Like other 2020 films such as News of the World, Land, and Nomadland, Lee Isaac Chung’s breakthrough Minari suffers from a similar fate. 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.