Review: MOTHER / Bong Joon-ho (2009)
March 18th, 2010 by Scott Marks
Mother (2009)
Directed by Bong Joon-ho
Written by Park Eun-kyo and Bong Joon-ho
Starring: Kim Hye-ja and Won Bin
Photographed by Hong Kyung-Pyo in 
Running Time: 129 min.
Rating: 
We never do find out the name of Kim Hye-ja’s character in “Mother,” but the unyielding blood bond between this parent and her son is established immediately after the opening title hits the screen. The problem is we are not quite sure whose blood is on whose hands.
Mom sits in her flower shop trimming stems, all the while keeping an eye on her mentally challenged twenty-seven-year-old son who loafs across the street with a friend and his dog. Do-joon (Won Bin) is so attached to his mother that he encourages the pup to say “hi” to her.
The reflection of a passing car briefly illuminates mom’s face and in an instant, Do-joon is hit and on the ground. He’s unharmed, but it takes a moment for all parties concerned to realize that the blood on his shirt isn’t his. Mom cut her finger the second she saw her son was harmed. It’s a metaphor that will reverberate throughout the film.
Mother is a devoted single parent who will go to any length to protect her boy. After a drunken night out Do-joon follows a schoolgirl home and the next morning police find her body hanging off a balcony with a fractured cranium. The boy is convicted of murder and we spend the rest of the picture along with mom trying to figure out whether or not her son is guilty of the crime.
Bong Joon-Ho directed his first picture in 2000 and has since turned out another 4 1/3 films. There is not a clunker in the bunch. He first came to the attention of American audiences with “The Host,” a story about a mildly retarded narcoleptic that has to save his family and all of Korea from a genetically engineered monster. If Hollywood studios took a lesson from this picture, oh how much more entertained and enlightened action film fans would be. For my money Bong Joon-Ho is the single greatest directorial discovery of the past decade.
With “Mother,” Bong introduces another Korean superstar to a global audience. Kim Hye-ja is a staple of Korean television where she plays a stereotypical devoted mother in the long-running series “The Rustic Diary.” The director, who wrote “Mother” with Kim Hye-ja in mind, wanted “to capture Kim’s little-recognized psychological intensity and emotional sensitivity, and to illuminate the unseen power in the destructive side of her personality.”
“Mother,” which played one night at last year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival, has been picked up by Landmark for a theatrical run. It’s a film of raw emotional and cinematic intensity that is likely to stay with you for weeks to come. Forget about Sandy, Meryl and Mo’Nique. The best performance by an actress in 2009 is currently playing at the Hillcrest Cinemas.
Tags: Film Review, Kim Hye-ja, korea, mother bong joon-ho, mother movie, Movie Review, Won BinShare: 
Filed Under Reviews, Theatrical
Review: THE RED BARON / Nikolai Müllerschön (2008)
March 18th, 2010 by Scott Marks
The Red Baron (2008)
Written and Directed by Nikolai Müllerschön
Starring:Matthias Schweighöfer, Til Schweiger, Lena Headey & Joseph Fiennes
Running Time: 106 min.
Rating: 
From “Peanuts” to frozen pizza, the Red Baron continues to be a part of America’s cultural consciousness. The same cannot be said in Germany where, for obvious reasons, they tend to play down their war heroes. Perhaps that is why a film celebrating the life and work of World War I flying ace Manfred von Richthofen met with a cool critical reception when it opened in the Fatherland.
As far back as he can remember, von Richthofen (Matthias Schweighöfer) always wanted to be a crack aerialist, but this biopic only gives us one Hallmark greeting card glimpse into his childhood. We open on a young Manfred drawing a bead on a deer. A plane passes overhead and in an instant, the budding aviator is on horseback, arms outstretched and pretending to soar through the heavens.
The Huns depicted in “The Red Baron” are gallant charmers, not airborne killing machines. “We’re sportsmen, not butchers,” von Richthofen informs a gathering of rookie pilots. Before bragging that he shot down Canadian Capt. Roy Brown (Joseph Fiennes), von Richthofen is the first to come to the aid of the wounded airman. His famed Flying Circus arranges a flyby to drop a wreath at an enemy funeral. As if to make clear to uninformed viewers that Nazis didn’t arrive on the scene until World War II, writer/director Nikolai Müllerschön gives the Baron a Jew for a best friend.
Budgeted at $25 million, “The Red Baron” is said to be one of the costliest films ever produced in Germany. At times, the wavering CG scale replicas flying overhead seem more like giant pterodactyls than two-seater airplanes.
My knowledge of the real-life exploits of the Red Baron are limited to what I took from John Guillermin’s “The Blue Max,” Roger Corman’s “Von Richthofen and Brown” and the Royal Guardsman ditty. I’ll have to take the word of fellow critics who claim that the romantic relationship between the pilot and his nurse (Lena Headey) never took place.
As the daring fighter pilot Matthias Schweighöfer has the swagger but lacks the charisma needed to pull it off. Co-star Til Schweiger (Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz in “Inglourious Basterds”) would have been a much better choice for the lead.
For all its faults, “The Red Baron” is a good old fashioned genre picture that held my interest. Sadly, I won’t know until the DVD comes out exactly where to rank the film. Monterey Media’s version is 23 minutes shorter than the original German cut which probably accounts for some of the film’s abrupt narrative shifts and short shrift paid to character development and backstory.
“The Red Baron” is currently playing at Reading Cinemas Gaslamp 15.
Tags: Film Review, Lena Headey The Red Baron movie, Matthias Schweighöfer, Movie Review, Nikolai Müllerschön, The Red Baron, Til SchweigerShare:
keep looking »