The Best Korean Movies of 2012 (Sort of)

Was 2012 a great year for Korean movies? I've no idea since I haven't seen a single movie made that year yet. Was 2012 a great year for watching Korean movies? Hell, yes. Evidence below.

1. Peppermint Candy (1999): Critics raved about Lee Chang-dong's Poetry but this flashback film about a corrupt, suicidal businessman blows that later movie out of the water.

2. Woman Is the Future of Man (2006): Who doesn't love a good love triangle? Fools perhaps! Who doesn't love director Hong Sang-soo? Me until this movie actually. Now I totally do, too.

3. Night Fishing (2011): A short film without subtitles? That's right! Park Chan-wook's iPhone pic would have made this list if all it had been was the floating hat sequence with music by The UhUhBoo Project.

4. Bedevilled (2010): No top ten list of Korean movies is complete without a great fright flick. No great flight flick comes without a political message. Bedevilled is all about sisterly bonding. Not.

5. War of the Arrows (2011): Archery, certainly the trendiest of warfare weapons, is showcased to great effect in this Medieval action movie. Plenty of studded leather, too.

6. Crying Fist (2005): Now here's an anomaly: a boxing movie in which you're smitten with both contenders (Choi Min-sik, Ryu Seung-beom) -- both of them losers looking for redemption.

7. A Great Chinese Restaurant (1999): You'll have to suffer through the soundtrack but believe me, this indie dramedy is well worth the effort. Quite touching.

8. The Yellow Sea (2010): Na Hong-jin, who also directed the heart-racing thriller The Chaser, has paranoia in his DNA. Once again, the thrills here come from "Somebody's after me!" scenarios,

9. Quick (2011): Total motorcycle madness drives this movie that literally turns the premise of Speed on its head. Or on her head to be more precise.

10. My Dear Desperado (2010): Once again the Koreans defy expectations in this romantic comedy which ends up not that funny and not that romantic but pretty damned good.

Click here to see the top ten Korean movies I saw in 2011.
Click here to see the top ten Korean movies I saw in 2010.
Click here to see the top ten Korean movies I saw in 2009.
Click here to see the top ten Korean movies I saw in 2008.

Peppermint Candy: Off to a Sweet Start

There are certain works of art -- Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop; Thornton Wilder's Our Town; much of Shakespeare -- that somehow capture the totality of life so completely that they feel practically omniscient. Art-house darling (and mine too) Lee Chang-dong's Peppermint Candy is one such work. Told in reverse chronology with unerring compassion and merciless honesty, this brilliantly searing movie surveys the life of Yang-ho (Sol Kyung-gu) -- a suicidal businessman who initially comes across as the universe's whipping boy -- with a scientist's methodicalness. But as Lee peels back all the layers of corruption and cynicism, self-loathing and loss that have accumulated for Yang-ho, you end up simultaneously confronted by the man's complicity and his misfortune. A person can make grave mistakes and still be worthy of our sympathy. Isn't there an unsure, hopeful, longing being existing in each and every one of us? Isn't the loss of innocence the most universal tale?

If that sounds like sentimental hogwash, take note: Lee's film is a rattling scream of anguish. I didn't cry once although I was pretty upset for most of it. Unrelenting in its intensity, Peppermint Candy keeps throwing cold water in your face the moment you start to get the warm fuzzies. Check out the seriocomic scene in the car where Yang-ho is literally performing on his cell phone for each caller or the surreally discordant marital scene that features his nude wife Hongja (Kim Yeo-jin) running around on all fours like a golem or the seemingly straightforward hospital scene in which he sweet talks his first love (Moon So-ri) while her husband stands in the background. Every time you think you've figured out what's going on, Lee gives a wrenching twist to the action that reminds you that you can NEVER really know what's going on in anyone's life, head, heart, or world.

Peppermint Candy is Lee's sophomore effort as a writer-director and like Oasis, the heartbreaking film which followed it, this movie has a magical quality that's hard to explain. Between each sequence, for instance, dreamlike footage reveals a train's journey but backwards: Nearby cars drive in reverse, people retrace their steps, a dog seems to dance to on unheard command. It's nothing you haven't seen before and yet it feels as though it is. The ability to make the familiar new may be what makes a piece of art, art anyway. Don't you think?

Invasion of Alien Bikini: Female Aliens Ought to Be Treated Better

A hot female extraterrestrial comes to Earth in search of sperm. Sound like a porno flick? Well, don't you have a dirty mind! Remember the horror flick Species? That hardly qualifies as smut but that was basically the idea. And it's the same one here with Invasion of Alien Bikini, a weird hybrid flick that's got comedy, scifi, martial arts, horror, and domestic drama as part of its movie makeup without a naked breast in site. Which doesn't mean that sex doesn't figure into the picture. It does. The alien has taken human form (Ha Eun-jung) and spends the majority of her time parading around in a black bra and panties. But her targeted sperm donor -- a volunteer community activist (Hong Young-geun) who has unwittingly rescued her from earthlings wiser to her ways -- has taken a vow of celibacy so while he too spends much time in his underwear, her attempts to stimulate him via a feather duster, some rope and an off-screen (and somewhat bloody) blowjob are all for naught. Her biological clock clicks way too loudly for his taste.

Because of that, her attempts at pre-martial sex annoy him. He's got his moral code and a fairly damaged childhood to keep him on the straight and narrow. And when she resorts to violence as a way to get him to comply, he comes right back at her... which is the problem with Invasion of Alien Bikini. Although we know she's an alien -- we have been told as much and even seen her spine pop out and try to strangle him -- she still registers as a woman so when her designated donor turns against her and starts punching her repeatedly in the face, you can't help but see it as violence against women. Try as a I might to rationalize that scene, I couldn't shake the inherent misogyny of it, which could've been solved quite easily if we'd seen the whites of her eyes turn fluorescent green or her teeth turn metallic or her hair fall off to reveal a bald head tattooed with advanced math problems.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that Invasion of Alien Bikini is a bad movie. To the contrary, it's a remarkable low-budget indie that does an immense amount with very little and has super-fun performances from its two leads. But this particular misstep knocks what could've been a Grade A B-movie into the bargain bin of basement curiosities. Maybe writer-director Oh Young-doo will right the film's wrongs with his next flick. I'd watch it!

Pulgasari: The People's Godzilla of North Korea

Looking somewhat like the love child of a minotaur and a dinosaur, Pulgasari is not you're typical, everyday movie monster. Molded from rice by a wrongly imprisoned blacksmith (Ri Gwon) then brought to life by a droplet of blood shed by his industrious daughter (Chang Son Hui), the North Korean cousin of Godzilla is literally "of the people, for the people, by the people." After quickly growing from cute-and-squeaky squeeze toy to a growling, towering creature thanks to a diet of stick pins and swords, he becomes the mascot and war machine for a village of farmers fighting the royal army which wants to take all their tools, pots and pans and turn them into weapons. Naturally, the king (Pak Yong-hok) and his cohorts try everything they can to bring Pulgasari down -- a cage of fire, rockets to the eyeballs, a hailstorm of stones, a cannon shaped like a lion, even sorcery -- but the big man in the rubber suit will not be stopped from fighting the good fight alongside Inde (Ham Gi-sop), the bare-chested leader of the rebellion against the greedy government. And yes, you do get to see Pulgasari smash a few buildings along the way.

