Monthly Archives: September 2026

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Harbor Frights

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Hope

by Hope Madden

When I learned that Na Hong-jin, the filmmaker behind 2016’s The Wailing and 2008’s The Chaser, was releasing a creature feature this year called Hope, well, I was as on board as a person can be.

The writer/director has an instinct for dumbass heroes, beleaguered and in-over-their-heads, and mysteries that are too big for them to solve. His shot making is breathtaking, often finding an almost obscene beauty in the most disturbing of images. And the humor in his films is so inappropriate given the gravity of the subject that it can’t help but be appealing.

And now a creature feature? We haven’t had a great Korean creature feature since Bong Joon Ho’s 2006 masterpiece The Host. Two decades! And for the first hour or so, Hope delivers a breakneck and breathless bit of horror.

Hwang Jung-min is the police chief of Hope Harbor, a tiny South Korean harbor town in the demilitarized zone just this side of North Korea. Chief carries himself with a little swagger, wears fancy Western boots and shades, and has no idea what to do when some hunters report an ox that looks to have been ripped apart by a tiger.

From that moment of revelation, what Na crafts is the most precise and astonishing chaos. The movement of the camera, what we see and what we do not, what we hear without seeing, the scale and the intimacy and the carnage is magnificent. Unheard of. Deeply amazing.

And within that pandemonium, characters emerge. They are funny, cowardly, fearless, dim-witted—sometimes all of those adjectives at different moments. The chemistry among castmates is fresh and electric, but you know you’re waiting for something more. Depth, a backstory, a twist. You know it’s coming.

With the first good look at the beast, the wheels begin to come off this joy ride. And as Na lets you take a breath between acts, complications pile up, genres switch up, and CGI continues to disappoint.

The actors never do. Zo In-sung is a force of nature in this film, and Hoyeon oscillates between sweetheart and badass depending on the needs of the scene. But their film, this breathtaking creature feature, feels like it’s bled into an entirely other movie. One more ponderous and pretentious and weighed down with CGI.

Hope is an impressive piece of filmmaking no matter its end result, but it’s fully an hour too long and that hour belongs to some separate, other movie, which keeps the movie I loved so much from a satisfying conclusion.

 

New In Theaters

We Were On a Break!

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The Sun Never Sets

by George Wolf

Buried deep in the guts of The Sun Never Sets is a movie we’ve seen plenty of times. It’s that amusing, sometimes zany rom-com where two impossibly attractive people slowly find their way to each to other. We know they’ll be together, it’s just a question of how enjoyable the journey will be.

And that can be a perfectly fine, easily forgettable time at the movies.

Joe Swanberg doesn’t make those movies. His stories are lived-in slices of humanity, often filled with easygoing humor, stellar performances and easily relatable characters who must navigate compelling pushes and pulls.

The Sun Never Sets has all of that, and it may be his finest film to date.

Dakota Fanning is simply fantastic as Wendy, a construction worker in Alaska whose two-year relationship with Jack (Jake Johnson, terrific) is suddenly at a serious crossroads. Jack is an older, divorced dad with two kids, and isn’t really interested in adding more wives or children.

He’s worried that Wendy will resent these choices as the years go by, so he insists she take a few months away from him, to “see what’s out there” and decide if she really wants Jack for the long haul.

Reluctantly, she takes that break, and ends up meeting her bad boy ex, Chuck (Cory Michael Smith, Saturday Night‘s Chevy Chase) who’s back in town as a charter pilot for tourists. Sparks are reignited.

And suddenly, Jack wants the break to be over. Imagine that.

Swanberg, doing triple duty as writer/director/editor, again sets a casual pace filled with authentic dialog that’s always propelled by a lovely, improvisational feel. The entire ensemble (also featuring Debby Ryan and Karley Sciortino) shines, each actor carving distinctly human characters amid oversized, Alaska-worthy fashions, a robust adult dating climate and the smell of salmon.

The Sun Never Sets is just a warm, funny, frisky delight. It’s a film that makes you feel you just hit town and are instantly accepted into a circle of friends involved in a juicy love triangle. You’ll get a kick out of where they take you, and where Swanberg leaves you.

Because the finale is something you won’t be expecting, even though you’ll leave the theater thinking you should have seen it coming early on.

Either way, you’ll probably be smiling.