Director: Davy Chou

Writer: Davy Chou

Stars: Park Ji-min, Oh Kwang-rok, Guka Han

Synopsis: A twenty-five-year-old French woman returns to Korea, the country she was born in before being adopted by a French couple, for the very first time. She decides to track down her biological parents, but her journey takes a surprising turn.

Davy Chou’s exceptional character study is about the haunting empty void of hollow identity and the non-existent end to finding closure. Equipped with a simply stunning turn by newcomer Park Ji-min, Return to Seoul is wonderfully nuanced. A multi-layered and deeply felt cinematic experience of the trauma of childhood abandonment that is inherent to international adoption.

The story follows Frédérique Benoît (Ji-min). Known as “Freddie,” she is a French Korean woman who was given up for adoption at the Hammond Home (The most prominent adoption agency in South Korea). Now, Freddie returns to South Korea for the first time. Why? The obvious answer is to locate her biological parents. The other appears to be not a search for personal identity but a cultural one.

Freddie is a tiny tornado looking to leave a wake in the Korean cultural establishment. She is staying with Tena (Guka Han), who is a French-speaking translator, her guide to Korea, and her helping hand with Hammond. While having dinner with Tena and her friend, Dongwan (Son Seung-Beom), begins to run to surrounding tables. One by one, she pairs young single men and women at a table. She begins saturating her new friends with an overflowing amount of soju. Freddie is now almost mocking the Korean tradition of pouring one’s drink by caring to serve the entire room, as opposed to just one. She is now rebelling against a culture that rejected her.

Freddie is not trying to fit into her new surroundings, but making those around, who are highly malleable, conform to her. Chou’s script continuously pits east versus west cultural norms against each other. Freddie frequently experiences triggers by her biological family’s unearned concern and guilt-ridden apologies discomforting. Her biological father (Oh Kwang-rok) is a tragic figure, reliving the haunting events of giving up his daughter almost a quarter century ago. So much so that his wife shares with Freddie that he drinks and cries every night before he sleeps, ruminating over her.

The trauma of childhood abandonment makes for a significantly more complex story. Also, being seen through a lens of international adoption is deeply felt throughout Chou’s phenomenal film from different angles. The script really stands out because you learn about individual characters’ triggers, viewing them in other lights, which makes even the smallest of roles three-dimensional. It’s a multifaceted experience. Freddie goes through crescendo-decrescendo patterns and behavior patterns, even during periods of descending and ascending maturity through different life stages. It’s breathtaking, really. Specifically, seeing Ji-min’s burning aggression and anger, heartbreaking sadness, and withdrawal takes us on her journey. All lead to mental health diseases such as major depressive and bipolar disorder and self-medicated substance abuse.

Yes, Freddie was raised in a loving environment, but feeling lonely and isolated. It’s quite a high-wire act Chou clears here. You get the perspective of what some call the child mill of the adoption industry in Korea. (With over 200,000 adoptions since what the Asian Centennial calls the “child diaspora” sparked in 1955 by Bertha and Henry Holt). A simple Google search will also shine a light on the overrepresentation of females in the Korean (and international) adoption system. You’ll also see a reflection of the unspoken bond between other adoptees she connects with in Seoul. The theme of the hot-button topic of international adoption is particularly interesting. This practice has been cut by 72% since 2005—a result of many questioning the practice that was becoming an issue of forced cultural migration. Here, the character of Freddie is a product of intended and unintended consequences that have come full circle.

Return to Seoul is a soul-stirring film (pun intended) that slowly sneaks up on you. As a viewer, Chou will have you asking yourself where the story is taking you. The film’s constant emotional material, like rocks on the bottom of the riverbed, displays devastating effects that shape familial generations. Nevermore apparent in one of the film’s very best scenes, where her biological father makes sure he locates a cab for her with a preset destination to avoid Seoul’s famed Itaewon district because Freddie is achieving a period of sobriety. By the film’s end, you will be in awe of Ji-min’s jaw-dropping arc of maturity and how she deals with yet another moment of disappointment.

