Since everyone and their comic book guy are going to be talking about 300 this weekend (I’m being a good friend and waiting for my other metro-geek to return to the city to see it), I thought i would write about The Host.

This is a Korean ‘monster movie’ that will be released in the US fairly soon (I’ve already seen some commercials) and its pretty damn cool. It may suprise you how cross-genrifying this movie is. While there is a monster and it does kill, the movie is also a family drama which turns out to be funny too.

I guess the first thing you’d notice watching the movie is how soon they reveal the monster. This is cool. Monsters do cool shit in movies, so why should the thing hide in dark corners the whole time. We get to see this thing do eveything its learned to do since it was ‘mutated’ or whatever into life (they allude to the monster being 2 yrs old), and it looks pretty good too.

The dramatic side of the movie also totally works. You get really attached to the family who are the main focus of the story, and deeply involved to what happens to them. This is something that most monsters movies lack, its always all about the creature, rarely about the people its terrorizing.

The last take away from the movie are the political overtones, which I felt were a little heavy handed, if not accurate. Ya see, everything bad that happens in this movie is a result of stupid Americans…seriously. I wont give everything away here, but a main focus of the film involves Americans doing stupid things in search of something they find dangerous, which never actaully existed in the first place (WMDs anyone?).

I really liked The Host. It wasn’t any piece of ground-breaking, award-winning genius, but it was something new and different, and I always give props to filmmakers thinking outside the box. A monster movie with heart, ya gotta like that.

Alright, its here. After returning the first macBook i purchased i was ready to shake my PC addiction and learn a new OS. I’m gonna write some posts about using this machine as i learn more, but for now, how bout checking out a screenshot.