The Divine Move: Go Ahead and Hit Me Again

In the iEra, the nerds may have risen to power but they still don't know how to take a punch or land a roundhouse kick. So when a poorly-groomed gamer (Jung Woo-sung) whose specialty is Go ends up unjustly sentenced to the slammer, all he wants in exchange for giving master boardgame tips to his jailer is to receive ongoing martial arts training from his fellow convicts so he can kick some serious ass when he gets out. The prison fighting lessons in The Divine Move are built around the philosophy that good fighters must be beat up to learn how to beat up others. Sound crazy? Well, my grandfather took a similar approach with my father and it worked for my dad so I had no reason to doubt that it would work here too.

When you see Jung remove his shirt during one of his final prison brawls, you'll likely gasp at how effective such training can be. The actor is shredded to a point that makes you think this prison comes with a nutritionist/dietician, too. His character hasn't let his Go skills deteriorate while in the big house either. As luck would have it, he's sequestered next to a blind genius of Go whenever he ends up in solitary confinement; the two square off by tapping out moves through the wall. Further luck: Someone's left behind some chalk. And so he's a Go graffiti artist. He's a street-style fighter. He's an uncharted player. Plus he's a master networker.

That last talent allows him to entice a fine crew to exact his grand revenge, my favorite of the lot being a one-handed techie (Ahn Kil-kang) who has a nice variety of attachable parts including a hammer for self-defense. These are nerds who are no longer satisfied with outwitting former tormentors. They want blood on their knuckles, not just on their hands. Those jerks who killed our hero's brother (Kim Myeong-soo) are going to get iced, one (Lee Beom-su) quite literally in a freezer showdown to the death. Getting the girl (Lee Si-young) — a master Go player herself — is just Cho Beom-gu's fantasy fulfillment for all the nerdy gamers watching the movie (which they should!).

Lifting King Kong: Feel-Good Girl Power in Spandex

I was ready to yawn, to gag, to roll my eyes, to multitask on my iPhone, to vacuum, to fall asleep and upon waking again to basically loathe Lifting King Kong. You see, this feel-good sports pic has such emotive acting and such an obvious narrative arc that I was sure I was going to be bored (i.e., feel bad) despite the movie's best intentions. Well girlfriend! I was wrong. Here's how the movie defeated the skeptical me. (Why do I keep thinking I won't like movies about athletes when I so often do?!)

The first surprise is that Lifting King Kong focuses on a sport that's rarely the center of a movie: Weightlifting. The sport is one in which individual athletes compete against their own best efforts instead of other teams. So while there's a ragtag group at the center of Lifting King Kong, there's not a team in the conventional sense. The second surprise is that Lifting King Kong not only spotlights an atypical sport but it also features the women who practice it. No. Not women. Teen girls. Outcasts who take up the sport because they've got no families, no futures, no friends. You could subtitle this movie "From Pity Party to Pumping Iron." The third surprise is that the fat girl (Lee Hyeon-kyeong) who poops on herself actually gets the cute boy (Ahn Yong-joo).

So 40 minutes in, I went from sneering to cheering as the various budding athletes -- orphan/Olympian-to-be Young-ja (Jo An) among them, progressed from junior high chumps to high school champs. That their devoted coach (Lee Beom-su) is a seriously injured former bronze medalist who appears to be wearing a fat suit for part of the movie as a way to bond with his mentees only allows you to tear up more as the girls develop muscles as well as self-respect and inner strength. The acting doesn't get any better mind you but this one will trigger the waterworks nonetheless. Kleenex required, for sure.

And before you write the movie off as preposterous, you should know that Lifting King Kong is based on a true story that's also pretty dramatic. In reality, Jeong In-yeong -- SPOILER ALERT! who also died of a heart attack -- coached a girls weightlifting team to a record number of medals and went on to also discover the flyweight Olympic Medalist Jeon Byeong-gwan who won a Silver in Seoul and a Gold in Barcelona. I can see why writer-director Park Geon-yong and his writing collaborators Jeong Ik-hwan and Bae Se-yeong decided to combine all the stories into one. The truth is always a bit messy.

