Crisp Criticism - "Parasite", "The Laundromat", "Lucy in the Sky", "The Lighthouse", "Zombieland: Double Tap" Retrospection - "A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929)"

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Julien Faddoul

Parasite ***

All unemployed, a poor Korean family takes a peculiar interest in a wealthy and glamorous one for their livelihood until they get entangled in an unexpected incident.

Exemplary, unpredictable, witty satire on class struggles, social mobility and “solidarity forever”, with riveting Hitchcockian staging and excellent performances. Like all Bong films, it is at times heavy-handed, but this is his most thoughtful and arresting film to date.

d – Bong Joon Ho

w – Bong Joon Ho, Jin Won Han

ph – Hong Kyung-pyo

pd – Lee Ha-jun

m – Jaeil Jung

ed – Jinmo Yang

cos – Choi Se-yeon 

p – Bong Joon Ho, Jang Young-Hwan, Moon Yang-kwon, Kwak Sin-ae

Cast: Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik, Park So-dam, Lee Jung-eun, Chang Hyae-jin, Park Myung-hoon, Jung Ji-so, Jung Hyeon-jun

Crisp Criticism - "Joker", "Gemini Man", "Transit", "Brittany Runs a Marathon", "Adam" Retrospection - My Man Godfrey (1936)

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Julien Faddoul

Joker

During the 1980s, a failed stand-up comedian is driven insane and turns to a life of crime and chaos in New York Ci-- I mean Gotham City.

A con, and a fairly hostile one at that. A film with the sole purpose of sucking up to both enlightened liberals and those of whom that have not experienced an adulthood that didn’t involve the canonizing of infantile comic book characters, but did involve the vital character studies by Martin Scorsese from the 70s and 80s; surreptitiously and shamefully trying to blur the lines between the two groups. Phoenix gives a committed but ultimately mannered and unconvincing performance. This is the kind of rubbish that hustlers can pull when an audience is so starved for basic craftsmanship and is so unaware of anything that might have been prominent before the age and climate that they live within.

d – Todd Phillips

w – Todd Phillips, Scott Silver   (Based on the Characters Created by Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson

ph – Lawrence Sher

pd – Mark Friedberg

m – Hildur Guðnadóttir

ed – Jeff Groth

cos – Mark Bridges

p – Todd Phillips, Bradley Cooper, Emma Tillinger Koskoff

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy, Brett Cullen, Shea Whigham, Bill Camp, Glenn Fleshler, Leigh Gill, Josh Pais, Marc Maron, Sondra James, Murphy Guyer, Douglas Hodge, Dante Pereira-Olson, Brian Tyree Henry, Sharon Washington

Crisp Criticism - "Ad Astra", "Abominable", "Hustlers", "Rambo: Last Blood", "The Goldfinch", "Judy" Retrospection - Andrei Rublev (1966)

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Julien Faddoul

Ad Astra **

An astronaut travels to the outer edges of the solar system to find his father and unravel a mystery that threatens the survival of the planet.

Stunningly constructed in the manner typical of the director, the narrative essentially follows the same trajectory as Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness (or, if you will, Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.) But as is often the hitch with Gray, the thematic rhetoric is glib – the relationship between fathers and sons being indicative of humanity’s primary purpose to connect with one another – with a lack of characterization and an over-reliance on voice-over.

d – James Gray

w – James Gray, Ethan Gross

ph – Hoyte Van Hoytema

pd – Kevin Thompson

m – Max Richter

ed – John Axelrad, Lee Haugen

cos – Albert Wolsky

p – Dede Gardner, James Gray, Anthony Katagas, Jeremy Kleiner, Arnon Milchan, Yariv Milchan, Brad Pitt, Rodrigo Teixeira

Cast: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Donald Sutherland, Liv Tyler, Kimberly Elise, Loren Dean, Donnie Keshawarz