Oh, man... OH MAN.

🔸️The most distinctive trait of this movie: uncompromising. Some very decent acting somehow works its way through very weak directing, while some decent fight choreography and a brutal bullying scene are still visible through very unflattering lighting, trembling camera (how tf did you make it tremble when it's on a tripod?), and a terrible music choice.

I was fucking rolling on the floor of laughter watching the characters first kiss scene. A minute ago they were just strangers, and now they're jumping out of their pants and tripping over the table like they haven't had sex for twenty years. (Dang, i wanna see a behind-the-scenes of it) The criminal part of the two assassins' lives didn't make sense for a long time. I couldn't even understand that Ki Tae was a killer too before I read the synopsis.

🔸️What I find different in Long Time No See is that it's not entirely a "Boys Love". It focuses specifically on two gay men and their struggles to find their place in the society they have to literally fight for. BLs though tend to not focus on that struggle but rather on just the relationship and background of the characters (in most of the BLs I've seen). Therefore I can suggest the movie to be assigned to the LGBTQ+ category.

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"나는 도망 대신 사랑을 선택할 거다."

🔸️The debut mini-drama of the director Lim Hyeon Hee is an incredibly lovely piece that made me smile all the way through it. It definitely doesn't fall into the category of "Competition for the most cringey skinship" but it feels that a lot of thought has been put into the making of the drama.

The metaphor and the premise - video game format to reimagine one's relationship + learning to not run away from your problems - make the drama stand out. But the viewers' love it earns thanks to the good chemistry between the actors and the gentle directing.

🔸️Originally, it was planned to be longer, and the director says in her interview that she has regrets about not being able to tell more about Wan and Ki Tae's past due to the nature of the short form. I personally think that the background could still be successfully incorporated, e.g. showing more by telling less, but what has been done is pretty solid already. Fun fact: Ki Tae only wears shorts because it matched the character so well.

I hope Lim Hyeon Hee will join Hwang Da Seul and other famous BL directors in this Korean BL Renaissance and bring more joy to the viewers, especially considering that her favorite genre is melodrama. 응원합니다, 감독님!

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이젠 단팥빵 먹고 싶어 죽겠다

These 8 short episodes is not really a drama but more like a travel show with a fictional character and her background. Each episode is a separate short story that happens to Ha Gyong on her weekend trips.

🔸We get to know Park Ha Gyong through her relationships with students, colleagues, reactions to unusual situations and life regrets. Each novel is totally fictional, but in the 7th episode there is a long bakery ad, and, you know, it worked. I now want to buy a 단팥빵 when I go to Jeju. Yet that episode-long advertisement was off-putting for the main narrative, leaving me more or less indifferent towards the end.

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"나는 사랑하는 게 너무 어렵더라."

This nostalgic web-drama follows the lives of two best friends growing up together and going through the first love, first heartbreak, hurtful arguments, kidney transplanting and "cellular memory" that makes one of them adopt the traits of another.

🔸Although not the most coherent and too relying on the unnecessary "big reveal" in the end, the story is quite lovely to watch. My favorite scene is drinking home-brewed makkolli at school in the middle of the night and escaping security guards together. The biggest mistake is making the cellular memory responsible for the arguments between Joon Hwi and Yoo interrupting his personal development, not to mention that cellular memory is just a myth and you could use it more creatively.

Overall, it's still a good drama about navigating friendship, anger, sorrow, love and grief, and the performance from Se Hoon is worth a watch.

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The world without Cheonmyeong or without smoking?

If they had to choose an actor with the most expressive eyes to make us watch him wear a mask, they sure did the right choice casting Kim Woo Bin.

🔸That would be weird to expect another Blade Runner from Cho Ui Seok, known for his (boring) "action-only-and-forever" movie Master, and you lose nothing skipping Black Knight as there is nothing you haven't already seen in Master and Alienoid with Kim Woo Bin. The production design might be good, so as the storyline about Yoon Sa Wol - "from zero to hero" type that is always satisfying - but that's it. I honestly don't give a damn about the "villainous villain" who wants to destroy the world for some reason, or looking for a treatment for his who-knows-what disease, or whatever else he does, ending with a huge exhausting action sequence that has no purpose.

🔸I finished this overly extended movie, and it immediately faded away from my mind. There is no memorable OST, no intro. It is soapy.
The story failed in building emotional connections with it's characters, and I wished for all the refugees to die if they remained so naive, faceless, and didn't try to protect themselves. Theoretically, 5-8, Sa Wol and his company are representatives of the refugees, but de facto they are on totally different levels of intelligence and power.

And, seriously, it's so easy to steal a QR code. Where are all the hackers in that town? Or at least people with smartphone cameras?

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아름다운 청년 전태일 편히 쉬세요.

🔸️Can you imagine what level of despair one has to reach to set themselves alight and die the most horrible death publicly? Will their sacrifice change anything at all? In 5 years? And in 50 years?

