Movie Review: La La Land

WARNING: The following review contains spoilers. If you have not yet seen La La Land and wish to do so without having the plot given away, then do not read this.

In fact, don’t read any other review either. Go to the theater and watch it now. I cannot possibly emphasize more how much I would like people to go watch this movie. Don’t stream it from a shady website. Don’t torrent it. Don’t wait for it to come out on Netflix. Go to the theater and watch it now. You won’t regret it.

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Some of the earliest movies I remember having watched as a child were musicals and from a young age, I knew that musicals were different from other types of movies. They were different because every topic they dealt with - love, longing, hope, family - were made bigger and purer through their dancing and singing. Sure, Harry had no problems telling Sally that he wanted the rest of his life to start with hers as soon as possible, but Gene Kelly had You Were Meant For Me. Gene Kelly wins hands down.

Musicals ensured that I grew up a romantic. Reality beat it out of me. Love fades, the burden of responsibility grows heavier, wrinkles deepen, hairlines recede, waists expand, recessions bring despair, and youthful idealism is beaten and calloused until all that remains is wary cynicism. However, musicals, especially those made famous by Broadway and Disney can and do still serve as a refuge from harsh realities. Unfortunately, musicals have been few and far between. Good ones even more so.

So I went to watch La La Land with the minimal of expectations. All I knew about the movie was the title, the two lead actors, and the fact that it was a musical. Nothing else. By the time the movie ended about two hours later, I could only think of one word to describe what I had seen, heard, and felt. Magical.

For one thing, it won’t be hard for many people to find the lead characters relatable. Mia (Emma Stone) dropped out of college to move to Los Angeles where she works as a barista and she goes to one audition after another only to have the door slammed on her face by rude and uncaring agents, directors, and producers. Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) is a jazz musician who wants to open his own jazz bar so that he can play music as it was meant to be played but in reality is a starving artist who plays Christmas jingles for measly tip money at a family restaurant. That restaurant’s owner, by the way, is portrayed by J.K. Simmons who seems to be paying a gentle homage to a much more aggressive character he portrayed in Whiplash (both La La Land and Whiplash were directed by Damien Chazelle).

The two meet repeatedly through sheer chance that is so ridiculous that it can only be found in movies. They fall in love, move in with each other, they both push each other to find the successes they dream of, they argue when they think the other isn’t living up to their potential, and in the meantime, there are plenty of singing and dancing.

As for the music, what’s odd about the movie is that there isn’t a single song that I would consider an instant classic. There was no single Defying Gravity moment where a single song’s climactic high notes can can leave the audience breathless. I am sure that at least a couple of the movie’s songs - City of Stars, a jazzy tune with a haunting refrain, and Audition (The Fools Who Dream), the movie’s ultimate anthem - will be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song. But it doesn’t seem likely that the songs will have as much longevity or recognition as musical classics go. Also, the two lead actors aren’t the best singers in the world. Had any singer auditioned in front of Simon Cowell singing like that...

Despite that, however, the movie works. The songs might not become instant classics, but instead of relying just on the songs (the lyrics) to move the plot forward, the movie also focused on dance choreography and the music itself. There is a scene where the two actors literally dance among the stars and not a word is said between them. What words can one use to adequately describe a feeling like that? And toward the end of the movie, the two opening notes of City of Stars better convey the characters’ emotions than most songs ever could.

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The movie could have had a mawkish happy ending. But it veered away from that. Depending on one’s fortitude, the ending can be described as being anything from bittersweet to downright heartbreaking. The movie takes its own advice and instead of going for the likable, it goes for the truth and by doing so, the movie goes from being good to great.

And what is the truth? The truth is that everyone has a dream, but most dreams end up broken and scattered on the ground, which is all the more reason so many people do whatever they can to not end up on that boulevard of broken dreams. But there are costs to pursuing one’s dreams and oftentimes one of those things that people have to give up is “the fairy tale ending.”

As the final credits roll, one realizes that the movie was not so much a story about two star-crossed lovers, but rather an ode to everyone with “a dream as foolish as they may seem.”

