Parasite (2019) - Kang-ho Song, Joon-ho Bong

Joon-ho Bong is fast becoming one of my favorite directors. His latest, Parasite, won the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or, proving that I'm not alone in my thinking.

Clever, beautiful and genre-bending, this film stars Kang-ho Song, who plays the patriarch of a poverty-stricken family that includes actors So-dam Park, Woo-sik Choi and Hye-jin Jang. Song is a favorite of Bong's and has appeared in five out of Bong's eight films.

This is a film about a poverty-stricken but clever family that entrenches themselves into a wealthy home. One by one, each gets the next hired into the "castle in the sky" through trickery and cunning. The wealthy family, with an air of naïveté, glides through life, tossing decisions, groceries and orders with abandon into their shopping cart of a life, with little thought towards consequences.

There are real moments of humor--possibly my favorite was Jang's imitation of the North Korean dictator.

One of the most perilous scenes was wrought with a tunnel of a stairway that radiates the unknown and the unacknowledged. Turning metaphors on their heads, a tunneled staircase with its looming light is a portent of doom and water becomes a carrier of stench and disease. Trigger warning: if you were a victim of Harvey or similar events, beware.

With Escher-like stairs taking us up and down between subterraneans and the high place this mythopoeic warning cautions us of the space between the haves and the have nots and what exactly supports who.

Learn the real meaning of Jail Bait: Bates Motel (Vera Farmiga, Freddie Highmore)

I'm watching Bates Motel and thinking this is The Goldbergs with guns.

The prequel to Psycho, Bates Motel examines the guilt-ridden relationship between Norman and his mother, Norma Bates. Yes, I said that. Norman and Norma.

It's that same kind of ludicrous, over-the-top awfulness that makes the show so spectacularly creepy.

It reminds me of a course I took at UT on horror when I learned that the very things that make us happy will also scare us to death. Think about it: clowns, dolls, mannequins.

The show does a great job of explaining why Norman, played by Freddie Highmore, is so screwed up. Partly his mother, partly his genetics, partly his mental state, he couldn't look more like Anthony Perkins.

Norma Bates, played by Academy-award nominated Vera Farmiga, is like a hyperbolic mash-up of Donna Reed and Mad Men's January Jones. One minute she's like a streak of sunlight; the next, she's swirling debris in her wake. And then there's her obsessive cleaning.

And it has a weird, anachronistic feel to it with its smart phones and 50s dressware. The set is an incredible recreation of Hitchcock's set.

One fun fact, after reading the trivia on the IMDb site, I learned that the house is based on an Ed Hopper painting, The House by the Road.

With 3 seasons under its belt, its a great show to binge watch.

Watch it on Amazon Prime Instant Video.

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The Orphanage / El Orfanato (2007) - Spanish

Heart Rate: YYYY

With 31 wins and 30 nominations, this Spanish gothic thriller is excellent.

A woman returns with her husband and her adopted, ailing son, Simón, to her childhood orphanage. Odd sounds begin to emanate from the house and the little boy, Simón, has two imaginary friends.

You guessed it--he sees dead people.

But his parents just think he is playing. So they ignore Simón and continue with their plans to open up a home for children with special needs.

In the meantime, an old woman comes to visit, hinting at a knowledge of the orphanage's past and a penchant for Simón.

The day of the opening, she gets into a fight with her little boy and orders him to stay in his room. Later, when she comes back to bring him down to the party, she looks for him. Suddenly, she is attacked by a child wearing a scarecrow mask and locked into the bathroom.

When she is finally released from the bathroom, Simón has disappeared. For six months they search, but to no avail. What happens next is astounding . . .

NOTE: the trailer makes it look more gorey than it actually is--it is more suspenseful and mysterious than "BOO! scary". There are maybe two gross scenes but you have plenty of warning and can hide your eyes.