The Legend of the Shadowless Sword: Babes Who Take Stabs at Revenge

Way back in the late 900s A.D., only one prince (Lee Seo-jin) survived from the royal family. Lucky for him, a young girl (Yoon So-yi) who he'd rescued during an earlier political upheaval made it her mission in life to reinstate him to the throne. So while he's been making a living as a shady thrift shop owner, she's been mastering the basics of the Medieval bodyguard. You know... Martial arts, sword-fighting and the lost craft of self-propelled human flight. But she's not the only one who's been training like there's no tomorrow. There's also a bloodthirsty guy (Shin Hyeon-jun) with cornrows and his sexy girlfriend (Lee Ki-yong) who favors red. They too aspire to the currently unoccupied throne. Since both pairs are black belts in every form of combat, The Legend of the Shadowless Sword has plenty of riveting clashes in which swords clang, fists thud, and feet skid in the dirt when they're not pedaling their fighters effortlessly into the sky. As historic legends go, director Kim Young Jun's epic is a really good one. He keeps the mysticism to a minimum, preferring instead to fold the magic into the real. If Ancient Peruvians could perform brain surgery way back when, why couldn't the Koreans be able to make each other explode?

Terror Taxi: A Ride Into the Unknown

For every Eraserhead, there's a Liquid Sky; for every Evil Dead, there's The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the Universe. Sometimes, an early oddball movie announces a directorial visionary (David Lynch, Sam Raimi); sometimes, it doesn't (Slava Tsukerman, W.D. Richter). I wish Terror Taxi had fallen in the former camp. But from the looks of it, that's probably not going to be the case since, as far as I can tell, this funny freakshow circa 2000 is Heo Seung-jun's first and only flick. Too bad. A kooky comedy about a dead cab driver (Lee Seo-jin) trying to make sense of Limbo, Heo's feature debut has the crazy logic of a Repo Man or a Donnie Darko with enough surreal imagery (blood-fueled car engines, amusement park rest stops, and flying taxis), visual gags (projectile vomiting, butt cracks), and hammy performances (Jeong Hae-gyu in particular) to justify a cult following. The movie demands -- and deserves -- repeat viewings since there's no other way to untangle its knotty narrative. That said, for anyone who thinks a little confusion isn't necessarily a bad thing if it's delivered with smarts, style and a sense of humor, Terror Taxi is kind of terrific.

Guns & Talks: Hitting All the Wrong Notes

There was a point midway through this awful buddy comedy (co-starring Lee Seo-jin) about hired killers when I wondered whether Guns & Talks would work better as a musical. As the young narrator (a bee-stung lipped Won Bin) waxed philosophical about the transformative power of love, I thought maybe this wouldn't be so unbearable if it were sung to a catchy tune. A later scene in which Shakespeare was shouted by actors in an avant garde production of Hamlet had me thinking: Yes! Yes! And here director Jang Jin could use Verdi's operatic version of the tragedy instead! But even that idea grew tired as the clock ticked away and my drifted to whether the toilet needed cleaning or the dog brushing and so on. Subplots involving a pretty newscaster, a smitten high school student, and one of the unlikeliest abortion strategies that I can recall never got overly complicated but they didn't add much to the experience either. The one surprise about Guns & Talks was Cantonese was the default language on the DVD even though the film is Korean. A background soundtrack lifted from a bad seventies porno movie meant no matter whether the actors were dubbed or speaking in their native tongue, the dialogue always sounded out of tune.