There's an interesting back story behind Pulgasari, too, as it's one of the movies-in-exile directed by Shin Sang-ok, the South Korean director, who along with his ex-wife/actress Choi Eun-hee, was kidnapped by Kim Jong-il -- the same Kim Jong-il who went on to become President of North Korea -- in an effort to strengthen his country's film industry. As producer of Pulgasari, Kim's efforts didn't stop with getting a famous expatriate director either. He also hired Japan's Toho Studio to help with special effects and had none other than Kenpachiro Satsuma, a Japanese performer who'd previously costumed up for Godzilla and other Kaiju monsters in his homeland, to play the title role.

Intended as a polemic against capitalism, Pulgasari occasionally feels as though it's criticizing any totalitarian regime, which is ironic given Kim's role as executive producer. Even so this 1985 propaganda flick never screened outside the two Koreas until 1998 when it was finally shown in Japan. If you're looking for more of the late Kim's work as a film producer, check out The Schoolgirl's Diary, which -- like Pulgasari -- is currently available on YouTube of all places. You might not like his record as a "supreme leader" but as movie execs go, he's not half bad.

The Cat: Creatues With Nine Lives Battle Humans With One

Here pussy, pussy. Here pussy, pussy. We may never agree on which house pet is smarter, the dog or the cat, but one thing we probably can all agree on is that cat owners more consistently cater to the needs and wants of their four-legged friends. Think how rare it is to hear a dog owner say, "I give him wet food because he just won't eat dry." Or how much stranger it would be to hear of a tabby that's been regularly beaten, trained to kill, and can only be controlled with an electronic collar. There may be lapdogs treated like princesses but even so, they're part of a broader spectrum in terms of care. Which is what makes a movie in which cats figure as enactors of revenge for man's mistreatment of animals so damned creepy. Dogs have every right to bear a grudge but cats... When did we ever do anything but treat them like royalty!

In writer-director Byeon Seung-wook's fright flick The Cat, pet groomer So-yeon (Park Min-young) is what you might call a quiet animal rights activist. She doesn't carry a poster or bullhorn but she will softly correct a woman for coloring a cat's fur pink or chastise her best friend Bo-hee (Sin Da-eun) for adopting Dimwit, a stray chinchilla, simply to improve pet grooming skills. That So-yeon doesn't own a cat herself seems strange but when her high school crush Jun-seok (Kim Dong-wook) who's now a cop asks her to take care of one white Persian named Silky, she doesn't hesitate to bring the feline to the pet store where she works and then eventually home. Neither place turns out to be a good idea because this cat likes the taste of blood, and not just the type that comes trickling out of an accidentally cut finger. This cat is out for the blood of anyone who's mistreated cats, and she's not alone. Soon other cats are making appearances, gathering in cat gangs, and at one point, attacking one particular jerk as a group. (Yes, it does look a bit silly.)

No cats were harmed in the making of The Cat and that's as it should be. If they were, spooky little ghost girl Hee-jin (Kim Ye-ron) would certainly exact vengeance on their behalf. Given her cat eyes and cat claws, she's practically a member of their species even as she's got her own grievances to settle. Finding out what they are is the only way that So-yeon can stop these crazy cats from making mincemeat of humanity. And while she's at it, So-yeon's going to tackle her crippling claustrophobia, too!

Little Black Dress: Four Soulless Bitches Want to Be Famous

Writer-director Heo In-mu's chick flick Little Black Dress has two characters worthy of screen time: Yeong-mi (Choi Yoon-young) a needy, aspiring screenwriter who wonders if her failure to get her ideas heard or to secure a promotion despite years of devotion is all because she just isn't that pretty. Her attempts to befriend the prize-winning new staff-member Yoo-min (Yun Eun-hye) don't get very far and even on her most suicidal day, she can't get much of a kind word from the colleague she so badly idolizes. The other fascinating character doesn't even have a name. She's simply a writer, who I assume is working on a soap opera. Broadly played by Jeon Soo-kyeong, this woman parades across the old screen like old Hollywood, milking not-so-hot one-liners for all they're worth, and generally making everyone else on screen look very community theater. That she also shows a sensitive side later on isn't a relief. It's a verification that you can paint with broad strokes without having to forego smaller touches when they're called for. Either of these women could have led to interesting stories but neither is primary role. Sadder still, they never have a scene with each other. For reasons that will dumbfound most viewers, Heo instead keeps her camera on four other, very less richly drawn ingenues, a quarter of narcissistic, hard-hearted gorgons who can imagine no fate worse than seeing a friend succeed and ending up in the shadow.

A certain poetic justice exists in having the one who appears the least talented -- the beauty of the bunch, Hye-ji -- land her fortune as a Levi's jeans model discovered at a nightclub. But even so, that little concession to the ironies of life, is unlikly to make you warm up to the soulless scribe Yoo-min, the wooden artiste living in poverty Soo-jin (Cha ye-ryeon) or the rich girl with a thing for underage boys Min-hee (Yoo In-na). Each character is hatable in her own way and whether Heo wrote Little Black Dress as a way to wreak revenge on former colleagues in her drama department or because she doesn't see just how monstrous these egomaniacs are is anyone's guess. There's a misplaced affection for the four girlfriends that definitely points to the second conjecture. For the love of God, I hope I'm wrong. No one that shallow is lovable. (Which means you'd never blame self-centered Lee Yong-woo for cheating on Yoo-min. You'd praise him. Only pain could help these four women mature if they ever do at all.)

Parallel Life: Tracking Down Your Own Killer

Recently appointed Supreme Court Justice Kim Seok-hyeon (Ji Jin-hee) has a real dilemma on his hands. He's living a life that's the mirror image of one that took place 30 years ago and which ended in a series of murders. If he has any doubts, soon enough, Kim's slutty wife (Yoon Sae-ah) will be dead (just like his alter ego's). Now it's just a matter of time before he and his child (Park Sa-rang) are six feet under as well. What can he do? He can visit the institutionalized professor (Oh Hyeon-kyeong) who wrote the definitive text on parallel lives but what will he gain? Further proof that he's going to die! He can finally listen to the nice lady reporter (Oh Ji-eun) who feeds his growing obsession that his personal history is repeating itself much in the same way that John F. Kennedy's life did Abraham Lincoln's. Same birthday, same month and date of something else important... All these matches can't be coincidental. So what does the lady reporter get? An early grave. Then again she must have seen that one coming.

Ultimately, that's the problem with director Kweon Ho-young's Parallel Life. You don't really have a sense of suspense because you never really doubt that Kim's going to die or that the parallel theory is anything but real. Even with the potential conspiracies and salacious rumors floating around about unethical judges, dirty cops and adulterous affairs, Parallel Life isn't a thriller because you're never on the edge of your seat. Maybe it's more like a muted scifi, a film that posits an alternate reality that may or may not be this one, and which sees the little details -- like exactly how someone dies, even a second time -- as the only stuff that matters. But for that to be true, you'd really have to like the characters, and while I did have a soft spot for Uncle Jung (Park Byeong-eun), I wasn't that into Prosecutor Lee (Lee Jong-hyeok) or any of the side stories (which according to the professor's mad scribblings of math formulas on the cement wall of the interrogation room have already happened 30 years ago, too).

My Way: A Man With a Story; A Man Without a Film

Yang Kyoungyjong led an interesting life to be sure. A Korean conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army at 18 years of age, he then became a Soviet prisoner of war forced to fight for the USSR's Red Army until his troop was defeated by the Germans who in turn enlisted him as a Wehrmacht soldier until the Americans overthrew the Nazis and he was imprisoned in a British POW camp under the mistaken belief that he was a Japanese soldier in German uniform. Eventually his actual identity was revealed and supposedly, he ended up living the rest of his days in the USA. A fascinating tale certainly worthy of a stunning biopic. Which brings us to Kang Je-kyu's My Way.

