In the year 1927 silent films are what made up Hollywoodland and George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) dominated the screens. Always by his side are his loyal dog and longtime producer Al Zimmer (John Goodman). His latest film was a smashing hit and during a public photo shoot for it, a lady from the crowd bumps into him that catches his eye. The next morning photos of the two together are on newspapers, overnight a star is born.

Her name is Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), a name that will soon be as big as George Valentin’s in Hollywood. She tries out to be a dancer in his next film and he grants her that role. George would have never guessed that by giving Peppy her first break that she would soon surpass him in fame, but she does.

His producer Al from the film studio he works at informs him that they are switching to the future, talking films. It is a future George does not want to be a part of, he believes it is just a fad. Peppy rises to fame as a talkie while the silent era is quickly diminishing leaving George without a job.

To make the situation worse, the Great Depression hits so the money he is living off from his previous success is now gone. He auctions off all of his valuables, the auctioneer says, “Congratulations! It’s all sold, you’ve got nothing left!” Nothing left is right, wife leaves him and he has to down-size to a studio apartment. It occurs to him one day that he has not paid his butler (Ed Lauter) in over a year, so he is forced to make the hard decision to fire him.

The scene that stood out to me the most is when his wife was leaving him because he would not talk to his wife. It was a metaphor for him not conforming as a talkie film actor. And on similar note, another stand out scene is when he had a dream that he was no longer able to speak, he knows that he belongs in the silent era.

Peppy knows that she would not be a star without George. She not only respects him but has always had a romantic connection to him as well. With George going through a riches-to-rags scenario that turns him on the bottle, will she still have the same feelings she once had about him? When you are at the top, it is hard to see the people at the bottom.

Jean Dujardin was the perfect lead for The Artist. He has the face and body language that silent films demand. In this film, his role required him to be charming, funny, prideful, sad and angry without the luxury of speaking. So it was well deserved when Dujardin won best actor at Cannes 2011.

The Oscar nominations will be announced tomorrow but the buzz around the internet is The Artist has a great chance for the top prize of Best Picture. I would not be surprised if it also won Best Original Screenplay and Best Original Score. Also, if animals could win, I think the dog would have a good chance for Best Supporting…Animal.

The Artist proves that a film does not have to have words in order to achieve greatness. When done correctly as in this case, silence can be just as engaging and rewarding as speech is. Similar to a good foreign film when you forget you are reading subtitles, you will likely be so enthralled with the film to notice there is no audible dialogue.

To say that Joseph (Peter Mullan) has anger management issues is a huge understatement. There are random moments where his anger explodes out of control. He will be the first to say that he is not a good human being. In the very first scene we see Joseph getting so upset with his dog he ends up kicking it to death. Shortly after that he shatters a store’s window with a rock without reason.

Joseph spends much of his time around local pubs where it is not uncommon for him to get into fights with other people. He is an Irish widower whose wife died of cancer. But you get the sense that his aggression has been with him his whole life.

One day Joseph stumbles into a charity thrift shop that a young lady named Hannah (Olivia Colman) runs. Hannah is a proud Christian and is quick to offer him a prayer knowing that his man is lost in this world. She is one that forgives easily or so it seems. Joseph is a little perplexed as to Hannah’s kindness to a total stranger.

On the outside Hannah has a happy-go-lucky attitude but there is more to her than meets the eye. That is until you see her eye is bruised one day as she is opening up the shop. When asked about it she lies and said she fell. In the back, she is seen taking swigs of alcohol.

She is more like Joseph than you would believe. However, she is not the one with the anger issues or the abuser but rather the abused. Just like when Joseph came to her when he was at his lowest point Hannah comes to him at hers. Maybe he sees the damage he has done in the past through her but even when you see his kindness shine through, it is not without boundaries.

As you probably have guessed the black eye was not caused by her falling. It came from her husband James (Eddie Marsan) who beat her after seeing her merely talking to Joseph. This is the kind of man who comes home drunk, urinates on her purposely as she pretends to sleep and ignore it. But everyone has a cracking point where enough is enough, Hannah is reaching hers quickly.

Peter Mullan is undeniably exceptional in his performance as Joseph in Tyrannosaur. His unrelenting anger sets the whole bleak tone of the film. When the time called for it, which was not often, he showed his character had some kindness to it. Olivia Colman was just as equally as impressive.

