A retrospective of ‘Parasite’ actor Song Kang Ho, plus the best movies in L.A. this week
Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
There are some particularly exciting new releases this week, with Frederick Wiseman’s restaurant documentary “Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgros,†William Oldroyd’s adaptation of Ottessa Moshfegh’s “Eileen,†Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Monster,†Takashi Yamazaki’s “Godzilla Minus One†and the return of action master John Woo with “Silent Night.â€
Song Kang Ho at the Academy
On Thursday the Academy Museum will launch the first retrospective series of South Korean actor Song Kang Ho; it will run into January. The event kicks off with a 4K screening of Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite,†winner of four Oscars including best picture, with Song present for a conversation. He also will appear at screenings of Park Chan-wook’s “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance,†Bong’s “Memories of Murder†and Lee Chang-dong’s “Secret Sunshine.â€
Other films in the series include Kim Jee-woon’s “The Good, the Bad, the Weird,†“The Foul King†and “The Age of Shadows,†Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Broker,†Park’s “Joint Security Area†and “Thirst†and Bong’s monster movie “The Host.â€
The Academy’s program notes (by Hyesung ii) declare of the actor, “A master of versatility, Song employs negative space in his artistry, resisting the urge to convey his characters in linear, conventional ways. His insight transcends the boundaries of acting, resembling that of a director, with extensive knowledge of filmmaking elements and the importance of their harmony as the collective force to create good cinema.â€
In an interview with Hugh Hart for The Times back in 2020, Song described his ongoing collaboration with Bong by saying, “It’s thrilling but at the same time agonizing. I always expect the project will turn out great. However, to carry out my assignment and meet director Bong’s expectation, I have to put out my very best effort to address every detail that he hands out. So there’s always those two sides of the coin when you work with Bong Joon Ho: great and agonizing.â€
‘The Parallax View’ and ‘Three Days of the Condor’
For anyone who feels like the world is spinning out of control and doesn’t know what to trust or who to believe, the New Beverly will have a double bill on Tuesday and Wednesday of the 1970s paranoid conspiracy thrillers “Three Days of the Condor†and “The Parallax View†to make you feel, well, not exactly better but perhaps less isolated in your malaise. Both screenings are in 35mm.
“Three Days of the Condor†reteamed star Robert Redford and director Sydney Pollack after their successes with “Jeremiah Johnson†and “The Way We Were.†Redford plays a low-level CIA analyst who is the only survivor when his office is attacked; he sets out to discover what really happened and who was behind it. Faye Dunaway and Max von Sydow co-star.
When “Condor†was coming out in 1975, Pollack spoke to The Times’ Mary Murphy, saying that the movie was more timely than when they began the project. In Pollack’s opinion that was “both good and bad. From a picture maker’s point of view I could be crass and say it will help enormously, but I’m also afraid that it will be judged more severely than it is meant to be. Had we known what the climate of the country was going to be, we would have dug deeper. As it is now the film is really a piece of entertainment.â€
“The Parallax View,†directed by Alan J. Pakula in between “Klute†and “All the President’s Man,†stars Warren Beatty as an investigative journalist attempting to determine whether the official story behind the assassination of a U.S. presidential candidate is anywhere near the truth of what really happened.
In his original 1974 Times review of the film, Charles Champlin called it a “meticulously made, eerie and monstrously suspenseful thriller.†Champlin teased out the real-world connection in the film to the assassinations of JFK and RFK, noting, “The impact of the movie is not that it offers a credible conspiratorial theory — it doesn’t — but that it suggests a conspiracy … some conspiracy … was possible. The inference from the movie is that the true view of its fictional events will never be known and neither now, by extension, will the truth of the Kennedy assassinations — assuming, of course, that there is an alternate truth about one or both.â€
Other points of interest
Jonathan Glazer at the Cinematheque
The American Cinematheque is launching a retrospective of English filmmaker Jonathan Glazer, showing the four features he has meticulously made over the last 23 years. Glazer’s latest, “The Zone of Interest,†won the grand prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and will be in theaters on Dec. 15. The Cinematheque will have a preview of the chilling Holocaust drama on Tuesday as a double bill with Glazer’s 2000 crime-film debut, “Sexy Beast.†Glazer will be present for a Q&A moderated by author Jonathan Lethem.
