I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK (2006) Review

Time: 107 Minutes
Cast:
Rain as Park Il-soon
Im Soo-jung as Cha Young-goon
Director: Park Chan-wook

After his bloody `revenge’ trilogy, Korean director Park Chan-Wook directs this deliriously daft rom-com. Young-goon (Im Soo-jung) works in a maddening dead-end job making transistor radios. Flipping, she insists she is a cyborg and that she only needs to lick batteries for sustenance. She is sent to a psychiatric ward where she is befriended by schizophrenic kleptomaniac Il-Sun (Rain). The two damaged souls fall in love.

I first heard of this movie from it’s very distinct and weird title, which definitely made it stand out. Then I heard that Park Chan-wook directed it which interests me, the movies I had seen from him are great, and I never heard of I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK before. I decided to check it out for Park’s involvement alone. It definitely wasn’t what I expected, and while I don’t love it, I do think it’s quite good.

This movie is basically a romantic comedy that takes place in a mental hospital and about a girl who thinks she’s a cyborg, and much of the movie spends time with her going out with another patient. The story is not unfamiliar, focusing on humans who are longing to connect in a world of malnourished relationships. It’s definitely the lightest of Park’s movies if only because of how dark all his other movies are. With that said still, it does have some Park elements, a little bit of revenge and some darker moments. It is a very quirky and bizarre movie, absurd, creative and with a lot of humour, yet heartfelt and sensitive. It does have quite a bit of charm to it, and it’s like if you mixed Amelie with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and it was directed by Wes Anderson. Most the characters in the movie are confirmed to be insane and are largely impossible to identify with, but they are still fully realised and complex characters. Something interesting is that compared to other similar movies, it’s less focused on these people escaping or trying to find sanity, instead focusing more on them accepting themselves, trying to find happiness and carry on. Whether you like this film depends on if you like atmospheric films and if you like the atmosphere of this particular film. Quite frankly, not a lot happens plot wise even when stuff does happen. The story was the characters, so your enjoyment also depends on how engaged you are with the characters. To be honest, the movie doesn’t connect with me that much. It does try to be whimsical very hard, and the quirks weren’t enough to keep me engaged. The humour wasn’t quite my thing either and didn’t always work for me. The movie is just following two idiosyncratic characters in a mental institution doing their own things for 90 minutes and that wasn’t enough for me. The characters don’t do a lot other than being weird and I wasn’t particularly interested in them. It is also a little too cartoony and light to actually get into it (surprising really). I will however give credit to the portrayal of mental health patients in this movie, they aren’t victimised or villainised. Despite being an absurd and quirky comedy, they display them in a somewhat serious way.

Generally I thought the acting was good. The highlights were the leads in Im Soon-jung and Rain playing the roles of Cha Young-goon and Park Il-soon respectively, the former being a woman who believes to be a cyborg, and the latter a patient who is a thief. They both do great jobs in the lead roles and have a comfortable and believable chemistry in the forefront.

Park Chan-wook is a great director and once again his work is great here. The technical aspects definitely help the movie work as well as it does. There was a lot of energetic and creative work behind the camera, with some stellar cinematography. The use of colour was fantastic, and the production design was stellar. The fantasy sequences definitely go all out and are very fantastical and over the top, which is fitting considering that most of the movie takes place from Young-goon’s perspective and mindset. Finally, the score is great and really fits the movie well.

I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK is currently my least favourite film from Park Chan-wook but it’s by no means a bad movie. It’s acted well, its charming and I’m glad I watched it. I guess it just wasn’t for me, I wasn’t as invested with the story and characters as I would’ve liked, maybe I just prefer Park when he’s doing darker movies. The movie isn’t quite for everyone, if you’re not a big fan of movies with any degree of quirkiness, I’m not sure you’ll get into this one. However if you like any of Park’s other movies I do think it is at least worth checking out.

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Speed Racer (2008) Review

Time: 135 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence
Cast:
Emile Hirsch as Speed Racer
Christina Ricci as Trixie
John Goodman as Pops Racer
Susan Sarandon as Mom Racer
Matthew Fox as Racer X
Benno Fürmann as Inspector Detector
Hiroyuki Sanada as Mr. Musha
Rain as Taejo Togokahn
Richard Roundtree as Ben Burns
Director: The Wachowskis

Born into a family business of race cars, Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) is one of the track’s hot stars. Sitting at the wheel of his Mach 5, he consistently deflates the competition. When Speed turns down an offer from the head of Royalton Industries, he uncovers a secret. Powerful moguls fix the races to boost profits. Hoping to beat the executive, Speed enters the same arduous cross-country race that killed his brother.

The Wachowskis haven’t always been making the best movies in recent years. For every Cloud Atlas they make there’s a Jupiter Ascending. Even though Jupiter Ascending was a really terrible movie (hilariously bad) I don’t actually think it’s their worst movie. That dishonour has to go to Speed Racer, a movie that oddly enough seemed to have been gaining a cult following recently. With its conflicting tone, obnoxious style it was honestly a real pain to sit through. I’m not sure how this movie could end up being this bad with the amount of talented people involved.

I never really found this story interesting at all, not once did it really grab my attention. This film really doesn’t know what it wants to be. On one hand it goes all out crazy with it’s fast and in-your-face style and it’s obnoxious and childish comic relief (which I’ll get to later) but at other times it tries to be serious. I haven’t watched the cartoon it was based on but I have a feeling that it never should have been turned into a live action movie, certain shows don’t translate well to the big screen. This movie is way longer than it needed to be, over 2 hours long, after a while it somehow became boring. The dialogue was most of the time cheesy, the comedy was really bad, but it mostly comes from the comedic relief, which I will go into more later on. So overall the story was uninteresting, the dialogue was cheesy and often terrible, and the comedy was awful.

Most of the actors are fine here, but I have no idea what many of them are actually doing in this movie. Like, what is John Goodman, Christina Ricci and Susan Sarandon doing here? They are way too talented to be in this movie. The acting for the most part is tolerable, so in a sense its really the best part of the movie. With that said, it also has one of the worst parts of the movie, the comic relief, which consists of a kid and a monkey, which are some of the worst comic relief I’ve seen in a movie, they are worse than Kate Capshaw in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Jar Jar Binks from Phantom Menace. That’s saying a lot. They offer absolutely nothing to the movie. They aren’t likable, they aren’t funny, they are obnoxious, there’s absolutely nothing to like about them, yet the film constantly forces them into scenes and dedicates entire scenes to their antics and ‘comedic moments’. I hated them.

I didn’t think the movie would be very good going in but I thought that there would at least good action scenes as the Wachowskis are involved. However that’s not the case, every car action scene looks like a McDonalds toy commercial, not a big budget movie. The way they filmed action wasn’t very entertaining. There were 2 fight scenes, the first was fine but the second was absolutely obnoxious. Even the editing is horrible, during driving (or whatever) there are heads that scroll in front of the screen for no reason. If there’s one thing that really annoyed me about the movie, it’s the style and direction. It was so obnoxious.

I’m of the opinion that Speed Racer is the Wachowski’s worst movie (yes, worse than Jupiter Ascending). The style and editing was obnoxious, the comic relief was irritating, the action scenes were poorly filmed and the film somehow becomes tiring in the worst possible way. The only aspect which didn’t flat out suck was the acting from most of the actors. Aside from that, I have to say that Speed Racer is one of the most painful movies I’ve watched, and that is saying a lot.