Minari

⭐ 9.0/10

(Originally written by Joseph)

Finally got a chance to watch this one and really enjoyed it. As others have noted, it's a movie about a Korean immigrant family moving to Nebraska to try to build a life through farming. This movie resonated with me a LOT and I'm surprised my siblings didn't point this out more. I felt I could really relate to the boy as I was about his age when my (kinda) immigrant parents started farming after quitting a dead-end job, dealing with those struggles and uncertainty. The way they were scared of their unfamiliar grandma, to not fitting in at church (though obviously for me it was different reasons) to even walking around in cowboy boots. I'm not saying we struggled like this family did, but I really felt a lot of the quirks this movie had.

Anyways, this movie is awesome like everyone says. It's just great, simple storytelling, though I thought they struck an awkward balance between wanting to tell a compelling story versus simply wanting to show what life was like. Am I allowed to relax or not?? But in the end it was sweet, effective, heart warming and legitimately funny on a few occasions. I think I would have preferred the climax to be the conflict between characters rather than the climax we got, but I also get that through the course of life, dramatic things do happen.

I began 2022 in search of a movie that would go into my all-time pantheon. This might not quite be it, but it was great nonetheless.