The series also will screen Glazer’s 2013 sci-fi thinker “Under the Skin,†starring Scarlett Johansson, on Friday, Dec. 8. Glazer’s “Birth,†starring Nicole Kidman,†plays on Sunday, Dec. 10. Just in terms of pure rarity, the screening of “Birth†in 35mm is the one that Glazer-heads should be sure to turn out to see.
“Sexy Beast†aside, Glazer’s films have been marked by divisive reactions, with some people loving them and some hating them. “The Zone of Interest†presumably will follow along those lines as well, with its detached view of the family of a Nazi officer living a bucolic domestic life just outside the walls of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
As Glazer said to me when we spoke before the release of “Under the Skin,†“I think what’s really important for a filmmaker is to understand that whether something is good and whether it’s well-received are two completely unconnected things. As long as I feel what I’ve done is what I set out to do, as close as I could get to, if it’s badly received, I’m fine with that. It’s not a problem.â€
‘Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé’
There has been something of a resurgence of the concert film of late, following the success of the rerelease of Talking Heads’ “Stop Making Sense†and the box-office surge for “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour.†Now here comes “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé,†a document of the blockbuster tour that only just ended in early October. The film features footage from a large number of tour dates, including her shows in Los Angeles in September. Guests who appear onstage in the film include Megan Thee Stallion, Kendrick Lamar and Diana Ross. Aside from the overwhelming musical numbers — seeing the movie in a movie theater at full volume is quite an experience — there are also startlingly candid behind-the-scenes moments of putting together the show.
I attended the Los Angeles premiere of the film last Saturday. Beyoncé herself was there, but she did not speak before or after the film, preferring to let the movie do the talking for her. Among those in attendance were the four other members of Destiny’s Child as well as Tyler Perry, Ava DuVernay, Issa Rae, Lizzo, Laverne Cox and Janelle Monáe.
Mikael Wood reviewed the film, writing, “If you caught the Renaissance tour in person, you’ll lament the fact that people are somehow sitting as they take all this in. But you’ll be glad for the chance to pay extra attention to the precision of her singing and to her band’s playing. It’s astonishing stuff. … ‘Renaissance’ keeps coming back to Beyoncé — to her voice, to her body, to her mind. As the movie’s star, she occupies every inch of the spotlight she’s labored for decades to fill. As its director, she knows she has something no other filmmaker’s got.â€
‘Attenberg’
Athina Rachel Tsangari’s 2011 film “Attenberg†will screen in the Academy Museum’s David Geffen Theater on Monday. Tsangari will be there for a conversation before the film moderated by filmmaker Lulu Wang. The film is genuinely singular, and this rare opportunity to see it in such a great venue is worth marking your calendar for.
The film follows a young woman who is caring for her ailing father as she struggles to connect with other people. Every once in a while, the story is punctuated by interludes that are part dance, part abstraction and part comedy, in which two women emulate the movement of animals inspired by the documentaries of David Attenborough. (The film’s title is a play on Attenborough’s name.)
Actor Ariane Labed won the best actress prize at the Venice Film Festival for her performance in the movie, and “Poor Things†director Yorgos Lanthimos appears in a small role. (Tsangari also produced some of Lanthimos’ earlier features.)
I wrote about the movie, speaking to Tsangari, Labed and Lanthimos, back when it opened in Los Angeles in 2012. Tsangari recalled the wildly differing responses viewers had to the film, saying, “People have left completely furious or thinking they have seen a comedy and laughing all along, and also lots of people left crying. Because I did not make the film to go in a very specific and predictable direction, there are all these different readings of it.â€
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