alongside After Life on the number 2 spot.

Kore-eda has a very great ability to create films with relatable characters, no matter if your own life experiences line up with their own or not. This was true for After Life and Still Walking and remains true with Shoplifters.

The movie revolves around a “family” of misfits who live in poverty in a small house in Tokyo. The owner of the house, the elderly Hatsue allows the married couple Osamu and Nobuyo, teenage runaway Aki and pre-teen orphan Shota to live in her house because despite her limited pension, she would rather be poor than lonely. To compensate for the lack of funds, the family provides for itself through both low-paying jobs and through getting their food via shoplifting, an activity they all excel at.

Things get more complicated however, when Osamu and Shota find a little girl locked out of her apartment in the winter night. They bring her home and one thing leads to another and soon she is inducted into the family. It isn’t long before the police are looking for the child and the group’s already complicated living situation begins to unravel.

Shoplifters is a great introduction to Japanese dramas, but is an equally good choice for the already experienced. Its cast, made up of some of Japan’s greats and the final performance of Kirin Kiki as Hatsue make you forget that you’re just watching actors and the smaller moments Kore-eda injects into his story makes for a movie I can’t wait to see again, and to introduce to others I know would appreciate. If you want something more realistic, then Shoplifters is a good bet. Hell, it’s a fantastic one.

4. Burning (Original Title: 버닝, Dir. Lee Chang-dong, South Korea, 148 mins.)

Lee Chang-dong is one of South Korea’s most prolific directors. He’s also one I actually don’t have that much experience with, to be honest. Because unlike his peers Park Chan-wook (Old Boy, The Handmaiden), Kim Jee-won (A Tale of Two Sisters, I Saw the Devil) and Bong Joon-ho (The Host, Okja) he specializes on more down-to-earth stories that usually tackle incredibly heavy subject matters, such as rape, murder, kidnapping and overall existential fatigue. The others tackle these subjects too, but unlike Park Chan-wook, who for instance, with his film Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance made a movie so bleak that every single second you watch it feels like a lump of led settling in your stomach with a story that includes murder, torture, kidnapping among other atrocities, Lee Chang-dong usually chooses to portray these things as realistically as possible and it leads to some of his movies being very hard to watch. Hard to watch in a way that differs from what I am accustomed to.

However, when Burning was first announced, I was incredibly excited for it for not only being a new movie from a major Korean filmmaker, but because it hit the creative hat-trick. Not only was Lee directing it, but it was based on a novella by famed Japanese author Murakami Haruki and starred Yoo Ah-in, an actor I have come to really like over the years. It also features The Walking Dead’s Steven Yeun in his proper Korean movie debut. It also happens to be a more twisted narrative than Lee usually engages with.

Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) is a 20-something from the country town of Paju, just south of the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. Due to some legal trouble, he is left taking care of his family’s farm house, earning money from various odd jobs. One day he meets an old classmate, Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-so) and it isn’t long before feelings begin to develop between the two. Hae-mi leaves on a trip to Africa she was set to go on before the two met, but when she comes back, she has Ben (Steven Yeun) in to. A rich, charming Gangnam-man with everything Jong-su doesn’t. Hae-mi leaves the lines blurred where her relationship with either of the two men stands, but continues to rope a reluctant Jong-su to spend time with not only her, but with Ben as well.

But one day Hae-mi vanishes and Jong-su is left with no clue of where or why and no matter who he seeks out or asks, no one seems to know where she is, nor do they seem particularly bothered by her disappearance either. It is up to Jong-su to try and find her, and to figure out if maybe Ben knows more about all of it than he is letting on.

Burning is in a class of its own. It might just seem like I told you the entirety of the plot of this movie, but in all honesty, Burning lives off of its moments and details. I saw this movie with a friend and it was one of those movies that was worth it enough just for the talk the movie inspired in us afterwards. The film doesn’t set its tone right away, so you could very much throw it on for someone who knows nothing about it and let the story unravel. Burning’s story is like a rotten fruit, from one angle you might almost assume it is edible, but when you peel away the skin it turns out that there is something incredibly unpleasant underneath. In some cases that is the opposite of an endorsement, but with Burning it is a definite recommendation. It’s acting is fantastic from not just Yoo Ah-in and Steven Yeun, but also Jeon Jong-so, who as far as I can tell is debuting in this film, the story is subversive and unsettling in a way that has only seen the film grow on me over time and the direction is tight as all hell.

Burning is a damn good time to be had and a strong mark on the resumé of all the people involved with its production.

3. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Dir. Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rotham, U.S.A., 117 mins.)

