The Big Picture - The 25 Best Movies of the Century: No. 8 - ‘Parasite’

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

Sean and Amanda return to continue their yearlong project of listing the 25 best movies of the 21st century so far. Today, they discuss Bong Joon-ho’s ‘Parasite,’ which features one of the greatest movie endings of all time. They celebrate its nuanced portrayal of what systems do to people; highlight the small, formal decisions that elevate the movie’s ideas; and remember its iconic Best Picture win that changed the trajectory of the Academy Awards. Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Producer: Jack SandersUnlock an extra $250 at linkedin.com/thebigpicture Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennacy. And this is 25 for 25, a big picture special conversation show about Parasite. Respect! Okay, Parasite. Yeah. So it was obviously going to be on this list. Sure. This is, is it the most recent film on this list?

Let's see. Well, we don't know yet. We don't know. We haven't decided. We haven't had. that great conversation yet. We don't know yet. It is, for now, the most recent film that we have discussed on this list. This movie was released in October of 2019. This show existed. There are multiple episodes of this show in which we discussed Parasite. Yes. There's a famous clip of your

voice cracking while announcing that Parasite won best picture at the 2020 Oscars in February 2020. Yes. Just weeks before the pandemic and everything changed. This movie, of course, course is directed by Bong Joo. It's written by Bong Joon Ho and Hanjin-Wan. It is quite clearly one of the signature films of the century for a variety of reasons that we will talk about here. It stars Song Kang-ho, Li Song Kian, Cho Yang-jong, Choi Wu Shik, you know, a standout movie from South Korea that found its way around the world in a way that is very unusual. And it did so in a variety of ways, not just from a box office perspective, but you mentioned the Academy Awards.

This is a Best Picture winner. It's a Best Director winner. It's a screenplay winner. It's the movie that was voted at number one in the New York Times poll earlier this year by both the hallowed and esteemed people who were selected to vote and also the readers of the New York Times. They both voted this movie number one, which I still find shocking. and we can talk about maybe why that has become the case,

how this became an instant classic. Right. But it is an instant classic. This episode is presented by LinkedIn ads. Sometimes marketing gets wasted on the wrong people. Like if you see an ad for movie-themed dog sweaters when you don't even have a pet. Reach exactly who you need with LinkedIn ads

with a network of 130 million decision makers they can help you target by job title, industry, company size, or even skills. It's one of the reasons LinkedIn ads generates the highest B2B return on ad spend of all. all online ad networks. Seriously, all of them. Try it out. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash the big picture. Terms and conditions apply. I've had many friends try to guess what would be number one

on this list throughout the year and they don't want it spoiled, which is sweet of them. I guess they're invested. But Parasite was the guess of a lot of people. Because, you know, it seemed kind of preordained. Yes. Which is a interesting thing about that. How did that happen? And it happened pretty quickly. In the scope of award season in 2019 and early 20. Like it was still, it was still a bit of a surprise that Parasite won best picture. But we knew by about like 815 that night, well, I guess 8-15 Eastern, once the award started stacking up, and certainly once Director Bung won, best director. And we were, like, pleased, but also, like, yeah, I guess, I guess we saw this coming. Like, this was, things were lining up for this. So that everyone just said, uh-huh,

yeah, in real time, is pretty fascinating. I think part of the reason for that, and we will get into why this movie is on the list very, very shortly, but part of the reason for that was because 2019 is such a special year in movies. It's, you know, it's the once upon a time in Hollywood year. And I think in any other year, that would have been the year in which Tarantino was crowned. You know, that year also featured Ford versus Ferrari, 20, or 1917, marriage story. Greta Gerwig's Little Women. Jojo Rabbit was that year.

I think Joker was that year, right? Like, there were a number. Jojo Rabbit, sorry. Not a funny topic by Jojo Rabbit. Not a funny movie and not a movie on this list. But, you know, the fact that it was competing against such a hallowed group of movies that year, such a memorable movie year, I think also makes it feel like it had, like it conquered that year. And so it is worthy to kind of conquer this century.

So the movie itself, when you look at it, is actually a surprising movie to have become an instant classic for a variety of reasons. One, it is very South Korean. The sort of like the social structures that it's analyzing, the particulars of the lifestyles of, of the two families at the center of the story. It is not, there are a lot of nuances that I would say you could very easily overlook if you are an audience not from South Korea. Or even if you're two podcasters, you know, talking about it. I can only imagine what we said on our first episodes about the movie because over time,

it's a lot easier to learn. I've read now multiple books about Parasite. So I feel like I have a little bit of a better understanding. I was reading some criticism of it last night from a variety of different sources to think a little bit more differently about it. I remember we had Donnie Kwok, our former colleague and friend on the show, to talk about it back then to give us some of that perspective and some perspective on Bong. But it's a fairly simple Hitchcockian thriller in terms of its design, right? I mean, it's not that complex or even like elevated of a movie in terms of what it is trying to do.

