Parasite Filmgrab

[Ronald Frison]

Iagree with your assessment re: producers and parasites in general, but this movie was objectively horrible. Amidst all the accolades for this film, most of which are seemingly based upon an adoration for PTA and an appreciation for the performances, it serves a purpose for someone to point out that the movie was an unfocused, purposeless train wreck. Just my opinion, of course.

Yeah, it was more common in the seventies and it was regarded as gross back then too. Most parents of that era would have raised hell if they found out their 15 year old son was getting it on with a 25 year old.

And you also expect me to believe that the 25 year old woman who is dating a 15 year old, went to his house to show him her naked boobs, and ran across a city so that he could introduce her to an arcade full of people as his girlfriend (and he actually introduced them as husband and wife) is NOT sexually interested in this child?

Even ignoring the whole illegal age gap thing, the series of disjointed stories comprising the rest of the movie are highly implausible. 15-year-old boy opens a waterbed store? 15-year-old boy opens a pinball arcade? Are we to believe this is just the way things were in 1973, 15-year-old serial entrepreneurs roaming the streets of LA throwing big grand opening extravaganzas for their latest ventures? How about Gary getting dragged off to jail on suspicion of murder only to be forgotten about 2 minutes later? Or Sean Penn performing a Fonzi-esque motorcycle stunt for a crowd of cheering diners who abandoned their meals to go behind the restaurant to watch him? These are supposedly stories told to PTA by his former child actor friend?? And he believed them??

As for sexual activity, this is an unbelievably chaste movie. The director goes to great lengths to ensure this, possibly to avoid reviews as above. My problem is exactly that; are we to believe the couple flew from California to New York without an overnight stay? And nothing noteworthy happened there?

What a relief to find a review calling out the obvious! It appears Hollywood misogynists took the wrong lesson from #metoo: that juvenile fantasies about insecure, hot, 25-year old women from old dudes are not OK, but juvenile fantasies about insecure, hot, 25-year old women from JUVENILES are to be celebrated! Good grief! The juveniles who fund and make movies in Hollywood deserve to be called out. Thank you!

Not a fan of media that builds to a senseless climax that is surely the best it will ever get for these two mismatched characters. The sequel would be something like a race to see who goes to rehab the most times. Perfect! 1980 betty ford clinic for spoiled celebrity arcade owners going through divorce. Call a production designer!

So agree definitely had moments talent was believable art direction outstanding camerawork solid script made no sense

Was not extremely offended by the pedo situation ( an off the cuff forbidden romance ) but really Oscar Nominated so confused

Glad I waited 3 months to see what the hype was about. Beyond terrible flick with an absurd premises-15 yo in LaLaLand opens up retail store businesses overnight and also falls in love-though no one really would care about the trials and tribulations of these two youngsters. This is actually from the director of the amazing classic There Will Be Blood. Embarrassing.

Now, "Parasite" is widely considered the front-runner to win best international feature film (formerly known as best foreign-language film) at this year's Academy Awards, with more than half of prognosticators on awards site GoldDerby also predicting a best picture nomination. Bong is heavily expected to pick up nods for best director and original screenplay as well, following a similar path to awards glory blazed by Alfonso Cuaron's black-and-white "Roma," which won Mexico its first best foreign-language film Oscar last February.

But if you need a little bit more to go off of, here's the basic gist: Initially envisioned by Bong as a play and set almost entirely indoors, "Parasite" tells the story of two disparate families: the impoverished Kims, who live in a cramped, subterranean apartment doing odd jobs to make ends meet; and the affluent Parks, whose cushy lifestyle is dutifully run by a small army of chauffeurs, housekeepers and tutors.

The charismatic but uneducated Kim Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik) cons his way into an English tutoring gig for the Parks' teenage daughter (Jung Ziso), and slowly begins to infiltrate their home: He cleverly deceives the Parks into firing their staff, and convinces them to hire his sister Ki-jung (Park So-dam), mom Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin) and dad Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho). But the Kims' get-rich scheme goes violently off the rails in the film's suspenseful second half, descending into chaos that packs an emotional wallop.

"When the film begins, it feels like your typical dark comedy film, so the audience can just relax and watch it," Bong says. "Halfway through, there's a turning point that leads to all these uncontrollable situations and the audience doesn't have time to wonder, 'What is the genre?' They're just dragged to the endpoint without any time to consider what's going on. So when they leave the theater, the audience just gives up on trying to define the genre, and that's what I wanted."

"The messages (Bong) is trying to give people about poverty differences and problems are universal," Choi says. "It has a lot of meanings and metaphors, and you can actually have a conversation about it after."

The movie's title is even up for interpretation: "A parasite is an entity that feeds off another thing, but if you look at the film, it's not important to designate which side is parasitic," Song says. "Certain characters are parasitic, but the message of the film is that everyone in society has to live in harmony and have respect toward one another."

In a movie chock-full of striking imagery, one of the most memorable is that of a peach, which Ki-jung scrapes of its fuzz. Stealthily, she sprinkles the fuzz on the Parks' unassuming maid, who is fiercely allergic and falls ill on the job. Fearing she'll infect their kids, the Parks fire the housekeeper on the spot.

Coincidentally, peaches were also central to another recent awards heavyweight: 2017's "Call Me By Your Name," in which Timothee Chalamet's Elio pleasures himself with the fruit. Bong laughs off the connection between the two films, deadpanning, "I hope it helps all the peach farmers across the world."

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