2016 was a disappointing year for movies. La La Land pushed hard against that and buckled the trend. It was beautiful, well-crafted, romantic, bittersweet, heartbreaking, and honest. It is the best movie that I have seen all year. Perhaps even the best movie that I have seen in a good long while. Here’s to hoping for more movies like this!

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Movie Review: Suicide Squad

WARNING: The following review contains a lot of spoilers. If you have not yet seen Suicide Squad and wish to do so without having the plot given away, then do not read this.

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It is often said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Technically, that is NOT the definition of insanity, but whatever. Let's go with that definition of insanity and just plainly say that I am clearly insane. I am insane for constantly going to every single comic book movie expecting to come out of the movie theater feeling blown away when in reality, I always end up feeling disappointed and going through my usual bout of self loathing I always feel after watching a comic book movie yet again.

So why do I keep watching comic book movies if that's how I always end up feeling? It's obviously because I am insane. Just like how every four years (or five years in other countries) people always come out to vote for Candidate Elephant Excrement or Candidate Donkey Douche for president. It's because we are all bloody insane.

Basically, to boil down the essence of Suicide Squad into a single sentence, it is The Dirty Dozen except that it's on crack and acid at the same time and instead of disgraced US soldiers waiting on death row, we have supervillains (of various skills or the lack thereof) and instead of Nazi officers, we have a powerful ancient witch called Enchantress (Cara Delevingne) who for all intents and purposes looks like a college sophomore who ingested way too many funky mushrooms during Burning Man and forgot to take a shower for a year. By the way, she's the main antagonist.

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Suicide Squad's plot is thinner than the broth that is typically served in any ROK Army chow hall. Granted, one of the complaints of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was that it seemed like as though content that could have been spread out over six movies was crammed into one. So I expected that Warner Brothers would insist on a simpler plot for Suicide Squad but they apparently decided to go with the "little to no plot" route instead.

Anyway, back to the plot. Taking place after the events of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice with the death of Superman, Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), who is acting like the kind of government employee that the most paranoid libertarians believe actually exist in all levels of government, decides to round up a group of supervillains to create a paramilitary unit because the next Superman might be an enemy of the United States. She actually calls these supervillains metahumans but it's clear that most of them are NOT metahumans. The only metahumans in the team are El Diablo (Jay Hernandez) who is basically DC's answer to the X-Men's Pyro except he has facial tattoos (because who cares about ever getting a job?) and the aforementioned college sophomore.

The rest are a hitman with a heart of gold-ish (Will Smith), a bubbly nutcase with a baseball bat (Margot Robbie), a guy who is good with a boomerang (Jai Courtney), and a guy who either has a bad skin condition or is actually a human crocodile (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). And they're overseen by a soldier named Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) - because that's obviously not the perfect stage name of an adult film star - who happens to be in love with the college sophomore; and a ninja (Karen Fukuhara) who uses a sword that is able to trap the souls of those it kills because reasons.

That's the team. Seriously. So here's an obvious question. Why use supervillains who don't like or care for authority and who must be threatened with a bomb in their necks when there are perfectly good soldiers that the government could have easily used? For God's sake, one of the bad guys, the college sophomore's brother - who came out of nowhere by the way - was defeated with what looks like C4 explosives. Did the government suddenly forget that they have Tomahawk cruise missiles?

Here's another reason it doesn't make sense. In a post-credit scene, Amanda Waller and Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) are having a private meeting and Waller hands over a file to Wayne, which is full of information about the Flash and Aquaman! The government is aware of these two amazingly powerful metahumans and Waller decided that the best she could do was to form a team of people who use boomerangs and comically large mallets?! For God's sake! Was there not a single writer on the production team whose mother did not snort liquid cocaine while she were pregnant with him/her?

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But of course, the villain that the Suicide Squad has to defeat is the college sophomore. She's a powerful wizard but she has a habit of not keeping her heart in her chest where you would think it belongs because, again, reasons. So Waller borrows a page from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest's equally lousy and stupid plot and threatens to stab holes into the heart unless the college sophomore does as she commands. So the college sophomore rescues her brother who is also a witch (I told you he came out of nowhere) to help retrieve her heart and when he does so, she proceeds to do a weird belly dance to create a weapon that looks like a cloud with rocks swirling around it (which takes a long time) to destroy humanity. Because apparently this powerful witch can't hijack nukes. Makes total sense.

