34th Hall of Fame

And MovieGal is first on the board...The Good, The Bad and The Weird is a long title but not as long as my own nom. Those long titles are hard to fit into a double column post. BTW what does the 1st post look like on a phone? OK I hope and readable I hope.

Portrait or landscape..it was sideways.

Straight up and down...I have a Samsung galaxy s10

Thanks MG, can you read the entire 1st post or is anything jumbled up or not readable? I only use a computer so don't know.

The fonts are off. If I view sideways , they aren't in order.its all jumbled up.

Sorry about that. I don't know if that's fixable.

You are on pc ..I'm on phone. That may be the issue.

Yup. I mean I don't know how to make it look better on a phone.

The Good the Bad the Weird (Jee-woon, 2008)

This was quite a ride, plenty of action, a treasure map, set in the vein of a western. Obviously the action set pieces were pretty entertaining. Don't know if I overly connected with any of our three main characters but a fun entertaining ride would be the best way to describe it.

Good call, Black Robe is very good and another worthy '90s "colonials vs. natives" movie. August Schellenberg, who you've probably seen in a lot of other stuff, is great in it. It's finally on Prime Video after only being on DVD for the longest.

I seen Black Robe a couple months ago right after I watched At Play in the Fields of the Lords, IMO no comparison. Black Robe dwells too much on guy-flick-action stuff with little meditative qualities but heavy on gruesome killing scenes. The acting was flat and I didn't connect to it.
My past review of Black Robe

Are we talking about going in a converting Natives of other cultures to Christianity?

I watch on from New Zealand last weekend.

It's called The Convert.

It has Guy Pearce in it.

I can understand how it can strike viewers in different ways. The difference between the two movies, for me, comes down to the visceral feel of Black Robe. As the missionaries were going ever deeper into the wilderness, I just felt the danger; I just remember that feeling years and years after seeing it. And then the profound sadness of the final scene where the dying Indians return to be prayed over. There's just no scene in Fields that will stay with me like that.

__________________
Scarecrow: I haven't got a brain ... only straw. Dorothy: How can you talk if you haven't got a brain? Scarecrow: I don't know. But some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they? Dorothy: Yes, I guess you're right.

@TheManBehindTheCurtain

Have you seen Silence (2016)?

Beautiful film but harsh to watch. The Japanese don't take to kindly to Jesuit priests trying to convert them.

I had to look it up, but I do remember it now. All of these movies leave me with a sense of absolute amazement about what humans will be willing to do to remain true to their faith. The missionaries willingly go into the harshest and often the most hostile of environments to do their work. In Silence, many of the converted Japanese cling to their faith even in the face of excruciating torture.

After a little reading, I see that Neeson's character, Cristóvão Ferreira, was an historical figure. Evidently the novel on which the movie is based was highly regarded as largely factual in its core details.

Thanks for the reminder ...

(BTW, @-ing me doesn't work, though quoting does.)

I can totally understand what you're saying and you're right Black Robe did that sense of foreboding and growing danger well. If a person is looking for that or responds to that then Black Robe would work perfectly for them. I also agree that the end scene in Black Robe was a powerful one. But like you said movies strike viewers differently, as we're all unique and want different things in movies.

It's hard for me to put into words what interested/resonated so much with me with At Play in the Fields of the Lord...but I can say it wasn't the actual conflict or danger between the missionaries and the natives, I'm not much of an action-thriller type of fan. For me what I liked the most was the realization by some of the missionaries (mainly Aidan Quinn) that what they were doing was not helping the natives but destroying them... and that 'god' can be found in the forest and the trees as the natives believed...and that one religious idea isn't superior over the other. Now if someone is devoutly Christian they might not like those themes of the movie but for me a non-religious person those themes did resonate with me.

I also liked the sense of discovering and being in an exotic location. I've long been interested in the Amazon and the south American jungle regions. Once my wife an I went to Panama and took a long river trip in this big canoe boat with a small outboard engine with a dozen or so people and we went way up this slow moving weed choked river to an Emberá (indigenous people) village which reminded me of the journey the missionaries took up river. I suppose there's other aspects of the film that resonated with me but those are two of the main ones.

Fair enough. I did like At Play quite a lot as well; it just fell short on technical aspects, such as the pacing. I'm not familiar with the original novel, so I don't know how much the writers and Babenco added in terms of overall themes. I did manage to write a lot, and could have gone on even longer! But I think the salient points were all there, and would have remained intact if they could have condensed a lot of the atmospheric photography.