Spider-Man has been my favorite superhero as long as I can remember. As a kid, newly arrived in Sweden I would watch the Spider-Woman cartoon, not because I cared particularly about Jessica Drew (even though she was cool), but because there was that one episode of the show where Spider-MAN showed up!
That was when I was four. Before I knew Peter Parker. But as I grew older, and truly began to know what it was like to be alone, a bullied kid with an interest in science and books. After this evolution, Peter Parker became a vessel to put my frustration into. I read too many comics to count, bought as many toys from the animated series as I could and once the movies began coming out, I bought all of their tie-in games, soundtracks and saw the first trilogy three times each in the theater. I’m not telling you this to brag, I’m doing it to make a point. I love Spider-Man. I will probably always love Spider-Man. But as the years went on, I sort of fell off. I stopped reading the comics when his marriage to Mary Jane was undone, but I had basically stopped even before that, too. Choosing instead to focus on the already published classics. I still went to see the movies, but my enthusiasm began to wain even for these. In fact, I had basically switched to DC comics and had started idolizing Superman.

Then came Captain America: Civil War and things began to look up. This Peter Parker was a good portrayal of the character and his own movie Spider-Man: Homecoming was certainly a step up from Sony’s previous reboot attempt. However, ever since Amazing Spider-Man 2 failed, people had been rumbling about maybe giving the newer Spider-Man from the comics, Miles Morales a chance instead of Peter Parker again. All that came of this was some rumbling from people at Sony about there being some plans for him.

Fast forward to 2018. Tom Holland’s Spider-Man takes part in the penultimate Avengers-movie Avengers: Infinity War, we get a truly excellent game from Ratchet and Clank-makers Insomniac Games and Miles Morales finally gets his own movie in the form of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, an animated film from Sony Animation Studios and… it’s my favorite of all of them.

Miles Morales is a kid from Brooklyn who struggles to fit in at his new school, an elite private school for the gifted. The pressures of his classes, fitting in and overall just being a teenager begin taking their toll on Miles. Things don’t get any easier when he finds himself bitten by a spider that ends up giving him the same powers as Spider-Man.

When a convoluted plot from The Kingpin results in a tear between universes, Miles finds himself in the middle of a fight not just for our world, but all worlds everywhere. And along for the ride are crew of other Spider-characters from across the multiverse. The only problem is that Miles has been Spider-Man for less than 24 hours, is he really ready to be a hero?

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse managed to do something I thought would never happen again; it made every single hair on my body stand up, just like it did when Tobey McGuire first donned the suit back in 2002. I attribute this mostly to the fact that by choosing to make this movie an animated movie, it is given a more comic book-like feel, which along with its remix of familiar characters and plots and quick humor both visual and verbal make it so easy to get swept away by. It also has a terrific soundtrack, which has been soundtracking my life for the last few weeks.

2018 will always be the year we lost Stan Lee. But I choose to see it as a beautiful thing that he left us in what is the best year his most famous creation has probably ever seen. The wait for Miles Morales was worth it. I just hope enough people choose to give their money to see it so we get to see where this journey can take us.

2. Paddington 2 (Dir. Paul King, United Kingdom/France, 104 mins.)

This is essentially the movie I chose to define my rule of “American release date” for. I couldn’t not have Paddington 2 on my list. That’s how much this movie resonated with me. The first movie took me and a lot of people by surprise by just how sincere and heart-warming it was. It saw Paddington (voiced perfectly by Ben Whishaw), the South American bear moving to London, only to find a place far less welcoming than he first believed, but over the course of his adventure his infectious kindness, curiosity and love of marmalade ended up getting him a home and family in the form of the Browns. And that is essentially what Paddington was all about: a person so loving and helpful that he turned everyone he came into contact with into better people just by being himself.

And Paddington 2 takes what the first movie did so well and somehow manages to improve on it even further. Paddington Bear is still living with the Brown family. Father Henry (Hugh Bonneville), mother Mary (Sally Hawkins), children Judy (Madeleine Harris) and Jonathan (Samuel Joslin) and housekeeper Mrs. Bird are all colorful personalities, who despite their different quirks never lose sight of the fact of how much they love and appreciate each other, or the newest member of their family.

Paddington doesn’t crave much out of life besides marmalade, but when Paddington’s aunt Lucy’s 100^th birthday approaches, the bear finds himself in need of a present. He settles on a pop-up-book of London, since aunt Lucy never got to visit the city herself. However, it isn’t long before the book is stolen and Paddington finds himself as the primary suspect.

Paddington 2 amps up everything that made the first movie so damn loveable. It’s laugh-out-loud-funny, emotionally impactful when it needs to be (there is a moment toward the end that makes me cry without fail every time I see it) and the whole movie is so sincere that I can’t even imagine what kind of person you have to be to not get swept up in it.

Much like Mission Impossible: Fallout (Gee, I wonder how many people have compared these two movies) the heart of the movie lies in the love the characters share with each other. In the first movie, Mr. Brown was the one who fought loving Paddington for the longest time and it is such a genuine joy to see him here, still the stiff, British office worker he was last time, but whenever something goes wrong or there is reason to be concerned for Paddington, he is always the one to react the most extremely. As if the idea of anything bad happening to Paddington being the worst possible thing in the world.

On top of the old cast, the film sees an amazing upgrade in the form of Hugh Grant as the flamboyant, self-obsessed actor Phoenix Buchanan, who wants the book for his own nefarious reasons.