But fighting the college sophomore wasn't even their mission. The Suicide Squad's actual mission was to enter the city (whose name I had forgotten the moment I heard it) where the college sophomore is doing her Burning Man with Bad JuJus routine in order to rescue a high value target. But there is a plot twist! That high value target is Amanda Waller herself! But then they botch the rescue and then end up fighting the college sophomore even when the bombs that have been planted in their necks have been deactivated, which was the only reason they agreed to join this group, because reasons.

The plot holes in Suicide Squad are so big that it would be inappropriate NOT to make yo momma jokes.

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But what about The Joker? He was heavily shown in the trailers. What about him?

Yes, The Joker (Jared Leto) was in the movie. Barely. He didn't contribute at all to the plot (for what little there was) and the few minutes that he was on screen were already shown in the trailers. A lot of noise was made about how he remained in character throughout the filming of the movie because he's a method actor and how at one point, he mailed used condoms and anal beads to his castmates. If he really did all that just for those few inconsequential minutes that he was in the movie, then Leto truly is an asshole.

Was Leto at least a scene stealer? No, he was not, which is such a damned shame because everyone knows that the man CAN act! Asshole or not. Requiem for a Dream, anyone? When the late Heath Ledger portrayed his version of The Joker, people couldn't take their eyes off him. Ledger's Joker was charismatic, laughed like a maniac, growled like a rabid dog, and even performed a magic trick with a pencil. He was a cold-blooded sociopath who was out to make a point - that everyone was just one little push away from being as mad as he was. Leto's Joker, on the other hand, was boring. All he wanted to do was rescue his girlfriend. Hell, even Cesar Romero's Joker was more interesting than Leto's version.

If in some later movie Leto's Joker and Affleck's Batman were placed in the same room together, I wouldn't know whom I'd wish were dead more - them or me. And then there's the depressing fact that I'd still probably pay money to watch that crapfest, too, because, like I said, I'm clearly insane.

Sigh. I do miss this man.
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Earlier, I compared Suicide Squad to The Dirty Dozen except that it was on crack and acid. I shouldn't have said that. The Dirty Dozen was a great movie. The overarching plot might have been somewhat similar but The Dirty Dozen made you feel for the characters. The movie showed you the characters' flaws, their weaknesses, their malice, their madness, their contempt, their hopes, and fears - humanity in all of its shameful ugliness. Suicide Squad, being the squeeky clean PG-13 movie that it is, barely does that.

In The Dirty Dozen, the audience got to watch terrible human beings perform a heroic act for their country and then make the ultimate sacrifice as most of them die by the end of the movie. Beyond being a great action-packed war movie, it also touched on the philosophical question of whether one could escape fate; whether or not karmic justice will always find you regardless of how much you may be try to absolve yourself of your sins.

There are deaths in Suicide Squad. One character is killed off as soon as we are introduced to him so there's that. The other character that dies is El Diablo - the only character who is actually sympathetic, but his death is, of course, blanketed underneath a ton of CGI, which has the ability to make people forget what feelings feel like.

The only other character who is also somewhat sympathetic is Deadshot (Will Smith)... but the problem with Deadshot is (1) he was never really portrayed as a villain worth hating to begin with and (2) he being a loving father to an 11-year-old girl makes it hard to distinguish Smith's character in this movie from practically every other movie role that he's had in the past ten years.

As for the other characters, they aren't given any depth and the audience doesn't feel emotionally invested or fear for their safety because, of course, Warner Brothers isn't going to kill off these characters after they had just gotten the rights to them. They've got to keep making sequels and prequels and spin-offs and keep resurrecting characters to keep churning out crap that people like me will inexplicably keep consuming.

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However, there are three nice things that I will say about the movie.

