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RETURN TO SEOUL
**** Standing next to his daughter, a father points to an island. It’s so small, he tells her, that he and his childhood friends called it Mouse Poop Island—and when the tide was low, they could walk there. The father’s reminiscence is so precise that as you listen, you feel as if you are reliving his memories. Whether or not the daughter feels the same way is the thorny question at the heart of Return to Seoul, Davy Chou’s soulful and slippery saga of family, regret and rebirth. Park Ji-min stars as Freddie, a South Korean woman raised by French parents. On her first visit to Seoul, she reunites with her biological father (Oh Kwang-rok), but she can’t bear the weight of his anguish. To know that he gave her up to give her a better life is one thing; to believe it is another. So painful and tender are the scenes between Park and Oh that when the film leaps a few years into the future, it’s hard not to sigh with disappointment. With its clean lighting and pained silences, the first act is movingly real; the second, with its neon gleam and bizarre subplot about Freddie selling missiles, is disappointingly heightened. Still, it’s fitting that both the film and its heroine experience an identity crisis. Is Freddie French or Korean? Is Return to Seoul a stylish thriller or a stripped-down drama? Those mysteries aren’t entirely solved, but you glimpse the silhouette of an answer in the final sequence. By then, Freddie has ditched the glamorous clothes and dark crimson lipstick of the second act, opting for a plain jacket and shorn hair. Maybe the transformation mirrors a newfound sense of self; maybe it’s just a new outfit and a haircut. But either way, you want to see where Freddie is going. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Cinema 21.
JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4
**** A 169-minute shootout may be as impervious to review as the tailored suits of vengeful assassin John Wick (Keanu Reeves) are to gunfire, but let’s compare the fourth installment in the Wick saga to its other blockbuster franchise contemporaries. Like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it features a cipher of a hero defined by garish antagonists (Bill Skarsgård’s Marquis, Clancy Brown’s Harbinger, Shamier Anderson’s Tracker). Like The Expendables, it assembles an ensemble of allies (Laurence Fishburne’s Bowery King, Hiroyuki Sanada’s hotelmaster/warlord) with allusions to cinema past that are less homage than guiding purpose. Like in the Bond films, any emotional nuance has been bestowed on Wick’s rather more interesting opposite number (Donnie Yen’s blind assassin Caine), while specificities of plot have been sacrificed for extended slaughterings intercut with worshipful sequences glorifying the hyperluxe corridors of power so shamelessly that they may as well be commercials for wealth. Which poses the question: Is John Wick: Chapter 4 an obscene glorification of capitalism unbound or cutting satire that insists all money is blood money? A profoundly inane exercise in empty violence or a transcendent ballet replacing exposition with movement? A stillborn spawn of a deadened culture or the apotheosis of a self-referential interactivity rendering originality itself irrelevant? To quote Wick, “Yeah.” R. JAY HORTON. Academy, Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Joy Cinema, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Progress Ridge, St. Johns Twin, Studio One.
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES
** Edgin (Chris Pine) is no hero—just ask Edgin. “Shut up, I’m a moron, you know that,” he declares after being cheered for battling a dastardly wizard. His avowed stupidity makes him a perfect protagonist for Dungeons & Dragons, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein’s adaptation of Vin Diesel’s favorite fantasy role-playing game. In their last film, Game Night (2018), Daley and Goldstein cast Jason Bateman as a man who makes peace with his utter patheticness—and in D&D, they’ve handed Pine a similar role. Edgin’s quest to steal the secret to resurrection from a foppish former ally (Hugh Grant) is a series of ghoulish misadventures, including a showdown with a corpulent dragon and a series of morbidly witty interviews with talking skeletons. These spunky, satirical scenes offer much-needed relief from Edgin’s endless brooding over his dead wife and adorable estranged daughter (Chloe Coleman), which threatens to drown the comedy in solemnity. While Game Night took the piss out of Fight Club by turning a David Fincher-inspired sequence into a game of hot potato with a Fabergé egg, D&D seeks to balance gleeful absurdity with Tolkien-style melodrama. It’s a numbingly tidy film—and a far cry from Daley and Goldstein’s Vacation (2015), which peaked when the Griswold family was nearly drowned by a deranged river rafting guide (Charlie Day). That scene may have been mean-spirited and distasteful, but it was an undeniably funny testament to a truth Daley and Goldstein used to understand: In comedy, it’s hard to score critical hits (to borrow a D&D parlance) by playing nice. PG-13. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Cinemagic, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Laurelhurst, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Progress Ridge, Studio One, Tigard, Wunderland Milwaukie.
A THOUSAND AND ONE
** Not, importantly, One Thousand and One Nights, in which a lovely young bride ensures her own survival by spinning an ever more fantastical tale. If anything, A Thousand and One aims for the opposite effect. By focusing on the dreariest stretches of a young mother’s fight to raise her son in the face of manifold torments wrought by generational poverty, bureaucratic dominion, and encroaching gentrification, the indie festival fave threatens to cloud Teyana Taylor’s sparkling star turn as single mom Inez. While determined to rub our noses in the burnt-orange glories of late-’90s Brooklyn, the film still seems curiously old-fashioned. The minimal story harks back to the age of weepies, and save for an adult situation or two with the strapping suitor (William Catlett) enlisted as father figure, it’s easy to imagine Bette Davis or Joan Crawford as the beleaguered heroine trudging through this hard-knock life. Considering the well-traveled plot and romanticized reveries of oldish New York’s bustling urbanity, A Thousand and One never quite commits to its nostalgia. Moreover, a truly unexpected late-stage revelation implies Inez’s guiding impulse wasn’t that different from the tech-bro slumlords buying up her block, though the revelation arrives far too late to spice up the story’s sodden trudge through yesteryear. The three most important words in storytelling? Motivation, motivation, motivation. R. JAY HORTON. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Living Room, Vancouver Mall.
