Mickey 17 (2025) | REVIEW

Robert Pattinson and Robert Pattinson in Bong Joon-ho’s MICKEY 17 — PHOTO: Watner Bros. Pictures (Still image from trailers).

Directed by Bong Joon-ho — Screenplay by Bong Joon-ho.

It boggles the mind that it’s been more than half a decade since the release of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, the first non-English language feature to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Director Bong’s Oscar-winning magnum opus is a widely recognized 21st Century masterpiece, and, thusly, the director’s follow-up to such an achievement would always be hotly anticipated, especially given the fact that his next release was a blockbuster-budgeted American studio release. In fascinating fashion, Bong Joon-ho has spent his Hollywood blank cheque, or carte blanche, on a scathing but funny political satire sci-fi flick about the way capitalist governments, whose leaders may use religion to gain and exercise power, view and treat the common person, women, and foreign territories, as well as its inhabitants. Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17, an adaptation of Edward Ashton’s novel Mickey7, is ambitious, messy, strangely predictive about the time we’re in, and very much a Bong Joon-ho film, even though it is very different from Parasite.

Continue reading “Mickey 17 (2025) | REVIEW”

The Count of Monte Cristo (2024) | REVIEW

Pierre Niney as the title character in THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO — PHOTO: Pathé.

Directed by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière — Screenplay by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière.

Based on Alexandre Dumas’ novel of the same name, The Count of Monte Cristo is set in the 1800s, where we follow Edmond Dantès (played by Pierre Niney), a recently promoted sailor, who, during his wedding with his fiancee Mercédès (played by Anaïs Demoustier), is arrested and accused of being a Bonapartist. Though innocent, Edmond is betrayed by people he thought that he could trust and is, eventually, imprisoned indefinitely on a harsh prison island. When he starts talking to his neighboring inmate Abbé Faria (played by Pierfrancesco Favino), Edmond starts to plan for both an escape and sweet revenge on the people who wronged him.

Continue reading “The Count of Monte Cristo (2024) | REVIEW”