One, I liked the soundtrack. A lot of the songs in the movie were classic rock songs, which I have a soft spot for, but I did feel that it was a bit too much after a while. After a while, it did feel like the filmmakers were trying to compensate for their lousy plot with an awesome soundtrack.

Two, Margot Robbie was fun to watch. Yes, she put the manic in the Manic Pixie Dream Girl role that she was given and she has pretty much guaranteed that the Harley Quinn look is going to be a permanent fixture among Halloween costumes. But more than that, she was the one thing about this sad attempt at a movie that was entertaining.

Which brings us to three. As a result of the bit of humor that Margot Robbie helped to infuse into the movie, I can say with certainty that Suicide Squad is a better movie than Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, but of course, that's not saying much.

EDIT:
Ok, I don't dislike all comic book movies. I thoroughly enjoyed Deadpool, but really, who didn't?

Movie Review: Batman v Superman - Dawn of Justice

WARNING: The following review contains a lot of spoilers. If you have not yet seen Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and wish to do so without having the plot given away, then do not read this.

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I want a refund. And I don’t just mean the 8,000 won that I paid for the ticket or the two-and-a-half hours for which the movie ran. I want back every moment that I had been excited and hyped for this movie since it had been announced in 2013.

Yes, the movie was that bad. Which was so tragic, considering the fact that I actually liked Man of Steel.

Some critics complained that the movie took itself too seriously. Perhaps there is some truth to that charge, but I didn’t mind it. Seeing how Marvel has decided to make their movies bright and colorful and optimistic, I understand why Warner Brothers wanted to make their movies a bit differently. Yet others said that the characters were too grim. I didn’t have a problem with that either. When Man of Steel ended, the fight between Superman and Zod destroyed entire city blocks and the Kryptonian World Engine probably caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. You don’t get to make a movie where everyone sings a happy tune and skips down the road while holding hands after something like that.

“People died? That’s hilarious!”

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The problem that I had with the movie was that the story was, plain and simple, stupid.

It starts out with a good enough premise. The movie starts with the last movie’s climax - Superman and Zod are duking it out and Bruce Wayne aka Batman witnesses all of the destruction it causes with human eyes. It is at this moment that he realizes that Superman is so incredibly powerful that he must do whatever he can to kill Superman.

That sounds fine but as the movie progresses, you have to wonder what kind of cognitive dissonance is going on in Batman’s mind. According to Batman lore, one thing that Batman never does is kill. He knows that he can kill but he chooses not to because that would make him no different from those psychopaths that he punches to a pulp every night. That’s why he never kills Joker. Except that in this movie, Batman does kill. A lot. Yes, Michael Keaton’s Batman killed, too, but not like Ben Affleck’s Batman.

Considering the way Ben Affleck’s Batman drives, uses the Batmobile’s automatic weapons, and the fact this Batman actually carries a gun (another big no-no in Batman lore), he definitely kills dozens of people in this movie. Oh, and he also snaps people’s necks. The only thing that differentiates Batman from Superman is that Superman kills a lot more people simply because he is an all-powerful alien.

Which is another thing. At the start of the movie, Batman thinks that Superman has to be taken out because he is too powerful and tens of thousands of people die whenever Superman uses his power. That’s fair. Truthfully, I thought that that the destruction that superheroes and supervillains cause is something that is glossed over too frequently in the Marvel universe. So when Snyder decided to bring the focus to the deaths of innocents, I thought that was a story worth exploring.

But then when Batman realizes that both he and Superman’s moms have the same name and that Superman’s mom was kidnapped, he literally tells Martha Kent that he is her son’s friend. Never mind that they were trying to kill each other just minutes ago! And then to insult everyone’s intelligence, Batman still likes Superman and doesn’t really think that he is a bad guy anymore at the end of the movie despite the fact that Superman’s fight with Doomsday caused even more destruction than his fight with Zod in Man of Steel. What changed?! We are literally back to where we started!