The Righteous Thief: Robin Hood Has a Family

Steal from the rich. Give to the poor. That's the modus operandi of one exceedingly popular folk hero who has manifested in various forms across various cultures. In England, they called him Robin Hood; in Germany, Schinderhannes; in Korea, Hong Gil-dong. In The Righteous Thief, Jeong Yong-ki's reboot of the People's Criminal, the man (Lee Beom-su) redistributing the wealth is a latter day descendant -- 18 generations removed -- who teaches piano and courts fellow faculty (Lee Si-young) at the local high school during the day then wears black tights, scales buildings and inhales helium to rob shady millionaires at night. Lately, he's developed an obsession with one evil mogul (Kim Su-ro), an absurdly rich businessman who's developed a somewhat fetishistic obsession himself with superhero paraphernalia.

Folk hero vs. superhero? Not really. Since we never really see the needy getting a piece of the pilfered pie, a more accurate description of the central conflict here would be indie criminal vs. corporate criminal. As crookery goes this isn't the most antiestablishment. Asked to testify which crimes are the worst in The Righteous Thief, I'd say probably say, they're the ones committed by the performers, not by the characters. Someone should be slapping the wrists of two stars immediately. Would Kim Su-ro and Song Dong-il please take the stand!

It's not often you see a movie in which two actors define their characters with identical mannerisms. So lazy. So felonious. Is Song, as the prosecutor, trying to steal Kim's characterization of the criminal mastermind? Or is Kim pickpocketing the performance of Song? Who's ripping off whom? Regardless, the mirroring of a shit-eating grin and the echoing of a self-deprecating laugh halves every potential laugh in The Righteous Thief. If I were the offended party, I would have left the opening night party in a fury and headed straight to the nearest bar. There I would've ordered a double.

Forbidden Quest: Making Some Noise for Love, Sex, and Literature (a.k.a. Porn)

I believe that while watching Forbidden Quest this past weekend, I said the sentence "This movie is good" aloud three times, the word "wow" twice and the expletive "shit" (appreciatively) once. These were not the only times I was moved to speak, and as I'm sure my dog Silas would attest (if he could), I am not in the habit of talking to the TV. When a movie gets me to sound off in private, something unusual is going on. And Kim Dae-woo's directorial debut Forbidden Quest is unusual: an 18-century historic drama about a populist pornographer with artistic aspirations.

Funnily enough, the first involuntary sound the movie caused wasn't an appreciative word or a sigh of pleasure. It was the barked laugh that erupted when one government thug (Lee Beom-su) pulled out a red, hardened bull's cock as his weapon of choice to protect a court intellectual (Han Suk-kyu) tracking down a forgery. That inflamed billy club came as a hilarious shock to me as did the calligrapher (Kim Ki-hyeon) copying porn in the back room of the shop which the scholar was investigating. Does it naturally follow that said scholar would try his hand at writing erotica or become the lover of the queen (Kim Min-jung) who'd become his muse? Probably not. But Kim's script isn't about the probable. It's a warped fantasy about what happens when porn becomes an obsession, even centuries before you could get it online by the touch of a finger.

There are plenty of interesting questions raised by Forbidden Quest about honor, betrayal, love, intimacy and sex and how they interconnect. Compare the very obvious sacrifice made by the eunuch (Kim Roe-ha) to be near the royal lady to the torture the scholar undergoes to hide the identity of his illustrator. Love isn't a trifling affair for anyone here. I didn't clap, alone in my apartment, for Forbidden Quest when it was over. But I did shed a silent tear which spoke volumes, some of them quite dirty.

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.

The Anarchists: The Nicest Terrorists You'll Ever Meet

On the eve of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, it's more than a little weird to watch Yu Yong-sik's The Anarchists (a.k.a. Anakiseuteu Anarchists) because this historical bromance about Korean terrorists who assassinate Japanese oppressors in 1920s Shanghai is so little about politics and violence and so much about brotherhood and youthful aimlessness. With a screenplay by none less than Park Chan-wook, The Anarchists isn't shy about slaughter. Men are stabbed, shot repeatedly, slit in the throat... Even women get tortured. But most of the time, this movie's all about male bonding, how young revolutionary Sang-gul (Kim In-kwon), once rescued from the gallows, comes to love and respect his mentors in the revolution. They're a likable bunch: a nihilistic opium addict named Seregay (Jang Dong-gun), a hotheaded prankster named Dol-suk (Lee Beom-su), a bespectacled didact named Myung-Gon (Kim Sang-jung) and a wannabe radical named Geun (Jeong Jun-ho) who never really seems to have his heart in the cause even as he's willing to sacrifice his life to it. Though the characters never break into a chorus of "Friendship / Friendship / Just a perfect blendship," you do get the feeling that they're humming it when the camera pans away.

