Parasite (new Bong Joon Ho movie)

burning was a lot better, on similar themes

This movie was just awesome. Kid wanted to see it (she’s into kpop so it made sense.)

This is something else.

as far as class warfare movies go, i would say

Burning=Shoplifters > La Ceremonie =Parasite >>>>Snowpiercer=Sorry to Bother You

still need to see Us, Ready or Not, Hustlers

It's pretty much the movie that I wanted Us to be.

Oh good, other people picked up on the doppelganger element. I liked it as a black comedy of inequality and the "problems" of one-percenter parents. The subsequent excursion into thriller/horror fits, but I agree that the film would have profited from a tightening up of the running time.

I loved Us! I think as much as Get Out

haven't seen Parasite yet but based on Okja, Snowpiercer I'm only somewhat hopeful

Parasite is so much better than either Okja or Snowpiercer.

never seen okja but snowpiercer is hot garbage.

Memories of Murder and Mother are both capital G Great films and The Host is a double capital G Great Genre film

i've avoided seeing Okja because he is sure as shit gonna make me feel for the big hippo thing and then kill it. i've played the last guardian; can't fool me again

I liked this a lot. The symbolism is club-you-over-the-head, but it works despite/because of that. And it's pretty funny through the first two-thirds. I didn't mind the ending, it felt like that was where it was always headed.

this was kind of a hot mess? it definitely shook me but i'm not sure i enjoyed the ride. idk so many "powerful" things leave me feeling exhausted these days.

Didn't really seem like a mess to me, I thought it was pretty tightly constructed.

oh no it was extremely tight of course (although maybe there were some pacing / pov issues near the end that could have been handled more carefully?), it was just too slickly constructed and hyper-meaningful for my tastes. like i think i respect that it's aiming to be a shakespearean tragedy about capitalism but it's also in the form of a 32 oz monster energy drink and it was all too much for me tbh.

i mean i definitely *felt* a lot during this movie but it was ultimately kind of exhausting. of course it was also funny throughout but the humor was also too frenetic for me. like i laughed louder when renee zelwegger pushed the bad sculpture off its pedestal in front of her ex's house in the otherwise very sad but also similarly profound judy garland biopic that i saw last weekend, maybe because the humorous moment had a bit more space around it and r.z.'s performance in that movie is extremely good.

there's several indelible images stuck in my mind from this film even now (the "ghost" shocking the boy eating cake, the kick down the stairs, shaving peachfuzz) but this isn't a super thoughtful or challenging movie... i'm fairly certain it was never meant to be.

the image stuck in my head is the dogs eating the meat on the skewer stuck in the corpse

yeah that's a good one

at least what it says about the trauma of capitalism is true. it may not be super challenging or whatever but it's otm, and in the form of a slapstick comedy/thriller. for instance, how the trauma of capitalism perpetuates itself across generations and how it's larger than any bogeyman character. idk these aren't exactly the easiest concepts to present in a mainstream film? but tbh i don't watch very many movies so.

quoting myself upthread but if you want to see some other films in the same vein that are as good/better:

Burning=Shoplifters > La Ceremonie =Parasite >>>>Snowpiercer=Sorry to Bother You

haha thanks though i'm not sure i have it in me to watch a film with similar themes for .. a while

it's also in the form of a 32 oz monster energy drink and it was all too much for me tbh.

haha, yeah that's a fair description.

Its central arguments and symbolism are super on-the-nose, but for me they landed with some oomph because the writing, acting and filmmaking were all sharp and often funny. (Until they weren't.) The long scene where they descend and descend and descend from the rich house to their semi-basement apartment, in a growing flood, only to find their home literally submerged in shit — on the paper that's grindingly obvious, but in the execution it was scary and heartbreaking.

I actually liked this more than Burning — or enjoyed it more, I guess. I liked Burning but it felt a little remote to me, unsurprising given its source material.

i dunno, there's so many moments in Burning that felt like pure honest complex dreams to me. it's a more mystical film i guess, don't think i'd say remote?
my sense is that a lot of folks who fell head over heels for parasite (and why it's so very popular) is that audiences are self-congratulating themselves on appreciating the complex class issues of what amounts to a cartoon. but maybe i'm being snobby i dunno.

i have at least four friends who basically never see movies who were raving to me about how brilliant this was and i feel like a total dorkus malorkus saying "yeah, i love the director and i saw this twice and it was... very good" and then they're all like "WHY DON'T YOU LOVE IT?!?!?" and there's no way to adequately explain that without referencing a lot of his films and other people's films that i know they haven't seen.