That's true. And I think it also, when you say design, you mean actually, like in the script and the story, but also quite literally. in the design of the house and the movie and this like upstairs middle, you know, middle and then downstairs basement world. Like the characters go up a hill or down a hill. They go up the stairs or down the stairs. And what it is telegraphing to you is very, very straightforward in terms of like the visual building blocks of where these people are, where they're trying to go,

where they're coming from, where they're stuck. So you or we may miss some of the particular sociological nuances to it being from South Korea. But there is also a universality and a directness to it that is it is quite literally constructed and into the film and, you know, into the camera. So the movie is essentially about one family, the Kim family that is a sort of lower class family in South Korea. that is slowly but surely kind of invading the life and home of an upper-class family in South Korea. Originally, the son of this family gets a tip that one of the children in the family needs a tutor. Right. And he gets that job as a tutor, and he slowly kind of conspires to bring in his sister and then his father and then his mother into this home.

And then we see this kind of portrait of these two worlds colliding, and then a third family enters the picture eventually as well. And so you see, as you said, this sort of like tripartite experience of class in South Korea and in the world. And I think one of the reasons why this movie has been so celebrated and one of the reasons why it feels so relevant is that class and income equality is kind of a defining problem of the last 10 years in America. And so that problem, and this is all happening kind of amidst two separate Trump administrations. Right. This is at the tail end of the first. Yes. Feels like, it feels very chewy.

Feels like something that we want to talk about. We want to try to understand. We want to figure out. I think one of the great things about this movie is, it's not your typical rich, bad, poor, good, social dynamic. It isn't, it is a much more nuanced portrayal of what systems do to people instead of how people are just bad. And I think you can read this movie as, purely Marxist if you want to

you can read it as just suspicious of capitalism you could read it I think with a lot of empathy for the rich family if you if you chose to I read a lot of different interpretations of it over the last few days and it kind of stands up to all of those interpretations and what you ultimately learn

is that everybody that exists inside of this story has been victimized by the way that we live our lives in these organized societies and I don't think I fully understood it in that way when I first saw the movie. I think I had a slightly more simplistic understanding

of what Bong was trying to accomplish. And I think probably most people who went bananas over it in 2019 did as well because the movie, in addition to being this, you know, beautifully constructed, like black comedy satire, is also a thriller. And so at some point you're just like,

Oh, what are they going to do? How are they going to get out of this? What's going to happen? Yes. What stood out to me rewatching it? And in some ways, this is the most like Captain obvious thing to say is just the movie itself is a system. The movie is so perfectly constructed by one of the great living filmmakers. You know, and down to that tripartite construction of the world.

Like every shot flows through. You see exactly what. you're supposed to see. It's designed. And as we know, Bong, like storyboards. Every image. Every single image.

And so you are watching, to me it was the feeling of watching all of these people almost like in a dollhouse being moved around by a director. I mean, the house is built in that way with like the big panoramic window and you see from both sides of it,

but you see the people being moved around which, you know, is a metaphor or a recreation of all of these people are just being cogs in the system that exists that is, you know, late-stage capitalism. Yeah, and I think you get like more different expressions of personal freedom in the movie too. Like when hearing you talk about that,

it makes me think about this choice that Bong makes that is something I would have not picked up on if I had not heard somebody explain it, which is that the family, the Kim family, is often seen as a collective, as four people working together to try to accomplish something. Right.

And or four people crammed in one room. Yes. Because that's... In part because of that, yes, the cramped space. And the park family, the wealthy family, is never shown together. That they're always shown as individuals with their own agencies and their own freedoms

because wealth creates freedom and life. And there's just no denying the fact that those characters get to be as loose and oblivious to everything happening around them and as desirous of services that they probably don't really need because they have the comfort to ask for those things

or to seek those things. And that's a very small, formal choice that is very instructive about the point that he's trying to make in the movie. And then the other thing, too, is, as you said, like, it's just a fun thriller.

It's the first time you watch it, I saw this movie a telleride for the first time after it had already won the Palm Door. There was a lot of hype going into my screening of this movie. And I was like, this better be fucking good when I sat down. And I sat down and I was like, wow, that was a lot fucking better than I thought it was going to be. And it's because it is a series of reveals that are very fun.

