Now and Forever: Love You to Death

Somebody help me. I've seen nearly all the good Korean movies on Netflix and Amazon Prime and I'm now stuck watching crap like director Kim Seong-jung's sappy romance about two terminally ill "beautiful people" who hide their fatal diagnoses from each other as the ultimate expression of their death-defying, tragic, self-sacrificing love. She's got a heart ailment. He's got a brain tumor. I've got a headache and gas. And the discomforts don't end there either.

Aside from her cardiopulmonary issues, Han Hye-won (Choi Ji-woo) has some mental deficiencies too -- so much so that for a good stretch of the movie, I assumed that she was in the Psych Ward, not the ICU. Choi clowns around -- giving sudden looks of total incomprehension then giggling inappropriately -- so often that you assume the doctors must periodically instruct her to stand on her head just to ensure she gets some blood to her brain. The drama, surrounding her constant "escapes" from the hospital, suggests a staff that thinks she's a desperate case. But since her best friend Soo-jin (Seo Yeong-hie) periodically takes Hye-won's medicine in the butt cheek, you wonder if the patient is just getting placebos in the end.

That Lee Min-su (Jo Han-seon) pursues her so arduously, intellectual lightweight that she is, isn't romantic so much as creepy. A self-styled ladykiller, he's apparently bedded so many independent women (all with abandonment issues) that his devotion to a half-wit feels a bit predatory. Here's a woman with only one real friend, a rarely visited father, half a brain and half a heart. Are those wedding bells he's hearing or the bells of bedlam? Is he in love or has he simply lost his mind?

Min-su's sidekick Kyung-min (Choi Seong-guk) is infinitely sweeter, if a bit of a dingdong. Falling in love with Soo-jin may be equally irrational but it's also pretty harmless and pretty amusing. You won't cry when the two best friends get together in Now and Forever but you won't vomit in your mouth either. Small victories!

Attack the Gas Station! 2: A Gang Fight With Plenty of Punchlines

A sequel that comes ten years after the original movie has gotta suck, right? Wrong! Attack the Gas Station! 2 is every bit as funny as its predecessor. Actually, I take that back. It's funnier. Once again, director Kim Sang-jin focuses his comedy on four disaffected youths who love to brawl. This time, there's a soccer player (Jo Han-seon) who kicks heads, motorcycle helmets and lighters now that he's been booted off the national team; an obsessive video gamer (Jeong Jae-hoon) who lives out his fantasy life by fighting through the pain then inflicting it by biting ears; a fat stutterer (Moon Won-ju) who defends womanhood by lifting men onto his shoulders then spinning in circles before tossing them aside; and their leader (Ji Hyun-woo) who just likes to deliver a mean right hook. They're not the only brawlers in the movie either, which also features a biker gang, four wannabe punks, a busload of escaped convicts, a squadron of police, and a shady reporter who runs around in his underwear for most of the film.

The movie is filled with running gags like the humiliated journalist. There's also an aspiring robber (Baek Jong-min) who jump-ropes through much of the action, a room of ever-changing hostages who keep building a castle out of soda cans, a criminal (Park Sang-myeon) obsessed with the notion of justice, and a series of back stories that explain why each of the four main characters have grudges to bear. The final extended fight scene in which the rebel youths and the prisoners on the lam join forces is impressive in its ability to keep upping the ante. The tension surrounding whether diesel fuel is as inflammable as gasoline (or sesame oil, for that matter) gets more laughs than you've any reason to expect.

After watching such disappointing comedy sequels as Sex Is Zero 2 and Mapado 2 earlier this year, Attack the Gas Station! 2 proved a welcome reminder that some lunatic ideas are worth revisiting and remaking and reinventing.