Sunny: Girls Just Wanna Continue Having Fun When They're Older

I knew within about three minutes that I was going to love Kang Hyeong-Cheol's Sunny, an adroitly crafted chick flick about a girl gang in high school that slowly reunites 25 years later after Na-mi (Yu Ho-jeong/Sim Eun-kyeong), the artsy one, discovers the group's tough leader Chun-hwa (Jin Hee-kyung/Kang So-ra) is dying of cancer in the same hospital at which Na-mi's soap-opera-devoted mother (Kim Hye-ok) is a patient. This chance encounter has a domino effect, as Na-mi begins tracking down the other five girlfriends, all of whom now lead frustrated lives though each for quite different reasons.

Jin-hee (Hong Jin-hee/Park Jin-hoo) has gone from potty-mouthed punk to rich-but-dissatisfied wife, Bok-hee (Kim Seon-kyeong/Kim Bo-mi) has fallen from aspiring beauty queen to prostitute, Jang-mi (Go Su-hee/Kim Min-yeong) has devolved from class clown to second-rate insurance agent... As each new friend re-enters the picture, new memories surface -- the turf rivalry with a girl gang called Generations, the teenage crush on dreamy Joon-ho (Kim Si-hoo), the life-changing day when the prettiest one (Yoon Jeong/Min-Hyo-rin) gets cut in the face by a glue-sniffer.

The performances are of the hammier variety: The cast wails when asked to cry and makes their eyes pop when a raised eyebrow would suffice. But the broad style never gets in the way of the story or prevents the flow of tears. You'd have to be one tough cookie not to soften up as Sunny flashes back and forth between the innocence of youth and what might be best referred to as the resignation of middle age. Corny and sentimental as it is, Sunny nonetheless acts as a rallying cry to re-engage with your life, to never relinquish your dreams and to reclaim your rightful place as the protagonist in your own story.

I think one of the reasons Sunny is so effective is that it understands how strongly we identify with our younger selves. "We are always the same age inside," Gertrude Stein once quipped. And she's right. Painfully so. Exquisitely so. For though the body may tire, and disappointments may mount, the inner adolescent -- ever ready for discovery -- remains intact and little changed. Step outside your own petty grievances. Look around you with fresh eyes. It's never to late for your old self to rejuvenate or your young self to be reborn.

Barking Dogs Never Bite: In the Beginning, There Was a Genius

Yun-ju (Lee Sung-jae) leads a cheerless life. His domineering, pregnant wife (Kim Ho-jeong) has him cracking walnuts on a whim and his teaching career looks bound for nowhere if he doesn't raise $10,000 fast as a bribe for his professorship. Save the pity party for someone else though because Yun-ju's way of dealing with the chip on his shoulder is to kill the yapping lapdogs in his apartment building. Once you've seen him off a beribboned terrier and a toy doberman, you're kind of glad that he's got it so bad. And anyway, someone else is in greater need of your sympathy. That's Hyeon-nam (Bae Dun-na), the management company's spacey bookkeeper who's on a mission to find the dog-killer and a purpose in life (with a gal pal played by Go Su-hee). Because this is a Bong Joon-ho film, the narrative ends up being much more than those two intertwining tales. There are also subplots involving an indiscriminate janitor who tells good ghost stories, a crazy old lady who dries radishes on the roof, and a homeless man whose bad luck ends up seeming to work in his favor. When you consider that Barking Dogs Never Bite is Bong's feature film debut, you realize that he hasn't got better with each successive movie. He's always been great. He's just been great in different ways.

The Red Shoes: One Sizes Fits All, Big and Small

Let's get a few things straight: The shoes aren't red. They're pink. And far from making you dance, they just make you feel good and act bad. They may get you laid but they'll also cost you an eyeball, a friendship or your life. In other words, these shoes are costlier than a pair of Jimmy Choos. For Sun-jae (Kim Hye-su), they seem like a godsend at first. Found on the subway (freebies!), they're hardly the cutest stilettos in sight but they're still capable of facilitating sexual conquests and proving the envy of her fat, sassy friend (Go Su-hee). Up till then, Sun-jae's been having a hard time, too. There's a crazy lady in the basement, a husband (Lee Eol) who bullies and cheats, and a bratty daughter (Park Yeon-ah) who's daddy's little girl even after daddy's absent from the scene. Add in a missing high heel from the shoe shrine in the living room and you've got the makings of tragedy. To make matters worse, Sun-jae is having flashbacks of some ballerina's horrific past and falling in love with the interior designer (Kim Seong-su) building her new optometry office (homage to Magritte). Now if he would just stop calling her "a total hypocrite" and "a horny bitch." Sigh! In Kim Yong-gyun's Red Shoes, no one gets what they want. Except us.