So when you're watching the movie, in particular, especially the basement reveal, when you learn that there is someone, when the housekeeper comes back to the house and you learn that there is someone living in the basement of this home, there is a kind of, it feels like, you know, it feels like psycho. You know, or something is shown to us. we're like, oh, that's what's going on here. And that's not, you don't find that in a lot of movies that go into the canon, you know, that they have that pop sensibility, the movies that are quote unquote important with social themes that we all should understand as a collective. Like, this is a popcorn movie. Well, I mean, that is the magic of this movie that it is so tightly constructed and, you know, formally arranged and about big ideas. It's just some wacky shit

And these people are They say weird things It's very funny But in an unexpected Very specific to Bong Like sense of humor It's a very dark humor So it's deeply entertaining

In addition to being like You know this kind of like jewel box of like perfect sentiment Yeah and it's not The themes are big But it's not highfalutin Like a lot of the stuff you see For example the Scholars Rock

Which is like the inciting object Of the movie Where a friend comes over to the apartment of the Kim family living together and says, like, here's something for you to think about and to use as you go through the world. It's a rock,

and this rock will help you feel more intellectually significant. And then come to find out, obviously, like it's ultimately used as a weapon as all rocks are as Chekhov's rock. But that's just like a classical storytelling device. You know, it's not any more complicated than that. It's just an invented premise that kickstarts us into,

this world that otherwise would feel ridiculous if you didn't have one character pushing this family into this other family's house. It's like a series of these things, you know? Um, Giancei, the guy living in the basement being the ghost in the house is another genre tool that allows the story to kind of like push forward. Like, he's not really reinventing the wheel in this movie. He's pulling a lot of strands of both South Korean culture. And then we also know that he's obsessed in American movies. and American movie history, and he's plugging a lot of that stuff into these worlds, too. And very, like, you know, pop culture conversant.

I was thinking about, remember the scammer era? You know, remember, like, the late 2015 to 2000s when everyone's just in, like, hey, Anna Delvey, all of this stuff. And so I do think that some of it is just everyone was really excited about some, you know, some righteous scammers mostly. Yeah, I think that there was the grifter. and then the kind of gig economy grind set quality to the movie too or sort of like the only way to come up in the world

is you have to get yourself into a position where you can like get the right gig to show people what you can do which is of course like all a fallacy obviously and we're kind of encouraging people to apply for these kinds of gigs so that we can bleed them dry. But the movie, you know, it opens with them folding the pizza boxes and then being, you know, scolded for their inability to properly fold pizza boxes.

That's a gig. economy job. So all of that stuff was happening. You can feel him writing it concurrent to those movements. And the grifter thing does feel a little ancient at this point. Yeah. I mean, many Netflix series like have failed as a result of that, you know? Yes, it's very true.

I think also, I'm curious what you think about this now. So the movie's called Parasite, very obliquely. Yeah. Who is the parasite in this movie? You know, I mean, we all are. I guess. I mean, quite literally, there are a series of people living inside this home like, you know, nesting dolls. So those are, I think, the literal definitions of a parasite. But isn't the point that, um, that we're all either, you know, a parasite on some larger system and or we are the, you know, like we're a part of a larger thing that's being fed upon and also. is trying to suck other people dry. That's how we interact with each other.

I definitely think that that's the intention, right? That it's a multi-way street. I was reading a little bit about how in South Korea, it's a very patriarchal structure and that the father figure and especially the parents are expected to support their children all the way through the time when they retire. So it's a little bit different than how we think about it in the United States.

Me, for example, I fled my home at 21 as soon as I possibly could. Right. And so because of that, the father figure in this movie, played by Song Kang Ho, an incredible performance, is kind of the ultimate parasite because he's the father who maybe didn't create as much stability or was not able to create as much stability as other father figures. And he has kind of trained his children to be grifters and that they are leaching on this family. And then this family is obviously leaching on not just the parasitic family inside of their. home, but the wider structure of capitalism. And then they are very, you know, not just frivolous, but sort of like desirous of bullshit, which then further feeds your ability to, like, want to make more money so that

you can have more things, so that you can make more money, so you can have more things. And it's interesting to think about this. Because when, like you said, when the movie came out, everybody was just like, oh, parasites. These are like awful rich people. They're the people who are like sucking the blood out of the world. right but it's not that simple you know and it's not and i'm not saying that the rich people are good in this movie because they're not they're ultimately revealed to be extremely selfish and somewhat evil by the end of the film but it's more that the other family is complicated that everyone is

it's complicated yes everyone is committing sins throughout this entire movie um i think the other thing too is that except for jessica who rules well i mean she's a real grifter though she's a but her hearts in it, you know? But then also, what is her fate? It's very violent and terrible. I think, but I think she's an interesting person to think about, too, because the quote-unquote poor family, the Kims, are very smart. They're very clever, you know, they're not, they don't want to get real jobs, but they're not lazy. Right. Like, this requires a lot of ingenuity what they're doing. I don't know if they don't want to or whether they can't, like can't. You know, there's, that's also, yes. They speak a lot about the, you know, like the employment crisis.