Paddington 2 is one of the best sequels of all time and one of the best family films of all time as well. If you have a beating heart behind your ribs you owe it to yourself to go on this adventure, because in a world as rough as this one, it might just give you a little more hope.

1. One Cut of the Dead (Original Title: Kamera o Tomeru na!, Dir: Ueda Shinichiro, Japan, 97 mins.)

Where in the hell did this… thing come from? I honestly don’t even really know how to describe One Cut of the Dead. Because this really is a case where I feel that knowing as little as possible about it is the best way to enjoy it. So, what can I tell you?

Well, it’s a Japanese independent movie with a super low budget. It was filmed in only 8 days and has currently made over 1000 times its budget back after its reputation has spread and has made people go check it out.

The film starts with a 37-minute-long single take (yes, really) as a zombie invasion grabs hold of a movie set on the Japanese countryside. It’s rough, cheap and clichéd, but the fact that it actually works is impressive as all hell. What happens after that? I won’t tell you. Not a word. Because you need to see it for yourself.

The same friend that I saw Burning with saw this at a different screening than me, but I remember meeting him the day after at another movie and sort of trying to lead in to telling him that I saw a movie that was so good it had me wondering if I had somehow lost my mind. But when I told him the title, his eyes lit up and he pointed at me energetically and said “I SAW IT, TOO!”

It was confirmation that I wasn’t crazy. Or maybe I am, but in that case, I don’t want to be sane. Because my movie of 2018 is a minimal budget Japanese zombie movie (and I can’t emphasize enough that this description doesn’t do the movie justice) called One Cut of the Dead of all things.

It embodied not just everything I love about film, but what I love about filmmaking. And I think that if you see it, you’ll understand why.

Stockholm International Film Festival List

NOTE: The following entry is one that I wrote at the end of November of 2013 and never published. Not because I felt my points were bad or opinions uninteresting as much as out of laziness and unwillingness to edit it. I came across it while looking up films to write about for this journal, and realized that many of the movies I wanted to talk about were on this list. So here it is!

Since all but one of the films I saw at the festival were Asian,
this little banner fits kind of perfectly. 

As I mentioned previously I have for the last ten days been attending screenings at the Stockholm International Film Festival. Sweden is a small country and being someone who has gotten a taste for a pretty wide variety of cinema it can be slightly frustrating. I've mostly relied on Amazon to guide me to directors and works I might like, but now I had a chance to see some new releases on the big screen. I attended a total of fourteen screenings along with an event focused on Swedish short subjects. I will not be talking about the shorts since availability will be so varied and uncertain, but I want to make a list of all the movies I saw and order them by number to show how much I liked each film. So without further ado, let's get started!

I have never seen a movie make the act of characters changing clothes look as awesome as Cold Eyes does.

1. Cold Eyes (Choi Ui-suk, Kim Byung-seo)

I have to say that Cold Eyes had me worried. South Korea as a country does truly excel at making tight, well thought out thrillers, but something about Cold Eyes made me think it would be a standard 2 hour macho-fest. In a way I feel some voice deep down inside me that's telling me "Christian, you're a film student! There has to be something else that was better that you saw? Something that had something to say!", but the majority of my heart and brain has an answer for that voice: "Cold Eyes has something to say! That spying on criminals and outsmarting people is fucking rad!". In fact it might be the film student in me that loves Cold Eyes most of all. It is so well-made that most American studios and their directors should see it just to see how you properly film, edit and pace a scene. There are moments in Cold Eyes that thrill more than any American action movie I have seen since Terminator 2: Judgement Day and in a way that is sad. I'll leave it at that since my last entry centered entirely around this movie and I feel I have covered enough to prove my point; Cold Eyes reminded me why I want to make movies in the first place. And yes, I know it's a remake of the Chinese film Eye in the Sky (which I have not seen) and it still ranks the highest. Because remake or not, great artistry is still great artistry!

Cousin's niece, being used as a subject by his equally playful nephew. 

2. The Story of Children and Film (Mark Cousins)
Mark Cousins is a name that any cineast or movie buff should know, not that I expect that to actually be the case. Cousins is a man who truly loves and understands the film medium with such great articulation that he has come to the forefront as a guru of sorts. His TV-epic The Story of Film is a 15 hour long masterpiece spanning film's history from the Lumiere brothers all the way to last year. Unlike most people however, Cousins uses his personal connections and information not as a neutral fact-spewing narrative but adds his thoughts, insights and own footage of the places that changed film the most from decades past to make you understand why he loves film. 

The Story of Children and Film is similar to the show, only this time it doesn't focus on film's history as much as the way films portray and mirror the essences of childhood. The good thing about Cousins is how his journies and reputation has given him a vast network of contacts throughout the world. Not interested in telling the traditional story of the "hero child" that so many American movies about children focus on, Cousins instead highlights more obscure movies from all over the globe. The Story of Children and Film isn't just a fascinating achievement for the lovers of cinema, but is an excellent reminder of what children are like. I think it may very well be a near perfect tool for anyone who doubts their ability to write children in stories.
The Story of Children of Film is a gem I want to take home as soon as possible.