The only thing that changed was that Superman had died. Sure, at this point, unlike the audience, Batman doesn’t know that Superman will come back to life. Does that mean that all Superman had to do was keep doing what he did, caused wanton destruction in the name of saving humanity (Team America has nothing on Superman) and then just die to gain Batman’s sympathy and friendship? Holy cognitive dissonance, Batman! World’s greatest detective, my ass!

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And then there’s Lex Luthor. Gene Hackman’s Luthor was campy but so was the original Superman movie. But as campy as it was, it was still Gene Hackman, which brought gravitas to the role. Kevin Spacey’s Luthor was menacing and unhinged. As different as Hackman’s and Spacey’s versions were, what both versions of Luthor had was the ability to communicate their ideas. Yes, they were bad guys, but at least they were not inarticulate.

Jessie Eisenberg’s Luthor, however, seems like a college-know-it-all spastic who has snorted way too much cocaine. Not only is there an absence of gravitas and menacing presence, there is also an absence of reason. Why does he want to kill Superman? Why does he want to pit him against Batman? Why does he want to create Doomsday using Zod’s deceased body? Why does he mix his blood with Zod’s deceased body to do so? None of these questions are answered. He just attempts to quote Copernicus, fails, shakes his head, gives an annoying laugh, and eats jelly beans. Jessie Eisenberg’s Luthor isn’t a menacing or formidable villain that could take on the mightiest superhero the world has ever known, but rather the weird kid next door whom everyone claims was so nice when they are interviewed on CNN because it has been revealed that he just went on a shooting spree in his school but then only managed to shoot himself in the groin.

Then there is the ridiculous manner in which Luthor tries to frame Superman for a crime. In the movie, intrepid reporter Lois Lane interviews an African warlord/terrorist but gets captured when it is revealed to everyone’s surprise that her cameraman was actually a CIA assassin. I guess Lane decided to go on this assignment because she knew that Superman would come to rescue her if things go badly, which he does. Talk about Moral Hazard!

Anyway, Superman is thundering toward our damsel in distress but for some reason, the warlord’s clearly Caucasian and clearly some-of-these-things-are-not-like-the-others henchmen begin to shoot and kill the other henchmen and other people in the village before taking off in their bikes. Superman arrives and rescues Lois and they fly back to Metropolis. But the news says that Superman killed all those people in the village - those people who were shot and killed. Did no one bother to do an autopsy to find out how these people died?

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Also, it turns out that the bullets that were used to kill those villagers and henchmen were made of some type of prototype alloy that even experts at the Pentagon were unable to identify them. And upon further digging, it’s discovered that those bullets were developed and manufactured by Lex Luthor’s company, LexCorp.

WHAT??? Not only did no one bother to perform an autopsy to figure out how those people actually died, those assassins also used prototype bullets that directly led back to their employer? Why couldn’t they have just used regular bullets like everyone else? Was that just too passé? Or why use bullets at all? After all, this isn’t the first time Zack Snyder had to frame a superhero for something. Doctor Manhattan was framed for having caused cancer to all the people who had ever been close to him in Watchmen. Was Snyder unable to plagiarize himself or did he forget that he directed that movie, too?

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Later on in the movie, Lex Luthor convinces Superman to kill Batman because if he doesn’t, he will kill Superman’s mom. Yes, Luthor knows Superman’s secret identity, which he doesn’t reveal to everyone else because reasons. At this point, Superman could have beaten, frozen, burned, punched, kicked, or tickled Luthor to release his mom. He could have done anything. The guy can fly at speeds that have to be measured in Machs and shoots laser beams out of his eyes that can destroy entire city blocks and could atomize a man with a single punch. Or he could have used his super hearing like he did to save Lois when she was in trouble. Twice.

But no, Superman decides to cry “Uncle” and do Luthor’s bidding because of reasons. Kinda. Right before flying to Gotham, Superman tells Lois that he is going to ask Batman for his help.

And this is how the following conversation could have gone down. “Hey, Bruce, can I call you Bruce? Sorry, I’ve got these X-Ray vision that allowed me to see who you are underneath the cowl. I know we got off on the wrong foot, but Lex Luthor sent me to kill you because if I don’t, he’ll kill my mom. Now I don’t want to do that. So could you help me out? Peace pipe, BFF?”