in South Korea at the beginning of the film and they can't get jobs and you know the brother character says to his friend they're perfectly healthy they just are like unemployed

yes and we know that the sister is like a design whiz you know that she's got all these great skills and they're educated that's the other thing is like they've gone to college

they're very they're not I mean has he or has the brother or is it like he's taken the entrance exam but he can't get there

yet. And so they remember because they make the degree. And he has that speech of like, to me, this isn't a forgery. It's just, I just printed it out early. You know, so which there's, there's a lot of delusion going on with everyone, which I think is probably an essential part of being a grifter and or a successful rich person in the world. Um, I felt like I think they go hand in hand. Yeah. But, um, I think it's asking you does poverty drive people to become low level criminals because of the inability to break the system. Right. But like, you know, the only difference between, like, is it hustling or criminal?

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And once you've made enough money, then you're not a criminal anymore, you're just a rich person. But then rich people also commit very elaborate crimes as well. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's an indictment of kind of the entire structure. Yes. Throughout the, there are a number of ways that the difference between the two families is communicated. There's obviously there's a wealth gap in their living arrangements, which we and great detail in that home that has been expertly designed. And they both have front picture

windows, but like, you know, one is architecturally significant and you know, above ground. I was going to say one goes up. And one goes down. And one goes down. Yeah. But then there's a couple of other things. You know, the stench of the Kims is something that we hear about all the time. You know, they ride the subway. They live in a kind of filth. We see that

they're surrounded by bugs that need to be literally fumigated inside of their home at the beginning of the film. You know, when the flood does, Well, they accept free fumigation from the street. Yes, they pursue it. They could have closed their window, but they leave it wide open. They sleep in the gymnasium after the flood. They don't shower.

We see multiple times park family members pinching their nose to avoid the smell. This idea that, like, we're forced to be around you and we'll tolerate this stench, but it's very unpleasant to us, which is, you know, obviously a component of class division here. And even the idea, like, just that the... the idea of Mr. Park clenching his nose at the very end of the film when he lifts Guillaise and then that is the triggering moment

for Mr. Kim is so fascinating because it's, I think it speaks to that there's this idea that there is like a breaking point socially too. Yeah. You know, that no matter what you do, no matter how much money you pay someone

for their work, you can cross the line. I mean, also a fascinating formal decision to really like hinge the movie on the one sense that like movies can't really like communicate to you you know you've got sound you've got you know visuals

like you can and and the movie successfully does like I'm sure that the smell is smells something different to everyone but he builds it into the to the text and in such a way and the actors play with it in such a way

that like you know what it is, you know, it feels real. You feel the closeness. You could see a world where there is a smell version of this movie. I mean, I don't want to do it. But it's like the peaches, you know, are so tactile in this movie, the pizza with the hot sauce. Like there are images in the movie that are kind of like emanating off the screen that, and if that includes Mr. Kim's body odor, that's also a factor. I mean, it could be laundry, you know, because they notice that they all, they quote, smell the same. Or the pig out session that they all have in the living room, right, with all the snacks and treats.

Yeah, it's like mostly whiskey. But that's the other thing too is like that's another thing that is communicated in the movie is what kind of foods are they eating in this film? Like all of the foods that the Kim's are eating are all come out of a bag or processed or delivered by a fast food. They're lower economy foods and that's what is available to people who don't have as much money. And meanwhile, they're just like platters of fruit are presented. to everyone at all times in the park home. Yes, everything's fresh in the park home

or this freshly made rom-don, you know? Yeah, well, that, I mean, that does come out of a bag. Yes, yes. But then the sirloin is added in. Exactly. Yeah. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets

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a It's a movie that's like very, I think very, very self-aware about what it's doing. The fact that we constantly hear the phrase, it's so metaphorical. It almost feels like it's thumbing its nose at the audience a little bit this movie in a way that I like. But then maybe in at first blush, I didn't totally understand. He was going to be like, I'm doing my class satire now. But maybe everyone's kind of complicit, you know, and also everyone's screwed over by what they're stuck inside of at the same time. which I think is kind of brave to make a movie like that,

you know, to make a movie in which we have rooting interests, of course, and the movie ends, I think, with a lot of empathy for the Kim family. Yeah. But they're not innocent, you know? No, and, well, I think empathy is different than sympathy. And as, you know, as English teachers around the world try to teach, you know, children in AI every day. And also that, you know,

I think the ending to me just finally after two hours of being like this is absurd and there's almost like a nihilistic like every this is a really messed up society and like everything is bad just brings a little like heart

and a little bit like this is actually quite sad as well. Yes. It's tragic ultimately. Yeah it twists kind of it twists the tone more than to me it like twists who the hero and who the villain is. I agree. I saw a suggestion that I thought was intriguing that I had not fully considered, which is that is the Kim's downfall a result of a lack of solidarity with Munguang, the housekeeper, the first housekeeper and her husband, and if they had only conspired together in some way, instead of trying to victimize one another, would,

could all of this have been avoided somehow? Which, you know, is, again, a pretty, if that is intention, that's a pretty severe class critique about the ability to overcome these systems. You know, there is a lot of nuance in this. It doesn't have to be one way or the other, but it's a line of thought that I think makes this an even deeper movie. I mean, things escalate pretty quickly in that particular situation, if I recall. And there's that exchange between the old housekeeper and Mrs. Kim, once the old housekeeper figures it out, and immediately...

