Tag: Chan-wook Park

Rapid Response: Oldboy

“Oldboy” is the pinnacle example of the Cult film in the 21st Century.

“Oldboy” is the finest example of a cult film we have in the 21st Century. “Pulp Fiction,” “Fight Club,” “American History X,” “Memento”: all these movies have attained ubiquity to some extent, the Internet uniting all these factions to raise these movies from the underground and into the mainstream. All it means to be a cult film today is to have a ravenous fan base or for a passionate fan base to emerge when the mainstream wasn’t there to swoop it into the stratosphere.

“Oldboy” on the other hand has the same kinetic style, the same cryptically impossible story and the same rebellious themes of the classic cult favorites, and because it comes from Korea, it somewhat has the capability of flying beneath the radar, able to be made into an American studio film by Spike Lee without ruffling too many feathers.

In a way, “Oldboy” is a standard revenge drama. Oh Dae-su (Min-sik Choi) is a flawed, but good man driven to pitifulness by alcohol, and he is abducted without explanation and forced to right a wrong done to his family. Later when he is freed, he will meet a beautiful girl to help him on his journey, he’ll get a mysterious phone call from a suave sounding villain, and he’ll become a Charles Bronson-esque vigilante skilled in combat. The cryptic nature of the mystery will culminate into an epic twist and climax, and many will be killed along the way. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Oldboy”

Stoker

“Stoker” is a twisted, perverse thriller of sinister and sexual undertones all accomplished through precise filmmaking.

The best scene in Chan-wook Park’s “Stoker” is not one of its several murders or Hitchcockian set pieces or psychotic outbursts. It’s a piano duet between its two leads, the timid teenager India and her creepy, suspicious uncle Charlie.

She starts, and he joins in, silently squeezing his way onto a cramped piano bench. They play with speed and beauty, stealing glances at one another when not focusing on the keys. Suddenly, he crosses her body to reach the high octave, and the sexual tension is palpable as the music continues. Considering their relationship, it’s a twisted, perverse sensation that turns out to be a dream sequence, but it begins to hint at the tingling feelings of something worse than naughty, and “Stoker” does so with the precision of a ticking metronome.

“Stoker” is the first English film from Director Park, whose “Oldboy” is a recent cult classic that currently sits at #83 on the IMDB Top 250 and is being remade this year by Spike Lee. His violent legacy runs deep, and although “Stoker” minimizes on some of the bloodshed, it’s effortlessly textured with horror movie staples and Hitchcock set pieces. A butcher’s knife, garden shears, an ominous person-long freezer in a dark cellar and a hazy, flickering chandelier lamp paint a familiarly sinister world.

Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt” serves as inspiration on a narrative level as well. On India Stoker’s (Mia Wasikowska) 17th birthday, her father is tragically killed in a car wreck. At the funeral, she meets her Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode), a perpetually smiling, unblinking young man with an attractive face and disarming voice. Immediately something rubs the timid, spiteful, skinny and goth India the wrong way, more so because her mother Evie (Nicole Kidman) has gotten over husband’s death a bit too quickly with Charlie’s arrival. Coinciding with his arrival, a housekeeper and visiting relative suddenly vanish, and India slowly sinks into even more vicious behavior. Continue reading “Stoker”