But no. They meet, grunt something at each other, and then fight. For 30 minutes. Until Wonder Woman finally shows up and then tells the both of them to quit it. When Luthor realizes that his plan has failed, then he unleashes Doomsday to fight the three of them.

Yep. This isn’t your delicate Christopher Nolan Batman who tries to use reason and logic or even your Bryan Singer’s Superman who is capable of cracking a smile now and then. At this point, the whole thing has turned into a monster bash movie and Godzilla and Mothra are telling everyone to take it down a notch.

I’m having a hard time understanding my character’s motivation
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And Wonder Woman? There isn’t much that I can say about her because there isn’t much of her onscreen anyway! Holly Hunter as the doomed senator gets more air time than Gal Gadot! Wonder Woman appears in the movie for no other reason than to serve as a teaser for the upcoming stand-alone Wonder Woman movie. But of course, there has to be a reason for her to be around, right?

So Zack Snyder comes up with a reason. If it can be called that. It turns out that both Batman and Wonder Woman need to access Lex Luthor’s heavily encrypted computer for their own individual reasons. Well, hello, meet cute! It turns out that Lex Luthor has a yellowish black-and-white picture of Wonder Woman that was taken in 1916, where she stands with a group of World War I soldiers (one of whom is Chris Pine, so I guess he’ll be in the Wonder Woman movie, too).

And if you think about it, that’s really dumb. I’m willing to accept that Wonder Woman aka Diana Prince doesn’t want the fact that she is an immortal warrior princess from a secret mythical island revealed to the rest of the world. But come on! This wasn’t a one-of-a-kind hard copy photograph. The photograph has been scanned and digitized into a jpeg file and uploaded into a computer. Did the writers forget how the Internet works? Once your picture has been digitized and uploaded onto the Internet, that’s it. You are never getting that picture back and it will be out there forever.

Whoever wrote this damned script apparently decided to make stuff up along the way and used copious amounts of alcohol for inspiration when they realized that they didn’t have a creative bone in their bodies and said among themselves, “Dude, Gal Gadot would look so fucking hot in that slinky dress, am I right? Gimme five!”

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As for Batman, he’s supposed to be the world’s greatest detective and be an all around super-intelligent human being. None of that is in the movie. But you get to see him do a whole Crossfit workout routine and have a bunch of dream sequences though. No, this is not your Christian Bale Batman. And gods, I miss Christian Bale.

Sound like a clusterfuck? It is a clusterfuck. I remember reading the comic books - The Death of Superman. It was emotional and gut-wrenching. Yes, I know that superheroes never die as they always come back to life but until that point, superheroes never died. Period. But by the time Superman “dies” after having fought Doomsday in this movie, I was long past caring.

Even the musical score annoyed me to hell. The score was written by the great Hans Zimmer and as usual, the music was epic. So what’s the problem? Most movies’ musical scores are in the background, oftentimes so subliminally that the audience isn’t fully aware that there is even music playing. There is no way that can happen in this movie. The score is bone-shatteringly loud, in your face, and constant. If the poorly-written script doesn’t make you feel nauseated, the musical score certainly will.

If you’ve seen the movie and you’re reading this, I think we should all collectively march to Zack Snyder’s house and pelt him with eggs. If you haven’t seen the movie and read this, why? I told you not to. But since you’ve already read it, don’t watch it. Save your money for the newly rebooted Ghostbusters movie instead when it comes out. I don’t think it will be an awesome movie or anything, but it couldn’t be worse than the crapfest that is Batman v Superman.

Personally, this one hurt. I've always been more of a DC fan than a Marvel fan. Yes, Marvel has some decent characters and stories, but they don't have Superman or Batman. But it looks like Marvel has nothing to worry about. If Batman v Superman is the foundation that all future The Justice League movies are going to be based on, Marvel and it’s parent company, Disney, can safely churn out more dumb Avengers movies and count all the money they make til their dying days because it turns out that The Justice League movies are going to be even dumber.

I give Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice 1 out of 5. I would have given it zero, but I liked the Batmobile.

