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Bong has lamented that shooting locations were hard to find because little is left of the nation’s totalitarian aesthetic, and his film’s almost William Castle-like coup de graçe punctures a hole through space-time as if to say: “This might seem like the stuff of ancient history, but democracy has always been vulnerable to delusions of permanence, and ours is still new enough that the Hwaseong murderer could be sitting in the movie theater seat right behind you.” Even non-Korean audiences who discovered the film as it ascended into the canon of world cinema were liable to shiver at the thought that the killer was still out there somewhere, living among decent people like a tiger in the grass.Īnd then there’s Bong’s oft-mentioned hope that the killer would feel seen - or at least feel something - when he felt Park’s eyes find him in the darkness, a hope that would be frustrated by the predictably sociopathic response Lee shared during his court case: “I just watched it as a movie, I had no emotion towards it.” And yet, revisiting “Memories of Murder” through the Criterion Collection’s deluxe and context-rich new Blu-ray, it’s striking how the closure provided by Lee’s confessions only serves to clarify how the film was never really about him in the first place. First and least evergreen was the idea that returning the viewer’s gaze would viscerally bridge the gap between contemporary Korean audiences and the violent horrors of their country’s all too recent past. Several of the moment’s stated intentions have been negated in some way. Now that we know a man named Lee Choon-jae confessed to all nine of the killings depicted in Bong’s movie (in addition to six others) in 2019, the dying seconds of “Memories of Murder” can’t help but hit different.

Unsupported by a futile national police force that devoted the majority of its manpower to suppressing the student rebellion that had risen up against Chun Doo-hwan’s oppressive regime, and kept in the dark (sometimes literally) because of despotic policies on both sides of the 38th Parallel, the kick-happy Keystone Kops driving the film’s tragicomic investigation naturally crash into a dead end.

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This question only applies to so many films, but none have asked it more directly - or answered it with more force - than Bong Joon Ho’s “ Memories of Murder.” A loose but historically redolent evocation of the serial killings that plagued the rural South Korean city of Hwaseong between 19, Bong’s 2003 masterpiece defrosted his country’s most notorious cold case by looking back at it as a damning microcosm of life during autocracy, and as a symptom of the powerlessness that can seep into the general population of any country whose government only cares about preserving its own tenuous control of them. Would an uncannily effective studio thriller like “The Mothman Prophecies” still be eerie enough to punch above its weight class if the Mothman turned out to be a bored accountant named Gary whose prank calls got a little out of hand? Probably not.

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The one recurring character, Jennifer Coolidge's Tanya McQuoid, earns her spot with each and every awkward moment.Every film inspired by a real unsolved crime leaves behind the same lingering question: Would any of then retain their full power if their respective real-world crimes were eventually solved? Would “Zodiac” still be such a haunting police sketch of pathological obsession in a world where viewers could Google the killer’s identity in less time than it takes Robert Graysmith to crack even the easiest cypher? Probably. Oh, and its casts - while mostly different, because it takes place at different hotels - are fantastic. And you'll probably pick favorites, and start hoping that they're not the ones who die.

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So, for everyone who's ever hate-watched a TV show filled with terrible people, you may get a familiar sense as you hope your least-favorite folks meet their makers. You become the sleuth, as each of the two seasons of The White Lotus began with many rich folks checking into a luxury hotel - and others 'check out' of the mortal coil. This one is probably the biggest stretch, because when you watch The White Lotus, you don't follow anyone playing detective.