Unsatisfied with a tragic Everyman, Kang needlessly complicates this strange bit of history by transforming Yang, a John Doe of practically Brechtian proportions, into Kim Jun-shik (Jang Dong-gun), a destitute rickshaw-driver/closet-marathoner who is at once the rightful heir of real-life Olympian Sohn Kee-chung and a rival to Japanese long-distance runner Tatsuo Hasegawa (Jo Odagiri) who ends up being Kim's commanding officer in the Japanese Army, his fellow POW in Russia, and his best buddy in the German barracks (which apparently come equipped with a staff beautician: Everyone looks smashing!). Why Kang scraps Kim's one-of-a-kind biography for a bromantic parable about an oppressor who learns to love the man he once subjugated suggests a very different kind of racism: How else to interpret the angelic choir that accompanies representatives of Japan and Korea finally united in Nazi uniform while fleeing the American troops? Better An earlier chapter in the film finds Kim falling for Shirai (Fan Bingbing), a sexy Chinese sharpshooter so skilled she can take out a warplane with a single shot but once she's dead, his heart belongs only to Hasegawa. Eventually, his identity does, too. Somehow I bet Yang Kyoungjong would hate to see a movie that credited his life's final triumphs to a Japanese man pretending to be him. There's gotta be a better way, Kang Je-kyu.

Blossom Again: He Broke Her Heart in Three Separate Pieces

I can buy the idea of Joh In-yeong (Kim Jeong-eun), a dissatisfied, confused 30-year-old woman falling in love with Lee-suk (Lee Tae-sung), her 17-year-old, possibly learning-disabled student who looks exactly like her first boyfriend who bizarrely happens to have had the same name. What I don't and won't buy is that there's also a teenaged girl named Joh In-yeong (Jeong Yu-mi) who is also in love with this Lee-suk lookalike who is also the identical twin of a guy named Lee-soo who just happens to be the first love of the younger In-yeong who now also is head over heels for the replacement. Lee-suk is king of the sloppy seconds! It isn't as confusing as it sounds. But it is as preposterous as it sounds. With all the repetitions of an Escher drawing but with none of the complexities, writer-director Jung Ji-woo's exasperating Blossom Again (a.k.a. Close to You a.k.a. Teacher's Pet a.k.a. Wisdom Tooth) is way too forcefully fanciful to be enjoyed as a tragic romance or a time-travel tragedy or a puzzle of perversion or a plain old piece of cinematic art.

When an original, now older Lee-suk (Kim Joon-seong) enters the picture, you're left with no option but to follow the lead of the old In-yeong's still-around boyfriend Jang-woo (Kim Yeong-jae) who can just grin and bear anything. Just how much Jang-woo is willing to smile through is kind of amazing. In-yeong says she still loves her very first boyfriend? Grin and bear it. In-yeong says she's got a crush on her underaged student? Grin and bear it. In-yeong comes home after screwing said student? Grin and bear it. In-yeong says she wants the apartment to herself so she can entertain said student alone Saturday night? Grin and bear it. Although in that last case, the grin is now kind of a grimace and Jang-woo sabotages In-yeong's twisted fantasy by bringing the old Lee-suk over for food and wine. Why Jang-woo loves In-yeong (and why either Lee-suk does too for that matter) is a contrivance that's even less believable than all the endless coincidences. Take another page from Jang-woo's book of behavior and permanently delete this movie from your brain. He used the index finger and thumb. I use the middle finger.

Lovers' Concerto: This Love Triangle Works Every Angle

Before it spins off into a cuckoo weepie of the three hanky variety, Lee Han's Lovers' Concerto is actually a damned good romance, and I'm speaking as one who isn't a fan of that particular genre. But this periodically sweet, youthfully true, emotionally complex love story about three directionless friends just out of high school -- one boy named Ji-hwan (Cha Tae-hyu) and two girls, Su-in (Son Ye-jin) and Kyeong-hee (Lee Eun-ju) -- conveys a certain freshness (in both senses of the word) by constantly shifting who is pining after whom, even as they're all constantly falling in love with each other all over again. So while Ji-hwan claims love at first sight for Su-in, you can immediately see that Kyeong-hee is just as quickly smitten with him. Soon thereafter, Su-in warms up to Ji-hwan even as Ji-hwan is fast realizing that Kyeong-hee has her unique charms. Even Su-in and Kyeong-hee have special feelings for each other. In a way, you kind of wish they'd all have an orgy sanctified by the state. Without question, Lovers' Concerto has an overabundance of passion that reminds you what it was like to give of yourself without getting too caught up in the caution that comes after your first real breakup, your first real betrayal and your first disillusionment. Each characters in Lovers' Concerto is untried when it comes to amor so while they may be nervous about taking a leap, they're not bitter. That two of them are suffering from unnamed but fatal diseases is just tragic icing on the cake.

Did the cake need the icing though? I'm not so sure. I saw a few possible endings that weren't so treacly but Lee is clearly committed into making the audience feel a varieties of bittersweet pain, and since he pulls off most of them, I, for one, will forgive him the film's minor failures. A secondary plot involving Ji-hwan's younger sister (Moon Geun-young) and her crush -- the handsome guy (Kim Nam-jin) who works at the bookstore -- somehow feels organic to the whole. It's nice to have some moments to breathe between all that heaving by the exquisitely fraught threesome that is Lovers' Concerto.

A Smile: Eyesight's Sore Loser

As disease-of-the-week movies go, A Smile is oddly uninformative about its spotlit illness: retinitis pigmentosa. This currently incurable degenerative eye disease can cause a short list of intermediary symptoms -- ranging from night blindness to color separation issues to blurring to tiredness -- before the dreaded darkness sets in. Yet aside from some early mentions of tunnel vision and the occasional bumping into objects like a tripod or a low table, photographer So-jung's (Choo Sang-mi) primary side-effect appears to be depression. Her soul is suffering more than her sight and her symptoms feel more psychological than physical. When she informs us her situation is getting worse, you can't help but think: Girlfriend, your biggest problem isn't retinitis, it's you!

Unable to reconcile herself to the possibility of going blind, she ends a relationship with her really sweet boyfriend Ji-seok (Song Il-gon), mopes around her grandmother's funeral without telling anyone else in her family of her recent diagnosis, and sells nearly all her cameras and equipment to run away and take flying lessons from a drunk aviator in the middle of nowhere. At no time do we see her exploring treatment options (admittedly limited) or tracking down her father's side of the family (the disease is genetic). It appears a part of So-jung saw doom forecast and then just ran with it.

I wasn't sure whether writer-director Park Kyung-hee wanted us to feel she was bold or batty when she decided to throw her life away so she could learn to fly but I definitely fell into the latter camp. So-jung's longing to get free of the earth and see the world from a new perspective may have some poetic cache but as an element in a hyper-realistic drama, she comes across as incredibly irresponsible and egocentric. Will she ever take to the skies? If she does, will she crash? If she crashes, will she die? If she dies, will she see again? If she does, will she meet the smiling Buddha which was one of the last things she photographed? And if he does, will the Buddha smile? I wouldn't.

Bedevilled: Friendship Is a Bloody Mess

I suppose, you could call Bedevilled a horror movie since in its bloodiest, climactic section, you do find a crazed yet determined woman killing just about everyone in sight. But the real horrors in Jang Chul-soo's gritty little gem aren't the murders -- which in truth are disturbingly satisfying -- but the abuse suffered by the film's ingratiating protagonist, a good-natured naif named Bok-nam (Seo Yeong-hie) who's become a kind of pathetic joke to neighbors and family. Her husband (Park Jeong-hak) beats her. Her mother-in-law (Baek Soo-ryeon) ridicules her. The town aunties belittle her without mercy. As you see her abused by nearly every person on the remote island on which she lives, you can't wait 'til they in turn get their comeuppance. Which they do in chilling fashion.