Tyrannosaur is a grim tell-it-how-it-is kind film that is more of a character study than plot based. It is a brutal film that does not reward you with much salvation or uplifting message. Instead, the reward is the amazing performances by the cast members. It is one you have to be in the right mood to see.

Atafeh Hakimi (Nikohl Boosheri) is a rebellious teenager that comes from a wealthy family is best friends with Shireen Arshadi (Sarah Kazemy) who is being raised by her uncle. The two girls must keep their love a secret as such relationships are frowned upon in modern-day Iran. In the eyes of the government they are rebellious sinners.

The dream of running off to Dubai together is a frequent one. There they would get such freedoms like going to clubs, smoke and drink alcohol and listen to whatever music they wanted to. Atafeh knows of some of those places in Tehran but they believe they should not have to do such things in secret. One of the characters sums it up the best by saying, “What they were doing to the gays 30 years ago, they’re doing to you now.”

Atafeh’s brother Mehran (Reza Sixo Safai) returns home from drug rehab but has seemingly turned a new leaf shifting his focus on God. In fact, he grows distant from his family as he becomes so involved at the mosque. You can tell something is a little off with Mehran as a transformation in character begins.

I felt like the film had a few opportunties for the storyline to excel past the mediocrity. One such opportunity was when Mehran was using security cameras to spy on his family. Keshavarz could have expanded on that obsession he had to enhance the film’s plot.

Echoing what some have said about the film, one of the issues it has is that it shows many unnecessary erotic scenes. Some scenes seem to be shown for the pure sake of showing eroticism instead of further advancing the plot. In the end you have a film that is very sexy but often it was not needed.

Circumstance received a nomination for the John Cassavetes Award (an award that is given to a flim that is made for under $500,000) at this year’s Independent Spirit Awards. The film won the Audience Award at Sundance this year and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize. Those are pretty outstanding achievements for anyone not to mention a first-time filmmaker.

The biggest disappointment is that Circumstance had the potential for being a captive human rights film but it missed that mark. The real achievement here was on the production level, for the small budget the film allowed it felt well made, most notably the cinematography by Brian Rigney Hubbard. The ambition was there but the focus was not.

The film opens with a young boy named Cyril Catoul (Thomas Doret) who is attempting to call his father’s phone number but the number is not in service. He does not want to believe that his father has abandoned him. After repeated failed attempts he makes a run for it out of the foster care farm. The counselors barely catch Cyril when he is about to climb over the fenced in wall. All he wants to do is find his father.

Cyril is reunited with his lost bike when a kind stranger named Samantha (Cécile De France) returns it to him. Immediately, he hops on the bike to show off his tricks with it. He asks where Samantha found it and she insisted that the neighborhood boy bought it from Cyril’s father. But Cyril does not believe that his own father would sell the bike. To him it is obvious that someone in the neighborhood stole it to make some money selling it back.

Now equipped with his bike, Cyril rides around to all the local establishments that he and his father have visited in hopes that one of them would know of his father’s whereabouts. He tries a bakery, automotive shop and pub but no one has seen him in the last month nor knows where he would have gone.

Coming up empty handed on leads for where his father could be, he seeks help from the only person that he knows to trust, Samantha. She agrees to watch him on the weekends but will prove to be more challenging than it seems. Watching over any adolescent is not easy but it is exponentially more difficult when the child is in the troubled state Cyril is in.

With the help of Samantha he finally meets up with his father. They locate him at a restaurant that his is working at but seems very standoff-ish to Cyril when asked why he did not come back for him. He seems to want little to do with Cyril. He does not even give him a phone number that Cyril can call, instead says that he will have to call him. Cyril is okay with all of his father’s excuses, he is just happy to see him again.

It is sad when a father wants nothing to do with his own son and that is exactly the case here. Guy pulls Samantha aside after they stop by the restaurant. He tells her he can no longer see Cyril anymore. She suggests bringing his son even just once a month but still Guy refuses. Guy is coward enough not to tell Cyril the truth, instead he instructs Samantha to break the news. Samantha does not oblige and forces Guy to tell Cyril directly.

