Dream of a Warrior: Your Past Life Is on a Distant Planet

Usually, movie characters who time-space-jump end up in costume-rich eras: the 1920s or some century with powdered wigs perhaps. In Park Hee-joon's Dream of a Warrior, the time-travelers ditch earth completely and head for Dilmoon, a sword-and-sorcery planet where people wear neutral-colored Arthurian capes and black leather halters while warriors prove their mettle via mixed martial arts and a variation on football owing something to mud wrestling. Adept at both sports is Dean (Hong Kong pop star Leon Lai Ming), a lower class type who's contemporary counterpart is a soft-spoken cop with rare brainwaves that facilitats intergalactic adventures. He's been enlisted today to rescue Princess Rose (Park Eun-hye) of yore but first he needs to relive their entire romantic story as research. (Cue the sappy score for a flashback that lasts nearly the entire movie.) In this earlier courtship, Dean gets help fending off bad guys from tough chick ShoSho (Lee Na-yeong). By the time he returns to unfreeze Rose, ShoSho is dead so he's stuck fighting solo against Rose's betrothed who's got a better bloodline, bigger biceps and the supernatural powers that come from selling your soul to the devil. Lucky for Dean he can make a clone of himself!

The Curse of February 29th: The Horrific Toll of Bad Acting

Working in a tollbooth sounds like a nightmare to me. The car exhaust, the cramped quarters, the endless monotony would drive anyone over the edge. And it appears to have done just that to poor Ji-yeon (Park Eun-hye), a lowly, low-paid worker stuck with the late shift and suffering from insomnia. She blames her aural hallucinations and bad driving on a bloody ticket that a driver handed her right before (when else?) February 29th; Detective Park (Im Ho) and his partner think she's criminally insane with problems rooted in her childhood. My vote goes with the cops. Anyone who pops pills and babbles about a woman who dresses up like her (in cheap outfits ordered off the internet) sounds suspect. You can sympathize with Ji-yeon for acting out. She's got a dead-end job, a blandly furnished apartment, and a serious case of chapped lips. But while you feel for Ji-yeong, you'll more likely relate to the reporter who visits her in the mental ward then ends up doodling a shark on his notepad. She's crazy, not fascinating. If I was going to get meta, I'd say director Jung Jong-hun has asked his lead actress to play it like a toll booth worker acting like an actor instead of vice versa. That is the true Curse of February 29th.

Night and Day: A Cad Abroad (And the Broads Who Love Him)

Somewhere out there is a pamphlet entitled A Beginner's Guide to Existential Filmmaking, Vol. 7: The Paris Edition and somehow director Hong Sang-soo got his hands on a tattered copy. You can tell because his flick Night and Day follows many of the rules therein. To wit: #3 Your protagonist should be a middle-aged man (Kim Yeong-ho) who smokes incessantly. #8 He should fall for a nymphette (Park Eun-hye) whose feet he glimpses poking out from under the sheets. #56 He should also have a wife, a mistress, an ex-girlfriend and a random woman to reject. #114 Scenes should end abruptly, right before something big is going to be said ("What is painting?") or done ("Make love to me!"). Hong's a competent filmmaker so Night and Day is never boring but like a skillful kiss given by a man with bad breath, it's not particularly satisfying either. That disappointing kiss is actually a good analogy too because there's no passion behind Night and Day either. More than anything else, the movie feels like an intellectual exercise in which the director explores ideas like deception, desire, and displacement, minus the deeper anxieties. There's ennui but no poignancy, disillusionment but no real grief.