But what makes Bedeviled such a great pic isn't its story of righteous vengeance but a sub-plot of devotion and betrayal involving Hae-won (Ji Seong-won), a childhood friend who escaped from the island and who has returned as a completely self-absorbed, big city sophisticate. It's Hae-won we meet first, not Bok-nam, and in a weird way Bedevilled is her story of transformation, too as a truly discomforting tension exists between these two women, a tension extending beyond their suppressed lesbian attraction to the much more commonplace push-and-pull that happens when a needful friend is desperately searching for help while the self-sufficient one is committed to not getting involved. Hae-won's self-justified detachment becomes both Bok-nam's undoing and her liberation. With no one to turn to and overcome by relentless misery, she lashes out and thereby turns Bedevilled into a kind of feel-bad chick flick in which the dangers of not subscribing to the sisterhood are revealed in gory detail. Whether you're an old lady championing the patriarchy or an old friend who can't be bothered, Bok-nam has no sympathy for you. Like any respectable fright flick, Bedevilled is ultimately a political allegory, in this case a cautionary feminist tale that encourages the manicured hand to reach out to the rough-skinned one with dirt under the nails. Hear the message as you scream.

The Ring Virus: Here's the Version You Haven't Heard About

If a movie's cultural relevance could be calculated by the number of sequels and copycats it spawned, then surely Japanese fanboy fright flick Ringu would count as globally significant since it's inspired not just two sequels and a prequel in its native country but also a popular American remake (which in turn has its own Part 2) and a Korean spin-off. Given that worldwide impact, you'd be asking a lot of the transnational versions if you expected any of them to achieve the same level of notoriety. Never heard of The Ring Virus, the Korean variation? Well, that's not because it's bad. It's because it came out a mere year after the original and shifted the stylistic frame from horror to supernatural detective story. Think serviceable more than sensational.

So while you've still got the videotape that kills you a week after you watch it and a pissed off female spirit (Bae Doona) who hides behind long black hair even when she's crawling out of a television to shock you to death, the central quest of one potential victim hoping to break the video's fatal curse before it snuffs her entails less screaming and more forehead wrinkling this time. This is a mystery after all. So when her niece dies from a premature heart attack and Sun-ju (Shin Eun-kyung) senses something's amiss, she's sniffing out a story, not a dead body per se. A closet newshound, she applies her admittedly undeveloped investigative skills -- to date, she's been working on art exhibits, not breaking news -- to unearth the cause of her relative's death. Out of her league, she enlists the help of offbeat forensic doctor Choi Yeol (Jeong Jin-yeong) and together they search, worry, ponder, get goosebumps, take a boat, and obsess over details neither can decode nor piece together. (The only puzzle that actually comes together in The Ring Virus is the jigsaw on Choi's floor.) Although he's ostensibly the sidekick, Choi is the more interesting character -- a cold-blooded man of science who sees this chase after death as a temporary respite from existential ennui. Writer-director Kim Dong-bin believes, dying is better than boredom. That's a sentiment with which I agree.

Repechage: No One Else Is Into Either of You So Get Together Already

A sweet-natured nerd (Jang Dong-gun) in a blue oxford shirt and dress pants is mindlessly walking down the sidewalk when a fiery knockout (Kim Hee-seon) in dark sunglasses, fishnet stockings and a leather jacket pulls over in her convertible and offers him a ride. How lucky is he? Before you answer that, take into account she's wearing a red pleather jacket and driving a canary yellow convertible. If that doesn't bother you too much, then check out the photographs she's just handed him of his fiancee (Kim Shi-won) making out with her boyfriend (Lee Jin-wu). Suddenly, the cliched male fantasy that opens Lee Kwang-hoon's Repechage is officially null and void. And what kind of fantasy was it really? I mean, he had a sexy fiancee already! Why did he get into this strange woman's car?

We'll never know because for the next 80 minutes, we're instead subjected to one of the slowest realization processes committed to celluloid. As we watch the two rejecting exes in the photos make out then dine out then take a mini-vacation together, we also see the two people they've dumped trying to figure out what could it all possibly mean? Neither the nerd (a veterinarian who likes to inject animals with anesthetic) nor the babe (a photographer who shoots everything from bathing suits to weddings) can comprehend that their former soul mates have moved on and that reconciliation will not be an option. Because they're slow learners, we sit impatiently waiting for them to figure out that the love of their lives is the fellow rejectee. Given how stupid these two are, you just hope they stay married forever (to save the rest of us from getting stuck with one of them) and never have babies (to save the world from their less-than-brilliant genetic pool).

The best thing to say about Repechage is it taught me a new word, which means "a last chance round for eliminated contestants to make the finals." I doubt I'll remember that. I doubt I'll remember this either.

A Great Chinese Restaurant: Don't Expect a Sequel to Le Gran Chef

I don't know how I got it into my head that Kim Ui-seok's A Great Chinese Restaurant (which I'd initially seen referred to as The Great Chef: Peking Restaurant) was a sequel to Chong Yun-su's Le Gran Chef, one of the funniest Korean comedies I've ever seen. The title is similar but not truly derivative. The movie itself was actually made eight years earlier than the one I thought it followed. Be that as it may, I was pretty excited to see the imagined followup. What I saw instead was a truly endearing little indie picture about a failing Chinese restaurant that finds a second life shortly after its owner (the wonderful Shin Goo) has a stroke thereby forcing the staff to draw upon its own resources to drum up business again.

The flailing restaurant's recovery is largely due to the arrival of Yang Han-kook (Kim Seok-hun), the son of the owner's childhood friend, a friend who disappeared many years ago after borrowing a lot of money and a butcher knife. Yang wants to repay his father's debt -- not with money but with the discovery of an irresistibly tasting recipe for a spicy noodle dish. If he can do this, he'll fulfill his father's childhood pact with the owner to establish a little eatery that qualifies as the best Chinese restaurant in town. With gently naturalistic performances from quite a few actors early in their careers -- Jeong Jun as the klutzy prep cook, Myeong Se-bin as the owner's independent daughter, A Great Chinese Restaurant is, in reality, the perfect companion piece to Le Gran Chef, because it revisits the same themes -- the comedy of competition, the poignancy of familial devotion, even the cooperative nature of the kitchen -- on a smaller scale. This is a chamber movie for foodies, a sentimental dramedy about pursuing the impossible, a feel-good flick about male bonding and the importance of not taking shortcuts.

The only things that keep this film from being a mini-masterpiece are the grating soundtrack and the unappetizing closeups of the various dishes. This film won't make you crave Chinese food. Why should it? It's Korean!

4 Toes: Comedy on the Fly

You get the feeling that writer-director Gye Yun-shik neither wrote for nor directed the actors in his jopok comedy 4 Toes but rather that he set up a couple of cameras then threw out spur-of-the-moment ideas for improvisation until he'd amassed enough material -- at least in terms of footage -- to cobble together a feature film. To that end, you've got skits about blood type, about a car's CD player, about a car accident with your buddy, about a mythical golden axe... You've also got skits based on locations, like a nightclub, a parking lot, a photo portrait studio, and a sauna which means for this big fight have the guys are naked, although never full-frontally so. Most scenes are super-short. Nothing really adds up. Nothing really goes anywhere either. There's no larger vision at work here outside of the desire to make a movie fast and cheap with some friends. And actually, it's a technique that could work but you'd have to have luck on your side and some actors who were a bit more naturally funny.

