Pelish at the Movies – ‘Parasite’

~By Norm Robins~

One might think it strange that “Pelish at the Movies” was written by Robins, not Pelish. Please bear with me. Pelish is sick as a dog with this cold now making the rounds in Reno and so am I. Pelish, being the man of impeccable taste he is, will not write a review on a movie he hasn’t seen in the theater. Okay, you purist, fair enough. I, Norm Robins, Pelish’s editor and occasional co-author, will step into the breach and do a second-hand movie review. Second-hand it must be. I tried going an hour without exhaling so as to protect our movie-going population. It didn’t work.

Here goes. Parasite is a Korean movie by acclaimed director Bong Joon-ho whose oeuvre is the stuff of legend. It is in Korean with English subtitles. It is a story of class discrimination that threatens the amity between a wealthy family, the Parks, and a destitute family, the Kims. It is a dark comedy-thriller that is winning awards all over the place, not the least of which is at the box office. It just crossed the $100 million mark world-wide. It won the 2019 Palme d’Or Award at the Cannes Film Festival.

Rotten Tomatoes, whose apparent job it is to throw rotten tomatoes at popcorn movies, rated it at 99%. Please note Joker, a movie highly rated by our own movie critic and wise man plenipotentiary Randy Pelish, got only a 69% rating from this curmudgeonly crowd of naysayers. The New York Times, that knows almost as much as they think they do, wrote, the movie is “wildly entertaining, the kind of smart, generous, aesthetically energized movie that obliterates the tired distinctions between art films and popcorn movies.” I have no idea what that means, but it sounds good and is from The New York Times!!! Brian Tallerico who has taken up the cudgels after we lost Roger Ebert, who was better than he thought he was, said of the movie, “Parasite is unquestionably one of the best films of the year. Just trust me on this one.”

This sounds like a movie worth seeing. I suspect after Pelish and I stop being perambulating plagues capable of laying waste to complete populations we will see this movie.

Parasite is currently playing at the Century Riverside 12 in Reno.

                                                                  Norm Robins

                                                                     Norm@renoarts.news