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Movie Review: Trumbo

WARNING: The following blog post contains a lot of spoilers. If you have not yet seen Trumbo and wish to do so without having the plot given away, then do not read this.

When I first saw the trailer for Trumbo a few months ago, I knew that this was a movie that I wanted to watch. But I also knoew that this was not going to be a movie that I'd be able to watch in a theater in Korea.

Now I'm not saying that the Korean government somehow prevented the movie from being shown in Korea. There is no evidence for that. Also, there are many reasons why a movie might not play in theaters in any particular country. However, considering the fact that Korea is a country where ironic tweets can get you into trouble and where a professor can get indicted for merely holding an unpopular opinion, well, it made it all that much sadder that the movie has not made it to theaters here yet. If anyone needs to watch this movie, it's Koreans.

Bryan Cranston plays the eponymous character, Dalton Trumbo, an eccentric and witty screenwriter (whom I discovered only after having watched the movie that he had penned some of my favorite classic movies such as Roman Holiday and Spartacus) who also happened to be a member of the Communist Party of the United States of America.

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Anyone who is familiar with me and my blog already knows that I am a staunch anti-communist. So before I sat down to watch this movie, I already knew that there was going to be a part of me that would feel uncomfortable knowing that the movie's protagonist was going to be a character who held beliefs that I am fundamentally hostile to.

And there were parts of the movie when I did shake my head a bit. The first moment was early on in the movie when Trumbo explains to his young daughter that if she were willing to share her Ham and Swiss Cheese sandwich with a schoolmate who didn't have any food, that made her a communist. Obviously, in this scene, a father was taking pains to explain to his very young daughter a political opinion that he held. So, the scene would not have made any sense if Cranston's character gave a speech about the virtues of Das Kapital. However, it is obvious that this is more than just a father explaining what communism is to his young daughter. Rather, it was the filmmakers attempt at explaining what communism is to the audience. And as a member of the audience, I felt insulted.

The other moments were when the anti-communists, the bad guys – a meatheaded John Wayne (played by David James Elliott), a vicious Hedda Hopper (played by Helen Mirren), and a slimy J. Parnell Thomas (played by James DuMont) along with other extras – were treated like two-dimensional stock villains. Was John Wayne's anti-communism a result of a him trying to compensate the fact that he did not fight in the Second World War? Was Hedda Hopper really trying to preserve American democracy from what she thought of as a threat that millions of American soldiers were fighting against or was it her way of getting back at a movie industry that forsook her because she had grown old? What about J. Parnell Thomas? Was he simply looking to gain more political power for himself or might there have been other reasons?

None of that was given much attention. That being said, I don't think that the filmmakers ought to be judged too harshly for glossing over the villains. After all, the move itself lasted for about only two hours. So it was obviously impossible to explore every individual's inner psyche. This wasn't the fault of the filmmakers but rather the fault of the medium itself. And that, I think, is all the more reason why I think television shows are becoming increasingly more popular among the audience than movies.

One thing that I think is important to mention, however, is that no one who has ever watched this movie could ever say that Trumbo is pro-communist. Aside from the first scene I mentioned and the brief scenes that Louis CK was in, there was no talk whatsoever about communist ideas. In fact, the whole idea of Trumbo being a communist was made quite silly when Cranston appears in one scene holding a bottle of champagne in each hand exclaiming “We're rich!” after he sells the rights to Roman Holiday to Paramount Pictures.

If anyone watched this movie hoping to see a stirring defense of communism, they would have left feeling utterly disappointed. The fact that Trumbo was a communist was treated as though it were a mere coincidence.

In fact, Trumbo himself is probably not the first candidate that even genuine communists might choose to represent as his/her ideal hero because like Louis CK says in the movie, Trumbo “talks like a radical but lives like a rich guy.” Had Trumbo been a contemporary figure, I have no doubt that many people today would have treated him much like the way people treat Sean Penn (who really deserves to be treated like an idiot).

Not your grandfather's communist!
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No, the movie was not a defense of communism but rather a defense of individual liberty – especially the notion that people are free to think whatever the hell they want.