Obviously the news is devastating to the little boy. He fells abandoned and not wanted. Without a father figure in his live he is in danger of hanging around the wrong crowd. Which is exactly what happens when a local gang leader takes him under his wing. Samantha must give it her all to protect Cyril from negative influences.

We were never given the full background on Samantha which is a shame. She seemed to thoughtlessly accept Cyril into her life. When the first impression of Cyril was him bursting into a hospital lobby running from counselors it seems a little far-fetched that the next thing she does is locate and buy the kid’s old bike for him. One thing is for certain, there needs to be more Samantha’s in the world.

That being said, The Kid with a Bike feels more like a fairy tale than anything else. It does a great job identifying you with the young boy who just wants his father to be in his life. But ultimately it lacks in details and background information and it will make you wonder where the boy’s mother was this whole time.

Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas) is a brilliant plastic surgeon according to his colleagues. His specialty is facial and skin transplants. Brilliant he may be but we soon find out that his work closely resembles that of Frankenstein. The goal of Robert’s experiment is to create the perfect female body, he calls her Vera.

Vera Cruz (Elena Anaya) is locked up in a room in Doctor Robert Ledgard’s large mansion but we do not know why. She receives her food and reading material via a dumbwaiter. Surveillance cameras watch her every move and he handles her with tremendous care. She tries to commit suicide but again we do not know why. We must wait for Almodóvar’s masterfully crafted narrative to unfold for answers to such questions.

The new artificial skin Robert has created is resistant to every insect bite thus it can prevent diseases such as malaria. This is because it smells different from normal human skin so it repels mosquitoes from wanting to bite it. Also it cannot be burned easily due to using some pig cells to strengthen it. After he reveals his secret of using pig cells, the president of the institute of biotechnology informs him of how the bioethics of doing such a thing is forbidden then threatens to report him if he continues with this experiment.

While Robert is pondering what to do with Vera as her skin has been successfully healed from his transgenic therapy experiment, another part of the storyline develops. The primary servant of Robert, Marilia (Marisa Paredes), is reunited with her son Zeca (Roberto Álamo) who is trying to hide from local police for stealing jewelry. Zeca’s plan is to have Robert operate on his face so that he will not be recognizable by the police but Marilia quickly scolds him saying that Robert would never do the operation.

You get a sense that Marilia is afraid of her son just by their conversation which is then confirmed when she pulls a gun on him and instructs him to leave. She says to him, “You’re not my son. I just gave birth to you.” Zeca grabs the gun from her and notices Vera on the surveillance screen. Somehow she looks familiar to him. This is one of many plot thicken scenes that keep you engaged until the credits roll.

The difficult part of doing this review is not to give away any big clues. As with any good thriller/mystery, figuring out what happens is what makes it so entertaining. Almodóvar tells the story in a beautiful yet crafty way methodically giving you clues here and there. The thriller at times treads close to the line of horror but never quite crosses the line.

Almodóvar’s previous work has proven him as a cinematic artist whose eye for beauty is rarely surpassed. The Skin I Live In is no exception to that. It would be hard to walk away from the film without vivid images burned into your head, the styling is top notch (the perverse nature of the film adds to this as well).

The Skin I Live In would have ended better if it did not explain itself in the very last scene. I did not think it was needed, unless you were not paying attention during the film as it was alluded to on multiple occasions. That is really is my old compliant, and a small one at that, it ended about a minute too long. The film is an amazing yet bizarre thriller that involves a mad scientist creating perfect beauty as a way of filling a void in this life that results in a disturbing vengeance.

Geum-ja Lee (Yeong-ae Lee) is released from her thirteen and a half year prison sentence for kidnapping and murdering the boy Park Won-mo. She is presented with a plate of tofu upon her release; it is a tradition that symbolizes that she will never sin again. Instead of accepting this she smacks it out of the givers hand. An obvious hint that she will sin again and she wants redemption.

It is revealed later that Geum-ja Lee did not murder Park Won-mo after all, although she did help kidnap the boy, she did not commit the murder. We find this out when she incorrectly gives the color of the boy’s marble he played with. So why would someone lie about being a murderer and get thirteen years in prison for something they did not do? Eventually, we find out that she was blackmailed.