Real is a lot of things. But the title is not one of them. 

3. Real (Kurosawa Kiyoshi)

Real is one of the most sophisticated films I have seen all year. It story revolves around Koichi, a twenty-something who's girlfriend Atsumi has been left in a comatose state after a failed suicide attempt. The hospital that Atsumi is located at has a set of machines that through a technique called "Sensing" allows someone compatible with Atsumi's brain patterns to enter her subconcious and communicate with her. Koichi is sent in, and through a series of sessions starts to get closer to reaching Atsumi. Soon however things from the sensing sessions begin to bleed over to his reality, causing Koichi to start to doubt everything he sees and hears in front of him.

I found Real to be a very fun experience. I described it to my friends as a film that would occur if The Matrix and Inception got together and had a baby that they raised to have an obsession with the Loch Ness Monster.

The movie's story twists and turns about as you would expect and even though I saw the final revelation coming it didn't impede my enjoyment of the film. The film's visual style and rather unique final act made up for it quite well. Highly recommended.

Bo-na suddenly finds herself the center of attention for the first time in her life.

4. How to Use Guys With Secret Tips (Lee Won-suk)

I have learned a whole lot about my own tastes as of late, and this film festival has if anything given me the final comfirmation I needed. How to Use Guys With Secret Tips is one of the dumbest movies I saw at the festival, but it's still a movie I can't wait to see again. It tells the story of Choi Bo-na, a struggling 30 year-old assistant director who just can't seem to catch a break. The same asshole steals her cab every morning, despite being structured and driven she still can't get passed being the second assistant director to a complete slob and the men at her workplace don't listen to her at all. After a particularly disastrous shoot, Bo-na stumbles upon a vendor who sells her a series of self-help tapes that he claims will teach her to get men to do whatever she wants. Much to Bo-na's surprise the tapes actually work and soon she is directing commercials, getting hit on and on the verge of a relationship with one of South Korea's biggest actors.

The humor of How to Use a Guy With Secret Tips is classically Korean, filled with awkward moments, slapstick and characters acting completely mind-blowingly stupid. This movie is one of those films that I probably shouldn't like as much as I do, but something just clicks. South Korea has in recent years seemingly had somewhat of a revolt in their storytelling, finally questioning the lack of female leads in their films. Both this and Cold Eyes have female protagonists, and even though they are both somewhat helpless and shy at their respective stories beginnings both learn to fight their way through "the man's world" and have by the end become strong characters in their own right.

My choice of this movie I can't really motivate much more than just saying that is is just plain fun and luckily it is one of few films from the festival that does have a solid European DVD release date in early 2014. (NOTE: it's out in the UK now, distributed by Third Window Films) 

Zheng, trying to use her weaponized smile to get what she wants.

5. So Young (Vicki Zhao)

So Young was after Cold Eyes the biggest surprise of the festival for me. The longest film I saw, clocking in at 132 minutes I expected it to be an overly long unengaging drama. I guess most of all I expected it to be forgettable and lack anything to make it stand out. So Young plays out much like a classic American college comedy, but with a Chinese twist to the whole proceedings. The story circles around college student Zheng, a remarkably cute girl filled with enthusiasm over starting her college career. The reason for her enthusiasm is that a boy whom she has been in love with since she was a little girl is attending the same school as her, and the two left each other making a non verbal agreement that they would finally be together when they were re-united. Zheng soon finds that the boy has gained a visa to study in America and has left the school.

Distraught, Zheng finds comfort in her roommates and before long finds herself head over heels in love with another boy. So Young is predictable and is oddly paced. The first two acts take place in the college and follows Zheng and the students she interacts with through their ups and downs, while the last third jumps forward in time to catch up with them years later. I have heard rumors saying that the original cut of the film was close to four hours long and that the studio forced director Vicky Zhao to make enormous cuts to the finished product. This would explain why some parts of the film feel really well paced while others feel almost criminally rushed. This being said almost makes me question my judgement and why I like this movie so much. Why is this movie so high on my list?

Simple really, it's charm lies in its characters. Zheng and her three roommates are all fun and through their first drunken night together we come to like them all and regard them as recognizable personalities, because nearly all of us had had one of those nights where you know that things have changed for the better. You are no longer roommates, you are friends. I liked these characters so much I didn't want the movie to end, because it would mean that my connection to them would be severed, no matter how shallow a connection it was. It should be a testament to any film that I can without a doubt say that if there is a four hour version of So Young out there, and I would have the chance to see it I wouldn't hesitate for a second. I will hope, much like Zheng does for the love of the boy at her school, that one day that version will be mine. That or the actress that plays Zheng herself, because she is so cute it almost hurts to look at.

Quiming, still romantic, naive and hopeful. 