Return to Seoul‘s complex portrait of the trauma that comes from abandonment that leads to ethnocultural identity confusion is spectacular —a one-of-a-kind experience that cannot be missed.

Grade – A+

Director: Elizabeth Banks

Writer: Jimmy Warden

Stars: Kerri Russell, Alden Ehrenreich, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Ray Liotta

Synopsis: An oddball group of cops, criminals, tourists, and teens converge on a Georgia forest where a huge black bear goes on a murderous rampage after unintentionally ingesting cocaine.

How can you screw up something so basic like Cocaine Bear? That was the question I asked myself while sitting through Elizabeth Banks’ insanely promising, yet terribly unfunny movie that lacked both fun and cathartic slapstick humor and massive amounts of gore. The film is based on the true story of a Black Bear who shortly died after ingesting a duffel bag full of cocaine in 1985. However, it revises the part where the bear died and instead goes on a killing spree while looking for more cocaine to snort. Doesn’t that sound incredible? Doesn’t that sound like the return of cinema? Music to my ears! Finally, this could be Hollywood’s answer to Quentin Dupieux’s Rubber, and yet…

There are some sequences that do work in this movie, and spoiling them would rob you of the pleasure of discovering them for yourself. All of them involve Margo Martindale’s Ranger Liz, who oversees the national park in which the Bear is located. Martindale’s comedic timing is perfect, teetering the line between absurdly self-aware and just frightened enough that when the Bear charges, you believe in her willingness to protect visitors at all costs. She’s the best part of the film (she has every funny line and best action setpieces to herself), alongside Alden Ehrenreich whose delivery of “The bear! It f—ing did cocaine!” is exactly why he was cast in the role in the first place. 

Ehrenreich has decent enough chemistry with O’Shea Jackson Jr. who plays his drug dealing partner, but Jackson can’t match the same level of comedic skills that Ehrenreich, Martindale, or even Isiah Whitlock Jr. (who plays a police detective whose deadpan line deliveries are legendary) bring to the table. It’s unfortunate that every other actor in this incredible ensemble are nowhere near as good as the ones mentioned above. Even the late Ray Liotta, in one of his final film roles, looks completely bored playing Syd, the drug dealer on top of the operation to retrieve the cocaine-filled duffel bags. He’s barely in the film, and when he’s in it, his performance is a total sleepwalk. What a shame, since this will be one of the last times audiences will see Liotta on screen. 

And while there are many cathartic sequences in Cocaine Bear, most of its insanity lacks a severe amount of gore. The CGI Bear doesn’t look convincing, nor scary. It makes a weird guttural sound every time he’s close to cocaine, which doesn’t make it feel like a menacing creature, and the same can be said for how the film edits the bear’s drug trips. At one point, a character mentions “it’s Christmas with cocaine,” and Christmas bells are heard to signal that, hey, this is snow for the bear! Boring. 

The action is also quite haphazardly shot. There’s an incredible ambulance chase that happens almost halfway through the movie, but it’s the only sequence where the bear feels like a menacing threat to the characters. It’s also the only time in which Banks and cinematographer John Guleserian craft something visually exciting and push the gore to the extreme. One shot of a hand barely hanging on a character’s arm is powerful enough to provoke a strong reaction. The film’s climax is so poorly shot and set in the laziest setting possible (a dark cave!) that all momentum it tries to create is lost in a sea of murky cinematography, poorly conceived CGI, and shoddily written dialogue. 

As such, the insanity that is Cocaine Bear is only reserved for its trailer, which promises an insane ride at the movies, only for the movie to be a total whimper. It never doubles down on its premise enough to make it feel like a blast. Aside from a few great performances and select fun action scenes, most of Cocaine Bear’s impact falls flat. This could’ve been the movie to save all self-referential movies. However, it’s the single biggest disappointment of a film made in the 2020’s so far. That’s not good. 

