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Bong Joon Ho, dir. Mickey 17 (Warner Brothers, 2025) Reviewed by Merry Byrd (Virginia State University) Mickey 17 is a delightful addition to writer/ director/producer Bong Joon Ho's oeuvre. The craft itself resembles a freight vessel: a cast-off submarine or an enclosed barge, more than a spacecraft. Four years later, once the ship reaches the planet Niflheim, the outlook brightens but only when the ice-covered planet reflects the sun's rays.

[...]it is merely an expanded version of the threat found in The Host. The three aforementioned textual elements are in distinct contrast with The Host's narrower concerns, which include the mutant beast, the strictly South Korean main cast, and the American-made environmental crisis that leads to the mutation of the film's monster. Bong's strategy emerged in expanding upon the national tensions of The Host and repositioning them for global audiences in Snowpiercer. [...]Bong is playing an integral role in shaping the early filmic language of nascent trans-national blockbuster cinema.

Both feature oblivious carousers before a flood, sleeping homeowners, and domestic workers caught unaware by a returning homeowner. While Matthew 24:36-51 envisions an external divine force meting just judgment, Parasite centers on an immanent catastrophe that injures indiscriminately. Because characters do not experience rewards or punishments in accordance with their merit, Parasite has a tragic dimension absent in Matthew 24:36-51. To encourage clearer perception of hidden perils, both Parasite and Matthew 24:36-51 utilize imagery of oblivious carousers before a flood, sleeping homeowners, and domestic workers caught unaware by a returning homeowner.4 While Matthew 24:36-51 envisions the righteous and wayward receiving fitting rewards from a just judge, Parasite features an indiscriminately destructive catastrophe triggered by conditions of capitalism. Parasite's apocalyptic layer is immanent because economic disparities-rather than an external judge-catalyze the film's catastrophe. Since the characters in Parasite do not experience reward or punishment according to their merits, the film has a tragic dimension absent from Matthew 24:36-51. \"6 Within Biblical Studies, it has been notoriously complicated to define apocalyptic literature.7 The definition proposed by a working group led by John Collins in the 1970s has proven fruitful: \"Apocalypse\" is a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial, insofar as it involves another, supernatural world.8 While Collins' definition pertains to entire texts that display this genre, a wider range of texts share some of these characteristics. [...]when discussing apocalyptic traits in Matthew, Leopold Sabourin emphasizes that the heart of \"apocalyptic thought\" lies in divine revelations about history, including how a new age of God's reign will follow a future judgment.12 While Jesus' teaching in Matthew 24:36-51 focuses on this coming judgment, he does not directly answer the disciples' question about its timing. Since the timing of this judgment cannot be known, Jesus stresses that its arrival will be unexpected. When comparing the \"little apocalypse\" in the Synoptic Gospels, Cook contends that Matthew 24 highlights \"Christian wakefulness\" the most.13 Thus, Matthew 24:36-51 's focus on living attentive to a coming judgment is a distinctive emphasis among the synoptic versions of the \"little apocalypse.\" Since adjusting behavior in light of a future judgment is a hallmark of apocalyptic worldviews, this aspect of Matthew 24:36-51 emerges as a prominent apocalyptic feature.

In 2001, Korean cinema's market share in Korea exceeded that of Hollywood blockbusters, and the market dominance of domestic films surged to 60.9 percent in 2006. The argument suggests that the status of Korean cinema in the US film market has undergone significant changes in recent decades. [...]this article considers two early attempts to introduce South Korean cinema in the United States, Chunhyang (Im Kwon-taek, 2000) and Nowhere to Hide (Lee Myung-se, 1999), as well as early New York– and Los Angeles–based art film distributors’ efforts to diversify their Asian repertoires. The festival “culminated with Im's visit to Los Angeles and to the university, where he was presented with a lifetime achievement award by Arthur Hiller who was at the time president of the Academy of Motion Pictures” (James 9).

This essay reads Bong Joon-ho’s film Parasite and its surrounding discourses as significant texts for reconsidering US imperialism in Asia without recentering the US and while creating space to consider an alternative Asian American critique. It analyzes Parasite ’s representation of the haunting memories of the Korean War and the US as a figure of modernity by placing the film in longer histories of the development of the South Korean film industry in the 1950s, South Korea’s rapid industrialization, and US support of South Korean military regimes in the 1960s and 1970s and the social movements that followed in the 1980s, protesting the unequal class structures. Borrowing Jodi Kim’s formulation of the Cold War as an epistemological project, I investigate how the shared lack of attention to the film’s representation of the Korean War in selected reviews gestures to complex US interventions in Asia. By examining the film’s representation of the history of the secret bunker and North Korean nuclear threat, I argue that these “Cold War’s ruins” productively foreground the protracted Korean War and US militarism in Asia. Building on Lisa Yoneyama’s transpacific critique, I suggest that these ruins of geohisorical violence elucidate the otherwise unrecognized transpacific entanglements.