The Good, The Bad, The Weird -

Does this movie bear a striking similarity to another Western from the '60s beyond the title? Yes. Is that a bad thing? Not at all. First of all, you may be thinking, "a Western in Korea?" While it is quite funny at times, it is not just a tongue in cheek genre homage. It's rooted in actual history; namely, the situation between China, Japan and Korea you may remember from The Last Emperor that indeed made Manchuria resemble the Wild West. Luckily, the movie familiarizes you with this period organically and without relying on talking heads too much. Where this movie really shines, though, is that it's freakin' awesome!

The average Korean genre movie from the 2000s to...well, pretty much today is as reliable as entertainment gets, with this entry demonstrating that this rule does not just apply to action, crime and horror. I've seen Chinese and Hong Kong movies set in environments resembling the American west, but I was still struck by how much the Korean desert in this one also resembles it and how endless the movie makes it appear. As for the action, which features fistfights, gun, knife and sword play, it is even more thrilling and tactile than you would expect given the pedigree. The highlight is a chase scene that is among the most thrilling action scenes I've ever watched in a movie, Korean or otherwise, that to quote Nicolas Cage in Adaptation, defines "technology vs. horse." Last but not least, as high as the standards of the Western tropes in this movie may be, they would be for naught if the good, bad and ugly, ahem...weird trio did not also meet them, but that is thankfully not the case here. As much as I love Woo-sung and the venerable Kang-ho's work here, it is Byung-hun whose other work I want to explore the most and not just because I am the least familiar with it. If you're wondering why I did not mention who is who, well...I will say no more.

Again, this movie proves in highly entertaining fashion that every genre is apparently fair game for Korean filmmakers. It also manages to tell a fascinating history lesson about the consequences of occupation and puppet statehood at the same time. If you don't find the latter as interesting as I do, you will undoubtedly enjoy everything else regardless. Oh, and that especially goes for Byung-hun's impossibly cool Park Chang-yi, who I would cosplay if I could, but I'm honestly not sure if anyone could. I mean, does anyone else in the world have such good hair?

The Good, the Bad, the Weird (Kim Jee-woon, 2008)

Brash, cartoonish, and filled to the gills with action and humour and unfortunately I found none of it to be fun, exciting or engaging. Its something I've been noticing with bigger Korean films, whether its Park Chan-wook, Bong Joon-ho or Kim Jee-woon, these movies all have something that makes them feel the same and whatever it is it rubs me the wrong way. Like how McDonalds puts something in their food that makes it all taste the same, even the drinks somehow, the Korean film industry seemingly has this going on and I don't know what it is. The only thing I can identify is the cheap faux-slickness they all seem to have but it feels deeper than that. idk but either way this just didn't have me feeling much of anything. Like every scene I'm thinking "this should be fun" but the only time I actually found it to be fun was the big horseback action scene towards the end but it was too little, too late by then. That being said, there's movies I don't think work or things about them that don't work and then there's movies that don't work for me and this is a case where its very clearly the latter. I certainly get the appeal and its not like its done badly at any point (outside of a few cheap looking moments I guess) it just doesn't click with me sadly.

__________________
slurps up! 🤙🤙

The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008)
Director: Kim Jee-woon
Key Cast: Song Kang-ho, Lee Byung-hun, Jung Woo-sung





What better way to start a rollicking adventure than with a double cross. A wealthy businessman orders his assistant to deliver a map to a Japanese official named Kanemaru and collect payment. He’s arranged for an assassin to then steal it back from Kanemaru during a train trip. They’ll get the money and keep this valuable map too.

It won’t go as planned. Never does.

The assassin is Park Chang-yi (Lee Byung-hun), renowned for his ruthlessness and unerring success rate. But when Chang-yi and his gang stop and board the train (via the classic “train blasts through burning logs blocking the tracks set piece”), it interrupts petty thief Yoon Tae-goo (Sang Kang-ho) as, just coincidentally, he’s holding up Kanemaru and his cohort of military escorts and female traveling companions. As the train jerks to a stop, Tae-goo inadvertently shoots up the place, astonished at his luck at having survived. Tae-goo franticly begins collecting whatever booty he can find, which includes … hmm … a map. Chang-yi’s efforts to stop Tae-goo from escaping with the map are frustrated when bounty hunter Park Do-won (Jung Woo-sung) begins popping off shotgun blasts at the both of them.

Well, there you have it. The good, Do-won. The bad, Chang-yi. The Weird, Tae-goo.

