A Seattle moviegoing lifestyle magazine
From the moment we meet him, Sergeant Lim Gyu-nam (Lee Jee-hoon) is desperate to find a way out of North Korea and into a seemingly promised land to the South. Planning for what seemed like years, he has his route mapped and a thought-out plan to escape while he’s still in the military with familiar surroundings and path out, but on the cusp of action things fell apart.
My first reaction to Yorgos Lanthimos’s new absurdist black comedy anthology was that it was nice to see him getting weird again.
There’s something remarkable about the opening scene of Copa 71. Brandi Chastain, hero of the winning American team of the 1991 Women’s World Cup, is given a tablet and shown footage of the 1971 Copa tournament, a massive women’s soccer competition in Mexico City two decades earlier than the first official FIFA Women’s World Cup. She had no idea it even existed. I suspect many other diehard women’s sports fans didn’t either (I certainly didn’t).
Taking inspiration from Danny Lyon’s iconic book of photography The Bikeriders, director Jeff Nichols uses his admiration for the images of mid-century motorcyclists as the basis for a fictionalized account of a Chicago-based motorcycle club.
This caper starring June Squibb as a 93-year-old granny on a Cruise-inspired impossible mission to avenge her honor after being phone scammed & Fred Hechinger as underemployed Grandson of the Year might be the Most Sundance Movie of the fest: impeccably made, note-perfect, heartwarming comedy.
Directors Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson leverage the chemistry of a real-life family in crafting a drama about a working-class Chicago-area household. When we first meet the family in a principal’s office as they’re still reeling from the aftershocks of an unspecified trauma and the mounting stress of a looming lawsuit.
Kenji goes out on his first mission as the Ultra hero and finds himself stuck with Emi, a pint-sized Kaiju. He’s convinced by his estranged father that he has to keep Emi safe and raise her as his own.
Inside Out 2 finds us once again in the head of Riley, the young girl we grew with and cried for in Inside Out. This time, she’s just just a girl, she’s hit puberty and with it a whole host of new emotions. Riley hasn’t just grown up, she’s a star hockey player with two best friends and fantastic grades… so she’s on top of the world. Overnight, her emotional buddies (Joy, Anger, Disgust, Sadness and Fear) find their world crashing around them as “construction” is doing a complete overhaul of her emotional stability.
These are three films Morgen was incredibly eager to view and it ended up being a mixed bag of contentment and disappointment. She talks of a French meta-film about film, an over-the-top South Korean dark comedy, and an intimate portrait of male prostitution.
With a smattering of films Morgen was able to see during SIFF, she tells us why these three, that are all set to have a wider release or show at a SIFF cinema near you, are worthy of your time… or at least strange enough to experience for yourself.
