Joon Hwan Jang. Which is to say I just watched Save the Green Planet. I mean, yeah, I’m a fool for Korean movies these last couple of years — not my fault, they’re just exploding, or I’m riding the wake of some explosion when everybody cool was watching Korean stuff, I don’t know — but, man, I went into this expecting something along the lines of Shaolin Soccer, with maybe some The Host mixed in. And then this hit me in a wholly different way. Easily the best I’ve seen since Leslie Vernon (which, as I’ve said, was far and away the best since Feast, which is of course that than which there can hardly be any better, or anything even close), but that was only a month or so ago, I guess, and I want to say something bigger.
How about: in my desert island movie list (provided my desert island has an entertainment center, and that I’ve got some leisure time there between eating gulls and finding fresh water and going crazy and joining the dagon tribe), this is right up there, now, with Jacob’s Ladder and 12 Monkeys and Lost Highway and Life is Beautiful and Donnie Darko and Scream and Tin Cup and Se7en and Leap of Faith and (yes) Oldboy. Not that my personal little cinematic pantheon’s worth anything to anybody but me. But that’s how good Save the Green Planet was, and is. To me. Going to have to go out and pawn something, nab this DVD:
[ and yeah, ‘Tin Cup?’ I know. But man, at the end, when Costner’s batting those golf balls up into the face of everything sane, my heart follows them into the air each time. not that I can even tolerate to be around people who are talking golf, much less stoop to play it. and of course Leap of Faith doesn’t need any defending, except to say that I seriously considered putting Doc Hollywood there instead of it ]