The best movies in the world today are from ... Korea?

Amazingly, quietly, almost secretly - Korean cinema has become the most interesting and thoughtful in the world - why is this? I have to plead guilty here, I don't know the names of most of the directors or stars of the recent great Korean films, so I don't even know if it's one or two people or many who are responsible for this renaissance - but I'm thinking about the terrific films Mother, Oasis, The Host, Poetry, two of these made by Lee Chang-dong(?) - and now add a third of his to the list: Secret Sunshine - why don't more people know this film or his work? Secret Sunshine like his other works is a masterpiece, a tender and unflinching examination of a woman undergoing great suffering [ spoilers ] loss of husband and son - and how she copes and survives, without a bit of schmaltz or fakery, Lee takes follows her to the depth of despair, it's one of the greatest acting performances ever, as she at times is sweet and whimsical and tender, and then howls in misery - just an enormous range of emotion in one film. Most dramatic part of the movie for me is her battle with her faith - drawn to a church revival meeting, the greatest scene in the movie, beginning with her silent and stolid ending with her sobbing as those around her pray, then she joins a faith group but soon loses her faith, and all of her bearings, after meeting with the man imprisoned for killing her son. Smart, scary, built on scene after scene of smart writing, tremendous acting by a wide range of characters, camerawork that captures the life in a small but modern and growing city - terrific movie that just will never find a wide audience, has barely been distributed in u.s. as far as I know. Wake up!

Spelling Bee - at Harvard?

Another great and completely fun Harvard student production - "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" - done in a faux middle-school gym, with a really fun and sharp cast of 10 plus four befuddled audience "volunteers." The show obviously inspired by such films as Spellbound and built on a lot of improvisation, as we watch the six young contestants (plus the volunteers, not all young) pass through the rounds and in the process, through some energetic numbers and snappish dialog, reveal who they are, where they've come from, and in the end where they're going. You can kind of predict the types: the nerdy brainiac, the driven overachiever, the girl who's pushed by needy parents, the girl who's ignored by her parents, the kid who's surprised he's even there because he thinks he's not smart, and so on. But you can't predict what will happen to each over the course of the 90-minute no-intermission show. Our friend the delightful Susanna Wolk gives a great performance as a nerdy but politically energetic kid with a comical lisp and a superabundance of energy - go, Susanna! Also have to shout out to the showstopping # from MG Presioso, "chimerical," wishing her parents would pay attention to her and love her; to Justin Pereira's William Barfee and the broadly comical # about his "magic foot" (replete with some pretty good tapdancing), and the beautiful voice of Elizabeth Leimkuhler as an ex bee queen; the direction of this very challenging show (by Alex Willis) was superb, keeping it clear and quick and at various times witty, touching, troubling. Show's a lot of fun, and if I ever get to see it again, I will volunteer. (Sorry, guys - I am using spell-check.)

Civlizations in conflict - an a metaphor for life itself - in Meek's Cutoff

"Meek's Cutoff" is an entirely thoughtful and from first shot to last an entirely captivating low-budget movie that could only an Indie director with a cast of little-knowns (except for Indie queen Michelle Williams - who is terrific in this movie) could have made. The story is about a 19th-century stage crossing, a group of three families (two couples, and one a couple with a young son) crossing toward Oregon with a grizzled guide (Meek) who gets them good and lost. The dramatic tension comes when they capture an Indian whom Meek believes is going to bring a tribe with him to kill, torture, rape, or kidnap - he wants to kill the Indian immediately, but others in the party have different ideas: barter with him, befriend him, ignore him - various ways to get him to lead to desperately needed water. It is never clear (until perhaps the very last shots) who is right - is the Indian a victim, is he truly leading them to water, or is Meek right and the Indian is leading them to certain death? The movie subtly explores all the different ways civilizations in conflict respond to one another (the Indian has choices, too: should he help them when their wagon is stuck?, for example). It's also in some ways metaphor or allegorical, without being heavy handed: the crossing in some way represents a life course each of us takes, in partnership with others and perhaps with a guide, who may be faithful or cruel or indifferent. Movie seems to be shot in 4:3 scale (unless my Blu-Ray was being weird), unusual for a film with the great vistas of the West. Williams is great - what a beautiful speaking voice. She alone among the characters sounds natural - the others, a bit stilted, with their archaic dialog. The film intentionally blurs some of the conversations (many are virtually unintelligible, in some cases because we are meant to be with the women, closed out of the men's serious discussions and decisions). Ending to some may seem abrupt and too ambiguous, but if you think about it for a few seconds you will know exactly what becomes of these travelers.

Why the supernatural doesn't quite work in Uncle Boonmee

Why is it that I'm reading a Japanesenovel about an 60ish man who is facing intimations of his own death (Sound of the Mountain) and also find myself last night watching a Thai movie about a 60ish man facing intimations of his death - don't read anything into that, please! I feel great! But something last night drew me to watch "Uncle Boonmee ho can recall his past lives," a very unusual movie that got some really strong reviews. What can I say? Best Thai movie I've seen this year? Among the pluses, some very beautiful scenes of the Thai countryside and some truly haunting sequences when ghosts come alive - not only to Uncle Boonmee but also to his caregiver and his relatives, who have come to see him in what may be his last days. When the ghost of his long-dead wife, and then of his lost son, who has been transformed into a werewolf-like monkey god, with bright red eyes, show up at the dinner table on the veranda, at night - it's truly a spectacular sequence. Other good sequences include a wealthy woman or princess, being carried on one of the chairs on poles perhaps to her wedding, stops by a pond and is seduced by - a catfish! Strange indeed. Could have been a really good movie - except that the filmmaker takes very little care in introducing the characters so that from beginning to end I was unsure of who was who and what was happening to whom. Mystery and the supernatural is fine in a movie - think of the great Pan's Labyrinth, for example - but to make the supernatural work you need to also pay attention to the natural world and make it credible and clear. Also, the acting is wooden - actors seem to be amateurs, learning their lines - and the pace is glacial, many scenes could have been more effective at half the length. One interesting sidelight is the xenophobia some of the Thai characters express toward the Lao neighbors - coming into Thailand illegally, taking away jobs, and so on - all sounding so painfully familiar to the racist rhetoric we hear in the U.S. today.

Some love this film, but ... not I

There are movies that are "not for everyone" and then there's "Le Quattro Volte" (loosely: the four seasons, or the four turns?), which is beloved by some and for others - me and M - left us totally cold and bewildered. It's one of those movies that on the surface sounds so improbable that you think it has to be amazing or it would never have been made, let alone distributed: a movie without any dialogue that follows a season in the life of a small Italian mountain village, particularly an elderly goat shepherd, as a way to look at the interconnection of all life: people, animals, vegetables, minerals, water, earth, fire, and air. Okay, let's give it a look! Great, except: I don't need every movie to be 13 Assassins, but a little plot and character development goes a long way. We watch the old shepherd coughing and spewing up flem, brushing a gnat from his face, fixing and drinking some weird health potion. From a fixed camera, like a spycam almost, we watch some interactions in the village square (a parade passes by, a dog barks, a truck pulls up), we see the villagers saw down a tree, cut up the tree, build some weird structure in which the wood is turned into charcoal - used for heating (and for medicinal purposes?). A little goes a long way. Most interesting sequences involve: the goats, particularly the birth of one, and its first days, and how it gets separated from the herd and, presumably, dies at base of tree that later fuels the hearths of the villagers. It all connects - but it left me pretty cold and uninterested.