6. Trap Street (Vivian Qu)
Another film I covered in my last entry. Trap Street is a serious look at how the Chinese government uses modern technology to monitor and control the populace. The film itself is rather basic from a technical perspective. Colorless, somewhat unpolished and filled with dirty, ugly environments. But that's why the movie works, at times you wonder if it's all right for us as an audience to see what is going on, because the film is so controversial in mainland China that it will never be seen there. The film focuses around Quiming, a surveyor who when measuring streets runs into a beautiful woman whom he soon develops a serious romantic attitude toward. Their paths cross several times and soon he is firmly wrapped up in the woman's personal life. But it becomes clear that the woman's job is classified governmental work and soon the surveyor finds himself being questioned by people he's never met before.

Trap Street is frightening and remarkably effective at conveying its message. I left the movie theater angry, sad and worried for the future. I think director Vivian Qu would be pleased, because I think that's exactly what she wanted.
(Again, covered heavily previously so I don't want to say much more than that).

Sunhi and the three men in her life. 

7. Our Sunhi (Hong Sang-su)

Hong Sang-su had two movies at the film festival this year, and Our Sunhi was the second of the two that I saw. The other one, Nobody's Daughter Haewon left me worried because of how similar their premises were. Both were about female film students, who have problems with the men in their life. The similarities transcend the script and litter the visual elements of the films. Both Haewon and Sunhi wear the same style coat and both spend a lot of time walking around talking about seemingly everyday things. The films are almost Ozu-like in the way they use similar locations, camera positions and script structure to tell two stories that are very similar to begin with.

Lucky for me I guess that one of these two movies was able to seriously grab a hold of me, then. Our Sunhi is about Sunhi (imagine that), a film student who has a tendency to vanish for months if not years at a time. At the start of the film Sunhi has re-appeared from one of these absences and goes to her teacher to ask for a letter of recommendation. What follows is a comedic study of Sunhi, uncertain with what she wants and how the men in her life (the teacher, her ex-boyfriend and a mutual friend who links the other three) react to her. Sunhi herself, is somewhat of a blank slate. She mopes a lot, is reluctant to truly take responsibility and is seemingly only enthusiastic when the oppurtunity to consume vast amounts of fried chicken while getting drunk on Soju and beer appear.

However it functions within the story and the climax fits the character of Sunhi rather perfectly. It's funny, simple and filled with beautiful locations, and while it doesn't leave a huge emotional impression I think that's part of the film's greatness. It doesn't explicitly tell you how to feel, and much like Sunhi herself, you might not know how you truly do feel at the end.

Jiale and his parents sit down for dinner, Terry is in the background,
much like the role she struggles with throughout the film.

8. Ilo ilo (Anthony Chen)

In the Singaporean drama Ilo ilo we are introduced to a upper middle class (maybe even higher by Singaporean standards) family who are struggling. The mother is pregnant, a few months away from having their second child, the father is a struggling salesman of glass and their son, Jiale, is a spoiled brat who can't seem to behave himself in school.

The mother, who still has to work despite being pregnant, hires a nanny from the Philippines named Terry. The movie centers around Terry, and the hardships she faces having been sent to this place she doesn't know, while also struggling with the emotionally taxing thought of having left her own 1-year-old son back at home with her sister. Ilo ilo is a stable, interesting and well-told story, which only real problem is that it has been told so many times before. The things that still makes me really like it is the setting itself. Singapore is a fascinating backdrop and if anything bothers me about the film it is that we, all things considered get to se remarkably little of it. But the film is hardly weak narrative wise, just not overly strong either. Recommended, if only for the setting.

The protagonist of the bookend-segment, Se-young looking moody.

9. Horror Stories II (Kim Whi, Kim Sung-ho, Jum Bum-shik, Min Kyu-dong)

Quality isn't always assured, but when it comes to horror themed anthology movies I rarely find myself unentertained by them. Be it Creepshow, Three... Extremes or V/H/S there is always at least one segment which you usually leave thinking "I really liked that one where...", making the entire experience worthwhile. And as far as feeling that the whole experience was worth it Horror Stories II definitely holds up. The movie consists of four seperate stories; three featured as their seperate entries and a fourth story acting as the bookend and transition between the other three. The story that leads us through the others is about two workers at an insurance company who are mulling over old cases one night. The younger and least experienced of the two is a goth girl named Se-young, who happens to be psychic which her superior uses to have her read off bizarre case files as to figure out if they really should have given payment on them.

The three case files the film shows us are all vastly different in their approach and better for it. The first segment which centers on two friends who have just made a succesful investment in stocks and come out with quite a bit of money, and decide to take a nice nature hike in the mountains to celebrate. They soon find themselves trapped with a Snickers bar as their only food supply, and paranoia threatens to consume them both.

The second is about three girlfriends driving home from a party. The two in the front seat are drinking and the third in the back is sobre. One thing leads to another and they crash the car, and now they have to walk back to the house, but the woods are cold and dark and the three soon get the feeling that someone or something is watching them from behind the trees.

