Hacker Cinema
Okja
2017 · Film · 120 min
Directed by Bong Joon Ho
A young girl named Mija risks everything to prevent a powerful, multi-national company from kidnapping her best friend - a massive animal named Okja.
11 positive1 negative8 neutralfrom 20 commenters
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21 comments on Hacker News
> The Netflix catalog is full of not so good movies, and the video rental shops in the 90s were too.
I subscribed to Netflix for a year or two when the platform became popular, but I quickly realized it resembles those old school rental shops too much. Yes, you could get some popular classics like The Godfather or Goodfellas, but apart from that you were stuck with another crime story or a comedy with Steve Martin or John Candy. Actually, my analogy may not be 100% fortunate, because I still have good memories about watching these comedies as a kid with my dad. Now I wouldn't have time and patience to go through movies of "that" quality. Anyhow, my point is that you were very unlikely to get there anything that wasn't already proved to be popular. Forget about anything more niche / arthouse. Netflix has produced plenty by itself, but how many of those movies are actually any good? I remember a handful of them: Marriage Story, Roma, Don't Look Up and a movie for kids called Okja.
The movies Okja and Earthlings. Made me realize I could not continue to support the exploitation and abuse of animals.
Makes me think of that Bong Joon Ho movie, Okja!
> The elephant in the room here is the obsession western TV now has with being woke.
The biggest Korean series on Netflix is absurdly "woke": I don't know how one could watch Squid Game and miss how critical it is of capitalism. I also find most movies by Bong Joon-ho to be similarly "woke" - not at the periphery, but as a central theme of the work - for instance Snowpiercer, Parasite and Okja, and they are hits in Korea and abroad.
Meta commentary: your appreciation for diverse types of movies (and not just the same-old bland Hollywood ones) is pretty woke too!
I get the sense that you would like some adult themes, but not too slow?
Top of my mind (and in no specific order) would be:
- Dark City
- The Thirteenth Floor
- City of the Lost Children
- Tron (original and maybe new one)
- Interstellar
- Inception
- A Clockwork Orange
- Her (very relevant to our times)
- Dune (2021 version)
- Brazil
- The Martian
- Children of Men
- Edge of Tomorrow (most like Marvelverse on this list but still very good)
- Moon
- Twelve Monkeys
- Upgrade
- The Fifth Element
- Contact
- Okja
- District 9
- Predestination (very relevant to our times)
- Serenity (but might need some prep from the tv show before watching)
- World on a Wire
- The Abyss
- Minority Report (very relevant in our times)
- The Fly
- Videodrome
- Equilibrium
- Strange Days
- The Andromeda Strain (relevant after Covid)
- eXistenZ (trippy but I loved it when it came out and was only around your sons age)
- In Time (interesting class dynamics on display)
- Enemy Mine
- Franklyn (some interesting takes on mental illness)
- The Arrival
Hypocrisy doesn't absolve those acting in very questionable ways at Neuralink.
Film recommendation: Okja
I like some of Netflix's content but always have the impression that Netflix casts it net very wide - perhaps too wide? Their library stretches from low-quality reality shows to expensive high-end drama. It's a strange mix - trying to be all things to all people?
To be fair to Netflix, they have invested in a lot in non-US content globally - probably more than other production/streaming services. They have also given some highly-regarded directors creative freedom and financed their films e.g Martin Scorcese (The Irishman) and Bong Joon-ho (Okja).
Whether Netflix is 'crisis' mode or I don't know, but it will be interesting how Netflix changes (if at all) in the coming months.
This comes up in the movie Okja but I didn’t know it was based on a real thing
A good triple watch is the next two movies by the director - Okja, and the much lauded Parasite. All three are themed on class struggle, and Parasite nailed the theme to perfection.
Okja ?
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt3967856/
Not an overly helpful comment, but this is loosely the premise behind the movie 'Okja' on Netflix. It was an interesting idea and made you see both sides. Weird it seems to be coming true.
Mad Men didn't even have an audience when it aired (<2 million viewers most episodes), and airs on a network that likely won't exist in 5-6 years (or at least won't be producing new content), so it's not super clear to me what your point is about those shows as evidence of how a network grows. The way a network grows is by producing content people want to watch, whether that's disposable content made to last a minute or content made to last the test of time. HBO isn't growing because people are subscribing to watch Sopranos re-runs.
Past reporting suggests churn in most subscription content services is very low, so your Netflix cancellation may be unusual. I'd also add that exclusive content is one part of the story, but there's also a lot of licensed content that's very good on Netflix as on other services.
But for what it is worth, I would rank the following Netflix originals to be "top tier" within their genre -- some of these genres lend themselves more to rewatching than others, and some are closer to my taste than others, some held up in quality through their run more than others, so in a sense I am ranking shows based on their peak quality --
Orange is the New Black; Bloodline; Stranger Things; The Crown; Gilmore Girls AYITL; The OA; A Series of Unfortunate Events; Mindhunter; The Haunting of Hill House; Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt; Master of None; Love; Lady Dynamite; Santa Clarita Diet; GLOW; American Vandal; Maniac; Bojack Horseman; F is for Family; Disenchantment; Hilda; Dark; The Rain; Elite; Chef's Table; Making a Murderer; Shot in the Dark; Wormwood; Wild Wild Country; Salt Fat Acid Heat; Queer Eye; The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell; My Next Guest Needs No Introduction; Lilyhammer; Terrace House; Alias Grace; The End of the Fucking World; Collateral; Wanderlust; Longmire; Black Mirror; Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.