Snaps that video. Yeah, it grabs the video. which is just another, like, we're all trained, you know, at our moments to, to, like, get the receipts for ourselves. There is, you know, the English translation is, um, the Mrs. Kim calls her sis and it's, you know, don't call me sis, which I assume as, you know, some form of, like, Korean, um, what's the word, like, uh, familiarity. You know, like a tense thing, um, that, that many languages have that the English doesn't really. And, but it snaps instantly. It goes from, no, no, no, we're not on that.

Now we've like, the hierarchy has been changed. I'm no longer. So it's not even really the Kims that aren't going along with it. The housekeeper sees an advantage so quickly. Yes. They're trying to beat each other. And I think it's really more just like it's everyone is so everyone for themselves, which you have to be.

Yes. in the world of parasite and probably also in the world of large, sadly, that there's no time for that. Yeah, it's crabs in a barrel trying to survive and willing to do anything to take advantage of one another. I think also there's something interesting about the way that Mung Guang's husband is portrayed to where he is this kind of idolater of the parks and of the wealthy lifestyle and the respect incantation being this thing about how you can become kind of obsessed and consumed by the desire. buy people who are successful to, and then you want to be successful like them, but then the only ways you can think about are by, like, modes of emulation, you know, like there's a Steve Jobs book downstairs in the basement. Yeah.

There's this, like, aspirational one day I will be able to pull myself from the basement feeling, which people kind of delude themselves into. I mean, he's literally been in the basement for four years. I think he has, you know, gone, like, like, you know. To avoid loan sharks, by the way. Right. Exactly. But so some of it is just like a lack of grasp on reality at this point.

what that is funneled into, you know, it's maybe not unlike people on the internet and certain other people right now. Yeah, it's true. It's like, it's just kind of, and seeing like what you want and it is the further you lose, the further you dive into that world,

just the more outsized it gets. I think this is a movie with one of the great endings of the 21st century. Very heart-wrenching. The score for this film is amazing, and none more so like in the kind of close, notes of the movie. But it's a film that is like pretty breakneck and comic. Yeah. And then has this kind of epilogue that is very sad. And I think is also like a grace note on that idea

of delusion that you were talking about too where you've got characters who think that they're going to be able to do something. But if you do the math, the idea of them ever being able to buy that home and free their father and make it work is. And come out into the sunlight and that like beautiful last shot. Yeah. The hug that will never be. It's just an absolutely beautiful movie with also, as you mentioned earlier too, like a series of ecstatic movie set pieces from, you know, the basement raid at the beginning to the flood to, you know, the role-playing sex scene. Yeah. And the idea of observing how desire plays out and the idea of like becoming less than the wealth class that you are. to then be able to realize some sense of desire.

Right. I mean, there's the whole sequence of, which is effectively like a heist in reverse, getting everybody in the house instead of out of the house. But just like completely exhilarating and the selfies at the hospital. Yes, yes. Yeah, come on.

All edge of your seats. And then the garden party too, which is to me like the most classical bong set up where there's like huge violent moments. It's very gory. It's very extravagant. There's a lot of food present, you know? That's something you find in a lot of his work.

it's an absolute culmination for one of the great movie directors of the last 25 years that's weird it's an interesting time to be talking about this because you know he made mickey 17 this year yeah um i think a movie that both of us liked and kind of got caught in the slipstream of oh this is a letdown from parasite and it didn't work at the box office but i think i think you liked it more than i did i liked about two-thirds of it and i really did not like the most timely kind of let me like, you know, dig into broad social commentary and specifically like the Mark Ruffalo as Trump of it all.

You know, and that's kind of like a triple hat black licorish situation for me, but I didn't think it worked. And I thought it was like the timely commentary that stuck out in a way that this movie does, you know, nails perfectly. Well, I see, okay, so this is what I was going to, the reason I brought that up is because with Mickey 17, I found it to be pretty consistent

with Bong's tone. Bong has a very antic, comic, absurdist tone in all of his movies. And even when a movie feels like it's going to be deathly serious, like the first 20 minutes of the host, where there's this like prologue about ecological damage when they pour the formaldehyde down the sink, and then the kid being squabre

gooped up by the monster and you're like, oh my god, this is a severe epic monster movie. And then it's not that. It's like, it's this weird comic fantasia about families in South Korea amidst this monster attack. Obviously, the same is totally true for Okja. Yeah.