Let’s backup; like the movie, I’m going pretty fast. Here are the broad stokes: It’s Manchuria, circa 1939. It’s the wild west, as viewed through the exaggerated lens of celebrated Korean director Kim Jee-woon. Though Manchuria is officially ruled by the Chinese, the Japanese have been there for many years, long before the official start of hostilities in July 1937. Besides the roaming Chinese and Japanese armies, Manchuria is awash in Russian opportunists, Korean freedom fighters, competing gangs of bandits, and opium dealers, but seemingly nothing like the equivalent of the local sheriff sporting an iconic tin badge.

At the center of the whirlwind is “the map,” which Tae-goo learns the Japanese believe reveals the location of treasure that can save their empire. To everyone who wants to get their hands on the map, that can mean only one thing: it leads to the lost, fabulous treasure of the Qing Dynasty. Which would be riches enough to fund the Japanese war effort, help the Korean freedom fighters succeed in their struggle, or make Tae-goo or any bandit horde wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. Through double crosses, madcap chases, and chaotic shootouts, the map changes hands as Chang-yi chases Tae-goo and Do-won chases them both, with rival gangs and soldiers nipping relentlessly at their heels.

Though the title “The Good, the Bad, the Weird” announces its intentions as few movies do, it’s more than just an homage to the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood. Director Kim himself coined the term Kimchi Western, and indeed he’s offering a spicier pastiche than the standard adventure recipes. There’s a frenetic shootout in the Ghost Market (the bandit’s hideout) as Do-won swings around rooftops on dangling ropes ala Spiderman. During a madcap, motorized pursuit in the desert, you’ll feel echoes of Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Road Warrior, and even Stagecoach. Watch Do-won riding a horse while shooting a rifle; tell me it doesn’t remind you just a bit of John Wayne. There’s even Jackie-Chan-esque prankish gunfight choreography when Tae-goo dons a diver’s helmet. And then, oh yes, the finale: the classic three-way Mexican standoff. The blocking and camera work tracking the eye movements of the three gunfighters manages to be just mirthful enough without descending into over-the-top ridiculousness.

In my personal pantheon of Westerns, TGTBTW earns a much higher ranking than TGTBTU. I found myself rooting for the characters more, particularly the boastful, clumsy Weird, who has a dark secret and yet takes time out to rescue children from an opium den. Kim Jee-woon’s non-stop action made for a far more enjoyable experience than Sergio Leone’s self-indulgent, ponderous saga. (TGTBTU’s soundtrack gets the nod, though TGTBTW is still atmospheric and fun.)

Jung Woo-sung, Lee Byung-hun, and Song Kang-ho were already stars when TGTBTW premiered in 2008, and each has gone on to even greater stardom in Korean historical dramas, adventure movies, and serious cinema. Each has worked again with Director Kim. Jung’s physicality and horsemanship elevates his turn as the bounty hunter who remains uncorrupted by the map’s allure. Lee is just mesmerizing as the seriously psychotic, peanut-munching assassin with the irritating haircut. Song is perhaps the most recognizable to Western audiences as the scheming father in the Oscar-winning film Parasite. He's endlessly entertaining, the master of the wide-eyed look of surprise, the boastful posture, the clumsy pratfall. It’s fun to think of comparable Hollywood casts in their younger days: maybe Brad Pitt, Keanu Reeves, and Steve Buscemi; or Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp. (But oh gosh, no, we don’t need a Hollywood remake!)

In 1939, Korea had been suffering under the yoke of Japanese colonial rule for four decades. In many South Korean movies and series of today, Manchuria in this period is a refuge where Korean freedom fighters go to hide or recoup, and Kim includes enough references to let Korean audiences know he hasn’t lost sight of that dark period. Characters talk wistfully about being able to get away from it all. In one of the few quieter moments, he also offers a bit of a tongue-in-cheek coda about centuries of struggle against neighboring superpowers as Do-won observes: “Life is about chasing and being chased. There is no escape.” To which Tae-goo replies. “Let me sleep, man. Stop making me think!” I think Korean audiences will catch even more hints of underlying resentment than I’m able to grok.

For those who want to think more deeply about their movie watching, TGTBTW isn’t perfect. Anyone who obsesses about continuity errors could probably have a field day. The tone shifts chaotically from slapstick to brutal violence (I made the mistake of doing the latest rewatch with my 81-year-old stepmom, and had to fast forward through the scene featuring a dull knife and a finger.)

Still, judging TGTBTW against its obvious intent, it’s an honest piece of entertainment that does not pretend to be anything more than it is. I first saw it circa 2010 via a DVD without subtitling. I actually didn’t need much interpretation; the action pulls you along with the story. It sits in a short list of movies to rewatch periodically.

Final hint: Make sure to watch into the credit roll for an epilogue of sorts. For the true fan, the TGTBTW also has alternate endings with slightly different twists that you may want to track down.