Minari is a film I’ve been looking forward to for a long time, about a family of Korean immigrants following the good old American Dream in the 1980s. Jacob Yi and his wife Monica have just moved from California to rural Arkansas. They’ve had jobs sexing chicks (separating males from females) and know the work, but Jacob has higher aspirations of making money by farming. He knows the stiff competition for American produce, but thinks he can nudge into the growing Korean food market by farming Korean produce on his land. The couple buy a very poor and dilapidated mobile home, which Monica instantly hates, and bring their children Anne and David there. The couple isn’t afraid of hard work; they both work at the hatchery all day, and then David works the farm at night and on the weekends, with the help of an older (and maybe a little crazy) man named Paul. Paul fought in Korea and has taken an instant liking to the Yi’s. Monica hates it all, and to placate her, Jacob allows her to invite her mother from Korea to come live with them. It’s a very endearing film about hard work and striving for your own version of success. Jacob isn’t looking to get rich or set his kids up for life, he just doesn’t want to work all his life and die with nothing to show for it. In today’s society where people try to get rich quick and think that anything less than a couple million dollars in the bank is a failure, it is refreshing to be reminded that nothing beats hard work and that even a small step up is a step nonetheless. Paul’s (Will Patton) antics and the grandmother’s unfamiliarity with American customs provide the humor, and the underrated Steven Yeun (Glenn from The Walking Dead fame) shows his skills in the lead. ★★★★½
I’m a bit torn on The Planters. It’s a very short (78 minutes) film, written and directed by two of of the 4 or 5 on-screen actors, and probably completely self produced. I gotta respect that, because it is a lot better than a lot of films that are made thus. But to say it doesn’t do much is putting it lightly. Martha Plant is a twenty-something who lives alone, after her adopted parents died in the last year or so. Her day job is selling AC units over the phone, and she’s terrible at it. In fact, she’s threatened with termination by her boss early in the film, unless she can sell 30 units in 2 weeks. On the side, Martha plants odd nicknacks in the desert around her tiny town, and leaves a note on the town’s bulletin board about its location. This treasure hunt doesn’t reward her much: the finder usually leaves a few dollars, but doing this is the only thing that brings Martha joy these days. That is, until she makes a couple friends. Sadie is a multiple personality woman that stumbles into Martha on a planting trek one day, and shortly after, Martha meets Richard, an older man she sold an AC unit to over the phone. Her new friends team up to help Martha make her quota, even as someone has started digging up her treasures without leaving money behind in its place. Very quirky/funny film, and you can see that Alexandra Kotcheff (Martha) and Hannah Leder (Sadie), who co-wrote and co-directed, have seen maybe a little too much Wes Anderson, as the movie has his influence all over it. A couple stars for some laughs, but nothing that will stick with me for long. ★★½
Adverse is about a man, Ethan, who’s trying to watch over his teenage sister, Mia, after the death of their mother. H’s been having a rough go at it, with her wild ways. He makes his money as a ride share driver, and on one fateful night, picks up Kaden. Kaden is a seedy underworld boss, and, through an underling, Mia’s boyfriend owes him a whole bunch of money. When Ethan finds out, he tries to pay the debt, but the underling doesn’t report the payment to Kaden, and Kaden has Mia and the boyfriend killed. Ethan sets out to get his revenge, hunting down people from the ground up, with his sights on Kaden last. This is a bad movie all around, despite some eye-catching names (Mickey Rourke as Kaden, and a couple cameos from Lou Diamond Phillips, Sean Astin, and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow’s Matt Ryan). Thomas Nicholas plays Ethan, and if that name doesn’t ring a bell, he’s the former child actor that starred in The Rookie so many years ago. The story is shoddy enough, but what kills this movie in every scene is the absolute dirge of over-acting and terrible direction. I can almost hear the director telling his actors he needs more in every scene: more emotion, more shocked faces, higher arched eyebrows, more everything. The terrible acting and awful dialogue combine for as bad a movie experience as you can find. One star because I did get all the way through it without quitting. ★
The Father won a few awards in this most recent cycle, but somehow it slipped past me. It features two amazing performances, by one of the best today (Olivia Colman) and one of the best of all time (Anthony Hopkins). The eponymous father is Hopkins as Anthony, an aging man suffering through dementia. Colman is his daughter Anne, and their lives together are as confusing as Anthony’s remaining memories. The film puts us right behind Anthony, and we are often as confused as he is. Characters and dialogue change mid-scene; for instance, Anne will leave the room, and another woman claiming to be Anne will enter, leaving Anthony wondering what just happened, but it is all due to his illness. He makes references to another daughter, Anne’s sister, but such talk makes Anne sad, which gets explained later. Anne’s been trying to find a carer for Anthony so she can continue to work, but he keeps getting combative with them, so they don’t last. To add to Anthony’s confusion, sometimes Anne’s husband is around (with various actors playing him), and sometimes Anne talks about moving to Paris because she just met a new man. The performances turned in by the two leads are as good as you’ll find, and the movie, based on a play by the same writer/director Florian Zeller, is put together extremely well. We feel Anthony’s frustrations, but also get a peak at Anne’s sorrow at watching her father disappear before her eyes. ★★★★★
Today’s movie offerings have been extremely up or down, so I was hoping for a good finale with Night of the Kings (French, La Nuit des rois). A surprise international hit on the film festival circuit, it takes place in the infamous Le MACA Prison in the country of Ivory Coast. MACA is run by the inmates, with a token set of guards who mostly stick to the guard rooms, and let the incarcerated do their thing. The head of the prison is the Dangôro, or king, and for a long time, that has been Blackbeard. However, he’s sick and getting sicker, and there are rumblings that he needs to step down before war breaks out between his second, Lass, and rival, Half-Mad, to become the new king. To stall for time, and maybe quiet the masses, Blackbeard says that tonight there will be a new Roman, or storyteller, who has to tell a tale through the night. The new Roman is a newcomer to the prison, a member of the Microbe gang on the outside, who ran with a gang leader named Zama King. Zama King was just killed, and Roman begins to weave Zama’s story to the crowd. As he tells his tale, inmates spontaneously act out parts of his story, which leads to a fantasy-like story-within-a-story. When he learns that he needs to keep talking until the sun rises or he’ll be killed, Roman tries to embellish his way to dawn. As the night unfolds, the drama also ratchets up between Blackbeard and Half-Mad, and the politics of the prison threaten Roman’s account. It’s a fascinating movie, as chaotic at times as you’d expect in its prison setting full of criminals, and the chaos adds to the excitement and suspense as the night goes along. Fun stuff. ★★★★
- TV series currently watching: Stranger Things (season 1)
- Book currently reading: The Rainmaker by John Grisham
Jons Movie Takes 