The best thing I can say about Lee Isaac Chung’s (Minari, Munyurangabo) Twisters is that it does very well at what it tries to do. In his first film since earning an Academy Award nomination for 2020’s Minari, Chung takes on a film that couldn’t feel any more different. Twisters is not a sequel or reboot of the commercially successful Twister, which earned $495 million worldwide, more than five times its $92 million budget. The 1996 movie was one of the most-hyped and anticipated in years, with its trailers ahead of their time and featuring two of the newest Hollywood A-listers, Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton. Despite its commercial success, it had poor Rotten Tomatoes critics (66%) and audience (58%) scores.
Category Archives: Lee Isaac Chung
Minari (2020)
Suffering from similar fates as other 2020 films such as News of the World, Land, and Nomadland is Lee Isaac Chung’s breakthrough Minari. This movie tells a familiar story in a way that is unique but ultimately ineffective. I say that tongue-in-cheek because my favorite film of the year (at the time of this post) is News of the World, which fails to escape many of the traps these other three movies fall into. And that’s not even to say that News of the World is a great film. It’s a very good film that earned quite an affinity in a reasonably drab 2020.