In my experience, Korean films can be (and love to be) a bit over-the-top (as can films from any country, to be fair, still… Korea seems to have a special advantage in this respect), but Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite strikes a magical balance of over-the-top-ness and gripping story-telling that left me and our lovely audience screaming with delight tonight. I hope the neighbors didn’t mind!

As perfect as it gets, Parasite invites you to be an insider to begin with… you just know how this con is going to play out, and you cheer as it does, until… well… until… This is film-making at its very best. Somewhat reminiscent of last year’s Palme d’or winner, Shoplifters, come to think of it.

Since Parasite is a tiny bit on the long side (not that you’d notice), we selected a brief short this evening… our go-to brief short, in fact. Evil Beaver a Miller Lite commercial, believe it or not. Funny.

The second part of our Creepfest mini-season, leading up to the Halowe’en special, Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now delivered a knockout punch. Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie had some chemistry going on for sure. Sweet.

Some tardy arrivals (natives of a certain country) delayed the start of our feature (not you, Max!) , so it was a bit of a late one, but we had a great evening, capped off with a loaf of banana bread, fresh from the oven. As usual, not a crumb remained.

Tonight’s opening short was Bicycle, by Cool 3D World. Clever stuff.

It was great to revisit this classic tonight! Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces packs so much color and depth into a rather short 98 minute package. We had a great turnout too.

On another note, I’m going to rethink the popcorn policy here. Every Friday morning, I throw so much uneaten popcorn out. As cute as it is for me to deliver popcorn to each sofa, it appears that not everyone wants it. I think I’ll just set it out on the side bar, and folks can help themselves. I know… first world problems!

Speaking of which, tonight’s animated short was the disturbingly poignant story of an immigrant’s futile attempt to make a new life in a first world country: Paper or Plastic, directed by Nata Metlukh

On the face of it, one might assume that a documentary whose premise is fairly obvious – triplets separated at birth are reunited – wouldn’t be able to hold its audience in rapt attention, but Tim Wardle’s Three Identical Strangers does just that. I won’t go into details for the sake of not being a spoiler, but suffice it to say that there are many layers of skin to peel off of this particular onion. Some layers are stretched a bit, but overall, this is mesmerizing stuff.

This week we revisited two NewScreen favorites: The Chemical Brothers – We’ve got to try, directed by Ninian Doff, featuring “Girl the Dog”. We just had to show it again.

The second thing? Banana bread, baby!

Tonight marked the first screening of a Japanese movie in the seventeen year history of MovieNight/NewScreen, and it surely won’t be the last. Director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Palme D’or winning Shoplifters is an intimate portrait of a “family” who share no blood lines, but are very much a functional unit.

It was a busy night at the bar and consequently the movie started a bit late. Sorry kids! I’ll be more disciplined in future. I know some of you have a long way to go home on a school night.

Our animated short feature this week was La Pista, directed by Juanluigi Toccafondo.