Logo and illustrations by Adrienne Luther.

Welcome to Soggy Waffles Reviews. Here’s how these bite-size, digestible movie reviews work. Every movie gets a haiku. That’s one movie, 17 syllables. Every movie gets a short write-up. I’m talking so short that you should be able to completely syrupize a plate of waffles in the time it takes to read the review. If not, then I’m not doing my job. This is my take on the movies I see, not a chewed up and spit out version of anything you’ll find online. And finally, every movie gets a Soggy Waffles rating. The scale is as follows:

1. The Frozen Waffle

The type of waffle that you can still taste the freezer burn when you bite into it. The whole experience is so traumatizing that it might be awhile before you can safely bite into another.

2. The Soggy Waffle

You don’t need a pick-axe or other climbing gear to attack this waffle, but the pneumonic device you learned in elementary school to memorize the cardinal directions still applies: Never Eat Soggy Waffles.

3. The Microwaved Waffle

This is the type of waffle that won’t stick with you for the rest of your life, but damn you enjoyed it nonetheless. Not every movie can be a Superbad.

4. The Crispy Waffle

Oh yeah, it’s not the best waffle you’ve ever had, but it’s pretty close. This rating is reserved for the movise that crack into your End-of-Year best lists but don't quite make it onto your Best of All Time.

5. The Perfectly Toasted Waffle

This is that from-scratch, special recipe, best-you’ve-ever had waffle. The kind in which the waffle is so good that the act of adding chocolate chips, butter or even syrup would be sacrilegious (but obviously you still do). You can never eat it for the first time twice, so savor it when you’ve got it.

Parasite

All aboard the train,

Not the “Snowpiercer” train:

The Bong Joon Ho train.

Every so often, a movie comes along that *literally* everyone who sees it urges the uninitiated to go into it knowing as little a possible.

Even less frequently does a foreign film have breakout success of such epic proportions that every showtime and every theater is sold out for its entire opening weekend stateside.

So when those movies are one in the same, I’m not going to fuck around with commentary that could give away a shred of a detail that you didn’t know before reading this review. Spoiler culture be damned, I’m doing this for your own good. I’m not going to comment on Bong Joon Ho’s masterful criticism of modern classism, and I’m definitely not going to rave about the devilishly twisted turns that “Parasite” takes before its curtain clos. Because even though you knowingly clicked on this review fully prepared to learn something new about the little Korean film that your cinephile coworkers and friends just won’t shut up about, I’m doing you a huge favor by removing myself from the conversation entirely. Trust me.

In Theaters, Perfectly ToastedGuest UserNovember 2, 2019