I think I prefer Okja more and you're more of a Mickey 17 guy. Yeah, I think they're all like in a in a very comfortable stew. But there is a little bit like, you know, Okja is more the well, just that the kid. is awesome.

She's so great. And then... Super big. And, like, the outsized, ridiculous characters are more, like, are broader characters as opposed to... I just, why is Mark Ruffalo doing Trump? Like, I really was just like, I don't want, I don't... This doesn't work for me. I think what I'm trying to locate...

And it's okay to not like it. I'm not saying you have to like it. It's more like there's plenty of broad social commentary in Parasite. It's just, it's in South Korea. It's just not true. You know? So I think it's kind of like you have to take the good with the bad or, like, the modes of that kind of stuff.

The one movie that I know listeners at home who really love Bong are thinking about that we didn't choose his memories of murder. Hello, Bobby Wagner. Yeah, I know Bob would want us to do that. Memories of Murder is the movie that got Bong kind of

internationally recognized as a filmmaker. It's his first movie with Song Kang Ho. It is a movie that's very openly riffing on the kind of serial killer movie and then became very influential on the serial killer movie. One of the magical things about that movie, which also has a lot of antic comic stuff inside of this really, really intense story is just the unknowability of life. You know, the insolvability of the biggest problems in the world. And it's a really great film that doesn't have the same – he's a little less interested in making it as crowd-pleasing as I find most of his other movies are.

right not just and part of that is because of the intention of the movie is like there is a kind of doom-laden like we're all fucked quality to memories of murder at its conclusion and there's not not to this film as well but it's wrapped up in some funnier

broader stuff yeah and like some gleeful stuff too that I think is really helpful you know he obviously has other movies mother he's now making an animated film called The Valley great

Do you think you'll watch that? I will. Okay. It's also shot by Hong Kong Pyo, who shot Parasite. Okay. And it's one of the world's great cinematographers, but it's an animated film. Right. So what does that mean for him?

No, he'll be doing the work that he needs to do. Listen. As an animated film, DP. I think... How does it feel to have picked the most obvious one on this one? This is our... This is the... I love this movie.

This is a five-star movie. loved it when it came out. I watched it last night and was just enraptured by it. And I think it's just a marvelous piece of tight genre filmmaking. So I don't really have a problem with picking the obvious one. I don't need to be smarter than other people. And I do think memories of murder is a very close second. I do think it's a big achievement. And he was a very young filmmaker when he made that movie. It has a kind of wow quality to it. But we can't do that for every movie on this list. Sometimes you've got to do the thing. You get to do it for Marie Antoinette. And I don't get to do it for Parasite.

which is okay. You might get to do it for a couple other things, and I think you have as well. We shall see. This is the movie that fully dragged the Academy Awards into not just the future, but the global future of movies. Because I think in 16, when Moonlight won,

it was very clear. That was a big, dramatic shift in the kind of film that could win Best Picture in this century. This movie winning is stunning to me. It was part of the reason why my voice cracked that night was because I was just like, wow, I've been following this since I was nine years old.

I never would have thought a movie like this. And in part because when you hear Bong talk about movies, he's like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you know, seven, you know, Halloween. Like, these are my hallmarks. Sure. But those are my hallmarks.

I believe it was the best director's speech, but like from the Oscar stage that night, like, thanked Scorsese personally. And was like, this is a been a personal hero of me. And that was also the year of the Irishman. It was. Which ruled. A great film.

I think it's, I think I felt like, so the Academy Awards is kind of into what I'm into now. Yeah. I mean, you and I have been wrestling with this for some time. Yeah. And do you think it's a spoiler to say, you can bleep this out if it's a spoiler, Jack, that this is our last best picture winner? No, I'd say it. Yeah.

It's all right. So, and we've, we've had what? other, two? We did do Oppenheimer, which is not, that's the most recent movie on the list I was saying at the top that that's the most recent, but this is the, yeah. Yeah, I think it's it. Is it only two? Yeah.

And we have, you know, on this long journey that we've been on, always had an uneasy relationship with like agreeing with the academy, you know, because we were raised on like, oh, but actually Paul Fiction should have won. and oh, but actually, you know, this should have won. And consensus and like being included in this is not the sign of great art or even or great taste in our opinion. Like we are historically more but like actually memories of murder. I had it on vinyl, you know? So we are, we don't, it's nice that when the academy agrees with us, I guess.

But it's just disorienting. Yeah, it's off-putting. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the things, for our purposes, people in our 40s that we are. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Is that?