Fortune isn't smiling on Gye, however, or his four male leads, all of whom feel too old to be playing high school students in some scenes and too goofy to be gangsters in others. And yet, as ineffective as 4 Toes is, and as lazy as the script is (there's so much voiceover you'd think Gye was filming a novelization), I still appreciated the ballsiness of the undertaking. The willingness to risk, though it didn't pay off here, certainly explains why some members of the cast have gone on to much more successful comedies: Jeong Eun-pyo (Le Grand Chef), Kim Kap-su (She's on Duty), Lee Won-jong (200 Pounds of Beauty). Which suggests to me that sometimes there's something to be said for just practicing your craft in public or on celluloid or in this case what looks like digital video; and that there's no shame in having a little egg on your face if you're aiming to eventually get a part in an enjoyably frivolous movie that's light as a souffle. Even Gye went on to greater success: My Wife Is a Gangster 3 may not be a work of genius but it's a threequel in a fairly big film franchise.

The Front Line: Breaking All the Rules for a Pyrrhic Victory

Everything's fair in love and war. That's certainly an extremist point of view. It's also an idea which the war pic Jang Hun's The Front Line has made its underlying principal minus the love part. Within the context of war, no action is considered unacceptable -- not shooting a squadron of your own men, not using an injured, baby-faced soldier (Lee Da-wit) as bait to catch a sniper, not transporting messages from the enemies to their friends just for some chocolate or a bottle of wine, not letting an assassin (Kim Ok-bin) go because she's a woman. Whenever this status quo is challenged, a shouting match may ensue between the crafty officer (Go Soo) with the unappetizing tactic and the upstanding, undercover agent (Shin Ha-kyun) who everyone knows is undercover. No matter how heinous the suggestion put forth by the diabolical soldier, he is the one who is going to get the support of the troops. Morality, evidently, is antithetical to the battleground.

It doesn't end there either. When the fat captain (Jo Jin-woong) who's been giving lousy orders for the entire film finally goes too far endangering the men you can shoot him and take over. When the command from above is to defend at all costs, you can flee. When your best friend is revealed to be a complete traitor, you can forgive pretty quickly. You can even shout hurtful things to little girls with missing limbs without losing the respect of most of your fellow comrades. It's stress-related behavior, I guess.

I'm not sure why Korea chose to put this movie in contention for an Academy Award -- it didn't make the short list. The story isn't just anti-war, it's anti-person. And as war movies go, the battles recall video games in that you can see the objective (climb the hill) or go into a monochromatic environment (explore the tunnel) as the casualties roll by and the landmines explode like so many special effects graphics intended to enliven your faux world as the story/adventure pushes forward. The snag is that there isn't a character here who I'd want to play. I want my token back.

The Yellow Sea: If You Can Cut With It, You Can Kill With It

In The Yellow Sea, Yanji* cab-driver Ga-num (Ha Jung-woo) isn't your typical anti-hero. A gambler whose debts have driven him to agree to kill a professor (Kwak Byeong-gyoo) in Seoul, he's short on charm and lacks a moral code, however warped. Myun-ga (Kim Yun-seok), the crime boss who enlists his services, comes across as more likeable and laudable. At least initially. But after the targeted prof has been offed, everything's become so horrific — the planned assassination has domino-ed into mass murder — that Ga-num emerges as the sympathetic guy. (It's hard not to feel for a guy who got played.) Framed and uninformed, he's left to fend off Myun-ga's gang, the cops, and the thugs of Kim Tae-won (Cho Seong-ha), Myun-ga's slimy white collar counterpoint.

Na Hong-jin, who also directed the heart-racing thriller The Chaser, must have paranoia in his DNA. Once again, the thrills in The Yellow Sea come from "Somebody's after me!" scenarios; yet again the action is all pursuit/escape. As Ga-num flees Myun-ga, Kim and the cops, Kim flees and pursues Myun-ga, and Myun-ga chases and chases and chases. Many of the face-offs when someone finally catches up to someone else involve men with big kitchen knives or just-as-lethal axes hacking, stabbing, and sometimes even sawing into unlucky bodies. Many die quickly, dramatically. But the three main guys — Ga-num, Myun-ga, and Kim — bleed and survive, stopping only for the time it takes to fashion a tourniquet.

Their collective rapid recoveries push The Yellow Sea into comic book territory, where men bludgeon others with pots and pans and even the occasional animal thigh bone. Where else can a man with a twisted ankle outrun police cars and a whole squad of officers on foot? Since the superhuman powers aren't restricted to the movie's hero, fights are fair among the main three: Anyone could win. Whether anyone actually does or not is a question to answer over the many excited drinks sure to follow.

*Footnote: Yanji is a Chinese city with a predominantly Korean population.

Just Do It!: Accidentally Not Funny

You never learn precisely why the Jeong family has gone broke in Park Dae-yeong's very unfunny comedy Just Do It!, but after watching about fifteen minutes you can assume it isn't a case of bad luck. It's probably just that the Jeongs are morons. A chance accident, that occurs when the drunken dad (An Seok-hwan) leaves a food tent and gets knocked over by a car -- He was standing behind it pissing on its license plate -- also lands the poor patriarch in the hospital where he reaps unexpected cash from a forgotten insurance policy. This sudden influx of money inspires the rest of the family to pursue near-fatal accidents as a way to collect some more dough and quite quickly move their way up in society. No slums for these bums!

Son Dae-cheol (Jeong Jun) taunts some soldiers into beating him senseless at a bar; daughter Jang-mi (Park Jin-hie) breaks her finger in a bowling ball; and mom (Song Wok-suk) strategically topples a tower of boxes holding wine so that she ends up beneath them. Bones are broken, eyes are lost, hips are dislocated. Each misfortune is greeted with glee as the family gains financially. Is it funny? No. Is it clever? No. Is it worth watching? No. Did I watch it to the end anyway? Yes. Why? Well, I just did it. For you, I would say, "Just don't do it."

As stupid comedies go, Just Do It! gets the stupid part right but not the comedy. After the initial setup is exhausted, an insurance agent (Park Sang-myeon) suspects the family of fraud. Rather than mine the yuks from his attempts to catch them hurting themselves, the movie stages a simple piece of poor sexually misleading slapstick that entraps the equally dumb agent into marrying the feather-brained daughter. A completely contrived final act finds the family tracking down a distant relative (Lee Beom-su perhaps at his weirdest) who they plan on murdering so they can collect a million dollars on his policy. For awhile he proves unkillable. But only for awhile. Eventually, the movie mercifully ends. If you want to spend some time staring at your television and not really feeling anything, this is your movie.

Delighted? Delighted!

방가?방가! (Bang-ga?Bang-ga!)

•Directed by Yook Sang-hyeon (육상효) 
•Comedy 
•110min
Opening Date : Sep 30, 2010

Also known as 'He’s on Duty'
He has the natural Southeast Asian feel. The greatest unemployed man pretends to be a Bhutan person in order to get a job.

