Okja (2017)

Directed by Bong Joon-ho. Starring Ahn Seo-hyun, Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano, Steven Yeun, Byun Hee-bong, Shirley Henderson, Lily Collins, Giancarlo Esposito, Daniel Henshall, Devon Bostick, Yoon Je-moon. [TV-MA]

Oh, just another story of a girl and her superpig. The Mirando Corporation has bred a new animal (think: a pig-like hippopotamus) that will one day be used to feed the hungry at a much smaller ecological footprint, but Okja, raised in the mountains of Korea, means too much to young Mija (Seo-hyun) to let her become a prize animal to be gawked at and slaughtered without a fight. Another imaginative, ambitious and eclectic effort from Bong Joon-ho; a bit ungainly at times, shifting tones at several junctures (sometimes adroit, sometimes abrupt), and its angle on radical animal rights activism gets muddled along the way, but even at its messiest, always distinctive. Like Gollum, King Kong, et al, it doesn’t take long before the pixels that make up Okja start taking on the substance of real flesh, and she’s a real soulful sweetheart. Seo-hyun preserves the emotional center, Swinton gets to ply her arch and eccentric trade, but Gyllenhaal’s miscalculated bizarro performance is showy in the worst ways (like a mugging Jim Carrey at his most obnoxious), and he goes further afield each time he shows up on screen. Stick around for a post-credits scene (they’re not just for superhero movies these days).

78/100