The Secret Reunion: How Our Tastes Are So Predictable and Distressing

Going into Jang Hun's blockbuster spy-caper The Secret Reunion, we pretty much already know that we're going to side with South Korea over North Korea, actor Song Kang-ho over co-star Kang Dong-won, and being true to your friend over being true to your country. But what's nice about this movie is that, for each decision you make between two obvious choices, you end up liking what you didn't pick as well. After all, if this movie is to be believed, Pyongyang's military academies are training single assassins capable of outwitting entire police forces (pretty cool); Kang is, against the odds, delivering a winning performance that's equal parts withdrawn hipster and anxious weirdo (also cool); and the fanatical political hit man operating under the name of "The Shadow" (Jeon Gook-hwan) is plain cool no doubt about it. A few hours after the movie, you may momentarily lose your cool should you question your knee-jerk reactions. I mean, do your sympathies really lie with a hot-headed, profiteering divorcé who tracks down foreign mail-order brides then returns them to unattractive, working class husbands who may beat them? Uh. Yes. You do. The Secret Reunion isn't out to radicalize your way of thinking. It's out to entertain you despite your disturbing predilections. So uncool!

Jeon Woochi: The Taoist Wizard: When Life Gives You Lemons, Paint a Cool Still Life

When life gets you down, go to the movies. If you're lucky, you'll see smart escapist fare like Choi Dong-hun's Woochi and be reminded that existence is an adventure and many worlds reside in this world -- not just the oppressive one that's put you in a funk. Woochi is cinema as anti-depressant, a preposterous, uplifting fantasy about a baby-faced wizard (Kang Dong-won) who fights a rodent-faced gremlin (Kim Yun-seok) in order to protect a wooden recorder that accords its possessor universal control. As the battle between good and evil rages on, this action-adventure shuttles between opposing realities -- medieval days and modern ones, dreamscapes and nightmares -- all of them magical. Are we living in a classical watercolor, a poster for an energy drink, an elliptical eternity, a video game? Blink your eyes and whatever it was that you were living in will be gone as something disorientingly new takes its place. And since your surroundings are so unstable, follow Woochi's lead and surround yourself with cool people like a trusty sidekick who's really a dog in human form (Yu Hae-jin) and a pretty damsel-in-distress (Lim Su-jeong) who's actually a reincarnated former flame. Yes, you'll still have to deal with pesky evil spirits and unreliable gods, but at least you'll be with your friends!

M: Not Letter Perfect Symbolism

In Lee Myung-se's mindnumbing melodrama M, maudlin muse and memory-figment Mimi (Lee Yeon-hee) mentions meditatively that she's mad for things starting with M. She loves Mozart, Modigliani, and more to the point Min-woo (Kang Dong-won), a momentarily manic memoirist made miserable by a millstone that's either money-related or a premarital misgiving. Maybe mostly it's the man's miserable case of writer's block. Whatever the mundane matter, Min-woo is majorly mixed up: See how he moons over the mercurial mystery woman; watch as he demeans his milksop/helpmeet/roomie (Kong Hyo-jin), imminent marriage be damned. (As to his book, it's a mawkish mess.) What to make of this murky material... M may mean a mystifying, metaphorical memory of Mimi or a morbid mental case in a midlife crisis! Most likely, M means high-minded masturbation. As moviemaking goes, M is Lee's meandering manifesto for maximalism with all the methods misapplied; the montages are technically masterful yet mildly meaningful. If Lee meant to make an imagist marvel with M, he missed by a mile.