Category: World News

You aren’t in much danger of walking out of No Other Choice wondering what it was about.

But director Park Chan-wook’s idiosyncratic, dark-comedy thriller is a masterclass in how hilarious, anxiety-inducing and chilling being on-the-nose can be.

When protagonist and former “Pulp Man of the Year'” Yoo Man-su loses his paper factory job in a takeover, his idyllic, summer barbeque-filled life comes under threat. As bills mount up, Yoo, his devoted wife and their kids (a boy and a girl – the daughter is a cello prodigy, of course) face the prospect selling their beautiful mid-century mansion.

It’s a very corny opening and laid on very, very thick. We even watch their two golden retrievers being driven away in the back of a car.

Struggling to get work amid fierce competition in a dwindling, increasingly automated industry, Yoo decides the only thing left to do is to find and kill the rivals that threaten to beat him to a new job.

What follows is an equally riotous and disturbing serial killer comedy of as many errors as you’d expect when a “paper man” tries to play assassin.

Park (Oldboy, Decision to Leave) is, perhaps, best known for films where people do violence to each other with things like hammers. But much of the tension of No Other Choice is the violence that doesn’t happen – the hesitation, the doubt and the incompetence that make any given moment feel like it could go any way. It’s impossible to predict.

Every scene feels as likely to end in slapstick comedy and humiliating failure as it is to turn truly grim. What’s most remarkable isn’t the seamless pivots from comedy to darkness, but how easily it manages at go both ways at simultaneously.

As Yoo holds a giant pot plant over the edge of a building, preparing to drop it on a competitor, plant water begins to trickle out and then runs slowly down his face.

These scenes are boldly wrapped in eye-catching and idiosyncratic cinematography, as Park deploys every playful technique in the kit, and a few new ones.

Be ready for Dutch angles galore.

Even the music gets in on the comedy – although it’s a joke better not spoilt.

No Other Choice feels like a test of the limits of sympathy for the very unsympathetic goals of a mostly unsympathetic antihero.

As Yoo, Lee Byung-hun (KPop Demon Hunters, Squid Game) mugs, grimaces, panics and transparently lies his way between job interviews, killings and family time. He plays it big, exactly where the film needs it to be.

It’s also a portrayal of cowardice disguised as desperation that’s as sleazy as they come.

And while No Other Choice devotes much of its energy looking into the strange ways we deform ourselves to compete in a capitalist system that turns us on each other, it refuses to let its protagonist off the hook.

It’s just as much concerned with the kind of toxic masculinity that drives men to obsessive, silly, madness, and what it means for those around them.

These are ideas both incredibly of our times and, of course, as true now as they were in fiction hundreds of years ago.

But No Other Choice delivers them in a heart-stopping, side-splitting vehicle that is a hard to compete with.

Growing older often brings unexpected grooming challenges. This is particularly apparent when some areas that, when young, we could otherwise ignore start to develop hair.

This includes our nose and ears, where hair grows thicker and longer as we age. But why do hairs in these areas act like this?

The answer predominantly lies in our sex hormones.

There are two types of hair that grows across our bodies.

Vellus hair is fine and colourless. This hair (also called “peach fuzz”) grows across most of our body, including our arms and neck.

Terminal hair is stiff, thick and darker. It stands up from our skin and is usually very obvious. Adult males have terminal hair on about 90% of their body, with females growing it on about 30% of their bodies.

Terminal hair stands up when we’re cold (giving goosebumps) and helps trap heat to keep us warm. It also protects us from the sun (such as hair on our scalp), and keeps dust and dirt out of our eyes through eyebrows and eyelashes.

As vellus hair is smaller, thinner and colourless, it is not usually an aesthetic problem (although it can be altered in some diseases). Instead, it is the terminal hair that is often noticed, and the primary target of our razor.

The normal process of hair development involves a growth phase (anagen), follicle-shrinking phase (catagen), and then a short resting phase (telogen) before the hair falls out and is replaced as the cycle begins again. Some 90% of the hair on our body is in the growth phase at any given time.

Nose, ear, eyelash and eyebrow hairs don’t usually grow too long. This is because the growth phase of the follicles only lasts about 100–150 days, meaning there is a limit to how long they can get.

Alternatively, the hair on your head has a growth phase that lasts several years, so it can grow to more than one meter in length if you don’t get it cut.

We have about 120 hairs growing in each of our nasal cavities, with an average length of about 1 centimetre.

As you breathe through your nostrils, the hair in your nose works with the mucus to block and collect dust, pollen and other particles that could make their way to your lungs.

The hair in the ears also plays a protective role, trapping foreign objects and working with the earwax to facilitate self-cleaning processes.

Androgens are a group of sex hormones that play a key role in puberty, development, and sexual health. The most common androgen is testosterone.

These androgens influence hair growth, and are the key to understanding why we have longer and thicker hairs in our nose and ears.

Hairs in different parts of the body respond to androgens differently. Unlike some hairs that are stimulated at puberty (such as pubic hairs and facial hair in males), some hairs, such as the eyelashes, don’t respond at all to androgens. Others increase hair size much slower, like the ear canal hair that can take up to 30 years.

Females have lower levels of androgens in the body, so major hair growth changes are more localised to the underarms and pubic regions.

We don’t have much data to support various conclusions about hair growth in later life, as most studies have focused on why we lose hair (such as balding) rather than why we have too much.

Nonetheless, there are still some hypotheses about why we grow more ear and nose hair as we age.

Most of the impact of hairy ears and noses is observed in males, as they have larger amounts of testosterone.

It’s not usually a problem. Having a hairy ear (auricular hypertrichosis) does not appear to impact hearing at all. Note that if you are using hearing aids, excessive hair can impact their effectiveness, so in these rarer cases it is worth having a chat with your doctor.

The largest issue appears to be the appearance of these hairs, which can make some people self-conscious.

To address this, avoid plucking hairs out (such as with tweezers), as this can lead to infections, ingrown hairs and inflammation.

Instead, it is safest to reach for the trimmers (or employ laser hair removal processes) to clean up the area a little.

Christian Moro is associate professor of science & medicine, Bond University. Charlotte Phelps is senior teaching fellow in medicine, Bond University.

Some of us remember having more energy in our 20s. We could work late, sleep badly, have a night out, recover quickly and still feel capable the next day. By our 40s, that ease has often gone. Fatigue feels harder to shake. It’s tempting to assume this is simply the ageing process – a one‑way decline.

The truth is that the 40s are often the most exhausting decade, not because we are old, but because several small biological changes converge at exactly the same time that life’s demands often peak. Crucially, and optimistically, there is no reason to assume that energy must continue to decline in the same way into our 60s.