In the wake of the 92nd Academy Award Ceremony, in which no women were nominated for the Best Director category, many were outraged at Hollywood constantly overlooking female direction. Critics of this latest Oscars snub were quick to post to social media and speak to journalists, many echoing similar sentiments: that women can direct movies just like men. “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” proves this statement wrong: women direct movies both differently and better than men.
Every few years, a genre-bender comes along, breaking some of those conventions but maintaining the essential ethos of that genre. “Parasite,” Bong Joon-ho’s haunting depiction of class struggle in South Korea, doesn’t fit into either category — the film neither conforms to nor breaks free of genre convention. Instead, Joon-ho’s latest thriller is indubitably a masterful genre-melding exercise, gaining the audience’s trust and comfort only to shatter the carefully constructed world later on.
