Hello everyone, and welcome back to my little corner blog. My media adventures were diverse and rewarding this week, as I explored films ranging from recent South Korean highlights to one of the very first noir films, along with a film that’s known mostly for introducing the world to the concept of Sean Connery in bright red underwear. I remember years ago, I’d frequently find myself paralyzed in choosing what films to watch by the inherent opportunity cost – as someone who didn’t watch that many movies, I didn’t want to “waste” any of my film-assigned time slots with a misguided pick. These days, I’m watching movies all the goddamn time, which actually makes me feel a lot more free to watch whatever comes to mind at any given moment. Let’s explore more of the treasures of this rambling journey, as we burn through another Week in Review!
I finally got to screening a film I’ve been meaning to watch for weeks: Burning, an acclaimed South Korean thriller from a couple years ago. Based on a short story by Haruki Murakami, Burning follows a young man named Jong-su who’s just finished his military service, and hoping to succeed as a novelist. A chance encounter with a childhood friend named Hae-mi gives him a brief sense of purpose, but when Hae-mi returns from a trip with a mysterious man named Ben, Jong-su’s life takes an unexpected and harrowing turn.
Burning deserves its acclaim – the film is absolutely gorgeous, its characters are remarkably well-realized, and its story elevates the regrets of youth and difficulty of becoming an adult into epic tragedy. Yoo Ah-in puts in a convincing, agonizingly hesitant performance as Jong-su, but it’s Jeon Jong-seo as Hae-mi who really steals the show. Jong-seo is restless and impulsive and brimming with an energy that Jong-su, trapped in his own insecurities, tends to interpret as confidence. It’s not confidence, though – like Jong-Su himself, Hae-mi is struggling against the insecurity and shapeless longing of realizing you’re now an adult, but are no more certain of who or what you want to be. Jong-seo’s masterful control of her body made me initially assume she had a background in dance; there are a handful of scenes in the film, including its dramatic centerpiece, that are entirely carried by her ability to evoke all the passion and tragedy of youth purely through motion.
Along with its uniformly stellar performances, Burning captures the decay and majesty of the Korean countryside in shot after shot, evoking through its cinematography the mixture of nostalgia and regret with which Jong-su views his family home. The film is a eulogy for things that feel incredibly close until the moment they’re lost forever; whether it’s a lost love or an old home, adulthood swiftly introduces us to the finality of time.
My house’s slow journey through the Scorsese filmography continued this week, as we watched the 1991 thriller Cape Fear. Unfortunately, Cape Fear turned out to be the worst Scorsese film I’ve seen – not bad, exactly, but also incapable of rising to much more than cheap scares. Centered on a lawyer played by Nick Nolte and an ex-convict played by De Niro, the film sees Nolte’s life and family being slowly destroyed by De Niro, in revenge for Nolte allegedly failing to demonstrate the proper enthusiasm as his public defender.
De Niro certainly makes for a menacing presence, but Cape Fear’s fundamental issue is that none of its characters are either inherently sympathetic, or possess the complexity of characterization to remain interesting in spite of not being sympathetic. Nolte’s wife and daughter pretty much hate him by the time the movie begins, and De Niro is basically a one-note monster, meaning there’s never really any sense of investment or danger that something valuable might be lost – just a healthy heaping of cruel spectacle. The cinematography is as strong as you’d expect, and De Niro clearly has a great time playing a terrible monster, but I really couldn’t find much to care about in Cape Fear.
I also checked out The Maltese Falcon, one of the first and greatest noir films of all time. I’m used to films from the earlier parts of the twentieth century having generally slower pacing than modern films, but not so for The Maltese Falcon – the film is gripping and energetic from its first shot to last, and offers a tidy potboiler elevated by an incredibly memorable cast of characters.
Bogart as Sam Spade is perfection, an articulation of the charming, distrustful, yet ultimately sentimental detective so perfect and endearing that it’s no surprise he’s become one of the enduring archetypes of the genre. But Bogart isn’t alone – Mary Astor’s ability to flutter between meek desperation and ruthless cunning makes it easy to see why Spade would fall in love with her, while Sydney Greenstreet takes full advantage of the film’s incredibly generous script, embracing his villainous role with such panache that it’s hard to ever feel angry with him. Spade’s dynamic with every single character is distinctive and intriguing, and with basically every major character being some kind of con artist, you can really feel their sense of camaraderie and mutual respect, even as they’re lying through their teeth at each other. The Maltese Falcon feels less fancy than it does flawless; a group of some of the best actors of all time making the most of a script that draws the best out of all of them.
We also watched a bit of a wild card this week, by screening the infamous Zardoz. If you know of Zardoz, it’s likely because of its meme-tier status online – perhaps you’ve seen the giant floating head, or Sean Connery in a bandoleer and thong, or heard “the gun is good, the penis is evil!” Well, as funny as all those memes are, it turns out they only actually cover the first five minutes or so of the film – and the rest of the film is actually a thoroughly satisfying post-apocalyptic scifi adventure.
Sean Connery plays Zed, an “Outlander” who is tasked by his floating head god with enslaving and killing the people of his world. But there is a sanctuary beyond Zed’s wasteland, and his journey soon takes him to a commune where people never age, and the psychically gifted population has remained static for hundreds of years. If not for its copious amounts of nudity, general preoccupation with reproduction, and discordant narrative jumps, Zardoz could very well have become a scifi hit – but as someone who isn’t bothered by any of that, Zardoz plays like a funny, exciting, and ambitious extended episode of Star Trek, with consistently inspired cinematography and a great lead turn by Connery. Certainly a lot better than the memes would attest!
My house also continued its watch-through of Atlanta, and by that I mean holy shit the Teddy Perkins episode. What the fuck, Atlanta? Having just been impressed by Lakeith Stanfield in both Sorry to Bother You and Uncut Gems, it was wonderful to see Atlanta offer him what was essentially a fifty minute horror movie, wherein a terrifying Michael Jackson-esque recluse (played by Donald Glover wearing a costume and facial makeup I never ever want to see again) gave Darius a tour of his estate, and celebrated the legacy of his abusive father.
Atlanta has toyed with elements of surrealism and horror before, but Teddy Perkins was a straight-up Lynch episode, and one of the most entertaining things I’ve ever seen Donald Glover create. They are having fun with this season – rather than moving towards a clear, central destination, Atlanta is offering a selection of bite-sized horror films (with Teddy Perkins being swiftly followed by “Van survives Drake’s house” and “Al survives the woods”), and I am absolutely here for it.