Cast
Kim In-kwon 김인권 As Bang-ga (방가)
Kim Jeong-tae 김정태 As Yong-cheol (용철)
Sin Hyeon-bin 신현빈 As Jang-mi (장미)
Khan Mohammad Asaduzzman 칸 모하마드 아사두즈만 As Ali (알리)
Nazarudin 나자루딘 As Rajah (라자)
Peter Holman 홀먼 피터 로널드 As Charlie (찰리)

Kilimanjaro: A Plot as Thin as Mountain Air

There's a point midway in writer-director-nincompoop Oh Seung-ook's Kilimanjaro when one character says to another, "See you in a better world." Probably, right after that shot, the actor uttering this bit of dialogue said to his co-star, "See you in a better film," too. A convoluted mess about the disaster set off when one shamed cop named Hae-shik (Park Shin-yang) decides to impersonate his twin brother Hae-chol, an unsuccessful gangster whom he disowned right up to until witnessing his forsaken sibling's unexplained suicide, Kilimanjaro requires a second viewing to make sense of because the flashbacks always leave you unsure just which brother you're seeing on screen at any given time. Since I have neither the patience nor the inclination to sit through this film again, this review may contain some inaccuracies. I'm okay with that.

Even with these misgivings, I feel confident stating ex post facto that lead character Hae-chol/Hae-shik shouldn't be so cocky when it comes to challenging the local crime boss Jong (Kim Seung-cheol) and he should be a heck of a lot more appreciative towards his repeated savior and fellow crook Beong (Ahn Sung-kee) who, oddly enough, treats him like a brother. I also know Hae-chol and Beong have two other partners-in-crime — "Sergeant" (Jeong Eun-pyo) and "Evangelist" (Choi Seon-jung) — with whom they've bonded by being photographed shirtless on the beach many years ago. As to the rivalry between Jong's gang and Beong's, the terrible thing that Hae-chol once did that now so pisses off Jong, the reason why Hae-shik got dismissed from the police force, even the reason why Beong got married, all of these things are conveyed as significant facts that the movie keeps inexplicably veiled in mystery. Lucid Kiliminjaro is not.

Despite the confusion, Kiliminjaro culminates in a satisfyingly bloody gunfight that puts all the good guys and bad guys in one shabby room with a bunch of guns that no one seems to know how to operate. You might not know why everyone's out to kill each other but you don't question the motives either. Sometimes people just piss you off and you wish they were dead.

The Schoolgirl's Diary: Being This Good Feels Just Awful

There's something discomforting about The Schoolgirl's Diary because it seems to be talking not just about one teenaged girl's struggle with poverty but about that struggle within a whole nation. The impoverished reality of living in a house where the doors fall down if you lean on them and faulty electrical outlets burst into flame doesn't feel like a portrait of the lower classes in North Korea. It just feels like plain old North Korea. Your heart goes out to Su-ryeon (Pak Mi-hyang) because she's struggling for a better life. Yes, and that's just as director Jang In-hak intended. But you also feel for Su-ryeon because you're not so sure that a better life is out there waiting for her. After all, you see her father (Kim Cheol) thanklessly toiling away at a factory for the greater good with only his wife (Kim Yeong-suk) according him any respect. As to mom herself, she's a martyr who's been diagnosed with a cancer that you doubt her socialized medicine will be able to cure. Su-ryeon's sister Su-ok (Kim Jin-mi) is the only happy member of the family. And where will her soccer skills take her? The North Korean women's team has been banned from the World Cup in 2015 for doping; the best the team has ever done is the World Cup quarterfinals in 2007. (Other years, it's been banned, didn't qualify or didn't enter.)

Amid this dreariness, Su-ryeon's pursuit of a better life is achingly optimistic if you can even say she's looking for a better life at all. Any personal goal eventually becomes so subordinate to the needs of the community that dreaming of better days can only mean dreaming of a better world...for everyone. In some ways, The Schoolgirl's Diary's selflessness stands in direct contrast to the egotism that reigns supreme in American pop culture today. Try to name a movie that depicts the nobility of good for goodness' sake without being framed as a satire and you're left drawing a blank. Far be it from me to wish for a stoic life in which luxury translates as potato taffy and warm soy milk is the reward for a hard day's work. Distasteful as it feels, the humility underlying The Schoolgirl's Diary is admirable. Now if only it weren't so depressing. Two red thumbs up for this one, my comrades.

Searching for the Elephant: One's Crazy, One's Horny and One's Non-Descript

Actor Lee Sang-woo needs to get a new agent. In Jhung S.K.'s Searching for the Elephant (a lopsided portrait of the tawdry affluence experienced by three childhood friends who never really grow up), Lee's saddled with a role so uninteresting that you wonder why he's in the movie at all. Compared to his co-star Jang Hyuk's schizophrenic who hallucinates hacked off fingers and photographs that reassemble in the shape of an elephant's head, and Jo Dong-hyeok's narcissistic plastic surgeon who can't stop screwing his patients because of his addiction to sex, Lee's part appears to be not so much a normal guy as a bland one. A financier with a mysterious history -- he disappeared for twelve years for reasons unknown -- Lee's businessman has invested in many money-making schemes but forgot to spend a little energy on a meaningful personality.

Maybe Lee's agent is prudish. Because the only other thing that distinguishes his character is the absence of screen time for his ass. Jang gives us two nice shots of his rear (one in the shower; the other, getting out of a pool); Jo can't help but share his bare bottom via a number of passionate sex scenes. The raunchiest Lee gets is sucking a paramour's toe while hidden, from the shoulders down, beneath a tubful of soap suds. Murder ensues because this paramour (Lee Min-jung) happens to be the wife of Jo's character and the sister of Jang's.

Who gets killed how eventually proves a bit farfetched, although what's bothersome about Searching for Elephants aren't the unanswered questions, it's the unrequested answers. Why do we need to learn the back story of Lee's renegade psychiatrist Dr. Jang (Hwang Woo-seul-hye)? Why do we have to watch antiqued footage of the three kids at the fair? Why can't Jin-hyeok exist in the Korean police's computer database? Each of these plot points suggest that the three screenwriters were getting paid by the minute (which would also explain the 2 1/2 hours running time).

Side Note: Time Warner Cable has Searching for the Elephant listed as Penthouse Playboys. Don't be tricked by the title. Neither movie is worth $5 via Movies on Demand.

Beasties Boys: Boy Hookers, Girl Hookers and Not a Lot of Romance

Prostitution is a messy affair and prostitutes in love are even messier. So while you might think Yun Jong-bin's Beastie Boys (a.k.a. The Moonlight of Seoul) is going to be a salacious bit of peekaboo concerning as it does Seung-woo (Yun Gye-sang), the rookie gigolo who falls in love with experienced call girl Ji-won (Yun Jin-seo), while he's working at a host bar pouring drinks out to cougars, this depressing drama serves up a lot more domestic anguish than it does backroom titillation. That's because director Yun is super-aware that professional seduction is the art of the con and that if you make a living out of a certain type of behavior then that same behavior is going to spill over into all other parts of your life.

So since Ji-won makes a living lying to men (and laying men), her being a scam artist too is inevitable because she can't help thinking of a better deal, a better setup, a richer life, a quicker fix. It's all part of her daily thinking. Jae-hyeon (Ha Jung-woo), Seung-woo's mentor, has been in the business even longer and he takes the compulsiveness even further — gambling, double-dealing, cheating, and extorting self-righteously without even a trace of guilt. Get tangled up with one of these warper sex-workers, as Seung-woo's sister Han-byeol (Lee Seung-min) does, and you're going to end up fleeced and heartbroken.

But Beastie Boys' descent into degradation and despair isn't as straightforward as this might suggest. On screen the story plays out as first as a rocky bromance alongside a sweetly unlikely romance. When things fall apart, as they tend to do in social realist dramas, all alliances are off. And it's not just every man and woman for his or her self, it's also "vengeance is mine." Since no one has been dealt a fair hand in life, these characters are out to win at all costs, and if not win then get into a different game, and if not that then make sure the competition is wiped out and that justice is served, no matter how much it hurts. This is a world in which the conscience has been devalued, which also means that guilt is scarily absent. Not a great film, Beastie Boys falls into that category of not-half-bad movies that periodically seize your attention with unexpected force.

