For It Is Man's Number: lee isaac chung

Showing posts with label lee isaac chung. Show all posts

Monday, 15 September 2025

Mubi Monday: Minari (2020)

Although Minari is an American drama, it is all about the experience of South Korean immigrants trying to establish their life in the USA. Which means I may well get some of the name formatting wrong, once again, despite trying my best to double-check the details available to me.

Steven Yeun is Jacob Yi, Han Ye-ri is his wife, Monica, and they have two young children, David (Alan Kim) and Anne (Noel Kate Cho). They will also soon be joined by Soon-ja (Youn Yuh-jung), Monica's mother who will hopefully be able to look after the children while the hard work is done that should turn their house into a home, and also hopefully turn their land into something able to grow produce on. It won't be a smooth journey, but it will hopefully be a journey that the whole family experience together.

Written and directed by Lee Isaac Chung, based on his own childhood, Minari is one of those films that makes use of specifics and personal details to deliver something that feels universal and identifiable. While it's about the immigrant experience, and about the challenges facing them, it's also just about parents doing their best to ensure that each subsequent generation has a better starting point in life than the previous one.

While the cast all do fantastic work, with young Kim being an absolute delight, and Yeun showing once again that he is yet to be given due credit for his many brilliant performances over the last decade or so, this is all about the delicate exploration of people who have to consider the value of the sacrifices made in pursuit of a better life. While there's a monetary cost involved, the more difficult moments come when loved ones may be negatively impacted by choices seemingly made for the greater good.

As well as those mentioned, Will Patton delivers a great performance, portraying a Korean War veteran who believes that it's a great sign that he has been placed to potentially help the family. His character helps to highlight the ways in which the world keeps changing, and how it's very easy to find commonality with people simply hoping to make a good life for their family.

There's a lot of strain and stress here, and it's always clear that Jacob has gambled everything on this one place, and his plans for it, but Chung shows that the risks are, despite moments of doubt, worth the reward. The family is together, there are happier times lying ahead for them, and they can feel as if they have made some progress as soon as they decided to make their home in America. Whether sexing chickens, trying to find a good spot for a water well, struggling to sell any produce, or figuring out how to deal with health problems, Jacob and Monica are always motivated by family and love. And that counts for a hell of a lot, even in the face of overwhelming odds trying to fill them with doubt.

9/10

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Thursday, 25 July 2024

Twisters (2024)

Despite the recent wave of nostalgic affection for it, Twister was never a movie that I considered great. It wasn't bad, and I have some amount of goodwill for any blockbuster that gives a lead role to Bill Paxton, but it wasn't up there alongside the many other disaster movies that came along after it. So I wasn't very keen to see this sorta-sequel (there's a bit of machinery used that was in the first film, and there are twisters, of course, but that covers all of the main connections). Thankfully, I had a partner very keen to see this, which is how I can now be glad that I saw it on the big screen, because this is blockbuster fun.

Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Kate, a young woman who retired from the tornado-chasing game after an incident that left her scarred and traumatised while trying to come up with a way to "kill" tornadoes. She now works in meteorology, in an environment that makes use of her intelligence and intuitive ability to read the weather, and hopes to stay far away from lively and huge tornadoes. That plan changes when she is approached by an old friend, Javi (Anthony Ramos), who wants Kate to help him capture some vital tornado data with the help of her natural talent and some cutting-edge technology. That puts them in competition with Tyler (Glen Powell) though. Tyler is a YouTube sensation, a cowboy daredevil, and a minor celebrity with a major ego. He might have a bit more to him though, hidden behind the cowboy hat and super-charged grin. He might even help Kate to finally realise her tornado-killing dream.

Written by Mark L. Smith, a decent enough talent working here to flesh out a story by Joseph Kosinski, Twisters is actually very smart and well-constructed, considering the type of movie it is. It delivers the required exposition via character moments, instead of in one unexciting info-dump, and it makes some interesting points about the need to stop being so passive in a world that has become increasingly hostile to many of the people living in it. It also nicely inverts the formula of the first film in a few different ways, but does so while absolutely sticking to the blockbuster movie formula you expect when you buy your ticket.

Director Lee Isaac Chung may not seem like the obvious fit for the material, considering the previous features he has helmed, but he goes all out here to deliver a slice of undiluted Americana. The scenery, the soundtrack full of lively Country music, the way in which Powell's character continues to deal with the tornadoes as beasts to be wrangled, this is a laid-back Western, in many ways, with a tornado set to be the main villain due in town for a shoot-out scheduled for High Noon. That undersells the film though, because it's also very funny. This is a fun and funny film, one that keeps entertainment front and centre. Like many modern day blockbusters, the runtime clocks in at just over two hours. Unlike many other films, however, this doesn't feel overlong. The pacing is perfect, and part of the reason for that is the timing of Glen Powell's entrance, about 20-30 minutes into the runtime.

There's no need to go on and on about Powell trying to become a star. Powell is a star. He has moments here that solidly underline that fact, and when he does his shimmy swagger at one point I coudln't help thinking of him as a demin-clad, stetson-wearing, male version of Jessica Rabbit. Powell feels like the lead here, to a degree, but it helps that Edgar-Jones is equal to him in their scenes together. She's smart, sassy, and continues to deal with trauma from her past that feels like something anyone would struggle to reconcile with. Ramos is fine as Javi, but neither he nor his main colleague, Scott (David Corensweet), are half as watchable as those who make up Tyler's troupe:Brandon Perea, Sasha Lane, Tunde Adebimpe, Katy O'Brian, and Harry Hadden-Paton (as Ben, a British journalist writing a piece on the star "tornado-wrangler"). Others appearing onscreen include Maura Tierney, David Born, Paul Scheer, Daryl McCormack, Nik Dodani, and Kiernan Shipka, but I won't tell you who gets a decent amount of screentime and who gets to cameo. Is the cast comparable to the group of actors we got in the original movie? No, but it's not too far off.

If you have seen or heard anything about Twisters and already suspect that you will hate it then you may well end up hating it. I would heartily recommend this to anyone after some full-blooded blockbuster fun though. It has human leads sparring with one another to be the brighter star, it has some great special effects also muscling in to be the star of the show, and it has a real eagerness to be absolutely entertaining from start to finish. I think it succeeds . . . brilliantly.

8/10