The third and last is about a teacher who after having embarrased himself in front of his new class on the first day, is told by one of his students who just happens to like the dark arts that there is another world very similar to this one and that by riding an elevator and following certain rules you can cross over to that world. The teacher does this, but soon realizes that the trade is far from worth it and now one question remains: how does he get back?

Ironically the segments are featured in the order that I like them with the first being the weakest and the third and last one being the best, managing to include both unsettling imagery and that classic Korean humor that works so well because the situation itself is so unfunny. The first just seems very by the books, and the use of a Snickers bar, and yes they DO make sure the logo is always facing upward whenever it is shown, which just makes it feel so cheap.

The middle segment is the most visually solid, using creepy woods very effectively. It's story is rather predicatble, but it didn't bother me that it was because of how well executed the mise-en-scene was.The third one was something else. Managing to combine ridiculous slapstick with disgusting visuals to create a tension seldom seen in western horror stories. My only problem with this segment is the ending, which feels forced and somewhat mean-spirited.

All in all, Horror Stories II was one of the few films I saw at the festival that I would be able to see myself watching with a group of friends. It's an easy watch, and now my only problem is finding it and the original on DVD...

If your sexual embraces include knives? You MIGHT need
to rethink your life slightly.

10. Moebius (Kim Ki-duk)

Kim Ki-duk certainly isn't one to shy away from controversy, and in writing this I wish I could say that Moebius wasn't the first of his movies that I have seen, but sadly it is. I have actually collected nearly every major work that Kim has made and I let my copy of his probably most widely recognized release 3-Iron sit in front of my Blu-ray player all through the festival in hopes that I would eventually get to it, which I obviously didn't.

From what little I know about his movies Kim Ki-duk has a fascination with the concept of human sexuality and how various people relate to it. Be it a monk struggling with celebacy in Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... And Spring, young female prostitutes in Samaritan Girl or a gangster's inability to forget a woman who he feels wronged him in The Bad Guy, sex always seems to have a heavy role in any Kim Ki-duk film. Moebius made headlines when it was both critically lauded and panned at the Cannes film festival this year. The movie was apparently so disgusting that some people couldn't stand the film, whilst others heralded it as genius and deeply profound.

The story of Moebius centers around a teenage boy and his parents, of which none are ever given names as far as my non-Hangul-reading brain can recall. The father is having an affair with an attractive store clerk and the mother disgusted with her husband's promiscuous behavior decides to get revenge by cutting off his penis when he is sleeping. When the husband wakes up and stops her she instead moves to their son's room and proceeds to cut off his penis and vanish in the ensuing chaos.

What follows is an odyssey of self-exploration as the son (and to some extent the father) try to understand what role exists for a young man who has had his physical embodiment of manhood removed. The journey is filled with sexual fetishes, violent outbursts and abuse of women and is at spots really hard to watch and had Kim taken the straightforward approach with the story it probably would have made the movie a lot easier to like, for some people anyway. But the crux of Moebius is that the film is done entirely without dialogue, none of the characters exchange any words that the audience is allowed to hear. The few conversations are heard only as mumbling through glass windows or behind closed doors.
This is Moebius's best and worst move at the same time. It makes the proceedings feel more feral, at times making at least me forget that I was watching a movie with people in the modern world at all. The cast felt more like cavemen than modern people. They were feral. It makes the atrocities easier to accept. However it also becomes frustrating when the lack of dialogue forces characters to work around plot elements that could easily be resolved by just speaking a line. It also happens a few too many times to disregard as "that's just the format" and forgive it. Besides that there are moments that almost feel like farce I really liked Moebius, but more for what it was going for rather than what it actually ended up being. I will continue my voyage through Kim Ki-duk's filmography, that has at least been assured.

Yumeko and Buusuke, un-merged. 

11. Nuigulumar Z (Noboru Iguchiy)
How to explain Nuigulimar Z without making it sounds like something I'm just pulling out of my ass... It's about a... Japanese girl named Yumeko who moves in with newly divorced sister and her 12 year-old daughter. The daughter is excited because this day just happens to be her birthday and it is the first birthday she is sharing with her mother without her abusive father being present. The mother is in the process of finishing the sewing of a teddybear named Buusuke for her daughter when an alien spore flies in through the window and hears the plight of the daughter, and of how lonely she feels and how the mother works too much. The spore lands in the teddybear and vows to always protect the beautiful princess.

When Yumeko (who also happens to be a fan of the Japanese Lolita fashion craze) shows up, the daughter becomes furious by the notion that this stranger is going to live with them. The mother takes the two to dinner and tries to make her daughter get along with her sister. A zombie outbreak puts a stop to these plans however and the mother is killed. When the zombies theaten the life of the daughter the alien in the teddy bear makes his presence known and merges with the Lolita-loving Yumeko to become the titular "Nuigulumar" a shock-pink-latex-wearing super heroine with bearclaws, yarn grappling hook and awesome fighting moves! With Buusuke and Yumeko in agreement over their interest to protect Yumeko's niece the two promise to always be there for her, no matter what.