Unbowed: Math Professor's Case Doesn't Add Up in Court

Jeong Ji-yeong's courtroom drama Unbowed starts off about the defense attorney, shifts to being about the defendant then ends up not being about anyone. What we learn about the lawyer (Park Won-sang) is that he's an alcoholic with a bumpy marriage, a flirty nature, and a strained relationship with his co-workers. He's not particularly likable. (Blame must be placed in part on Park who's drunk scenes are truly execrable.) But he at least knows he's fallible.

Not so his client, a mathematics professor (Ahn Song-kee) who, from what I can tell, was appropriately fired from his university job for not knowing the difference between perpendicular and parallel. After fleeing to the U.S. with his wife and son in tow, he decides to come back to fight for his position and ends up bringing a crossbow to the apartment building of a judge who dismissed his case. Does he shoot? Does it matter?

Far from being contrite, the teacher is sure he's getting the short end of the stick from the university system, the legal system, the police department, the media, and so on. He could be right but he's so damned arrogant that it's hard to rally behind him as he spits out every code that's being violated from his well-underlined law book to one smug judge (Lee Kyeong-yeong) after another (Moon Sung-keun). Like him or not, he's the most interesting part of the movie so when he temporarily drops out of the story after getting raped in prison, the film loses its preferred protagonist. By the time he returns, you forget his underdog status (which makes him somewhat sympathetic) and just remember his jerkiness.

Believe it or not, Unbowed is based on a real story. I don't doubt that someone could have the misfortune of facing a series of amoral judges or that an editor would shut down a story because he just didn't want to deal with the repercussions or that a woman would stay with her husband after he slept over another woman's place. What is hard to believe is that someone thought this particular trial merited a cinematic treatment. It doesn't. Or if it does, Unbowed needed a screenwriter with a stronger sense of character, actors who knew who to play drunk, and a cinematographer with a richer palette.

The Hand of Destiny: Under the Covers with an Undercover Agent

Jeong-ae (Yun In-ja) is such a bad girl that she pretends that she's a hooker as a way to cover up her much-worse role in society: She's a North Korean spy! As bad luck would have it, she falls hard for Shin Yeong-cheol (Lee Hyang-ja), a dock-worker/penniless-student who's working his way up the ladder of the South Korean military. Neither knows the other one's secret life outside the tawdry apartment that she's decorated with weird dolls, cheap curtains, and an owl clock that shifts its eyes left and right with every second. As the wise old owl knows, eventually their time of bliss will be over. Tick, tick, tick.

All those booze-fueled flirtations, the shopping sprees that snagged him a nice suit and her a well-dressed piece of arm candy, those sleepovers in which they've inexplicably spent the night fully clothed in a twin-sized bed are about to become troublesome memories. Is it love that kept the other so close or something else? Has she been double-crossing him since day one? Was she actually under constant observation by him night after passionate night? Is the pure love that each continually professes a complete ruse?

This is melodrama built on the idea that when romance unravels, drama heightens. After numerous scenes punctuated by silences that feel either unintentionally modernist or patiently waiting for the actor to say the next line, The Hand of Destiny culminates in two pretty engrossing shootouts on a mountaintop -- one with her hiding just a few feet behind him, the other filmed inside a cave that suggests they, and her bullying secret agent boss (Ju Seon-tae), have been transported to the moon. Indeed, the best cinematography in director Han Hyeong-mo's The Hand of Destiny makes the most of otherworldly shadows and angles so that household objects like a wicker purse or a circular mirror look somehow familiar and strange.

Although historically important for having the first big screen kiss in Korean movie history, The Hand of Destiny's most riveting love scene is actually a death scene, too, in which the femme fatale looks to be experiencing a near-orgasm of death as she begs her former lover to kill her once and for all. As endings go, it's a pretty entertaining one. As an oldie-but-goodie, it's really so-so.

Man of Vendetta

파괴된 사나이 (Pa-gwi-dwin Sa-na-i)

Directed by Woo Min-ho (우민호)
•Screenplay by Woo Min-ho (우민호)
•Crime/Thriller
•112min
Opening Date : Jul 01, 2010

Cast
Kim Myung-min 김명민 As Joo Yeong-soo (주영수)
Park Joo-mi 박주미 As Park Min-kyeong (박민경)
Eom Gi-joon 엄기준 As Rudolf
Kim So-hyeon-I 김소현 As Joo Yeong-soo's daughter, Joo Hye-rin
(주혜린)
Lee Byeong-joon 이병준 As Detective Koo (구형사)


Synopsis

One day, Hye Lin, the five-year old daughter of a devoted pastor, Joo Young Soo, is kidnapped. Pastor Joo, who has a rock solid faith in God at this time, prays wholeheartedly for her safe comeback, but she does not return. Eight years later, Joo Young Soo, who now does not believe in God and leads a completely secular life, receives a call. Hye Lin is still alive and is with the kidnapper. Joo Young Soo’s resolute attempt to rescue his daughter begins...

With his legendary acting, Kim Myeong-min, together with Seol Kyeong-gu and Song Kang-ho, has earned a solid place in Korea’s movie district, Chungmuro, as one of its best actors. He has created sensational and convincing characters in every role he has taken. With his acceptance of the role in “The Destroyed Man,” (Daisy Entertainment/Hancomm, Sponsors; iFilm Corporation, Production; Synergy, Marketing; Woo Min Ho, Director; featuring Kim Myeong-min, Eom Gi-joon, Park Joo-mi) there is high expectation of yet another poignant transformation in his acting.

Yi Soon Shin in “Immortal Yi Soon Shin”, Jang Joon Hyuk in “White Tower” and Maestro Kang in “Beethoven Virus” - these are some of Kim Myeong-min’s wide range of characters which he had made completely his own. With these roles, thousand-faced Kim Myeong-min has earned the praise and admiration of the general public.

Last year he showed the highest level of method acting, taking the role of Lou Gehrig’s disease patient Baek Jong Woo, in “Closer to Heaven”. By choice he went through a painstaking diet to realistically portray the dying Baek Jong Woo. He received the critics’ acclaim as well as moviegoers’ enthusiastic approval, and was awarded Best Actor at both of the major motion picture awards in Korea (Daejong and Blue Dragon). With this movie, he has irrefutably proven himself worthy of the big screen as well, following his previous success on television. His being cast in “The Destroyed Man” in 2010, even before filming started, has attracted huge interest and attention of the media and public alike.

In “The Destroyed Man,” Kim Myeong-min plays the role of Joo Young Soo, a pastor, whose young daughter is kidnapped by a psychopath named Rudolf. Joo Young Soo is convinced that his daughter is dead, but eight years later he is contacted again by Rudolf, who still has Joo’s daughter with him. Joo Young Soo is determined to find his daughter. Kim Myeong-min, as Joo Young Soo, is expected to capture the audience again with his signature charisma.

Eom Gi-joon is cast in the role of Rudolf, a psychopath who is relentlessly pursued by Kim Myeong-min. Uhm has proven himself a serious actor in musicals as well as in television dramas. The role of Kim Myeong-min’s wife, Min Kyung, is played by Park Joo-mi, who starred in “Yeoin Chonha” (Women’s Rule) eight years ago. This will be her debut on the big screen. She is expected to express painful, motherly love of a woman who loses her child to a criminal.

