The Host (Bong Joon-ho, 2006)

[Lino]

Interview with the director here.

[Michael Kerpan]

Be sure to also check out Bong's first film (and first masterpiece) "Barking Dogs Never Bite". This also mashes and smashes genre boundaries. I would call this the best screwball (style) comedy in decades -- but Bong subverts expectations by having no romance whatsoever between the male and female leads. And the underlying subject -- dog kidnapping (and worse) and academic corruption is not exactly the stuff that Hollywood dreams are made of.

[Michael Kerpan]

The grandfather (I believe) in Host has a great supporting role in Barking Dogs -- the high point of his performance being the telling of a rather long story about a phantom boiler repairman. ;~}

[Michael Kerpan]

Seen it. Liked it.

Thoughts still in a jumble -- but it left me feeling pretty sad (rather like Memories of Murder)..

I may (or may not) see it screened later this week.

[Antoine Doinel]

Here's the trailer for the American theatrical release

[Antoine Doinel]

An interview with Bong Joon-ho.

[Lemmy Caution]

Watched it last night and came away largely indifferent. There was an interesting structure to the film and I liked the way that it mixed together a few different genres (a Monster reaking havoc; a SARS-like virus scare; US Gov't conspiracy; survivalism with a goofy family comedy, etc.).

But the execution was often sloppy. I liked seeing the US as the villain, but the US baddies were strictly caricatures and poorly acted ones at that. Fortunately, the film didn't spend much time on them, but I wish the scriptwriters had spent a little more time making them more realistic.

Also the archer-daughter was such a useless and clunky addition to the film that it was pretty clear early on that her specific skill would be needed later. The humor with her character never worked; while the humor with her slacker-brother was a little too amped up and goofy for my taste. The cutting between scenes was kind of fun, but generated only limited tension.
I imagine this is best seen on a big screen with an enthusiastic crowd.

[tavernier]

Armond hates it:

In the new Korean monster movie The Host, the term “seo-riâ€

[rs98762001]

Armond hates it

No wonder I liked it so much.

But I'm glad Armond has set the record straight when it comes to the "genius" of the JURASSIC PARK movies and WAR OF THE WORLDS.

[denti alligator]

[quote="Armond White"]wit of that three-eyed fish that pops up near the nuclear power plant in occasional episodes of “The Simpsons.â€

[soma]

The visual richness that makes every frame of War of the Worlds a kinetic, hallucinatory, politically-loaded work of art...

Oh my god I just vomited on my keyboard.

[Michael Kerpan]

Armond White just may be the goofiest (and most consistently wrong-headed) of all the supposedly major US film critics.

;~}

[tavernier]

^^^^
Now THAT'S saying something!

[fred]

Armond White just may be the goofiest (and most consistently wrong-headed) of all the supposedly major US film critics.

He's just an iconoclast railing against the (perceived) doxa of the (mostly NY based) critical establishment. It's an incredibly tiresome position, even if he (occasionally) has a point about the shortcomings of his colleagues. He was crazy before, but he's gone completely off the rails in the last 5 years.

[scalesojustice]

here are my thoughts, if anyone is interested.

[Antoine Doinel]

Saw this tonight and I have to join the (few) voices of dissent. Though, I didn't hate the film, I thought the screenplay was completely juvenile. Bong's U.S.-bashing never goes much further beyond writing any character that speaks English as a one-dimensional bureaucratic drone. Perhaps that says something about how the U.S. is perceived in the world, but Bong fails to offer any insight. His disdain and lack of belief in his own native Koreans is even more troubling. At one point in the film, a character says "Is all of your family this dumb all the time?" and it may as well have been applied to every major character in the film. I found it difficult to sit through the film when I was so constantly frustrated by the Koreans lack of ability to convey their emotions to other authority figures or even each other. And his blending of genres never particularly works well. I saw it with a fairly decent sized audience and there was maybe one collective chuckle in the whole film. The emotional scenes fell flat just as equally.

And that's all really too bad because The Host is visually arresting and one of the most originally sequenced and composed monster flicks I've ever seen. It's too bad it's wrapped up in such shoddy surroundings.

[Michael Kerpan]

Your audience experience bore no resemblance to mine. I wonder how many (if any) Koreans were included in your audience. ;~}

[Napoleon]

I have to agree with Antoine about Bong's naive(?) political stance. It seems to be all over the place. The US are the bad guys because they are going to use agent yellow as they say the Korean authorities are doing nothing. Yet the Korean authorities are doing nothing?

And then when agent yellow (which is built up to be a bigger threat than the monster) is deployed it turns out to be nothing more than tear gas.

Where the film really scores is the initial attack. The best 10 minutes or so of monster action that I've seen in a long time.

BTW did anyone else notice that the capsule that agent yellow is deployed from bore an uncanny similarity to the monster (when the monster is hanging upside down), or was that my fanciful imagination?

[Michael Kerpan]

Somehow I feel that neither Antoine nor Napoleon have much familiarity with the history of Korea over the past half century. Looking at this film, totally divorced from its historical context, yields a very different sense of what is going on from what one sees when one looks at it in context.

In any event -- Bong's primary interest is NOT bashing America -- his target is Korean officialdom's childish servility towards America's overbearing behavior.

[Antoine Doinel]

In any event -- Bong's primary interest is NOT bashing America -- his target is Korean officialdom's childish servility towards America's overbearing behavior.

That fact was not lost on me in the least, I just wish Bong didn't paint all his characters with one-dimensional strokes. His "insights" have all the depth of political protest placards. I don't think one needs to be Korean to necessarily get the gist of what he was saying.

[Michael Kerpan]

You don't have to be Korean to know WHAT is going on -- you do probably need to (at least) know something about Korean history to understand WHY Bong is doing what he is doing.

(This is true of much of Korean cinema -- lots of these films assume contextual knowledge that non-Koreans won't have -- absent doing some research).

In any event, I can state from personal observation that an audience full of Koreans found the comic parts of this film quite funny.

[leo goldsmith]

And I can testify that the audience that I saw it with, containing only a rather small percentage of Koreans, if any, found it hilarious. Especially the American with the wonky eye.

[scalesojustice]

the lazy eyed american was pretty funny, but not as funny as the korean official in the hazmat suit slipping (for whatever reason) and then trying to find the news on t.v. comedy gold.

i'm glad i got to watch it at home on DVD, to avoid the influence of any audience other than some friends and drinks.

[Michael Kerpan]

The Korean in the hazmat suit (reportedly) is the same actor who played the all-too-fond-of-dog homeless guy in "Barking Dogs Never Bite".

[Narshty]

I have to confess I have no idea what gets people so excited about this film. I was in tears of boredom. The comedy is just agonising (the hysterical wailing scene in the rescue centre near the start was simply embarrassing), the suspense is non-existant, the plot is cretinous beyond belief (how on earth

Spoiler

does the dad "recover" from a lobotomy - I'll say it again, a LOBOTOMY - with no side effects whatsoever?

and the attempts at pathos were shabby and unearned. A shocking waste of £4.60 at the cinema.