In addition to these, the following shows are Netflix originals in my region, indicating that although someone else initially funded them, Netflix bought them for exclusive distribution here, and also meet the above requirements:
Babylon Berlin; Bodyguard; Casé; Crashing; Cuckoo; Derry Girls; The Great British Baking Show; Happy!; Happy Valley; The Investigator; Peaky Blinders; River.
I have pretty broad taste in TV and watch a lot of TV while I am programming or running data analysis, so maybe the breadth of stuff I include here is surprising to most. But to the extent your post is a useful anecdote about how Netflix has no great shows, I'm responding to your challenge to "Name one show" that would meet that criteria.
(These are TV shows only, not films. I haven't really liked many Netflix original films although there are a few I would say are great, like Okja and Roma)
Highly subjective and therefor probably not welcome here, but since this was the comment I saw first:
My Top Netflix Shows:
- Better Call Saul
- Bojack Horseman
- Mindhunter
- Fargo
- Maniac
- The End of the Fucking World
- Master of None
- American Vandal
My Top Netflix Movies:
- Beats of No Nation
- Roma
- Annihilation
- Okja
And where I think your list is wrong:
- 13 Reasons Why
Very problematic show[1]. I found Netflix' response to the criticism lacking and season 2 doubles down on the mistake. Even if one can ignore that, I think the writing and characters are still insultingly thin.
- Ozark
Not bad at all. But also not nearly as good as Breaking Bad. If we didn't live in this gilden television age, I might've found it worth my time
- Altered Carbon
Visually very entertaining. But it's definitely pulp.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13_Reasons_Why#Social_impact
"Bankability" is a variable in the risk-reward equation, certainly.
I think I was more trying to get a point across that most of those probably were perceived to be relatively "low risk" original or not.
If you compare apples to apples you could probably find an equal number of relatively bankable directors/stars making mostly original stuff.
Guillermo del Toro is a big one in my mind thinking about this decade; Paul Feig and Edgar Wright also come to mind as bankable directors. Between them you can probably point to plenty of original films that might stand toe to toe with ET or Ghostbusters.
Don't forget to take off any rose-colored glasses when comparing of course; there's always that nostalgic factor when comparing one's childhood favorites to today's output.
If there is a big difference between the Top 10 list in the 80s and the Top 10 list this decade so far might be that audiences rewarded the big experiments in ET and Ghostbusters a bit more fondly at the box office than any equivalents this decade, but mainstream favor is always the hardest part of that risk/reward equation for Hollywood.
Not to mention on top of that you have the market shifts of bigger international audiences, smaller domestic theater audiences (shifting to home theater setups), etc.
How do you even compare Okja, for instance? (That one is a bankability "hire", too, in that the director proved himself in adaptation and foreign market work.) One of the most original films in the last decade, and who knows what its equivalent box office numbers might be except maybe some formula of a Netflix accountant somewhere?
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The experience might not be always better. An 8K (~IMAX, usually 4k though) screen and Dolby Atmos beat out what I have in my house that's for sure, but I concede that's usually overridden by noisy neighbors. But, I can chose any theater. The large players like AMC, Edwards, or even some smaller cinemas like iPic, or even Alamo drafthouse.
And you know what? When it leaves that theater, it's available on DVD or Bluray. It's available sometimes on iTunes, Netflix, or Amazon. I (usually, if it's popular enough) don't have to pick and choose what distribution channel I need to subscribe to so that I can actually watch the darn thing. If it's in theater, I can at least usually get it on DVD.
None of that applies with anything Amazon or Netflix create. (EDIT: crysin informed me that yes, Netflix has released a couple TV shows on Bluray; I didn't know that! Thanks!) It's locked down to only their platforms. I can't get the DVD to watch independent of their platforms. If they pull the content one day, it's gone, forever. If they want to one day charge an extra surcharge to watch these movies, I'll be forced to pay. If one day Netflix decides to sell the distribution rights for Okja to Amazon, well now I have to leave Netflix to go watch it.
No one benefits from these walled distribution platforms, except Amazon and Netflix. The consumer gets screwed, and judging by a lot of the comments on this site, not many people seem to mind, probably because they're already subscribed to both.
I don't understand where this cheerleading for these multi-billion dollar companies started.
First off, these companies aren't banned at all. They are free to show them.
They can't compete unless they show their movie in a French cinema, which they refuse to.
The only way to legally watch these movies like Okja is to subscribe to these companies. If Cannes gives out an award, you can't go see it in an independent cinema, you can't buy it on disc, you must subscribe to Netflix or Amazon. I completely side with Cannes on this fact. You can't celebrate film by promoting the distributor (and in this case, their subscription model).
Netflix and Amazon are going to continue their quest to destroy cinemas, and in this case, French business. If Netflix and Amazon want to start their own awards, then they can go ahead and do it. I'll make sure to stay away from it.
Netflix isn't listed as a production company for Okja.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3967856/companycredits?ref_=ttfc_ql_4
They are for Bright.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5519340/companycredits?ref_=ttfc_ql_4
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Yep, inspired in part by watching Okja, tried being vegetarian before watching that movie and now more or less steeled my will.
Even ${hollywood-bigshot} = Bong Joon-Ho who made a movie for Netflix that premiered at Cannes film festival wasn't allowed shoot on film:
http://variety.com/2017/film/news/bong-joon-ho-working-with-netflix-controversy-okja-cannes-1202428394/
At first, Darius Khondji, my cinematographer, and I wanted to shoot ‘Okja’ on 35mm, but Netflix insisted that all Netflix originals be shot and archived in 4K,” Bong said in an interview with Variety