Nuigulumar Z is what you would get if you took Nakashima Tetsuya's Kamikaze Girls, Seth McFarlane's Ted and a classic ranger-sentai and put them in a blender. It's a film that looks cheap, filled with terrible dialog and is incredibly low on actual substance... But I still kind of love it. Though the characters are shallow (certainly Yumeko's niece's reluctance to warm up to her aunt FIVE YEARS after her mother's death and having lived with no one but Yumeko for said years is a classic example of "because the plot said so"-writing) there is some sense of fun in the proceedings that elevate it above just feeling aimless. In fact one thing that is rather fascinating about the movie is that it does actually present a profoundly strong cast of female characters. Except for the alien spore inside Buusuke (which just happens to have a male voice and is never explicitly referred to as male outside of this fact) and a small bit-player in the form of the daughter's guitar-aficionado friend, the only male characters in the film are villainous ones. First there is the ex-husband who clearly was an abusive bastard and both wife and daughter are glad he is out of their lives at the start of the film. The other male character is the film's villain Takeshi, who is a guy sick of being pushed around and rejected and bonds with an alien just like the one in Buusuke and sets out to conquer the world. He uses women, making them fall in love with him only to toss them aside when he tires of them, much like how he himself used to be treated. There is also a supporting character named Kill Billy, who just happens to be a tomboy. Billy straddles the line between good and evil and only when she finally chooses sides does she admit to being a woman. So in some odd way, Nuigulumar Z is a feminist film. Exploitative, yes, but still never doubting it's female lead's competence, and whatever mistakes it's other characters make are easily forgiven. They are only teenagers after all.

Again, much like How to Use Guys With Secret Tips and Horror Stories II  I guess I can't technically say that is necessarily a great movie (this one is actually far weaker than either of them by comparison, and would you call it bad I might have a hard time defending it) but that doesn't stop me from wanting to see it again as soon as possible, and having smiled a lot when reflecting back on it, and that has to mean something.

Haewon and her mother, exemplifying the repeated lengthy
table conversations that Hong utilizes.

12. Nobody's Daughter Haewon (Hong Sang-su)

From the same director that made Our Sunhi, Nobody's Daughter Haewon covers a lot of the same ground as Our Sunhi does. In fact in researching Hong's previous work I was surprised to see that my mental comparison with Ozu was clearly not a fluke based on the two movies of his I had seen by the end of the festival. The use of film directors, actors and students seem to pop up rather often in his features and that can be both welcome and unwelcome depending on the utilization.

I actually saw Nobody's Daughter Haewon before Our Sunhi and became really worried as the film moved on. The film, much like Our Sunhi (yes this text is essentially all about why I preferred Sunhi to Haewon so I apologize) focuses on a young woman and how people around her relate to her.

Whereas Sunhi was a film student, trying to get a recommendation from a director who is her teacher, Haewon is an actress who is struggling with her mother leaving to go live with her brother in Canada. Haewon, who much like Sunhi is rather distant and a self-chosen loner, calls up her teacher (a director, of course) with who she has had a relationship before. Soon old feelings come boiling to the surface and Haewon, the director and a myriad of people around the two are stuck in a spiral of negativity.

It's bizarre how two so similar movies can make me feel so different, despite the main characters being so similar. Both Haewon and Sunhi drink too much and lament this fact, they both get told and thus we, the audience are told how pretty they are and they even wear the same exact coat model as one another (though Sunhi gets bonus points for rocking a sweet purple Fjällräven backpark). In fact, neither Haewon or Sunhi are inherently likeable protagonists, and in fact out of the two, Haewon is actually the one who I would consider "better". Sunhi never seems to learn anything and essentially leaves the film the way she enters it in the first place. Haewon however has seemingly learned something about herself and seems prepared to face her life with a deeper insight by the end of her story.

But at the same time, Haewon's growth comes from her being a remarkably spoiled girl at the beginning of the film, self-absorbed, daydreaming about meeting celebrities and being complimented by them and (much like myself I might add) skates on the brink of being so oblivious to how others perceive her that it almost becomes tragic.

Sunhi seems more comfortable with her situation, she's withdrawn completely out of personal choice and doesn't ask for companionship by anyone else in the cast but either runs in to them by chance or seeks them out because she wants something from them for personal purposes.

But the main reason why Nobody's Daughter Haewon appeals less to me is probably because of the fact that there is a very muted but still present humor in the dialogue of Our Sunhi which isn't present in Haewon. Both of these films have some impressive long takes that feel natural in their flow, but in Haewon the most notable one is a very mean-spirited one, whilst the one in Sunhi is more on the fun side of the spectrum. And the overall environment of the two films reflects that. Our Sunhi has three potential suitors for our main characters and all of them are goofballs who honestly feel like caricatures of real people; the let's-get-back-together-ex-boyfriend, the lovelorn teacher and the goofball friend who listens but honestly doesn't give a shit. The ex-boyfriend in Haewon feels a lot more sympathetic, being less goofy and tragically accepting of the fact that a relationship between someone as beautiful as Haewon and himself would always end with his heart being broken. Equally the teacher in Sunhi is just a pathetic man who reads too much into her attempts to get a good recommendation out of him, whereas the director in Haewon is a married family man. A lot less innocent. In the end that humorous twist works a lot better than the more serious tone of Haewon, which feels overly long, meandering and unclear in its goal, which reflects its main character somewhat but still makes for a less enjoyable film.