I wasn't when this one. Is it just that we're getting old? And what we thought was cool and transgressive no longer is, is now just actually down the middle neoliberal Hollywood. Like that's the thing I was trying to think about with Parasite. I think yes a little bit. And I think it's... Same with Shape of Water Winning. I know you don't love it, but it's like a movie like that winning too.

It's very unusual for the Academy of War. But like it won over phantom thread, ladybird, get out, call me by your name. Dunkirk, yeah, Dunkirk was that year too, right? I think so, yeah. And then what was the Churchill movie that you love so much, Darkest Hour? Do you and I love any of these movies? Darkest Hour is not bad. It's not good, but it's not bad.

I've been turning this over in my head as an Oscar watcher sort of like. And a lot of it was disrupted by the 2020s because of, of course. COVID and the films that were kind of available to be nominated and but then everything everywhere at once kind of kick this back off. And Oppenheimer, to me, is a little bit more of a classical win, biopic from a great filmmaker.

This year we'll see. Yeah. This year, if one battle after another wins the Academy Award, then it's like you are middle-aged because all of your cool heroes are now being honored for their late in career masterpieces. We are middle-aged.

I know. I know. What a great reckoning we're having. Maybe we can still hang on being cool. Maybe it's just that all the middle-aged people have, I don't know, what did 23-year-olds want to give an Oscar to? Jack, what you got? For what year specifically? I don't, I don't know. In 2019, what would you have given? What TikTok are you most excited about this year? You know? Jack is a film. God damn it, Amanda. What, can you look at the 2019 list and tell us what you

would have chosen for best picture? I definitely would have chosen Parasite. I mean, I think I mentioned this like a few pods ago, but when I was at Ithica and we got an early screening at Cinemophobic. for it. It was like, it was like the Super Bowl. Like, everybody walked out of the theater. It was like, what just happened. Yeah. Shout out to Cinemopolis, which was a great art house theory, which I think is still there, right? It is. It is. That I frequented when I was a student at I think of a college that was extremely critical to my movie going at that time in my life. I'm glad to hear it's still going. Okay, so the film's legacy. As I mentioned, six Academy Award nominations, four wins, picture, director, screenplay, and international feature film.

It lost editing to Ford v. Ferrari. How do you feel about that? You guys really liked that. You know? Cool movie. Yeah. Production design Lost Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I thought when the production design is one of the great achievements of this movie.

It is. The design of the two homes and some of it is done via computer generated imagery, so that might have been part of it. But, you know, one thing I forgot to say out this movie. I love a house movie. You know? It's a movie about house. So that's really, really important. But the production design, Oscar usually goes to a period piece.

Yes. Almost always. So, you know. And don't forget. The lights, you know? I mean, once upon a time, fucking rocks. It's fantastic. This was a year that for me had three five-star movies.

That's very unusual. But my three-five-star movies that year were this, once-pon-a-time, and Uncut Jems. Which was not nominated for Best Picture, but Uncut Jems also came out. It was an incredible year. It was a great movie year. I got to tell you, I re-watched Little Women on the plane back from New York. Also great. Terrific movie.

I think we're talking a lot about Shalmay because he is, of course, in the new Josh Saffney movie. and that's an underrated great challenge not to me but I feel like it's getting like pushed aside for all his lead roles but he's obviously just supporting in that movie but he's wonderful in that

this movie has a 97 Metacritic score only 54 movies in the history of Metacritic have 97 or more read the rest of them I don't have the list in front of me unfortunately what movies is this standing in for now we talked about memories of murder and the bong filmography.

I was trying to think of a couple of movies that are class conscious because I do think that class is the new vanguard of the Academy Award film. But a couple that sprung to mind bridesmaids, which weirdly,

a movie that I think that you could have made the case could be on our list, you know, one of the great comedies of the time we put Anker Man on, but I think that it was in discussion for that spot

that is very much a movie about like a have and a have not in close quarters over a very emotional time. And the Florida Project, of course, and then along with the Florida Project, you have the other Sean Baker film about class.

Enora. And then I put Anora together with Moonlight and Hurt Locker, which are sort of the, huh, the Academy's doing this now, moments. Yeah. You know? Yeah. We're like critically acclaimed, quote unquote, smaller movies that we don't associate with Best Picture

in the vein of, you know, some historical epic. The big differentiator between Parasite and these three films that you have here is that those three films are the three lowest grossest. best picture winners of all time non-COVID restrictions edition. This movie went on to make well over $200 million around the world.

This is an insane financial success for Bong and is one of the reasons why he got to make making 17. He got a real proper American studio blank check after the success of this movie. I do wonder, I'm curious about the rest of his career because

he's not getting $150 million again anytime soon. That's not, but he does. have, he'll have support in South Korea and the pretty significant financial system that has helped produce a lot of his movies there for the longest time. And he does like to kind of move back and forth between U.S. features or, you know, U.S. and British casts and the South Korean features, and sometimes he blends those two things together. And, you know, doing an animated movie makes a ton of sense when you think about the way that he designs all of his films. For sure. The storyboarding being converted. Also do what you want, you know?