🔸️Jeon Tae Il used his last resort by the end of the Third Republic of Korea. Two more Republics would change before the democracy is established, and many more bloody years were ahead. Self-immolation is not an effective form of protest but the most shocking one. It does leave an indelible impression on witnesses, making them question their situation. It is only up to the living if the horrible act of sacrifice has a real impact later. In case of Jeon Tae Il, it wasn't forgotten.

The camerawork in the movie is absolutely fantastic. The depth of shadows and light gives sometimes dramatic feel or sometimes the feeling of being trapped. The leading actor Hong Gyeong-In is perfect. It would easily go to my favorites if not for the slightly undercooked screenplay that made me stray in between the two story lines with the newest one less clear.

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"하늘과 바람과 별과 시"

The movie has a feel of old black and white pictures coming to life. The camera is a careful observer and doesn't make unnecessary movements. It's a lot like a theater play that relies mostly on the actors performances, and those are amazing!

🔸️I feel like it's the right way to approach such complicated topic as Japanese rule and tragic life stories of people who lived in another century. We have to keep a respectful distance to remember that there is no going back, and therefore the history lessons have to be learned. This distance also makes the movie very lyrical, with poetry recited over the scenes, expressing Dong Joo's thoughts and feelings and creating the flow.

It was a bit hard to understand the potential goals and motivations of the characters, but now poetry makes sense to me.

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'김영화'는 아니고 '김용화'란 다행이군. 영화는 너무 섭섭하겠다.

I haven't seen a director with such terrible sense of space as Kim Yong Hwa in a while. On the shelf of nauseous editing, ridiculous costumes and CGI, weak world building, non-existent emotional bond with characters, another one is Choi Dong Hoon with his Alienoid.

If you show me a dude who saves someone's life and then dies and acts dumb all along just because he's "saint", I will wish for him to die again. All the trials are so dumb, the Kings don't even follow their own rules skipping the defending part. And each time the trial ends with discovering a piece of information that makes an excuse for the main character's actions. Even if it's a murder attempt. Ridiculous.

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Their personal stories in the waterfall of history

"다 지난 일이야"
You won't find any other drama that was made with such love and tremendous attention as Oasis. You won't find any drama as fine-tuned and organic. You won't find any thing sticking out and spoiling the detailed set or the flow. The first episode rating in Korea for Oasis was 6.3% and the final one peaked at 9.7%. These impressive numbers say it all.
🔹️I confess: I've watched the first episode 3 times simply because it's so immaculate and immersive from the very first second that I couldn't keep from going back to it. That musical sequence in slow motion, serving as a gate to the drama world, is the level above any K-drama we are used to seeing. The creators masterfully weave the music and movies of their childhood and teenage years into the layers of long kept secrets and hurtful passions. As nostalgic as Reply 1988 in some way. They made me fall in love with the music band 해바라기 that was popular back then, they made me explore more Korean movies made at that period of time. (You can find my review on Yeong Ja's Heydays here on MDL and on Letterboxd. That was the age-restricted movie the characters watch for the first time together in a theater) And I am still going through the history of South Korea under Park Jeong Hee and Jeon Doo Hwan, though it doesn't seem like the major historical events affect the story here, only the overall economic and social situation.

🔹️I love the quality of Oasis. I can feel the creators put all their warmest memories and souls in it. Especially the fights choreography is so good! I can track all the movements with my eyes, and camera doesn't shake like if the camera operator had a tremor. The gang wars are rampant and spectacular. Crashing glasses, breaking bones! There is a lot of visual humor: some gangster plays dead to not get his a$s beaten up. 😂

🔹️I tried to track the timeline, which is not always defined. The story starts in the late 70s (I calculated, most probably it's 1975) and ends in 1987, the year the current Sixth Republic of Korea was established and the authoritarian rule finally ended after all the years of struggle. It's a very matching background for the drama story. The unrest in society is passed to the teenagers who are becoming adults and learn to navigate their lives in this hectic environment.

Oh, have I already said that Choo Yeong Woo is an acting genius? Yep, I did. On his debut mini drama. I can't believe anyone else could ever play such a complicated and controversial character as Choi Cheol Woong. I will definitely keep an eye on this shining young talent.

P.S. Goddamn I wish there was a second MDL with only reasonable and mature viewers that I could escape to. Looks like the people here don't appreciate ambiguous characters, only simple entertainment, and for some reason think that the screenwriters have to satisfy their whims. I'm not trying to offend you, only those who wrote the mean comments.

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Are y'all insane?!? This is the best drama I've seen in ages!

Now, I expected just another All Of Us Are Dead but with aliens, and i never been happier i was wrong! This is not just an action shooter rpg gamelike eliminating monsters. This really is about war. Any war. And it doesn't matter who you fight against in it, it's always the same - crushing people's lives and minds and bringing death everywhere. No rules of an ordinary life work at war, and the show shows it in the best way possible.