Geum-ja Lee had a baby named Jenny (Yea-young Kwon) when she was seventeen years old. She needed a place to stay so she called her English teacher at the time, Mr. Baek (Min-sik Choi). The film alludes that Mr. Baek blackmailed her with Jenny into confessing she was the sole person responsible for the kidnapping and murder. She does not see her daughter again until after her prison sentence.

Everyone that runs into Geum-ja Lee now tells her that they hardly recognize her because she has changed so much. Once a “kind hearted” girl is now a cold woman looking for vengeance. She openly admits that she plans to kill the man who put her in prison and the true murderer of Park Won-mo.

While she was in prison, she had a job of taking care of another inmate who needed to be fed. This inmate was a larger woman who often bullied other inmates into sexual favors and was generally unpleasant to be around. Over the course of three years of feeding her, we find out that Geum-ja Lee was putting bleach in with her food and one day her stomach could not handle it anymore and she died.

All the other inmates were happy she killed the bully and owed her a favor in return when they all get released. Geum-ja Lee redeems that favor as part of a plan to “kidnap” the kidnapper, Mr. Baek. While she is executing her plan to capture him and seek redemption, he is at the same time trying to capture her. So that is where I’ll stop the synopsis and make you watch the film to see how it unfolds. Although, I admit, half the fun of the film watching and figuring out what I have mentioned rather than how it ends.

In typical Chan-wook Park’s style, the scenes jump around a lot instead of following a linear narrative which makes some scenes seem unimportant at the time but later reveals the importance. That being said, this style of editing demands upmost attention to detail which some will not be bothered with. Like the other two films of the trilogy, re-watching Lady Vengeance would be necessary to full appreciate the film.

There are different versions of the film but I watched the one that the color of the scenes slowly fades to black and white by the end of the film. I found it to compliment the overall gloomy emotion that the characters felt with their vengeance very well. I highly recommend you watch this version of the film if you are given the choice. The visual style Chan-wook has is some of the best in cinema.

When comparing Lady Vengeance to the rest of the series I would say it is the weakest of them all. Oldboy completely blew my mind not just for the excellent story or great cinematography but how poetic and symbolic it was throughout. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance had a better overall plot. I found myself empathizing with the main character a lot less in this film than the other two.

That being said, when thinking of Lady Vengeance on it’s own and comparing it just to other people’s work, it would be a stand out. Chan-wook Park is a magnificent director whose films are beautifully-shot, masterfully told and Lady Vengeance is no exception. This one just lacked the big twists and overall character development of some of his other work.

After the title screen the film quickly fires off information about our main character, Ryu (Ha-kyun Skin), who is a deaf-mute that is desperately trying to help his dying sister. His sister has seemingly dedicated her life to him such as putting Ryu through art school. She is in need of a kidney transplant that her willing brother Ryu cannot give because of his incompatible blood type.

Even though she tells him she would rather die than be a burden to him, Ryu is still very determined to help his sister out. Ryu visits some sort of black market organ donation place where they tell him they will give her a kidney if he gives them his kidney. He also spends the little amount of money he had to pay for this operation. After they took out his kidney he wakes up naked and alone in an abandoned building. They took his kidney and money without holding up their end of the bargain.

His bad fortunes did not end there though, a real donor became available shortly after that incident but because Ryu spent all of his money already, he has none left to pay for this one. You cannot blame him for being extremely upset from all of these. Ryu lets off steam by smashing baseballs at a batting cage.

Ryu’s anarchist revolutionary girlfriend Cha Yeoung-mi (Donna Bae) comes up with an idea to kidnap his former boss’s friend’s daughter (sounds complicated but it is not really) and hold her random for the money they need for the transplant. She tries to justify the kidnapping because they will not harm the kid at all and they will make it seem like she is not even kidnapped but rather just staying with her parent’s friends for a while.

So they do kidnap the little girl and hold her random for the money, which they receive from the father, Mr. Park. Everything is going as planned until Ryu’s sister discovers what is going on and commits suicide. Therefore, the money Ryu received from the ransom is now completely useless.

As Ryu is burying his sister under some rocks by the river as she requested at the beginning of the film when she was close to death, Yu-sun falls into the river. Ryu is unaware that Yu-sun falls into the river until it is too late. Even when he does notice, he is afraid of going into the river because of an aversion he as to the water from his childhood.

