Hong Sang-soo's Hat Trick
In The Novelist's Film, Hong explores the meaningful things people share and inspire by virtue of simply engaging with one another.


Those perfect Summer or Fall days. The sun is shining, the temperature is JUST right, and you've got nothing else to do. Therefore, isn't it time to get outside and take a nice stroll through the park, or along the shoreline (should you be that fortunate), or even just around the neighborhood? Sure. BUT.....if one lives in the America found in the newest film adaptation of the work from horror author/cultural icon Stephen King.....doing this SHOULD be the LAST thing you hope to find yourself engaged with.
That's the reality--and it is one DARK, deeply disturbing, and totally anarchic one--that is ultimately revealed and traversed through via this newly released feature film from director Francis Lawrence (majority of the "Hunger Games" franchise, "Red Sparrow"). Most assuredly borrowing some baseline premises and thematic tangents from the former while placing a decidedly edgier and more harshly, violently visceral content onto the screen, this is one weighty effort that won't, most likely, make a lot of people's "MUST SEE AGAIN" list.

In a dystopian 1970s America, fifty teenage boys take part in a deadly annual walking contest, forced to maintain a minimum pace or be executed, until only one survivor remains.
In The Novelist's Film, Hong explores the meaningful things people share and inspire by virtue of simply engaging with one another.
'Blue Beetle' is another solid addition to the superhero film canon.
The cultural insensitivity of 'Slumberland' is discreet, and can be easily overlooked in CGI extravaganza.