Grade: D+

Director: Christopher Landon

Writer: Christopher Landon

Stars: Jahi Di’Allo Winston, David Harbour, Anthony Mackie, Jennifer Coolidge  

Synopsis: Finding a ghost named Ernest haunting their new home turns Kevin’s family into overnight social media sensations. But when Kevin and Ernest investigate the mystery of Ernest’s past, they become a target of the CIA.

Recently, I engaged in a strange double feature of Ingmar Bergman’s Oscar-winning 1973 drama Cries and Whispers and Christopher Landon’s newest horror comedy We Have a Ghost, the latter now available on Netflix. The two films surprisingly have a couple of things in common, namely the central ideas of death and grief, but something the films don’t share is the same running time. Cries and Whispers is a finely observed and richly detailed narrative that packs a lot into its brief ninety minutes, director Bergman not wasting a single minute to moments that don’t matter. We Have a Ghost, on the other hand, should’ve been the same length, and yet the movie drags on to an outrageous two hours and seven minutes. The one I wanted to go longer was Cries and Whispers. The one that could’ve ended by the hour-mark? The very bad and empty We Have a Ghost. 

One of the pains of watching a terrible movie like We Have a Ghost is knowing it was written and directed by an incredibly talented person. Christopher Landon has been a quiet master at the comedy horror genre, the two Happy Death Day movies being blissfully entertaining, and his 2020 genre entry Freaky a delight, and his best work yet. This is a guy who knows how to pace a horror film, where to put the comedic bits, how to use a gifted cast, and where to dump the buckets of blood. Therefore, I found myself scratching my head a lot as I took in We Have a Ghost, which never knows what kind of movie it wants to be and which has a slow, often sloppy pace that’s made even worse with its sinfully long running time.

The movie begins like a standard haunted house movie, Kevin (Jahi Di’Allo Winston) and his family, including his dad Frank (Anthony Mackie) and his mom Melanie (Erica Ash), coming to realize there’s an adult male ghost living in the attic—a man with a bad comb-over named Ernest (David Harbour). For about a half-hour, We Have a Ghost explores an interesting concept—what if instead of being scared by the ghost in our house, we tried to profit off it and become social media superstars by sharing the ghost’s images and videos online—and it’s this segment of the story that works the best, one that brings in Jennifer Coolidge as an egotistical psychic. But then the film drops that idea and starts veering all over the place, getting Ernest out of the house, sharing how he came to die, and giving us about seven different endings that are mostly serious, in a film that comes across as nothing more than a silly horror comedy.

Classic horror comedies like Beetlejuice know what they’re trying to be, and they don’t apologize for it. If you want to be a scary haunted house movie, fine, commit to it. If you want to be a horror comedy like Ghostbusters and Beetlejuice, then commit to that. The biggest problem with We Have a Ghost is that it never knows what it is, the tone is all over the place, so it’s hard to ever become invested in the story and characters. Ultimately the film fails at pretty much everything it’s trying to do. In a film like this, tone is everything, it’s even more important I’d argue than pacing and raising the stakes, and with three or four movies essentially battling it out, the viewer is left closing their hand, and grasping only air.

There is a moment at the end of We Have a Ghost, for example, in which I believe the director wants us to be welling up with tears. But the film hasn’t earned those tears. Ernest for the longest time is a goofy-looking jokester ghost who makes dumb boo noises while floating through the air and tearing CGI flesh away from his face. We’re supposed to then feel sympathy for him later when the film turns serious? Imagine if at the end of Beetlejuice, Tim Burton gave us a five-minute scene of Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin reuniting with their living loved ones, sans irony or humor. It would come off as odd, right? 

The cast in We Have a Ghost try, but they’re all playing their roles as if they’re in different movies, Anthony Mackie playing things for real, David Harbour trying to emulate Slimer from Ghostbusters, Jennifer Coolidge playing her role like an SNL sketch. And then there’s the villain of the film, which I won’t give away here, but he’s playing his role as if he’s in a terrifying follow-up to The Conjuring. Nobody seems to know what kind of movie this is supposed to be, including its own writer-director. The mix of tones reminded me a bit of Peter Jackson’s 1996 box office bomb The Frighteners, which has elements of horror and comedy and then turns serious in the final half-hour. But no matter the flaws, The Frighteners is always entertaining and filled with creativity and imagination. We Have a Ghost just leaves you feeling nothing.

