Heads Up: Mother

Now, there are several films named "Mother," and I can only account for one of them.  Others might be good, and I assume at least one of them is terrible.  I'm talking about the 2009 Korean film from Bong Joon-ho called "Mother."  I discovered this movie in "Piranha," a free monthly magazine released by Saturn - the vastly superior German version of Best Buy.  It caught my eye because director Bong Joon-ho also directed "The Host," which was a super cool monster movie revolving around a dysfunctional family.
"Mother" received a lot of attention due to the performance of the female lead, Kim Hye-ja.  I learned from the special features that she is a very well known and well respected actress in Korea, and Bong Joon-ho essentially created this film from the ground up so he could work with her.
The film he created is a dramatic crime thriller, and has drawn many comparisons to classic Hitchcock thrillers.  Kim Hye-ja plays the over-protective, obsessive mother of a mentally challenged young adult, Do-joon.  When Do-joon is hastily arrested for the murder of a teenage girl, despite a lack of evidence, his widowed mother takes upon herself the investigation to find the real killer.  This search leads her on a twisted journey from one clue to the next, in the seedy culture of the small town they live in.
Often crime thrillers, or murder mysteries, begin with an intimate relationship, and unravel to show a far reaching effect full of convolutions and connections, or in other words: the story starts with an individual and grows to encompass the town.  This story is unique in its genre because it starts with the town and works its way back down to the relationship that forms the backbone of the story, that is: the relationship of son and mother.
Bong Joon-ho is a painter with a camera.  Cinematically this is one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen.  He consistently finds environments and sets up frames that are simply breathtaking.  Right from the incredibly beautiful, and charmingly surreal opening shot, it is clear that this film is incredibly beautiful.  Bong Joon-ho likes to play around with reality and surrealism, not in the mind-bending sense, but sometimes in the Brechtian sense, reminding you that you're watching a film.  I never felt these moments were out of place, I thought they added to the film and its style as whole, but I have heard complaints about that.
This is still one of my favorite movies I've seen in the past few years, and it seems to be tragically overlooked.  It is a thrilling story that would make Hitchcock jealous, and is crafted with an expertise rarely accomplished.  Excelsior!