The film shifts it’s focus to Mr. Park now as everything in his life has been taken away from him. The only thing in his mind that can save him now is seeking out vengeance on the one responsible. It is now up to him to find clues to who was behind his daughter’s kidnap and killing.

At times Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance can be a little hard to follow because the film simply implies that actions are going to happen instead of showing them and then it cuts to the consequence of that action. One example of this is when they are talking about kidnapping the boss’s friend’s daughter and then a couple of scenes later she is in their living room with them. In that case, it was pretty evident they just kidnapped her without showing it but in other instances it is not as apparent.

The cinematography in the film is nothing short of spectacular. The camera work that is often most memorable are the fight scenes. But there are plenty of well shot scenes throughout. The shot towards the beginning when Ryu and a few men are walking up to the upper level of the abandon building is one. Panning between apartments to see what is going in the neighbors apartment is another.

Certainly, it is not hard to compare Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance to Oldboy as not only are they done by the same director and because they are a part of the same “Vengeance Trilogy” they also share similar themes and violence. Oldboy is the most popular and tends to be the favorite film from the trilogy and I would agree. Although, I think Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance may be more rewarding after multiple watches whereas Oldboy is not as rewarding once you know the big twists.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance shows how fundamentally good people act when they are desperate enough. The film also does a good job at somewhat justifying their reasoning and at times makes you empathize with the characters. The South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook has shown that he is a brilliant director with his own recognizable style.

The film takes place in the slums of Rio de Janerio where they do not have electricity or paved roads. City of God is a ghetto for the homeless and poor where crime and drugs frequent the streets. But miracles still happen in the City Of God.

The opening scene begins with members of a gang chasing an escaped chicken down the street. Chasing the same chicken is our narrator named Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues). The chicken stops as it is trapped in the middle between Rocket and the gang. But just like the chicken, Rocket finds himself in the middle between the gang and the police.

City of God is a film told through flashbacks so the beginning of the film is really the end. The camera pans around Rocket and we are taken to when he was just a little boy playing soccer with his friends. This begins the first chapter of the story where Rocket tells us about the Tender Trio.

The Tender Trio was a group of hoodlum thieves formed by Shaggy, Clipper and Goose that holds up local businesses. Goose is Rocket’s older brother and even though most of the younger boys idolized the trio, Rocket admitted he never had the courage to follow his brother’s footsteps.

A young boy named Lil Dice tags along with the Trio in a motel robbery but they tell the boy he is far too young to do anything but serve as a look out for the police. This ended up being their last heist even though they managed to escape with lots of money. Following the chase from the cops a couple of the members had a change of heart. Clipper went a religious route, Goose started a real job, Lil Dice disappeared, leaving Shaggy as the only one that still had interest in continuing on.

The film states, “Hoods never stop, they just take a break” which rings true when Lil Dice shows up later after hiding for a while and eventually gets what he wanted since a child, to become the boss of the City of God. In order to achieve the rise in power he must kill off his rivals, which is obviously not a problem for him.

Lil Dice changes his nickname to Lil Ze as his power ascends to one of the most feared and dangerous gangster in the City of God. His childhood sidekick, Benny, has never left his side. Even though the two were always close together their personalities could not be further apart. Lil Ze held no remorse from his trigger-happy finger where Benny was as kind as any hoodlum could possibly be.

In the 70’s Rocket finally got his first camera that he so desperately wanted all of his life. He fell in love with a girl who was currently dating someone else. He went as far as scoring drugs for her and one day Angelica broke up with her boyfriend. Rocket had a chance to make his move but ultimately she went for Benny.

Rocket went to work long hours in the supermarket to pay off a newer camera. He called it the sucker’s life. That did not last long though because his boss thought he was in a gang and fired him. He began to wonder if it did not pay to be honest. Like his brother before him, he began to flirt with crime but he was never successful at it. He was too nice to ever go through with it.

Rocket never wanted to be a hoodlum or a policeman when he grew up because he was afraid of getting shot. Goose always told him to study and the only reason he is a hoodlum is because he has no brains. Rocket wanted to be a photographer and would soon get his chance to become one. Although he did not escape the getting shot at part.

