Parasite

I really don't care about the Oscars but I am pleased that, finally, a non-English-language film has won. I loved director Bong Joon-ho's riposte to the English-language-fixated: 'Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films'.

Some gorgeous, gorgeous cinematography - oh those night-lit, flooded stairs and swaying telephone cables! I would definitely trade sleeping on the floor of a wet, crowded gym with hundreds of strangers for some shots like that. 

The contrasts between the rich and the poor - those of us who live our lives somewhere in between need to thank cinema for letting us watch these daily realities and, whatever language the film is in, South Korea translates pretty easily into Europe or the USA in this revolting disparity. How many of us, living our above-average lives in our above-average neighbourhoods, can coherently argue that we are not parasites?

The violence - repellent but not gratuitous. Hanau, Germany, yesterday, for example. Humans do this. Though of course it is gratuitous really. It's about time we stopped.

The characters - well yes, mostly I believed in them, though perhaps not in the gene that made the basement-dwelling Kim family (what picturesque poverty that ground-level window offered! Can I praise the cinematography again?) into such astonishingly good actors.

The narrative - d'you know, I really, really enjoyed seeing a story unfold before me with no flashbacks. There's a place for that but this was ace story-telling. Plenty of clever foreshadowing though. I didn't dare tell my companions as we left the cinema that I had a rock in my pocket. A small one, but yes, I carry rocks around. It's not weird.

Now I'm going to go and read the real reviews, which I always avoid until after I've thought through my own.