Christopher Landon is a talented filmmaker, and I want to think this is a mere hiccup in what will continue to be an inspired career as a genre director. Part of me wonders if some of the fault goes to Netflix, a company that likes to throw money at big stars and name directors but then often doesn’t focus on the quality of the storytelling. I’m thinking of films like The Grey Man and Your Place or Mine, which with tighter scripts could’ve been solid entertainments but instead drone on and on with no end in sight. We Have a Ghost is sadly another entry in that group. Skip this tired, overlong misfire, and give the excellent Freaky a watch instead. Now that’s a Christopher Landon movie worth your time. 

GRADE: D

Director: Greg Barnes

Stars: Tyler Hyde, May Kershaw, Lewis Evans

Synopsis: In place of a third studio album, the band  shares the music they’ve been playing live for the past year.

Black Country, New Road: Live at Bush Hall alluringly explores the next stage of one of the best modern bands out there. Their latest material contains their usual personal and expressionistic lyrics, despair, and bliss being ever-present, yet with a sharper melancholic undertone that goes back to the departure of their former frontman, Isaac Wood. 

What else can be said of the English rock band from Cambridgeshire, Black Country, New Road? For starters, I think they are one of the best groups working today, even though they have only released two records – ‘For the First Time’ in 2021 and ‘Ants from Up There’ in 2022. Every music publication has written about them and their young masterful artistry, raving about their newly-forged discography, multi-instrumental variations, and genre-crossing records. It’s a thing of beauty; at a time when the majority of mainstream music (and art, in general) is filled with mediocrity and lackluster emotionless dribble, Black Country, New Road is creating some of the most exciting, unique, and outright ravishing pieces of work I have seen in quite some time by a recent act. Their records speak to many listeners, even though the lyrics are written from a deep emotional space inside the minds of their respective writers. The music editor of Now Then Magazine, Sam Gregory, even called their last record “the best album of my adult lifetime” in a loving piece dedicated to sincerity and romanticism in it. 

Four days before the release of their second album, BC,NR’s frontman, Isaac Wood, announced his affable, yet unforeseen, departure from the band due to his struggles with his mental well-being. Everything felt like it was crashing down; everyone started worrying about their future. I thought they would break up entirely and become another group with immense talent that stayed together for less than a handful of years. However, the members (Georgia Ellery, Tyler Hyde, Charlie Wayne, Luke Mark, May Kershaw, and Lewis Evans) voiced their support for Wood’s decision to leave. Because of that, they abandoned their plans to tour with material from that record. Instead, they started from scratch with their new six-piece composition, sharing vocal roles and implementing new techniques to appear like that band we all love, albeit in a new direction and perspective. Whatever they do next would be a bold choice, as they had to see where their sound would be after their lead’s withdrawal. 

They thought out their next steps, thinking and curating carefully, and concluded with a post-Isaac Wood “reintroduction” tour showcasing new tracks. During that tour, Black Country, New Road did three shows in December at London’s classic venue, Bush Hall. The group decided to record the performances there instead of doing another studio album with that new material, hence creating the concert film (and documentary, narrowly) Black Country, New Road: Live at Bush Hall, directed by Greg Barnes and mixed by the legendary John Parish. Each of those shows has a different visual theme inspired by high-school theatrical productions – When the Whistle Thins (pastoral settings), The Taming of the School (80s-themed prom night), and I Ain’t Alfredo No Ghost (which is an eye-rolling, yet funny title) – that the band members wrote minor lore off. As a result, each stage looks purposefully corny, and the bandmates know it (as they dress for the part); the audience is also in on the gag. 