Now, I'm not sure... But I'm guessing the one in the middle is
the Mark Zuckerberg. The one on the... oh, who cares? 

13. American Dreams in China (Peter Chan)

I can't remember ever feeling as uncomfortable watching a current film in a movie theater. That feeling even more clearly manifested after having seen Trap Street earlier the same week. The festival compendium described the reception of the film as a "Chinese The Social Network", which seemed promising enough. However, while that may be technically true there is something off about American Dreams in China. At first there is an air reminiscent of So Young, where a bunch of Chinese late teens/early 20's start college with the hopes of being able to gain visas and study in America.

However as the film progresses it becomes clear that though there is a definite character study on the screen, there is something else present too. Those who go away to America suffer defeat whilst those who stay in China succeed in opening a school for teaching English and preparing people for the questioning process involved when obtaining your visa.

It may seem cheap to suggest that the film is propaganda, but the pro-China subtext is there clear as day. The film starts with the three friends who start the business in a meeting with Americans claiming they've violated copyright laws and then proceeds to paint the picture of the struggle that Chinese society vs that of American society and the level of adversity the people in China face is much milder and "fair".

The worst part is, I like the basic story and even though some of the characters start acting surprisingly cold and terrible toward each other bizarrely quickly in the third act, there is a solid cast of characters to be found here.

Besides this the biggest flaw with the film is that it jumps very quickly from various years and doesn't really convince me that any real amount has passed. Three years isn't that long a time but it is still over a thousand days and more should have changed than just the calendar on the wall and that our characters now have new suits and a new teacher who's name isn't even established.

In short; all right movie, but it has too much underlying insidiousness for me to feel comfortable recommending it wholeheartedly. But don't take that as it having no good moments or interesting visual elements, just prepare yourself for what you're sitting down for beforehand.

Carina Lau's Anna struggles to deal with the disappearence
of her husband. Unable to accept that things will never be the same.

14. Bends (Flora Lau)
I have to admit, Bends was the second-to-last film I was set to see at the festival. The last film on a day which consisted of school from 9-12 and then directly from there to a movie theater followed by another trip to another movie theater where I would stay until 8:40 PM. The odds were not in Bends's favor, and I probably would have liked it a lot more if it wasn't for the fact that its themes mirrored the themes of another movie I had already seen; Ilo ilo.

Both films were about differences in social class, Ilo ilo focusing on a Sinagporean family and their Phillipino household worker, whereas Bends is about a Hong Kong housewife and the relationship between her and the family chauffeur. The driver is troubled, having a wife back across the border to mainland China who is expecting their second child, a child which they can't afford to pay the tax for. When the husband of the rich housewife suddenly vanishes the wife does everything she can to ignore the problem for as long as humanly possible. She continues with her expensive habits, paying for ludicrously pricy feng shui-sessions, going to expensive luncheons and buying things she doesn't need. When it becomes clear that the husband isn't coming back everything starts tearing away at the seems more and more and soon the woman, and her driver are both stuck together in a whirlpool of despair. He needs the work, and she needs money that she doesn't have.

The only problem with Bends is that it just didn't really grab me. Carina Lau's housewife is harmless, not striking you as cold or overly greedy, but when she is faced with the prospect of poverty she chooses to ignore it far longer than anyone should do. In fact she doesn't even start asking questions about her husband for several days, putting on a brave face and insisting that he's "probably around somewhere". It's this attitude which makes her hard to sympathize with, and the film tries to compensate with the story of her driver, which works to an extent, but when his employer is too much of a coward to admit to him that she doesn't know how long she'll be able to keep him it becomes so frustrating it makes it hard to care at all. The reason why this is at the bottom of my list is simple, even American Dreams in China had interesting characters that stood out. They may have done illogical things because the plot required a conflict at certain moments, but the plot moved along with a rather fast pace. Here? No such luck. And for a second I considered putting it ahead of American Dreams because of the duality of the two main characters, but I just can't do it. These two are probably the closest to being tied of all the movies I saw, and I saw them both on the same day and they are both filmed by Christopher Doyle, who is a brilliant cinematographer, who's work with Wong Kar-wai is modern day legend.

It's almost perfect that this is the case because it feels as if both of these films could easily be jobs Doyle was hired for because of worries about a weak script. And yes, both movies do look nice, but unlike Wong Kar-wai, there isn't that sense of auteurship to keep the films from feeling rather stale. Bends is a movie that doesn't really leave a lasting impression, sadly and is one of the weakest films I saw at the festival for that very reason.