maybe the right answer to "why don't you love it" is to give them a thumb drive with Mother and Memories of Murder on it and ask them to check back with me in three months when they get around to watching it to see it they agree?

i was SO taken with those two movies and then host was such a great oddball genre film that i was psyched to go wherever this guy wanted to go and then, well, snowpiercer.
with parasite, i think i've come to the conclusion that Bong is an immense and great stylist but that he's not going to likely level up into something more highbrow and affecting now that he has more money and fame a'la Park Chan Wook or Lynch. Maybe you could make a comparison to Miike? Dunno.

Yeah he's definitely more of a populist/popcorn director than e.g. Lee Chang-dong. But he's an interesting and talented one, I think. I agree that Mother is probably his best movie, and it is surprising in a lot of ways — stylistically and narratively — that Parasite isn't.

i really like him! i'm just in the unpleasant indie fuck position of being unable to avoid saying "his earlier films are much better"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCqjR1gHyIQ
in any case your post made me realize i should see more Chang-dong, so thanks for that! recommendation for the best one to jump into?

Besides Burning I only know Secret Sunshine and Poetry, both good.

will try poetry and report back

mother was the one for me too

it's been a while but i remember thinking it was on par with great hitchcock

I liked this a lot more than Burning but I would never think to compare them.

I enjoyed the hell out of this movie.

Count me among those who haven't ever really gotten terribly into this dude's work up until this movie and fully embraced the crossover. Enjoy re-rewatching The Host to the rest of you, tho.

oh hey if you want another class warfare movie from this year (and one that will definitely be in my faves of 2019), try 'The Last Black Man in San Francisco'

Parasite was so good that I don't want to see any other class warfare movie from this or any other year ever again. If anyone puts on The Last Black Man in San Francisco while I'm in the room I'm getting up and leaving.

that's the spirit!

oh hey, here's another one you'll want to leave the room for that I just remembered that's not so much class warfare as an eco-comedy/drama with a lot of bong's penchant for comic bookish magic realism: Woman at War
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2v3_jHrvBQ

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/drqrii/im_bong_joon_ho_director_of_parasite_ama/

Parasite is the best move ive seen this year

Snowpiercer was also great craic

this was ridiculously entertaining, and powerful at the end. definitely preferred this to snowpiercer and okja (okja was similarly structured for maximum gut-punch), and the cast was incredibly charming.

i liked snowpiercer a lot, it's dumb but imo dumb things are good

this movie was excellent though. i would like to vigorously disagree with everyone upthread and say the climax is the best part

besides the ghost scene

i've avoided seeing Okja because he is sure as shit gonna make me feel for the big hippo thing and then kill it. i've played the last guardian; can't fool me again

― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Sunday, October 27, 2019 8:41 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

has anyone informed you that doesn't happen

though the ending *is* depressing in a fundamentally similar way

the flooding scene in this movie made me wanna die

okja is really bad imho but this is incredible, best dark comedy since get out

“Fundamentally similar” is close enough for me thanks

i did not enjoy okja but i'm glad i got to see that jake gyllenhaal performance anyway

Sister sitting on top of the toilet smoking in the flooding bathroom was an incredible shot, imo

is there a thread for the lighthouse yet?

Kind of what I picked up on anyway it sucked

Beau Is Afraid / Dicks: The Musical makes a for a good-time double-dong-feature

I liked Midsommar quite a lot for many reasons. Not sure where the fascism bit comes in - it had a lot of different themes but I really don't think that's what they were exploring at all.

Zone Of Interest was pretty good, I thought. It had one trick, but it did it well in exemplifying the banality of evil; but having one trick didn't make it thin

loved Midsomar, don't see anything in it related to any sort of totalitarianism, it's about cults and wanting to belong

Different readings: let's have them and be happy.

yeah it would help if the reading had any fucking thing to do with the movie

ah, I get it. you get to immolate your boyfriend if you join fascism

sorry, that was what popped into my head and I was giggling

I enjoyed this except for Ruffalo and Colette, who were supremely unfunny. Ruffalo in “comedy mode” is rarely a good thing. Thought Pattinson was excellent.

I disliked Ruffalo in this in the same way I disliked him in Poor Things.

But I quite liked this movie! Surprised by RPatz's comedy chops. He had a vibe not unlike Tim Blake Nelson. In fact for some reason it was making me think of Slaughterhouse Five (not that Ive ever seen a film of that!).

