Tag: So-ri Moon

FANTASIA19 REVIEW: 메기 [Maggie] [2019]

Jared Mobarak

Let’s believe in people from now on. How would a movie narrated by a catfish feel? While the animal probably has a good view of what’s going on, would it understand? And when people use it as a stand-in for their conscience—knowing (yet not wanting to accept) the voice responding was still his/her own—would it retain the context of what it had heard? This fish would be an objective third party observer trying to parse the world around it through those few kind souls that pay it the time of…

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REVIEW: 아가씨 [Ah-ga-ssi] [The Handmaiden] [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“The snake marks the bounds of knowledge” As soon as I began walking out of the theater after 아가씨 [Ah-ga-ssi] [The Handmaiden], a friend and fellow critic asked if I was the one laughing. I said, “Yes.” Parts Two and Three (of three) were legitimately funny—I’d say intentionally so. All of Chan-wook Park‘s films are out of necessity considering how dark, twisted, and violent his subject matter proves. I’d argue Korean cinema on the whole has an inherently unavoidable humor if only because the acting always seems to possess a…

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