The group invites them to join the special event in style, and indeed they do, going all out, particularly from the prom-night-inspired show. These preparations and costume-filled festivities encapsulate Black Country, New Road’s ingenuity and dedication to reinvention. The first few seconds of the film focus on why people care about the band and what their music means to them. But, this is cut off immediately because the introductory song for the shows at Bush Hall, titled ‘Up Song’, captures those feelings from the perspective of the band and their appreciation toward Isaac Wood, singing: “Look at what we did together, BC,NR friends forever”. For this song, cinematographer Jack Maddison gives us glimpses of the audience welcoming the lyrics – dancing and singing along – all with an emotional tie to their love for them. There are also audience members who are recording the show with classic VHS cameras, whose footage is added onto the concert film so the viewer (us watching at home) can feel immersed in the show and make the fans feel special.

The editing team, consisting of director Greg Barnes and Kev Corry, is savvy in seamlessly intercutting the different performances. They consider the lyrics when playing with the footage shot at Bush Hall, making sure that the lighting also ties to them as well. However, one brilliant element manages to jump right off the screen. Throughout the short fifty-two-minute runtime of Live at Bush Hall, Greg Barnes concocts not only a unique experience that showcases the following stages of modern musical talents but an intimate one. It feels like a reunion of close-knit friends, all joining hands, embracing the expressive and stirring wonders of young masterful artistry. The quick glances of the audience’s faces mirror ours, watching at home. And after each song ends, the rupture of cheers from them brings a smile to the band member’s faces. 

Black Country, New Road’s new material featured at the Bush Hall concerts is just astonishing and spell-binding, to the point where you can’t just stick it into one specific genre. Pop punk, art rock, post-rock, and jazz influences are all scattered from track to track, often implementing most (if not all) of them in the same track. Black Country, New Road just delivers one beautiful song after the other, all covered in melancholy and bliss, adjoined by ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’-like instrumental breakdowns that add to those emotions in their tracks. However, a specific song would make any fan shed a tear due to the intimate and personal notes adjoined by May Kershaw’s smooth voice: ‘Turbines’. May repeatedly sings, “Don’t waste your pearls on me; I’m only a pig”, rewording the English phrase “pearls before swine”, meaning offering something valuable to someone who does not comprehend its worth. 

Although May’s interpretation of the lyrics remains unexplained, we might attach it to many things that have caused emotional wounds. Since the release of this concert film, I have been listening to their new material repeatedly. And each time, I get something new from it – a different feeling, a different emotion. There are layers in their personal and deft writing, as well as in May and Tyler’s haunting vocalizations backed by somber piano notes. If Live at Bush Hall is the next stage, or a glimpse of what’s to come, for one of the best bands in the world right now, then we are in for a magical and awe-inspiring journey. It may not be technically the best concert film out there. But, Live at Bush Hall definitely leaves a big emotional impression on every person who watches, whether you are a fan of BC,NR or not. 

Grade: A+

Director: Michael B. Jordan

Writer: Keenan Coogler and Zach Baylin

Stars: Michael B. Jordan, Jonathan Majors, Tessa Thompson

Synopsis: Adonis has been thriving in both his career and family life, but when a childhood friend and former boxing prodigy resurfaces, the face-off is more than just a fight.

The original Rocky film will always be what this franchise, and any boxing movie truthfully, will spend its time chasing. Not only a commercial success but a multi-Oscar winning tale about a fighter doing the one thing he knows more about than anything. When Creed was initially announced, the story of Rocky had regressed astronomically and was only partly saved by the sixth installment of the series, Rocky Balboa. Creed was already fighting an uphill battle and managed to not only provide a compelling “Rocky” movie, but it instantly became one of the best of the franchise. For the first time since the original in 1976, a film in the saga was able to evoke the same emotions and feelings that made Rocky such a classic. Followed up by Creed II, which was another stellar outing, this spin-off series proved it had staying power and was even in a position to overtake the champ.