Are y'all qualifying? I love Ruffalo when he's loose and crinkly, not when he's self-consciously playing funny?

Ruffalo isn't one of my favorite actors out there in any case. Like Pedro Pascal and a few other contemporary favorites I find the guy to be a bland presence, merely serviceable. But when he extends himself into doing comedy it's kind of embarrassing. "Cringe", if you will haha

Also, what happened to the Kai character? One minute she's negotiating with Nasha and then she's gone. Anamaria Vartolomei...my heart stopped a little when she was onscreen.

There are characters, like Kai for example, who get introduced and then barely show up again...

― DLC Soundsystem (dog latin), Thursday, March 13, 2025 7:16 PM (three weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

I see DL already made this point way upthread, oops. Overall, it's the kind of well-made, "zany" (sci fi) flick I'd normally run away from if a less skilled director had tackled it.

aye, if i had to pick just one frustration with this film it was this. Baffling that the film forgets about almost everything that happened in the first part to make way for a limp Arrival / Avatar pastiche

I was mostly enjoying this until the last half an hour or so when it seemed to fall to pieces completely

I enjoyed this while I was watching it but it hasn't left much of a lasting impression. Way too much of a sense of studio interference in the script (whether this was the case or not), leading to a dog's dinner of a storyline. "We need cute aliens!" etc. Would have worked better as a smaller scale black comedy if you ask me, which they didn't.

The only thing I liked about this was RPattz, basically.
It all just kind of washed over me.

However I did enjoy the physicality & visuals of the “human printer”, the way it judderingly prints ppl like a laser desktop printer & they keep forgetting to set up the tray so the printed Mickey just flops lifelessly onto the floor

i think if i enjoyed edibles i would like this a lot more maybe

watched mickey 17 over the weekend. sort of suffered from the over-broadness that plagues bong's english language films, but was enjoyable enough. agree that it didn't leave much of an impression and the fake out ending was pretty unnecessary

i admire robert pattinson because if i were an actor, i too would find it impossible to resist doing a little voice for each role

NY Times poll of movie biz folks puts Parasite #1 on best films of 21st century so far

Don’t have a gift link

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/movies/best-movies-21st-century.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

http://archive.today/latest/https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/movies/best-movies-21st-century.html

I finally got around to watching Mickey 17. I thought it was great, in that vein of dystopian scifi humor like I don’t know, Brazil, or something, with a philosophical conundrum about the nature of human identity to chew on between the laffs.

The more I think about this film the more I think of it as hot garbage that missed the mark on pretty much everything it was trying to do by dint of trying to do way too much.

Do a clone movie with a love quadrangle. Do an Avatar pastiche. Do an Arrival parody. Do a scathing eco-political satire. Do a slapstick Hollywood sci fi. Do one, maybe two, of these things in your film. But don't do all of them at once

I would rank Bong's films thus:
Parasite 10/10
Memories of Murder 9/10
The Host 8/10
Barking Dogs Never Bite 8/10
Mother 7/10
Mickey 17 5/10
Snowpiercer 5/10
haven't seen Okja

Which is to say that he only makes decent films in Korea, fortunately his forthcoming animated film is a Korean production so let's see.

i enjoyed okja when i saw it years ago, maybe 7 / 10? lena dunham picks it out in her criterion closet as a singular movie, subject-wise.

snowpiercer was great imo

okja had its moments, most of them involving jake gyllenhaal

haven't seen most of those, but Snowpiercer is at least 7.5/10 for me, so many memorable scenes

I seem to remember enjoying Snowpiercer. Okja was maybe a bit precious. I enjoyed at least the first half of Parasite but it slowly comes undone in the second

Finally saw "Mickey 17." I enjoyed (much of) it more than I thought I would, but man, for all the talk of Bong's final cut, the movie is absolutely rife with all the red flags of a studio recut. Non-stop voiceover, characters and subplots that sort of fall by the wayside for long stretches, foreshadowing that doesn't pay off ... it's not a total mess, but it's messy. At its best, though, it reminded me a bit of the broader parts of "Brazil," or Gilliam in general.

I enjoyed at least the first half of Parasite but it slowly comes undone in the second

― Floyd 'The Oyd' Lloyd (dog latin), Wednesday, 30 July 2025 bookmarkflaglink

Slop opinion

parasite can be a 10/10 if you like but then memories of murder cannot be a 9