It simply does not matter what an individual thinks. The only person whom that should be important to is the individual himself. Trumbo was a communist, perhaps an imperfect communist, but he was a genius screenwriter who was able to make movies seem like magic.

That led to another theme of the movie – what a rational individual can produce with his own mind. Just like how Mel Gibson may be a racist (or maybe he is only when drunk) but he is an amazing director and actor and how Ayn Rand may have been an unpleasant harpy but she was an intellectual titan to reckon with, what truly matters is what one is able to bring to the table. Trumbo brought with him a Midas Touch. Every movie he made, even the bad ones, were made terrific because he worked on them.

What does it matter what the individual thinks in his own time when the work that the individual produces is so good that it practically loved by so many?

The fact of the matter is that what people think in the privacy of their own minds do not matter to the State. It is not something that the State should ever be concerned with. So long as people are able to produce works of beauty, and even if they don't, what does it matter what they think in the privacy of their own heads?

However, to this day, the State does remain concerned with such things. When people's lives can be made miserable over a newspaper column, it is obvious that Trumbo's fight is not over.

I don't know if Trumbo will ever be played in Korean theaters. But knowing the rate of piracy that goes on in the country, along with the rate of independent caption making that goes with pirated movies, I hope that millions of Koreans do get to watch this movie – legally or illegally. Preferably legally, of course.

For God knows that one thing that Koreans need, among many things, is the freedom of thought.

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Random Thoughts: The Martian and Forced Filial Piety

Thoughts about The Martian

Yesterday, I went to the movies to watch Ridley Scott's The Martian. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and I had wanted to write a review of the movie but Kevin Kim, from Big Hominid, already wrote a great review for the movie, which you ought to read for yourself here.

As Kevin already covered more than I would have, seeing how I have never read the book the movie was based on, I only have one additional thing to add.

This movie is a must-see for younger Koreans, especially considering how popular the notion of “Hell Joseon” has become among many of them.

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This article from Korea Expose describes those who subscribe to the notion of Hell Joseon as those who “find no hope for South Korea; they seek only to abandon and escape the system altogether... embodies despair and hopelessness of the most extreme variety, the idea that the South Korean state cannot be redeemed through effort.”

In other words, Hell Joseon is just another incarnation of nihilism, except that it has been served with Korean lipstick. Regardless of the guise it has been portrayed, nihilism is the very antithesis of the movie's core message, which was delivered by Matt Damon's character toward the end of the movie:

“You have to solve one problem and then solve the next problem, and then solve the next problem, and if you solve enough problems, you get to go home.”

This is a lesson that many people, not just Koreans, often seem to forget.

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Thoughts about Forced Filial Piety

It has been revealed that from the beginning of this year to September, the National Health Insurance Service has forced 39 people to pay for their parents' national health insurance premiums.

To be more specific, these 39 people had to pay for their biological parents' national health insurance premiums. Yes, these 39 people had been given up by their biological parents and had been adopted by other families.

This discovery was made despite the NHIS's claim that no such case existed.

I understand why someone would want to force someone's offspring to pay for their parents' medical bills if the parents themselves are unable. Firstly, the government, which knows that raising taxes is not popular, would rather that old people's medical bills be paid for by their children. Secondly, such enforced filial piety laws are probably easier to pass in Korea because of the lingering effects of (near pathological) Confucian values. And finally, though I seriously doubt it would lead to the law's intended results, the rationale behind such laws is to create “ideal” family relations.

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However, all of those factors might have some merit if we were discussing people who were raised by their biological parents. These 39 people were not raised by their biological parents and I assume that their legal ties with their biological parents ended as soon as they were adopted by other families.

It is my professional opinion that now is the time to give the NHIS the finger.

That being said, the government has long been wrestling with how to combat Korea's aging society, part of which is exacerbated by low birth rates. If people can have children, legally give them up, and still be ensured that their children will some day have to pay for their medical bills, that could be a novel way to turn Korea's birth rates around!

But I hope that you'll forgive me for not leaping for joy.