Like most of America, this was my first exposure to Bong Joon-Ho, the director who won the 2019 Best Picture Oscar for Parasite. I watched it in a friend’s basement in New Haven, Indiana sometime in 2008 and loved it immediately. It’s one of the few monster movies I’m aware of in which the monster appears in the first five minutes and somehow remains scary. It’s  also about family dynamics and failure and falling down, literally and figuratively, and it’s hilariously funny in a classic, slapstick-y way that recalls the silent films of the 1920s. These are all good reasons to watch it, but what you’re really after here is spending some time with Song Kang-ho, who is just really fucking great at… everything, pretty much. We open on him as the constantly sleepy fuck-up son of a snack stand vendor. From there, we go a lot of places – fugitive, distraught father, reluctant patient, monster warrior, Buster-Keaton-style physical comedian. They’re all good. He’s all good. You should watch this movie. It will make you happy. 

I had the pleasure of re-watching The Host at the Music Box of Horrors at the Drive-In. The Music Box of Horrors is, hands-down, my favorite event in Chicago, and I was genuinely thrilled to see it pivot to a Covid-friendly venue this year. Tickets are still available here. Please consider giving them your money so that they may continue to do the rad things that they do. If we’re all very good and ask nicely, maybe they will someday make my fondest dream a reality and reboot The Loser’s Club podcast’s Stephen King marathon from 2018. For that to happen, however, they need to stay open. Invest in the things you want more of.