Of the three Hong Sang-soo films I’ve now seen, Like You Know It All is by far the most accessible in terms of its surface-level genre. It’s essentially a comedy, one that taps a vein not dissimilar to the Comedy of Un-comfortability that’s so in fashion Stateside, while maintaining a consciousness about ego and the weakness of best intentions in the face of desire that grounds the humor in something hopelessly sad.
The film plays out in two major sections. Ku, a filmmaker, travels to a suburb to be on the jury at a film festival. He’s the most famous guy in town … until his former lackey-turned-star director shows up and attracts the attention of porn star who wants to launch a legit acting career. Ku habitually drinks by night and sleeps through movies by day. One night, he runs into an old friend, who he comically dismisses as “an alcoholic”, and after the friend claims that his new wife is his “soulmate” and salvation, the two end up drunkenly going back to the friend’s house, where Ku manages to offend the “soulmate” before passing out. Later, Ku travels to an island to present a lecture at a university. He hooks up with his former mentor for another long night of drinking, then meets the mentor’s own “soulmate” wife… who happens to be Ku’s ex-girlfriend. All throughout, Ku sits, usually quietly, while his drunk companions expound on the meaning of life and the restorative powers of love. Like You Know it All ultimately plays out like a spoof of the life of an independent filmmaker, with the festival circuit and speaking gigs as pit stops to both pump up the ego, and force crises of conscience.
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The producers of Tokyo!, three short films by two Frenchmen and a South Korean, aim to do for Japan’s metropolis what New York Stories did for the Big Apple or Paris Je T’Aime for the City of Lights. That the two Frenchmen are indie darling Michel Gondry and former film critic/Pola X director Leos Carax, and the South Korean Bong Joon-Ho, who made an international splash with The Host, would seem to lend these three very different takes on a single subject some serious cache. Unfortunately, only two directors rise to the occasion, leaving a gaping hole in an otherwise thoughtful trilogy.
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Ever since the great Italian director Sergio Leone rode into town, it’s been clear that the Western is not solely the domain of American filmmakers. Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns boosted Clint Eastwood’s career and forever changed the genre. A new film from Korea, what many are calling a Kimchi Western, may change the genre once again. Kim Ji-Woon’s The Good, the Bad, and the Weird is in many ways an homage to Leone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but is also an excellent example of the energy and originality emerging in Korean cinema.
The Good, the Bad, and the Weird, set in Manchuria in the 1930’s, follows the story of three bandits, all in pursuit of map that leads to an untold amount of treasure. Woo-sung Jung (the Good), Byung-hun Lee (the Bad), and Kang-ho Song (the Weird) all give excellent performances. Cool and outrageous enough for an action comedy, but not overdone. Kang-ho Song, who you may recognize from the hit Korean monster movie The Host, is particularly good at playing his own brand of lovable dork.
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There’s a Korean movie called Juno Jenny that has something to do with two teens and the night of awkward passion that leads to an unplanned pregnancy. This is news to Diablo Cody, who wrote the script for Fox Searchlight’s much-splooged-over Juno, which is about two teens and the night of awkward passion that leads to an unplanned pregnancy. She blogged the other day about her movie’s “spiritual cousins” which, as she puts it, “is a much nicer way to point out a cool/weird coincidence than going ‘OMG PLAGIARISM!’”:
There’s no adoption subplot and apparently the film is otherwise dissimilar to mine, but how fucked up is that? I bring this up because a journalist drilled me about it recently–awkward!–and also because I saw someone on our IMDB board wondering if Juno was a remake of the K-flick. So for the record, 1.) it isn’t a remake 2.) I haven’t seen Juno Jenny, though I want to now, and 3.) I don’t think anyone would even bat an eye about this if my film was called Jenny. The name Juno is just so darned distinctive that confusion is inevitable.
More on Juno’s various spiritual cousins at the link.
In yet another sign that the digital revolution will be good for smut and violence, the largest theater chain in the States, Regal Entertainment Group, has announced that they’ll 