Now in the third installment, Creed III starts with a young Adonis (Thaddeus J. Mixson) sneaking out and going to watch his best friend Damian Anderson (Spence Moore II) box in an underground ring. After winning the fight, and the bet Damian placed on himself, the two head to a liquor store which leads to Adonis and Damian getting into an altercation that would alter their relationship forever. Flash forward 15 years, and current Adonis (Michael B. Jordan) is finally getting his rematch against “Pretty” Ricky Conlan (Tony Bellew). This isn’t a normal fight, however, as this is the last fight of Adonis’s career after announcing his plans to retire following the fight, no matter the outcome. Luckily for him, he manages to keep his title belt and leave boxing as a champion.

His life after boxing consists of raising his daughter Amara (Mila Davis-Kent) as well as running the Delphi Gym and promoting the newest champion Felix Chavez (Jose Benavidez). That is until Damian is released from prison and he, as well as the past that Adonis has been running from, resurface. He lets Damian train at the gym and spar with Chavez to get his feet back on the ground, but when Chavez’s upcoming opponent Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu) can’t fight, Damian gets the chance to finally become the world champ he thought he would be from a young age. This fight puts Damian on the map as he begins to antagonize Adonis for living the life he felt he always deserved. After three years of retirement, Adonis decides that he can’t keep running from his past and needs to meet it head-on in a fight between who he was and who he became.

Shockingly, the story itself was one of the weakest parts of the entire film. Screenwriters Keenan Coogler (the brother of Ryan Coogler) and recent Oscar nominee Zach Baylin (King Richard) manage to evoke some emotional moments throughout whether it be Adonis’s aging mother or the relationship he shares with his daughter, but the underdeveloped script gives off a feeling of a behind-the-scenes look rather than a narrative feature. There definitely was some reclamation that had to be done as this was the first film to not feature Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky; while some of the charm was lost, it did allow Adonis to stand on his own feet as the focal point of this story.

In this film standing opposite Jonathan Majors was never going to be an easy task. Majors delivers an antagonist whose brutality and tenacity, mixed with his determination and tragedy, provides a good medium for the audience as someone they can root for and against at the same time. The Rocky series in particular always had an issue when it came to the antagonists being one-note villains whose only goal is to inflict pain on the protagonist. That is Majors’s goal with Dame, but it comes from a place of pain and resentment not for what Adonis did when they were younger, but for forgetting about him at his lowest. He also conveys Dame with empathy, and in what is easily the most physically demanding role of his career, he still displays the quiet nature that not only helped him breakout in 2019’s The Last Black Man in San Francisco but proves himself as one of the most captivating and compelling actors in Hollywood.

Where Creed III shines brightest of all is in the directorial debut of Michael B. Jordan. Jordan taking over as director isn’t surprising given that Sylvester Stallone directed quite a bit of this franchise with Rocky II, Rocky III, Rocky IV, and Rocky Balboa, but while Stallone was better on paper than he was behind the camera, in just one film, Jordan has proven himself to be an audacious visual storyteller. How he manages to tell the story through the camera can make up for the lack of story in the script itself, and the fight scenes are truly where he shines. Early on, Jordan talked about how he wanted to incorporate anime fight scenes in a live-action way, and while these sorts of fights could have been gimmicky, he and cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau are able to work the scene beautifully crafting some of the most intense and visually appealing fight scenes in quite some time.

His ambition didn’t stop there, however, as he magnificently used the final fight to tell the real story of the film. Fighting in the Rocky/Creed franchise has never been about being the best, there has always been a bigger picture to the battles being shown and how Jordan frames and tells the story of the final fight through the visuals and the choreography, stripping away all of the noise and displaying two people who are fighting for much more than a title. It was a truly risky but worthwhile move that reminds you what these movies have always been about, picking yourself up even after you’ve been knocked down.

While Creed III might be the lowest of the trilogy due to a thin story, it is a dazzling directorial debut from Michael B. Jordan and another prominent turn from Jonathan Majors that makes this film an entertaining addition to the Creed saga. The original Rocky is and always will be the gold standard for films of this franchise, but now three films in, it is clear that the reins have been passed and this franchise belongs to Adonis Creed.

Grade: B