First, the disclaimer. Part of going to a film festival is recognising that sometimes things get messed up: prints don’t show, screening times are pushed at the last minute, et cetera. Thus it happens that there was something wrong with the projection when I saw Juhn Jaihong’s Beautiful. First, there was a stretch of about […]

Ever since it premiered at Cannes in 2006, Bong Joon-ho’s The Host has been the recipient of some truly glowing festival praise: “the best monster movie in decades” is not at all an uncommon sentiment. That’s over-selling it something fierce (and probably reflects the fact that Proper Critics don’t really see all that many monster […]

I have not seen nearly as much of the work of director Kim Ki-duk as I would like, and what I have seen, though brilliant, is not usually regarded as “typical.” Therefore I don’t know whether Time is more of a return to form, or a fall from grace; it is certainly not subtle in […]