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the popularity and acceptability of Indian and South Korean films among Chinese audiences, highlighting the dynamics of film globalization within Mainland China. The study aims to investigate the appeal of Indian and South Korean cinemas among Chinese moviegoers. Data were collected through a questionnaire-based survey with 1963 respondents. The findings indicate that 45% of respondents regularly watch Indian films, while 34% frequently watch South Korean films. A positive correlation was identified between increased monthly film consumption and heightened interest in non-Hollywood/non-Western movies. Respondents reported various sources for discovering new foreign films, expressing general satisfaction with the genres of South Korean and Indian cinema. Additionally, the study revealed that the thematic content and narrative structures of these films offer learning opportunities for the Chinese film industry. Notably, Indian actor Aamir Khan and South Korean director Bong Joon-ho emerged as particularly popular figures among Chinese audiences. The survey underscores those Chinese moviegoers value high-quality films, regardless of their country of origin. The findings suggest that enhancing the accessibility and promotion of Indian and South Korean films in China could further diversify Chinese film consumption and foster cross-cultural learning and appreciation. Plain Language Summary This study aimed to investigate the popularity of Indian and South Korean movies among Chinese moviegoers. The researchers used a questionnaire to collect data from 1963 participants. The study found that 45% and 34% of respondents watched South Korean and Indian movies in cinemas. Moreover, the researchers discovered a positive correlation between increased monthly film consumption and a greater interest in non-Hollywood/non-Western movies. Indian actor Aamir Khan and South Korean director Bong Joon-ho were the most popular among Chinese audiences. The study mainly implies that Chinese moviegoers appreciate quality films from different countries. However, it is important to note that the study has some limitations, as the sampling method was non-probability, and the sources and time were limited. The findings could benefit filmmakers, distributors, and industry stakeholders who want to reach the Chinese market.

Winning more than 300 awards and overachieving at the box office worldwide, Parasite remains a perfect marriage of arthouse and mainstream, social commentary and entertainment. However, the rapturous reception of the film belies the odd paucity of critical conversation, eclipsed by an explosion of \"opinions.\" This article examines the way Parasite, by offering unlimited pleasures of interpretation of its elaborate cinematic details, leaves the theme of social disparity unchallenged: a process that would be best illuminated by Walter Benjamin's phrase, \"the aestheticization of politics.\" The first part borrows from David Harvey and Bruno Latour and examines the film's spatialization of social inequality within two opposite dwellings. The second part analyzes Parasite's merging of smell and poverty, using Jacques Ranciere's term, \"the distribution of the sensible.\" The last part delves into the things abundant in Parasite, how the exotic Korean objects designed to supplement action and characterization overpower the film and thus erase sociopolitical potentialities. The fact that Parasite was financed by a South Korean chaebol, which ironically created the film's artistic aura, shows that contemporary filmmaking cannot break free from neoliberalism but has become a cultural \"parasite.\"

Parasite speaks to the public because its narrative is centered on the practice of today's ubiquitous religion, global capitalism.The relationship between religion and capitalism, or capitalism as a religion, is a classic subject of religious studies, since Max Weber's Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism. Among many other works on religion and capitalism, I draw particularly on Walter Benjamin's 1921 fragment, \"Capitalism Religion.\"

The purpose of the present article is to study the social implications of repetitive metaphors in the film and of the word Parasite (2019) and to observe what makes the life of a lower-class family parasitic within a typical capitalistic society. In the mainstream discussion, the metaphorical functions of such words as ‘smell,’ ‘insects,’ ‘the rock,’ and ‘the party’ are assessed within the context of the film. The central questions of the article, therefore, are: What are the recurrent and metaphorical motifs in the plotline and how can their implications be related to the overall theme of the film? How does Parasite exhibit the clash of classes in a capitalist society? To answer the questions, the present study offers a comprehensive analysis of its recurring metaphors as well as its treatment of the characters who visibly belong to two completely different classes. Through a complex story of two families whose fate gets intermingled, Bong Joon-ho masterfully presents a metaphoric picture of a society where inequality is rampant and the poor can only experience temporary happiness in the shadow of the rich (represented by the Park family).

FQ columnist Bilal Qureshi reflects upon the significance of Bong Joon-ho's Parasite's Oscar victory over the presumed favorite, Sam Mendes' World War I drama 1917 for both the film industry and the culture at large. In keeping with the premise of his column \"Elsewhere,\" which explores the ways in which cinematic works are activated and reframed by the national, cultural, and aesthetic geography of where they are experienced, Qureshi offers a fresh perspective on these two films based upon his experience of watching 1917 in Dubai, with Arabic subtitles and an ethnically diverse audience. Viewed in this Middle Eastern context, a film dismissed as passé and traditional by U.S. critics revealed itself as urgent and resonant, transcending differences of language and geography to offer a potent reminder of why the pain and loss of war still matters.