Meewella | Critic

According to P

Tag: Steven Yeun

QuickView: Nope (2022)

“This dream you’re chasing, where you end up at the top of the mountain, all eyes on you… it’s the dream you never wake up from.”

Antlers Holst

Marketed as an extraterrestrial mystery, Jordan Peele’s third feature seems structured haphazardly as it morphs into a classic monster movie befitting the 70mm projection I saw. Its intention to obfuscate emerges from its opening with two separate and bloody prologues, followed by a long and meandering opening act that follows two sibling horse-wranglers — one laconically disengaged and the other energetically grating. The most enjoyable films of this type either trim the fat and dive straight into the meat like Tremors or focus almost entirely on the human relationships like Monsters. Nope lies somewhere between, though it tends toward the latter with Peele’s script exploring the capitalist tendencies that lead the siblings to an obsession with capturing footage of the UFO that they can exploit, whilst a nearby amusement park owner seeks to turn it into a crowd-pleasing spectacle. A particularly uncomfortable scene demonstrates the extent to which Yuen’s character is willing to market his own childhood trauma, a discarded subplot that is arguably more interesting. The film’s second half is more straightforward but also more successful, with familiar scenes as the characters learn the rules of interacting with the entity, and jury-rig solutions out in the California desert, its wide expanse of hills and skies captured dramatically by Hoyte Van Hoytema. With its overarching themes about humanity’s desire to control and exploit nature — and the risk in attempting to do so — Nope is not really covering new ground for the genre, but it is still an impressively-made throwback.

7/10

QuickView: Minari (2020)

Minari poster

“You go ahead and do what you want. Even if I fail, I have to finish what I started.”

Jacob

Lee Isaac Chung’s semi-autobiographical film about a Korean immigrant family setting up a farm in Arkansas is light on plot and heavy on character interaction, with the success of the farm itself less important than the fate of the family. The initial tension comes from Jacob’s decision to uproot a stable but stagnant life in California for risk that provides the possibility of growth and, although our initial impression of his wife Monica is unsupportive, the film is unusually even-handed in its portrayal of the couple. The arrival of grandmother Soonja seems like it will provide a one-note antagonistic presence, but she turns out to Minari‘s most multifaceted and fascinating character, portrayed expertly by Korean cinema veteran Yuh-Jung Youn as she shifts between childishly churlish and deeply caring. Steven Yeun, best known from The Walking Dead, is a nominal lead but this is really an ensemble cast, with the entire family being nuanced and fleshed out with sufficient screen time save for the daughter. Aside from half the dialogue being in Korean, there is little racial or cultural focus to Minari ⁠— perhaps its most universal immigrant experience is that the parents remain isolated, struggling to form deep relationships outside of the family unit, despite this particular Arkansas community being welcoming. As an amalgamation of Chung’s childhood memories, Minari may not show us anything particularly new but, in depicting the quiet struggle of industrious immigrants, it is both beautiful and timely in an environment of backlash to immigration.

8/10

"A film is a petrified fountain of thought."

(CC) BY-NC 2003-2023 Priyan Meewella

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