come anticipate Park Chan-wook's English-language debut STOKER with me (Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode, Mia Wasikowska)

It's on at the cinema here in December so I'm hoping i can go watch it then with a better translation lol

Got my ticket to see it Thursday; meantime the Alamo here is doing a one-off screening of Joint Security Area I'll be seeing in a couple of hours.

that scene where he is texting his grandma and keeps changing the reply, that's pure cinema!

i haven't seen Joint Security Area, that's one i'd like to get round to at some point

It's great! You wouldn't expect it because it's so distant from Wook's usual concerns, and being a debut I'd always assumed it was just work for hire, but I remember it being tense as fuck and not going soft on corruption in South Korea.

Just saw DtL, will report back tomorrow after it has fully sunk in.

Okay, this thing lived up to the hype.

i worry i get over-excited about PCW but on the level of craft alone he's a master

I loved this film.

What a way to take jumper cables to a genre exercise. The kind of film where if you bend down to tie your shoelaces or something you miss a subtle editing choice.

and, yeah, Noodle Vague otm about a certain staging decision.

there's a lot of Hitchcock in this one but done with such joy, the Vertigo parallels aren't overplayed, and for a film that's very funny at times it still earns its ending

it is so layered and subtle that I reckon I'll still be noticing things I missed on my first viewing after half a dozen rewatches.

i promised myself i wouldn't rewatch until i can see an official UK release but yeah there's a lot to go back to

bumped into xyzzz at my screening last night, all the cool kids are watching this

will say I've seen someone somewhere (I thought this thread but no) refer to it as a romantic comedy, and I can see where that take comes from, but it left me v much unprepared for the places this goes

lol i've seen the romantic comedy line somewhere. i guess genre tags are only good for jokes really

Just saw, but didn’t click on yet, something about him claiming he wasn’t intentionally channeling Hitchcock!

well i'm not gonna insist on influences but Stoker was an acknowledged remake of Shadow of a Doubt (ok PCW didn't write that one) and i thought about Vertigo in the middle of Decision to Leave without being prompted

but yeah, not intentionally, we all have things swimming around in the stew of our unconscious

https://www.avclub.com/park-chan-wook-hitchcock-inspiration-decision-to-leave-1849672024

Vertigo and also Rear Window as well. But yeah, I’m not going to worry about sinkah’s i-word if the director says it wasn’t intentional, despite the obvious deep connection.

“I think it’s related to the fact that I have bad memory,” Park continues. “I don’t clearly remember the films that I’ve watched, so it’s difficult to pull out of those.”

lol, same

Oh -- I don't consider NV's spoiler a spoiler. It's essential to understanding the thing.

“Vertigo? Don’t remember that one, but I did quite like Guy Maddin’s The Green Fog.”

“La Jeteé? Now there’s a film for you!”

I guess my point if I have one is that Vertigo’s, um, shadow is so long at this point that it may or may not need to be acknowledged so long as the film in question doesn’t suffer by comparison and this one doesn’t.

It also reminded me of De Palma as well tbh.

bumped into xyzzz at my screening last night, all the cool kids are watching this

― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 19 October 2022 bookmarkflaglink

That's right.

I liked how phones and their use were integrated into the plot, though I think there was too much fat on the plot as well.

yeah it's a lot of modern life as plot points - texts, siri play this song, using phones to translate

I agree with xyzzzz -- it's about 15 minutes too long.

I felt that a bit too but tbf what were we doing going to a 20:45 screening

Ha, I knew I wouldn’t be able to sit through a late screening.

watching at home allowed for an old man bladder break. it could be tighter, but there's no need when there's so much pleasure in each shot tbh

btw I'm not yet sure what happens in the last 10 minutes

well i thought i was but now you've cast doubt...

I mostly thought I knew but looking forward to a rewatch.

I feel much better now there are more than a few people who are not certain about the plot, and I've seen it twice now! But watching it home it's much easier to be distracted by things like cans of lager and the dog for enough time to miss vital details.

I've just accepted I suck at deciphering plot details.

Think the script/flow of the story was a bit tied up in knots. Had a few questions which I then forgot about in the morning.

I am still being bombarded by the MUBI Squad and the algorithms with trailers to see this. Really just want to watch it again from beginning to end.

MUBI’s campaign for Decision to Leave firing on all cylinders pic.twitter.com/WdNZ3PGWxE

— Reel and Roll Films - Jupe & Jobu Tupaki Freak (@reelandroll) October 20, 2022

good work

Heh

A very involving watch (catching up from my Thursday viewing). I thought the very careful choices in how the subtitles were presented for non-Korean/Chinese speaking audiences who pretty clearly wouldn't catch the important distinctions being made by how one character is able to understand or convey was a real strength.

As I muttered on Twitter, I was also pretty bemused/amused to have Mahler's 5th have a role on it after seeing Tár the other week. But another point of commonality was how both those films and Martine Syms's The African Desperate (also a MUBI thing and just hit the channel yesterday -- highly recommend) found their own distinct ways to work with filming texting/phone use in the present day. And as calz noted the one text conversation in DtL that had the constant changing of a reply was pretty brilliant.

just caught it at the GFT, great piece of cinema. found the second half harder to follow than the first but that's usually when my mind starts to wander

DECISION TO LEAVE is an utter masterpiece

Feel like maybe we should (re)watch every October 26th, sorry I was off a day this yeat.

heh, I made a typo, just like they do in the movie whilst texting

Hoping to see this tomorrow when it opens in Chicago