Cheap The Host (2-Disc Collector's Edition) (DVD) (Bong Joon-ho) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Host (2-Disc Collector's Edition)

Very cool
I really enjoyed this monster movie. Had an awesome monster and a pretty good story. The action scenes were the highlights. The way the monster moved, grabbed people was all very realistic. The monster itself could have used some more CGI work. When it was off in a distance it looked very believable. But when you saw it up close it looked like a cartoon. <
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>The story was well done but had a lot of plot holes. The acting was good but I watched it with the English dubbing which was terrible. The people they got to do the voice overs sounded like they belonged doing anime. It was really bad. And the English script didn't always make sense either. It's probably better to watch this movie in it's original Japanese with subtitles. For that reason, I'm giving it 4 stars. <
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>But it was really good.

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Don't let them fool you! A horrendous monster flick
I recently picked this one up at my friend's video store. He advised me that customer reviews were not good. I noticed the fantastic reviews on the cover: "On Par with Jaws" (Harry knowles), "One of the greatest monster movies ever made" and " A knockout monster movie." I figured it had to be at least decent with all these great reviews. After watching this terrible movie I thought, "what a waste of time." (approximately 119 minutes). This film doesn't deserve to be compared to Jaws. Maybe Harry Knowles should change his name to Harry "Know-less." They are lying to you folks. The dialogue is totally ridiculous an acting is beyond stiff and wooden. It has all the trademarks of many substandard Asian films today- sloppy direction, awkward emotional content, and lousy background music. The american actors in the film are some of the worst actors I've seen in a while. The monster appears in the begining of the film (Oh how suspenseful!) and little is left to the imagination. if this film is one of the greatest monster movies ever made, the film indsutry is in big trouble! I did make one positive observation. There are many unintentional laughs in The Host. It was definitely campy. I urge you to rent this one first before you spend your hard earned bucks.

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overhyped it's true but still worth watching
This is not a completely straightforward monster movie and will probably disappoint a lot of people expecting the wrong thing. The director of this film did Memories of Murder, a very dark and excellent Seven-ish movie about one of the first serial killers in South Korea (see it; much better than this); people were quite surprised by this choice of a follow-up project, I gather. I could see that some of the black humor here might be lost on viewers unfamiliar with his other work or just not paying attention. For example, the mourning scene is quite genuinely sad but also quite comical at the very same time, and this sort of mix in the same scene isn't your typical Hollywood approach. The reveal of the monster is another case in point where expectations are purposefully confounded (small spoiler alert). I thought it was one of the funniest sequences I had seen in a genre picture in ages, and it is precisely the beauty of it that the monster does not have a slow steady unveiling throughout the movie, as some people have criticized the movie for. The very brief shot of this wacky fish monster rampaging (lumbering) across the field in broad daylight from the woman's p.o.v. in the bus traveling overhead is absolutely priceless. <
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>Unfortunately, though I wanted to like this, I have to be honest about several things. The script is a bit workmanlike and, after the first third or so, starts to feel more and more routine. It almost feels like a first draft: things could have been much more interesting or compelling or different, but as it is the plot turns just kind of meander to the conclusion. The movie's main characters don't quite have enough room to develop independently in my opinion, so, despite the heavy emphasis on their interaction and emotions, the movie doesn't really succeed for me as a family drama. Also, while I am all for pointed critiques of American adventurism abroad (okay, hegemony, sorry to use the word), the film's politics, for which it has gotten some praise in some lefty-leaning media outlets, are simplistic and caricatured in the exact same way as the average Hollywood genre picture, it's just that the villains here are Americans and the obedient South Korean state. Frankly, caricaturing your villains no matter what the politics of your movie is has rather limited rewards. Also, people who enjoy nitpicking or attacking plausibility would have a field day with this, as many plot developments or actions are rather random, puzzling, or farfetched but really, it's a movie about a big walking man-eating amphibious creature, so that's probably a waste of your time. On the whole, I was entertained and I am glad to have seen it but, after a great opening stretch, the movie for me lost some momentum and became less and less successful. Better to go in with lowered expectations, but still, this is much better than the average. <
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>Don't watch the dubbed version; the dub is terrible, as bad as they usually are, and listening to mediocre poorly paid voice actors is pretty much a surefire way to ruin any possible appreciation for the positive features of this film (or others). Watch the subtitled version, trust me.