Rocket gets a job with a newspaper as a delivery man. He slowly begins to make friends in the photo department. Lil Ze asked Rocket to take a photo of him and his gang however the pictures get into the wrong hands at the newspaper and eventually ends up on the front page. He fears that the gang will want to kill him as the picture was meant only for the gang to have.

On one hand he is fears his life from the gang on the other hand he is happy that he is finally the photographer he has always wanted to be. The story comes full circle to the beginning of the film where Lil Ze’s gang and Rocket meet again after chasing a chicken. When the police show up it presents an opportunity of a life time to snap photos of the situation.

The cinematography was breathtaking. From the opening shot of chasing a chicken throughout the small city roads to the film turned to stills from a camera near the end. The way it used orange and brown filters during the 70’s era was brilliant and fitting. City of God received a well-deserved Best Cinematography Oscar nomination at the 2004 Academy Awards, although somehow Master and Commander took home the award. The film was also up for Best Director, Best Editing and Best Adapted Screenplay.

In what I thought originally might be a downfall of the film, the abundance of subplots and characters that enter the story as fast as they leave, ends up being the purpose and main theme of the film. For every person that dies, there is another to take their place. There will always be something to fight about and always someone to kill.

City of God is both a shocking and inspiring story about life in the crime filled slums of Rio de Janerio. It is often compared to some of the best mob films out there and it can easily hang with, if not surpass them. It is a powerful film that at times you may want to look away but it is so compelling your eyes cannot.

Mia (Katie Jarvis) is a 15-year-old girl that lives in a poor part of Essex with her negligent mother Joanne (Kierston Wareing) and her younger sister Tyler (Rebecca Griffiths). She is a foul mouthed troublemaker who lacks friends, guidance and education as she was recently kicked out of her current school.

Mia spends most of her time roaming the streets. She trespasses gated areas and tries to free a horse which is a symbolic figure of herself, chained up and seemingly neglected. Her one true passion seems to be dancing, which is does alone in her room.

Joanne does not have any interest in raising her children properly. She is more focused on hosting parties in her living room and boozing than giving her children the proper attention. While making breakfast one morning, Mia discovers that Joanne brought home a new man from the previous night. He is a charming and good looking man named Connor (Michael Fassbender) who just so happens to be great with kids.

Mia slowly becomes more and more interested in him. One afternoon Connor takes the family out to a secluded river where only Mia is brave enough to join him in the water. He proceeds to impressively catch a fish with his bare hands. This is where she spots a tattoo on his arm of one of his ex-girlfriends. We learn that he may be a man who easily commits to women and assume he has been fairly serious with someone in his past.

The first smile we see from Mia is when she is talking to Connor. He notices how good she looks when she does crack a smile. She shares with him her desire to become a dancer and that there is a dancer position available. He is very encouraging to her and tells to go for it. He even offers his camera to her so she can take a video to send in for the dancer position.

One night he asks if she would show him the dance she has been working on. She is hesitant at first but obliges. It is the first time that we see that he finds her attractive as he leans in for a kiss that quickly escalates into something much more. He tells her that she cannot tell anyone else what happened between them.

Fish Tank does a good job on showing each character’s flaws. Mia has many that range from breaking in to people’s houses to getting into fights with anyone that disagrees with her. Joanne’s flaw is as broad as being a mother in the first place. Even though Connor is a very likable character he still makes bad decisions with women.

The film relies heavily on Katie Jarvis’s performance as the camera almost always has her in frame, following her around the entire time. Luckily, she plays the part wonderfully. Jarvis had never acted before her role of Mia. She was found when the casting director saw her having a fight with her boyfriend at a train station. It is easy to see how natural the role must have been for her.

I could not help but compare this film to the film Precious. Both feature troubled young teens whose parents care for nothing about them and have zero friends. Although, there are many differences between each, the biggest one is how much further Precious pushed it’s boundaries.

At times Fish Tank showed glimpses of brilliance but overall it was not as rewarding as it could have been. Still, it was a pleasure to watch for what it was, a good character study of a 15 year old troublemaker. The film impressively does not rely on much dialog for the first half hour yet still manages to build Mia’s character well. If you are the kind of person that prefers a character driven film over a plot driven one then you will get the most out of Fish Tank.

