Paperman

NO OTHER CHOICE

2025

Directed by Park Chan-wook

Written by Lee Kyoung-mi, Don McKellar, Lee Ja-hye, and Park Chan-wook (based on The Ax by Donald Westlake)

Spoilers: moderate

The mountains and the sea

DECISION TO LEAVE

2022

Directed by Park Chan-wook

Written by Jeong Seo-kyeong and Park Chan-wook

Spoilers: moderate (maybe high)

Reviews from gulag: Late-winter cleaning

Just to get them all out of the way at last, here's a bunch of mini-reviews of the features I screened in 2016, but never got around to properly reviewing.  To wit: The Jungle Book, Nocturnal Animals, Denial, Sing Street, The Wailing, The Handmaiden, God's Not Dead 2, and The Nice Guys.  (I guess I should be a gentleman and warn you, I get somewhat spoilery for The Wailing and Nocturnal Animals.)

First up, we have Jon Favreau's The Jungle Book, presumptively the best Disney live-action remake of a classic animated film to date.  I say "presumptively" because I didn't see Pete's Dragon, but, of course, neither did you, so you're not likely to care about any misattributed superlative on its account.  Either way, more than anything else, The Jungle Book is a fantabulous technical exercise—albeit one that takes ages and ages to get used to, simply because there's just no preparing yourself for the incongruous and deeply upsetting sight of all these nearly-photorealistic CGI animals who flap their lips in a simulacrum of speaking English.  (And even after you've finally gotten your head around that, then you have to deal with those two musical numbers, imported from the animated original, neither one of which feels precisely on-target, and the latter of which does its absolute damnedest, in conjunction with the film's abysmal reimagination of King Louie as a Kongian kaiju, to ruin your fucking life.)

On the other hand, you have Idris Elba's Shere Khan, monumentally terrifying, though this has somewhat more to do with the sterling CGI performance, and Favreau's willingness to stage some genuine high-test brutality in his kid's talking animal adventure, than it does with Elba's vocal performance—although it is a rather good one.  On that same hand, however, you have Scarlett Johannson's giant-sized Kaa, who is, objectively speaking, probably just as ridiculous a creation as King Louie—but who still comes off as a bolt of creepy horror-movie perfection, right in The Jungle Book's heart.  Best talking snake ever?  Maybe.  But the best use of the focal plane in a 2016 movie, hiding Kaa's body against the limbs of the tree Mowgli's found himself in, until the electric moment she begins to move?  Oh, almost without a doubt.  (And yet Kaa's success is just as much thanks to Johannson's vocals.  In combination with Her, it leads me to believe that the woman is a significantly better voice actor than she is an actor-actor.  Plus, if they'd kept her musical number—which is relegated instead to the closing credits, even though it's by far the best of all three—it might have helped the other two feel even the slightest bit organic to the proceedings.)

Meanwhile, Bill Murray's pretty well-cast himself, as the lazy Baloo; and Ben Kingsley is likewise doing just fine with one more check-chasing late-career role, as the stolid Bagheera.  As for that kid playing Mowgli, Neel Sethi, he is frankly doing much better than he's gotten credit for: can you imagine playing make-pretend on a set like this one, let alone at his age?  He's fantastic.

And yet, if you throw in an ending that seems to be at cross-purposes not only with the original text (whether "original" means the Kipling tale or the '67 cartoon), but at cross-purposes with its own themes and story, what you're ultimately left with is not that much more than one amazing-looking mess.  (And one that probably needed an R-rating to really reach its full potential, at that.  I live and I dream, guys.)  But it is amazing-looking, and that still counts, even in 2016.  And so even all the things that you're bound to hate about it just don't matter nearly as much as they really probably should.

Score:  7/10

Damn near killed her!

STOKER

Far less than the sum of its parts, almost every opportunity in Stoker is a missed one, with the exceptions being Chung Chung-hoon's photography, which is almost reason enough to recommend the film, and the two and a half great performances so unfortunately underserved by an underwritten script.

2013
Directed by Park Chan-Wook
Written by Wentworth Miller
With Mia Wasikowska (India Stoker), Matthew Goode (Charlie Stoker), and Nicole Kidman (Evelyn Stoker)

Spoiler alert: high