Bong

A day of pottering around at home doing stuff and then out mid-arvo to see Underwater - a perfectly watchable but instantly forgettable submarine Alien rip-off. Plenty of genre conventions with the odd decent scare and jump. Very noticeable that Kristen Stewart spends a fair chunk of the film running around in her underwear, whilst the male co-stars do not. Gross misconduct - no need!

Anyway, Bong?

So, I went to see Parasite the other week and in my head I had "Brilliant! It's the new film from Bong Joon Ho"....and then shortly afterwards in my head "Erm, what's he done again? Have I actually seen any of his films?" And realised that I hadn't. Which all seems a bit remiss considering that I go to the cinema a fair bit and am generally quite up on such things.

So...Wednesday night we watched 'Snowpiercer' (now included free with Amazon Prime), his film from 2014 that screened at the Edinburgh Film Festival that year but then got pretty much binned by Harvey Weinstein, never got released in the UK and has achieved summat of a cult classic status since, with folk importing DVDs and Blu-rays to get their fix. Well worth a watch, dystopian sci-fi melange that Mark Kermode nailed perfectly on t'wireless last week describing it as "High Rise on a train". (As an aside, if you've never seen High Rise that's free on Amazon Prime too - outrageous, amazing, hyper, a fave!). Violent, messy, spectacular, bizarre, Tilda Swinton hamming it up like she's never hammed before, what's not to like?

And tonight we watched Okja (on Netflix). I'll say less about this as it's more well-known, but it does involve super-pigs, Jake Gyllenhaal in some alarming shorts and, erm, Tilda Swinton hamming it up (pun intended) as she's definitely hammed before (see above). Plenty to like.

Not seen The Host, not seen Mother but I will, in time. Let the Bong-fest continue!

Undercurrent