Parasite (2019)

"At the beginning of Parasite, the latest masterfully thrilling dissection of capitalism’s flaws from South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho, the twentysomething brother and sister – Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik) and Ki-jung (Park So-dam) – of a fiscally bereft South Korean family squeeze into a nook above their family’s cluttered bathroom with their phones, trying to scavenge free Wi-Fi. It is an apt introduction – cruel but everyday, more cheerful than grim – to a film that uses space, architecture, and the way it reflects circumstances and the resulting actions of people as a defining force. Bong, who used a progression of increasingly privileged train carriages as a metaphor for inequality in 2013’s Snowpiercer, is a masterful 21st century filmmaker: a subversive with a taste for genre, audacious in his shared implications."

"On paper, Parasite may look a familiar beastie—chronicling the divide between haves and have-nots (hello, other films by director Bong Joon-ho), it’s a Palme d’Or-winning tale about a down-on-their-luck family, none of whom are averse to a scam (hi, last year’s Cannes winner Shoplifters). But surface similarities be damned, Parasite charts its own course, into some unexpected territory and burrowing right into your head."

"Bong is back and on brilliant form, but he is unmistakably, roaringly furious, and it registers because the target is so deserving, so enormous, so 2019: "Parasite" is a tick fat with the bitter blood of class rage."

"It grips from first frame to last."

"You expect the whole enterprise to come crashing down around his ears, but this is a film-maker in total control of his craft."

"Parasite gets its tendrils into you."

"Parasite is a masterclass in writing and narrative control. That a film as funny, subversive and relevant as this can still win the Cannes Palme d'Ór makes me very happy indeed."

"As an escalating freak show of tension, surprise and class rage, "Parasite" would make a terrific double bill with Jordan Peele's "Us," which it matches and perhaps even surpasses in pact."

"Parasite is generally gripping and finely crafted, standing up well as Bong's most mature state-of-the-nation statement since Memories of Murder in 2003."

"...the work of a director intoxicatingly in his element."