Well, there's a reason they are heretofore unknown: They are unheralded movies from fledgling film industries the world over, bought on the cheap and dumped on the service for the unsuspecting cinephile to stumble over.
My problem with these movies is usually: They aren't "real" foreign films.
What the hell do I mean by that?
Well if we consider the goal of a cinephile watching new releases to be compiling approximately 150 movies to rank at the end of the year -- and while that's not every viewer's goal, it's certainly mine -- then those 150 movies should be chosen because you expect them to have crossover with the movies other cinephiles are watching and ranking.
If you're me, these are largely comprised of American movies. Whether that means Hollywood movies or small independents, they tend to be movies that you'd expect a movie podcast might consider worthy of discussion. And then of course your standards selection of other American movies that wouldn't clear that bar, like the mainstream movies your kids might want to watch, or a dumb comedy, or a slasher movie.
Of course, I can't think of anything more parochial than filling out a year-end list with just American releases. (Which is a funny thing to say, since I'm in Australia, meaning these movies are not "parochial" if we are using the definition "confined or restricted as within the borders of a parish"). I want at least 20 foreign films in there.
But how to determine those foreign films?
There are some that are easy. The latest release from a big international master -- your Bong Joon-ho's, your Asghar Farhadi's, your Gaspar Noe's -- are easy choices. Their past efforts have anointed them forever after worthy of consideration.
But how do new directors worth considering get added to their number?
Buzz has to do with it -- the right buzz. If, as I said, a film podcast has gotten their hands on it and discussed it, it fits the bill. If it gets a release in a local cinema, it fits the bill. It's a "you know it when you see it" sort of thing.
But the streamers take the semi-clarity of this process and throw it all out of focus. What is a person supposed to do when they go on Netflix and there are ten newly released movies that have not been vouched for by anyone in the know? Why would a person consider one worthy of their time over the other?
Because you can't see all of them. You wouldn't have the time, while still watching everything else you're supposed to see. And even if you did, what are you going to do, have these random foreign movies Netflix grabbed from some obscure European film festival and decided to pay some small amount of money to air on their service account for 70 of those 150 movies?
I was having this dilemma as I was searching for something to watch Wednesday night. I'll give you some indication of what I was up against. Here are the 2023 releases I considered and passed over, all of which I'd never heard of, followed by their countries of origin:
AKA (France)
The Matchmaker (Saudi Arabia)
Hunger (Thailand)
Kill Boksoon (South Korea)
Phenomena (Spain)
One More Time (Sweden)
Queens on the Run (Mexico)
Chokehold (Turkey)
And this is not even including the Bollywood movies, which I consider a proposition unto themselves. I need one to really break out (like RRR) if I am going to consider watching it in the year of its release and including it in my year-end rankings. (This year that movie might be Polite Society, though I believe that movie is in English so it may not fully qualify. In any case, it's playing in cinemas here right now.)
But then I came across the movie you see in the poster above -- and I recognized it.
Jung_E was playing on the screen by one of the pools on one of the nights we were at the resort in Vietnam last month. You know, the same venue where I watched the first hour of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, meaning to watch the whole thing but running into a very reasonable conflict involving my wife -- who, you know, thought it might be nicer to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary. (Which was actually two nights before that, but certain circumstances prevented us from celebrating it then.)
I had seen it on the movie schedule, and thought, "What's that?" And then when we actually walked by while it was in progress, I noted how it would have been impossible to watch it even if we'd wanted to; the subtitles were in Vietnamese. (I hadn't known the spoken language was Korean, as I do now.)
Apparently, a movie being selected by some entertainment programmer at a resort -- playing in the time slot that had hosted Avatar: The Way of Water, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Black Adam on other nights -- meant it was a "real" foreign film.
I wasn't disappointed in my decision. Although Jung_E, a sci-fi film involving AI, was a little more contained in its locations and scope than I would have hoped, it does some interesting things with the ideas from movies like I, Robot and A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. The robot designs were particularly compelling, reminding me a bit of I, Robot but going off in directions that were unique enough for you to count them among the things the film does well.
And I was hit with a bit of melancholy after it ended, not only because of what happens in the film, but because it was then I learned that the movie's star, Kang Soo-yeon, died after filming on Jung_E was completed but before it could premiere.
There are probably other Jung_E's on Netflix, maybe even among the titles listed above. I guess I just need a better method of figuring out which ones they may be.
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