Walk Up: An Experienced Cast Takes It to the Next Level

What do you look for in a Hong Sang-soo film? Hypernaturalistic acting? Zigzaggy dialogue that feels wholly improvised? Art about artmaking that gets unapologetically meta? A short list of specific actors whom you recognize as auteurial go-tos? A barely veiled unflattering self-portrait of the prolific director himself? If these are your must-haves then Walk Up is a must-see. This episodic movie sketches the lives of the occupants of a duplex by way of a recipe with those exact ingredients.

As a cougar landlady with a predatory vibe, Lee Hye-yeong turns in an especially riveting performance. She's practically licking her chops as she courts a semi-retired film director (Kwon Hae-hyo) -- with whom she may have had an affair -- to be her new tenant; her disdain for his fretful daughter (Park Mi-so), an interior designer apprentice, is no less visible for being nonverbal. All three of these performers have been in a couple of Hong's previous films and their familiarity with his material shows.

Subtext is what makes Hong's movies work. Actors who realize it's not just a matter of delivering the lines in front of a camera that's unlikely to move and start playing the interior world hard, and piling on motives perhaps not in the script, and being in the scene to the max... these are the type of actors who elevate Hong's material to unexpected heights. Fellow Hong alums like Shin Seok-ho as a boytoy and Song Seon-mi as a floundering restauranteur understand the assignment too. When you're willing to commit fully, you'll creatively creatively thrive on camera in a Hong Sang-soo pic.

The Woman Who Ran: Post-Marital Research

I haven't seen a Hong Sang-soo film for awhile so it's a bit of a readjustment getting into his rhythm and flow. I know from past experiences, however, that sometimes what looks like a meandering improvisation adds up to something quite substantial. I knew to be patient! Yet what to make of the initial conversations in The Woman Who Ran re: the beauty of a cow's eyes, the bullying by a neighbor's rooster, or the ethics surrounding the feeding of stray cats? Before you've figured that out, Hong has shifted to a completely new scene: gone is the divorcee (Seo Young-hwa) who appears to be in a lesbian couple; in her place is a Pilates instructor (Song Seon-mi) navigating the challenges of dating in middle age. The topics shift from animals to money: a rent deposit, her million-dollar-savings, her successful business... See a connection yet? I didn't.

Which brings us to the final reunion at Cafe Emu where our protagonist (Kim Min-hee) has one more "girl talk," this time with an old friend (Kim Sae-byeok) who now runs a movie theater. This last encounter has the least amount of dialogue but it's also when the movie comes together. For each of these reunions finds our drifting diminishing her feelings from her unseen husband. The random meet-ups suddenly register as a testing of the waters for a possible future, always with an awareness that the men in these other women's lives are uniformly irritating: a demanding neighbor, a stalking poet (Ha Seong-guk), and a self-important author (Kwon Hae-hyo).

Bogotá: City of the Lost: The Crimes of Alexa

I stopped watching Bogotá: City of the Lost after two previous attempts to get through it a few days ago. After picking up where I left off once again today, I quickly remembered why I lost interest. This beautifully shot but not-even run-of-the-mill crime pic about a young Korean man (Song Joong-ki) who masters the art of international smuggling when his family movies to Colombia feels as though it were written by an A.I. program. "Siri, please create a crime pic screenplay for Korean actors that will appeal to an American Netflix audience with potential Latin American appeal. No actresses needed."

Then the computer brain drew from its unlawfully acquired files of Narcos, the films of Kim Song-je (who directed this), and hundreds of other scripts which can't be named for legal reasons, drew on its translation programs for Spanish and Korean, and in a short order pumped out this mess. The intelligence then cast actors Song (so good in Frozen Flower), put an English mustache on Lee Hee-joon, and asked Kwon Hae-hyo to phone in a slimy performance as the movie's head thug. Once all the pieces and people were in place, a robot voice shouted, "Action." But what it really should have said was "Cut." Someone forgot to tell Siri, that the shopping mall is no longer central to the American dream.