Bong Joon-Ho is a fantastic filmmaker. His greedy revelry in icky and tense moments gives his movies a moody, panicky pace rendering them utterly enchanting. Add to that his almost slapstick sense of physical comedy–usually intruding into said tense moments–and you get this wonderful shimmering life that makes his characters human and his world entirely livable, no matter how bleak the scenario. For Bong does seem to like to put his players and his native Korea through a bad time–a serial killer campaign in Memories of Murder, a vile worm creature’s horrible campaign in The Host, and most recently a wrongful imprisonment in this year’s Mother, nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film.

In what has almost become a subgenre standard in the worlds of fiction and cinema, the eponymous mother in his new film must crusade against idiocy and all hope to reverse the wrongful murder charge against her simpleton son. She rages and writhes. She panics and wills to overcome. All the while traversing a familiarly Bongian environment via clunky and inane plot points–sudden disappearances, rememberings, and all too predictable character flip-flops. If not for the lush photography and odd ether trapped like a genie in this vessel the movie wouldn’t work at all. But one rankles at the drearily plotted bit for writing as intriguing as 2003′s zany and inspired Memories of a Murder.

That said, the last act will have you right on the edge of your seat until the denouement which will ether have you up in arms or groaning out the side of your mouth.