This movie is an exciting, hair-raising thriller, a story of breathtaking chases of a father who finds out that his daughter kidnapped 8 years ago, is alive. Filming of “The Destroyed Man” began in January, and the movie is expected to be released sometime around the middle of this year.

Punch Lady: Domestic Violence Becomes a Martial Arts Match

Personally, I was hardly expecting Punch Lady, a movie about an abused wife who challenges her homicidal/pro martial-artist husband to fight in the ring, to be a laugh-out-loud comedy. And yet that's really what Kyang Hyo-jin's movie is. Which isn't to say the violent scenes in which mousy Ha-eun (To Ji-won) gets pummeled by her psychotic spouse Joo-chang (Park Sang-uk) aren't horrific. They are. As is the climactic face-off during which the two throw punches/kicks in a packed arena broadcasting nationwide. But what transpires between is loaded with silly bits that never feel inappropriate, a miracle of sorts to be honest. How'd that happen?

Part of Punch Lady's ability to stay funny so much of the time can be attributed to the central theme being neither revenge nor justice. Kyang's screenplay is really about self-discovery instead. Which isn't the same as self-transformation by the way. Again, unexpectedly, Ha-eun doesn't change from timid housewife to unstoppable fighting machine. When she enters the ring, she still flinches whenever her husband approaches. All she has are a few key moves fueled by rage. There's actually an amazing moment mid-fight when she stops just to let out a few blood-curdling screams. These are the screams of a woman furious at being treated as less than human, as being part of a legacy of abuse that dates back to her mother (who was beat by her father) and now could continue through her daughter (already a target for Joo-chang's abuse).

Ha-eun's screams jar you back to the larger reality in which women can often be treated as second-class citizens and in which spousal abuse remains a topic people still don't like to talk about first- or second-hand. You could call Punch Lady a feminist comedy if you wanted to but I'm not so sure whether it holds up on that count. Her coach Soo-hyeon (Son Hyeon-ju) is positioned as a romantic figure because he wants to be her protector, even as his mock mastery of moves is simply his mimickry of what he learned the night before at a nearby gym. Enlightened as I might be and try as I might, I couldn't resist cackling at that first training montage which isn't a feel-good, get-tough sweatfest so much as it's a comical sendup of the masochism of pushing yourself to the limit and the sadism that accompanies helping someone else do the same. And only a misogynist wouldn't love her triumphant punches in the final round.

A Little Pond: The Big Picture for the Little Fish

In a generation, most of us will be forgotten. In another generation, most of the rest of us will be forgotten, too. There's a hierarchy to history and the little people (i.e., you and me) aren't destined for the annals of time. At most, we'll get a headstone that'll act as a backrest for a picnicker in 100 years. If we're really lucky, maybe this movie by writer-director Lee Sang-woo will stick around to tell our story too.

His war movie, A Little Pond, focuses almost exclusively on barely individuated civilians, who find themselves in the middle of a battlefield through no fault of their own. When we meet the villagers they're living a life of no consequence. Suddenly, they're commanded to desert their hometown Nogunri. Then they're commanded to evacuate their hiding place up the mountain. Nothing they do will save them though. Neither their needs nor their lives are important to their so-called protectors who order them around in English, a language they don't understand.

That language barrier actually explains too why the American soldiers are initially so paranoid of them. Unable to get instructions followed quickly, the soldiers perceive any reluctance or misunderstanding as possible subterfuge and resistance. The tension between the two cultures is inevitable and when the battle inevitably begins, the villagers find themselves dodging bullets and bombs which take some of them out indiscriminately. Stay behind to help someone and you're doomed. Run ahead and your chances to survive are slim.

Accidental deaths, sadly, are succeeded by intentional ones. This is war and mass slaughter is the order of the day. The American saviors become the American butchers as the helpless and unarmed hiding beneath a bridge leading nowhere are shot down one by one as what must be some sick form of damage control. There's a great moment near the end where a juvenile soldier for the Korean Communists asks if there are any survivors, and a young boy his age stands to face him. The safety of neutrality has always been a myth!

Tearjerker reunions cap this war pic for the people, a film that has plenty of schmaltzy moments throughout. But "life as a sentimental mess" is a valid point of view and what's a Korean movie without magic butterflies.

Forbidden Quest

Information

Category: Korean Movie

Film Date: February, 2006

Synopsis

Yun-seo (Han Suk-Kyu), a world weary Korean aristocrat, and Gwang-heon (Lee Beom-Soo), an old enemy of Yun-seo’s family, come together in the story of the Heukgokbisa, one of Korea’s most famous and lurid novels. The historical drama follows Yun-seo as, chancing upon an erotic novel, he decides to publish his own—and enlists Gwang-heon to illustrate it. When the Heukgokbisa starts circulating at court, the scandalous story takes on a life of its own.

Five Senses of Eros

Information

Category: Korean Movie

Film Date: July, 2009

Synopsis

Love can take many forms. Five acclaimed directors present five different stories about love that intersect in this 2009 South Korean film. In "His Concern" by director Byeon Hyeok, a man falls in love with a woman sitting across from him on a train to Pusan. In "I'm Here" by director Heo Jin Ho, a husband and wife deal with love and loss. In "33rd Man" by director Yu Yeong Sik, a veteran actress on a movie set coaches a fresh new actress to seduce their demanding director. In "In My End Is My Beginning" by director Min Kyu Dong, a new widow discovers her deceased husband's infidelity and decides to live with his mistress under one roof. In "Believe in the Moment" by director Oh Ki Hwan, three high school couples decide to swap partners for 24 hours to test their commitment.

First Love Rally

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Genre: Comedy

Category: Korean Movie

Synopsis

Love can drive people to achieve the seemingly impossible. Son Tae Il (Cha Tae Hyun) has been in love with Ju Il Mae (Son Ye Jin) - ever since they were babies growing up as neighbors under the same roof - and is determined to marry to her someday. Despite having a 148 IQ, Tae Il is lackadaisical about his studies and doesn't apply himself. Il Mae and her father, Ju Young Dal (Yoo Dong Geun), devise a scheme to use Tae Il's feelings for Il Mae to motivate him to study. Young Dal challenges Tae Il to increase his school ranking from 300,000 to 3,000 nationally and to graduate from law school - then he has permission to marry Il Mae. Tae Il not only does just that - but he also gets accepted to law school at the top-ranked Seoul National University. After years of round-the-clock studying and trying to keep other would-be suitors away from Il Mae, Tae Il passes his judicial exam. But the reward he receives is the bombshell that Il Mae is in love with another man. Despite all of his efforts, will Tae Il ultimately lose the heart of his first love? "First Love Rally" is a 2003 South Korean comedy, also known as "Crazy First Love," and is the first feature film by veteran television director Oh Jong Rok.

Papa

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Category: Korean Movie

Film Date: February, 2012

Synopsis

Choon-Sub is a talent manager. When his client run aways with another manager to America, Choon-Sub goes to America himself. In America, Choon-Sub agrees to a contract marriage and through the staged marriage now has six children. Choon-Sub then discovers that the eldest daughter Joon is an excellant singer. With Choon-Sub's encouragement, Joon takes part in an audition program and Choon-Sub attempts to mold Joon into a star ...

I Am Happy

Information

Category: Korean Movie

Film Date: October, 2008

Synopsis

A man (Hyun-Bin) suffers from mental illness after having lived with a mother suffering from dementia and a brother addicted to gambling. Now institutionalized, he falls in love with a nurse (Lee Bo-Young) at the psychiatric hospital.