I mean, if the outsized financial success of Parasite earns you anything, and kind of the magic of Parasite is that he was just making the movie that he wanted to make, you know, and then it went bananas. So, I don't know, that's, he can make an animated film. He can, he can do weird stuff. Like, what does he have left to prove? I mean, he has nothing to prove at this point, obviously. He goes into, he's in the. Pantheon at this point. I'll be interested to see, though, like, if America

kind of continues to care about him. Right. That's a very, you know, ethnocentric point of view, but this is an American movie podcast, and I'll certainly watch anything that he makes. The other thing that I think he was kind of a knockdown effect of this was, uh, Junya Jung won Best Supporting Actors at the Academy Awards a couple years

later for Minari. And there's so few foreign language acting prizes in Oscar history. And even though no one from the Parasite cast was nominated it did win the SAG Ensemble Award which was seen as one of those moments where it was like oh wow this is really happening

and I now wonder if you will see hopefully more and more international feature performances getting nominated for Oscars winning Oscars I'm kind of fascinated by sentimental value this year I think we're going to have a couple because of that yeah you know there's definitely

some stuff in play where it's not just like okay yeah Jafar Panahi made an amazing movie let's give him international feature and then like pretend like nothing else ever happened. Obviously, you know, I'm still here. We saw an acting performance from that film last year. I do think that's going to happen a lot more, which is very cool for the Oscars. It does do the thing of like kind of reducing the pool of awareness because just those films are, none of those films are parasite. And it's going to be hard to replicate the phenomenon, like, quality of this. But that's also just a great outcome from this movie.

Recommended if you like. Yeah. Bung has cited the housemaid, the South Korean kind of black comedy thriller or satire many times as a key inspiration for this movie. I wrote down Us, which is also got a kind of, you know, it's a mirror image of two families, but. But there's a basement in that, right? Yeah, yeah. There's class for sure as a factor in that one. Coriated shoplifters also this year?

Yeah. They're kind of twinned. They are. I wrote the host also for the bongheads fight club I see it yeah you know how do we break the system yeah that's what that movie is about and delusion yeah and broad satire in which kind of everyone is guilty

right um likewise for the killing of a sacred deer sure but a lot a lot darker I mean but pretty funny yeah but like real it real messed up yeah and with a real chaos agent yeah you know and Barry Keogun I see you've got an addition here Down Abbey. Yeah. Houses, upstairs, downstairs.

Listen, anything, you know, anywhere you want to go. But it's slightly lighter, but not trending great for anyone in that world at the end of the grand finale, you know? I mean, I guess they're like sort of emotionally fulfilled, but otherwise. Maybe Bonn could do down and four. That would be good. I would watch that. Yeah, this is a great movie.

You feel good about number eight? I say this every time. It's like we've moved past numbers, you know? It's all vibes. Well, I just at this point, it makes me feel a little queasy when I really start thinking about them. They're all great movies. We're at the point now when I tell my husband like, oh, you know, sorry, I have work.

I have to go watch like X movie. He's like, that's not really a half situation. Yeah, I know. So, you know, I feel okay. Well, I also went down into my basement, my dungeon, to watch this movie last night. And I had a similar, like, I'm sorry. As soon as bedtime is over, I can't sit with you. I have to go get into my spreadsheet.

And at first, I was like, it had been a long weekend. Yeah. And I didn't want to do work on a Sunday night as I often am. Sure. Same. And then within 10 minutes of the film, I was like, yeah, this is such a good movie. This is just such an engaging, emotional, funny, strange film. Yeah.

The next seven are not quite like this. That doesn't mean that they're any less good. They all have different energies, the final seven. Yeah. There's no sameness now. That's called listmaking. It is. It is.

Some good variety. Any clothing thoughts? I recommend Parasite if you haven't seen it. I would too. Thanks to our producer Jack Sanders for his work on this episode. Later this week on Friday, we've decided to separate two films. We were going to do House of Dynamite and Springsteen deliver me from nowhere in the same episode. I'll just be completely transparent here.

I thought that a movie that was coming out in November, was going wide, and it's not. Okay. So now we're going to push the schedule a little bit. So this Friday, Springsteen, Deliver Me for Nowhere, Me, You, CR, the true Nebraska head of the three of us, talking about one of the awards acting showcases of the year. And then on Monday, after everyone's had a chance to watch it on the Netflix streaming platform, we will talk about House of Dynamite. Does that sound good to you? I'm ready.

Okay, we'll see you then. Thank you.