Wednesday, February 22, 2023
Decision to Leave      South Korea
Location: SilverCity
Showtimes: 6:30 & 9:15 pm

Director: Park Chan-Wook
Cast: Park Hae-il, Tang Wei, Lee Jung-hyun
Running Time: 138 minutes
Language: Korean with English subtitles

Awards: Austin Film Critics Association: Best International Film; Cannes Film Festival: Best Director; Chicago Film Critics Association Awards: Best Foreign Language Film, Best Cinematography; National Board of Review: Top 5 International Awards; Korean Association of Film Critics Awards: Best Actress, Tang Wei. 34 wins, 188 nominations

“Every frame is like a painting, with hints to character motivation and plot twists.” Peter Howell, Toronto Star

After his dazzling Vengeance Trilogy (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, and Lady Vengeance) drew genre film fans into a world of graphic hyper-violence and powerful dark passions, Park Chan-wook elevated the tone and style of his suspense thrillers with The Handmaiden. He’s brought that same refined elegance to his latest seductive masterwork, and we can only be grateful.

Decision to Leave is an exceptional love story and a sublime noir thriller that invites the audience not to seek a culprit or a solution to the riddles proposed by the plot but to get lost in a mesmerizing tangle of tension, slow-burning desire and subtle emotions. The resulting experience is a personal and highly satisfying immersion in pure cinema.

Everything starts with a fall. A man who was climbing a mountain is found dead, crashed on the ground. Tragedy? Suicide? Homicide? Handsome detective Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) investigates the mystery. He is a gentle man, happily married and devoted to his work, the youngest inspector in Busan, a city of unsolved cases where crime rides high.

Making the case even smokier is Seo-rae (Tang Wei), the elusive, charismatic, and impossibly attractive Chinese wife of the deceased, whose charm creeps under Hae-jun’s skin. In ways he could have never envisioned, their broken conversations — deciphered through smart phone translations, her composed gestures, and mysterious allure — upset his life little by little, making him fall mentally and emotionally.

Wei’s performance intrigues and captivates, her black-widow role seemingly tailored to her magnetic personality, shining in the splendid work of indisputable Korean master Park.

Wednesday, February 8, 2023
The Inspection    USA
Location: SilverCity
Showtimes: 6:30 & 8:30 pm

Director: Elegance Bratton
Cast: Jeremy Pope, Gabrielle Union, Raúl Castillo
Running Time: 95 minutes
Language: English

Advisory: themes of homophobia, violence, sexually suggestive scenes, coarse language

Awards: African-American Film Critics Association (AAFCA), Best Actor, Jeremy Pope; National Board of Review: Top 10 Independent Films; Palm Springs International Film Festival: Directors to Watch. Santa Barbara International Film Festival: Virtuoso Award; Jeremy Pope. Two other wins, 31 nominations

“Jeremy Pope gives a searing performance as the young man lacking direction, with Gabrielle Union a powerful force as the mother who initially disowns him.”---Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times

At war with his sense of belonging, Ellis French (Jeremy Pope) is a sensitive young Black man who enlists in the Marine Corps to pull himself out of homelessness and gain the love of his dogged and combatant mother (played by scene-stealing Gabrielle Union). 

While the film takes place in the age of America’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue” policy, which directed that applicants to the military not be asked about sexual orientation, homophobia is deeply entrenched in all aspects of service, from boot camp to battle. 

Once enlisted, French struggles to conceal his sexual identity — as well as his invading attraction to his drill instructor (Raúl Castillo) — while under the watchful eye of the belligerent and hard-lining unit commander (Bokeem Woodbine).

The Inspection is writer-director Elegance Bratton’s retelling of his own incredible story. After being kicked out of his mother’s New Jersey home at the age of 16 for being gay and subsequently living in housing precariously for a decade, he joined the Marines, where he served as a combat cameraman. 

Bratton is ably assisted by his director of photography Lachlan Milne (Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Minari, Stranger Things). Emmy and Tony nominee Pope (One Night in Miami) portrays French with exquisite aplomb. Bratton’s powerful fiction debut is a heartfelt love letter to survival and staying true to oneself despite adversity on all fronts.