🔸️I either was a bit confused by switching the setting in the second part. How could the kids be abandoned by all their commanders? 말도 안 돼. But once you forget about it everything starts to feel even more horrifying. The truth is, you are always by yourself, and having and maintaining friendship in such situation is incredibly hard. And we see that in the drama. I was shocked by how agonizing, wistful and painful the drama is. It's better than Saving Private Ryan indeed. Because I can associate myself with those highschoolers.

The sttudents are portrayed perfectly. They learn to cooperate, grieve and think like adults yet they are still playful and full of dreams. The conditions of the war itself are crystal clear. It's not an offensive but a defensive war. So you can easily imagine moral choices one has to made in it.

🔸️The intro gives me shivers every time. It's tragic, and wistful, and horrifying in a very subtle way with characters shown as columns in an album, with only a memory of their past presence left. Kids turning into soldiers, carrying arms instead of future. And you think one guy going mad is stupid? There are real cases in the army of such "accidents", and what lead to them, both the environment and the mental state, are explored here.

🔸️This drama is much harsher than any drama I've ever seen. Much better written as well. Isn't that what always happens at wars? There are so many of them happening right now, look around! Ukraine is right on the edge of Europe. Seeing kids in full military uniform having fun with guns lying around is not a TV show for some people. The atmosphere of this drama is absolutely unique. I feel like this is something I saw in a dream that I forgot right away waking up.

Masterpiece.

"Why did grown ups give us guns? They had to keep us from getting them."

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Phew... Such a rollercoaster. Of disappointment.

This drama stole 4 month of my patience, so I gonna be brief and pinpoint. I was surprised looking at low ratings when I was on the first episodes but by the end I think that even low ratings are too high for it.

🔸️For me it's obvious that the main character Sa Hye Joon is based on Park Bo Geom, or at least relies heavily on his persona. He just finished his service the last year right after this drama. I was never a fan of him but I see how his fanbase ramped up the ratings. 8.7% wouldn't be possible with such crooked storytelling if there weren't the two Parks (Park So Dam).

Now, facts only:
▪︎Hye Joon's dad looks like Kim Jeong Il.
▪︎After the 8th episode Hye Joon already achieved everything somehow and starts earning millions and riding a luxurious car out of blue because the drama producers have signed a promotion contract with BMW.
▪︎The story goes nowhere after he reaches success. Hye Joon obviously doesn't give a damn about scandals, so why should I?
▪︎Endless dialogues about feelings and morals that sound like even the actors are sick of them. As if the characters were zen Buddhist monks. Cut to 1 hour per episode, nothing to lose.
▪︎Army sucks. Stealing 2 years of life. I got it.
▪︎WTF? "Hi how are u"? This is the ending?!?

I started watching Record Of Youth when I felt bad and needed motivation. Mistake. Please, don't watch this drama if you're having hard times. It's not motivating, it's manipulative.

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사람은 지키질 준 제가 있으면 버틸수 있지 않습니까?

It is such a weird creature, this drama. I'd say, a chameleon. It nearly falls apart for not having a clear distinct theme. It doesn't try to catch attention by any means but develops the story steadily. It could be rather a good point if the drama wasn't so ephemeral.

🔸️The story starts off with a premise of a detective, continues with attempts to get Hwan and Jae Yi together, concludes with restoring historical justice for the kingdom's falsely accused people. It could be a story about a female detective in Joseon who dresses up in man clothes and helps poor people, and we would know what we're watching. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but the motive for the murder of Min family was never revealed? We know who did it, but why?

🔸️Yet the supporting characters in the drama are great, from the ministers to Lee Hwan's closest friend Han Seong On. The couple of Myeong Jin and Ga Ram is genuinely funny and sincere. The actors did a great job. It also put on my radar the young actor Heo Won Seo (Tae Gang role), and I will watch where his career will go.

Overall, Our Blooming Youth feels like a good cupcake without any cream or sprinkles. It might taste well, but people won't eat it if there are more appetizing foods around. The poster and the title are so bland and tell nothing. Even the OST for the drama is almost nonexistent. The finishing music sounds crispy, but there is not a single song, only instrumentals. Having Park Hyeong Shik in the cast is not enough to get high ratings. I have an impression we saw just the first draft of the drama.

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나가 느편 해줄 테니 너는 느 원대로 살라! 할망이 모든 거 다 해줄 거야.

For starters, the translation of the title is "Grandma Gye Chun", not Canola. I guess because it might be hard to remember for foreign viewers.

🔸️The Jeju Island atmosphere of the drama Our Blues is one of my favorites in Korean cinema. This movie might have a messy screenplay, a couple of unfinished parts and some misleading unexplained moments, but it also has many beautifully shot scenes and heartwarming dialogues, e.g. Hye Ji going diving with her granny. Later she draws a picture of them holding hands underwater and floating in the deep ocean up to the light. It also reveals another person who was as close to them. Honestly, that picture got me crying. My big admiration for the artist who painted it. If you saw it you know what I'm talking about.

Another great part is acting. Kim Go Eun is incredible as always. She's incredible. That's it. I admire her. I do.

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