Platonic loyalty is hardly unique to Park's canon. Think of the absurdly devoted women in Lady Vengeance or the extreme devotion among the soldiers in J.S.A.: Joint Security Area. But the camaraderie shared by characters written by Park but directed by others always feels more palsy-walsy than sealed in blood. In both Yu's The Anarchists and Lee Mu-yeong's The Humanist, the extremism that defines unconditional love is tempered, leaving something more like chumminess in its place. Admittedly, few directors can match Park's ability to glamorize violence without losing its grotesqueness. De Palma and Scorsese immediately come to mind. And Yu, admittedly has one scene that comes close: A slow-mo bit in which Seregay gets a bullet hole in the head then falls backwards, his descent captured at various camera angles heightening the surreality of the cigarette still smoking between his now-dead lips. But that's an isolated moment. Most bloody encounters in The Anarchists are a little too tamely respectful of the audience to actually achieve something that would earn the audience's wildly undying respect.

Death Bell: Their Final Exams Will Be Their Final Exam

Being at the top of the class is a mixed bag at Chang Ahn High School. Straight A's may get you into college but here they could also get you drowned in a fish tank or tossed to death in a dryer if your fellow students don't figure out that puzzle on the chalkboard in time. Death Bell's midterms of murder have something to do with a dead student whose killer remains at large. Since someone at C.A.H.S. did it, heads are going to roll until that someone confesses (and asks for an apology). Scholarship student Yi-na (Nam Gyu-ri) figures this out soon enough. Why not? She was buddy-buddy with the victim and knows what it means to study hard, only to land in fifth place on the honor roll. (That ranking gives her some breathing space when the serial killer is working down the list.) But Yi-na also knows how to have a good time, thanks to her friendship with Hyeon (Kim Bun), the school prankster who sidelines as a DJ and would definitely get better grades if he applied himself. Head teacher Mr. Hwang (Lee Beom-su) sure believes in Hyeon; Ms. Choi (Yoon Jeong-hee)? Not so much. But then she doesn't seem to believe in anyone except director Yoon Hong-seung who's giving her plenty of screen time to scream in his K-horror torture porn.

The City of Violence: A Mediocre Movie That Packs Extra Punch

More than one not-so-hot movie has been rescued by a flashy martial arts finale. Ryu Seung-wan's The City of Violence takes this approach to the extreme: Every fifteen minutes or so comes another playfully shot, precisely choreographed battle that's as visceral as it is gymnastic. There's one great free-for-all in a police station, an unrelenting rumble with an ever-growing street crowd of baseball players, break dancers, and the girls' field hockey team, and an extended fight-to-the-finish that incorporates sliding doors, hilarious hair-pulling and one suddenly fingerless hand. The connection between all this killing and the founding of a casino feels negligible at best and the villain (Lee Beom-su) is neither clever nor charismatic. But ultimately, the WHY behind each punch and kick proves irrevelant. Every time Seok-hwan (Ryu) and his buddy, the detective Tae-su (Jung Doo-hong who's also the fight choreographer), decide to exact physical revenge on behalf of their old pal Wang-jae (Ahn Kil-Kang), you're too busy admiring the roundhouse kicks and wincing at the mouthfuls of blood to worry about something as simple as character motivation. If you need more than fisticuffs, focus on the costumes and the sets which are also thoughtfully executed.

Jungle Juice: Stupid Is as Stupid Does

Take out all the curse words in Jungle Juice and you'd be left with a silent movie colorized with Dayglo spraypaint. This cornball comedy's two numbskull-punks (Jang Hyuk and Lee Beom-su) cuss if they're bragging, cuss if they're clowning around, and cuss if someone's smacking them silly...which happens pretty often. The non-stop profanities and the aggressively bloody slapstick which, true to the word's roots, really does involve equal parts slap and stick, quickly gets tedious given the lack of plot in the meandering first half. By the time an actual story emerges -- involving stolen cocaine, intra-gang warfare, and a prostitute who goes by the name of Meg Ryan (Jeon Hye-jin), writer-director Cho Min-ho has his work cut out for him in terms of winning over an audience. That he does even partially is kind of amazing. The final halfhour is tight: multiple storylines intertwine and the goofy highjinks take on unexpected gravitas. In the end, it's still a stupid buddy pic with yuk-yuk gags and actors making silly faces but you're also clued in to the fact that Cho's capable of much more. He's the class clown who's smarter than he'd like to admit. Hey Cho! There's nothing wrong with being brainy. Try it sometime.