A middle-aged man named Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) is in police custody and is highly intoxicated at the police station. While belligerently shouting at the police, we learn that it is his daughter’s birthday and that he had gotten her a pair of angel wings as a gift. A friend comes to bail him out and as they stop to make a call from a photo booth, Oh Dae-su mysteriously disappears.

When he regains consciousness he finds himself in a hotel looking room with a desk, a bed and a TV. Although it looks like a hotel room it is more like a prison cell. He receives his food on a tray through a slot in the door and pleads with the man to tell him why they are imprisoning him. No reply. This is where he will spend the next 15 years of his life.

The TV becomes his only companion and learns from the news that his wife was murdered and his daughter has been adopted. To make manners worse, the police are after him as their lead suspect in the case. At least he now knows that the police are in no way associated with his current situation. So he starts making a list of all the people he is wronged in the past to try and come up with who might be behind this.

Keeping a man in solitary confinement for that long has drastic consequences on one’s mind. Partly out of frustration but mostly to keep an edge for revenge, he keeps up with martial arts like training in his room. He punches the solid wall until his hand can no longer take it.

After 15 years of chiseling away at the concrete wall with a chop stick, he finally breaks through a brick in a wall to the outside world. He figures it will be exactly a month before he is finally able to escape. Many exciting thoughts rush through his head such as; what will he eat when he gets out, how will he get his money, with all the car sounds he must be in a city but which one? But the most important question he asks himself is what floor is he on, it could very well be the 52nd floor. He decides he does not care, even if he falls to his death he will still be getting out.

Turns out he would not have to wait a month to escape because they release him before he could do so. Still he is given no answers as to why he was imprisoned or who was behind it. He goes to a sushi restaurant where he befriends a female chef he recognizes from his TV. Her name is Mido (Kang Hye-jeong) and she answers his request for something to eat that is alive. As he eats the live octopus, which by the way is not for the squeamish, and you cannot help but wonder if he is eating it just to feel what it is like to be alive again after being “dead” for nearly 15 years.

Mido and Oh Dae-su’s friendship spawns into a relationship and eventually love. She is willing to help with his cause and track down the person responsible for his imprisonment. After doing a bunch of legwork they find out that the person he is looking for is Lee Woo-jin (Yu Ji-tae). Oh Dae-su receives a threat from Lee Woo-jin that if he does not figure out in 5 days why he was imprisoned, every woman he loved will be killed. If he does, Lee Woo-jin will kill himself.

As with most films that have a mystery element, this film has quite an amazing twist that presents itself towards the end of the film. Sharing the details would of course ruin the entire film, which is why I will not divulge the spoilers in my review. The twist is what helps make this film so amazing to watch.

There were so many wonderful scenes throughout Oldboy, which range from suspense filled, violence driven and emotional. There is a scene where he hallucinates ants are crawling out of his arm which makes you wonder if the whole thing is all just in his head. At one point he fights a while room filled with guys with his fists and a hammer and is easily one of the better fight sequences to watch.

Then there are a couple of scenes that are disturbing to sit through. One of those scenes is when Oh Dae-su eats the living octopus. Four actual live octopods were eaten for the scene, which gained a lot of controversy when the film was released, however, eating live octopus in Korea is common. The other hard to watch scene is where we see very realistic teeth-pulling using the back of a hammer.

Director Park Chan-wook is very poetic throughout his film. The main character often refers to the world as the bigger prison. At the beginning we are presented with the quote, “Be it a grain of sand or a rock, in water they sink the same”, which reflects that Oh Dae-su does not know whether he did something small or big to Lee Woo-jin in order to get imprisoned. One that is repeated several times in the film is, “Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you will weep alone.” A quote that is true about finding answers, “You can’t find the right answer if you ask the wrong questions.”

Every once in a while there is a film you come across that blows your mind, Oldboy is one of them for me. It is not hard to praise it for it’s technical achievements, the intelligent script, the acting and the amazing plot twists. The film never feels too long as the story always seems to be advancing even towards the end. There is a reason why it won Grand Prize of the Jury at Cannes Film Festival in 2004, it is filmmaking at it’s finest.