The Handmaiden

With the aid of a supplanted maid, a conman schemes to marry a timid heiress living under guard of her depraved book dealing uncle. Approached from different angles and perceptions in a plot that keeps gently twisting, Chan-wook Park's The Handmaiden is sumptuous, explicit, and involving with an excellent cast, great production design, and a completely unique and sometimes overkill approach.

*** 1/2 out of ****

Stoker

In a set-up very similar to Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, a disturbed young woman (Mia Wasikowska), who just lost her father and is also contending with an unhinged mother (Nicole Kidman), suspects something sinister about her visiting uncle (also named Uncle Charlie, and played by Matthew Goode) and finds herself being diabolically attracted to him. Stoker was written by Wentworth Miller (of TV's Prison Break, of all things) and is the first American film from South Korean director Chan-wook Park, whose Oldboy was just recently bastardized by Spike Lee. The film is excellently crafted, exceedingly dark, and features several nicely crafted scenes. However, this picture is all style and no substance whatsoever and makes less than honorable demands of the usually captivating and seemingly sweet Wasikowska, which is disappointing considering how vacuous and unlikable this film is.

Oldboy

After being arrested for being drunk and disorderly, a Seoul businessman is kidnapped and imprisoned in a hotel room. While held captive, he is framed for his wife's murder, his daughter is sent to live with foster parents, and he vows retribution on his captor as he begins to study his television and turn himself into a killing machine. After 15 years of imprisonment, he meets a young girl who helps him find the man responsible. When he finally reaches him, he tells the man he has only five days to unravel the mystery of his imprisonment before the young girl, and everyone else he's ever loved will be murdered. "Oldboy" is a stylish, violent, energetic, devastating, and very Asian film from director Chan-wook Park. Min-sik Choi does an excellent job in the brutal role of Oh Dae-su and Hye-jeong Kang is just as fine in the equally harsh part of Mi-do. The film is largely off-putting, and at first is disjointed and hard to follow. However, when the plot threads begin to come together, the film really takes off, and there are many wonderfully realized scenes (I particularly liked when Dae-su was retracing his steps both in his memory and in the present during a revelatory scene). With the Hollywood machine, we become so accustomed to seeing the same product churned out week after week so that when something highly original comes to our attention, it can be jarring and startling. "Oldboy" is a unique film that shocks with its audacity and originality, and is highly entertaining once we regain are senses and start to keep pace.