Parasite (2019)

Rating: 9/10 (5 February 2020)

Directed by Bong Joon-ho. Starring Song Kang-ho, Choi Woo-shik, Chang Hyae-jin, Park So-dam, Cho Yeo-jeong, Lee Sun-kyun, Lee Jung-eun, Jeong Ji-so, Park Myung-hoon, Jung Hyeon-jun, Park Seo-joon, Park Geun-rok. (R)
Teen-aged Choi, from a lower-class, unemployed family, deceives his way into a position as tutor for the daughter within the prosperous Park family; soon, the rest of his family begins ingratiating (and insinuating) themselves into the Park's lives. To tell more would spoil the pleasures of this deliciously demented parable on class, greed, prejudice and more. As expected from a Bong Joon-ho film, the tone boldly changes at will (mostly between hysterical satire and nerve-wracking thriller), but the transitions are more fluid than ever before for the talented filmmaker--or perhaps it's just because the story and technique is so gripping. Meticulously designed and flawlessly performed by its cast (the first foreign-language group to ever score the ensemble cast award from the Screen Actors Guild), its audacious tangle of ideas and statements packaged with artful, precise elegance. Some of the metaphors come off as shopworn in their exactness, but the film is so otherwise ingeniously constructed that it takes effort to recall in the aftermath exactly how the incidents all piled up. Amusing scriptwriting workshop exercise idea: present the first twenty minutes and last twenty minutes of the movie and see how someone tries to navigate a connection between the endpoints.
91/100