Our critics celebrate Tarantino, a South Korean black comedy, and the return of Eddie Murphy.
Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
The year2019felt like one massive screen from which we couldnt turn away.
Everyone wanted our attention, from Disney and Apple jumping into streaming to Netflix takingThe Irishmanto Broadway.
Can a movie ever brand itself as bigger?
You feel it would be an act of cowardice to look away from even the most tragic sights.
Who are the title parasites?
The poor who attach themselves to the rich or the rich who suck the marrow of the poor?
Or is the system itself the parasite, drawing its energy from the turbulent interaction between rich and poor?
By rights, all this should keep you up at night.
Shes a real director.
Unusually, the film is stolen by its Amy, the petite, husky-voiced Florence Pugh.
The principled paralysis becomes him: Its his mostexpressivefilm in decades.
On paper it sounds a tad … reactionary.
But Quentin Tarantinos tenth film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt is more wistful pipe dream than manifesto.
And then it wore me down like a rising sea wears down an eroding coastline.
9.Atlantics
The young men inMati Diops feature debutare half-ghosts long before they become actual ones.
You think ones life belongs to oneself, he tells her.
But thats the difference between the East and the West.
In the East, a persons life is part of a whole.
Its a totally gutting moment, a declaration of Billis fundamental foreignness.
3.Parasite
HasParasitebeen out long enough for me to point out that the Kims arentreallyscammers?
Its not a conservative movie so much as its a movie that fetishizes an America in mid-decay.
At Cannes,I said that it was terrific save for a misguided ending.
Either way, I hope theres a nine-hour cut of this thing somewhere.
The whistle-blower protagonist ofGoodFellaslamented that he got to live the rest of his life as a schnook.
Also:Give Antonio Banderas his Oscaror face the consequences.
In so doing, it comes to poignantly embody the very capitalist ethos in which it pokes holes.
Its an anti-crowd-pleaser crowd-pleaser.
And its very last scene is its most crushing.
But its also one of the most terrifying.
In fact, its sort of aDr.
