Reviews

MOST UNDERATED AND UPTILL NOW THE EXCELLENT HORROR FILM IN KOREAN FILM INDUSTRY

RATING: ★★★★★

SUMMARY: Ji Woo, a webcomic artist, visits the Gwanglim Mansion after hearing the terrifying rumours about that apartment. The apartment's caretaker, a middle-aged guy, describes a few incidents that occurred there. Ji Woo becomes more and more obsessed.

MY VIEWS: This film tops Gonjam Haunted Asylum in quality. I realise that making such a bold statement considering how well acclaimed this Korean horror film is, but as a horror movie enthusiast, I can assure you that this film will not let you down. The narrative is strong because the movie's many scenes make connections. The story of each character shown in the first chapter is told by the middleman throughout the duration of the film's four chapters. The movie becomes really intriguing when the hints for next scenes are shown, since this demonstrates how precisely the plot was crafted and how skilfully the direction was executed. This movie is obsessed in every way. The middleman telling such stories is a very surprising and distinct character. It resembles watching episodes of short horror stories. There is nothing special to talk about the sets, because all the incidents happens in that apartment. I totally loved it! Creative, Engaging and Terrifying.

RECOMMENDATION: I recommend this movie more than 1 time

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..INTELLIGENCE, ENDURANCE, IMAGINATION. . .LUCK

..yes, these are the things that one's person possess to win a game..
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..first, I already watch Alice in Borderland, compare to this movie, what I like the most is about the time where the game ended, not always a last second which always happens in AiB (maybe just to add some intense scenes)..
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..also, it is a game where a teamwork is a must, unlike to other bloody game genre, here, it didn't need someone to kill just to win the game or have some sacrifice, or to be a traitor (except what Takeru did since he wants to kill), the winner continues, the loser dies..
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..the game itself is so tricky for me that even if I put myself on it can make me win, but some of the game are easy to get. . .the game are well explained on how they win too and made me amazed..
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..the ending is kinda disappointing yet satisfied and unique, you won't expect that even if the ML may have love interest it doesn't mean they will stay up to the last game. . .sadly isn't..
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..and yes, one of the best game genre to watch..

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Must watch heartfelt

Cinematography is beautiful in alignment with the emotions of the characters. Very comedic and witty screenplay . Personally the best part for me is the child’s and Sans acting . Lovely story ,too cute to resist and heartfelt and at some moments you break into tears so prepare your tissues . The bond between the characters is the highlight it’s just to beautiful and gives an insight on how bonds can still be formed even with different personalities,backgrounds age in short nothing matters more than the ability of your heart to open up . Very good screenplay well directed a must watch with family .

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Misfortune makes or breaks you

Misfortune makes or breaks you, depending on the choices you make. Kurosawa takes on postwar Japan's class divide and poverty and the choices people have to make in the face of destitution. Mifune Toshiro and Shimura Takashi star in one of the first buddy cop movies of all time. Mifune as the beleaguered rookie and Shimura as the smooth mentor made a great partnership.

The plot stems from rookie Murakami's service revolver being pickpocketed on a crowded bus. He feels responsible and despondent over its loss. His supervisor refuses to let him give into despair and ultimately teams him up with the experienced Sato. His gun is used in several crimes causing him greater grief as the crimes and violence intensify. This is no brainless, violent cops and robbers film. Kurosawa gives the faceless villain, Yusa, humanity even with the bad things he's done through the witness of other characters. The problems of rampant poverty and crime are highlighted as well as the problems soldiers coming home from the war faced. Murakami and Sato do old fashioned detective work, following the clues and often waiting and being persistent. Kurasawa even has the detectives track a Yakuza at a filled to capacity baseball game where they have to put the welfare of the crowd over their own goals.

I hesitate to write too much about the story after trying and ending up with three pages which hit my editing floor. This was a beautifully made film with amazing framing and compositions. Kurosawa wasn't afraid to linger over shots, especially when they were gloriously put together. Nakai Asakazu did a stunning job with the cinematography. The lighting was especially complex in many shots. There was masterful work going on with this film.

Tokyo was in the middle of not only a crime wave but also a heat wave and you could almost feel the sweat streaming down the characters' backs. As the film nears the culmination the clouds darken and the torrential rain that breaks through also symbolizes the unleashing of the greatest brutality the characters would face as they finally come upon their quarry.

At one point in the movie, Sato and Murakami have a deep conversation at Sato's house. Sato sees Yusa as simply a bad guy who must be caught. Murakami sees himself in Yusa. They both came home from the war only to have their knapsacks stolen on a train. Yusa chose to become bitter and turn to crime, Murakami chose to work on the problem by becoming a policeman. “They say there’s no such thing as a ‘bad man,’ only bad situations,” Murakami said. Sato reminds him of all the damaged sheep left in the wolf's path. A peek at Sato's children sleeping reminds the viewer that children represented the future of Japan, pure and vulnerable who would face their own choices. Would they give into materialism and crime or take the more honorable path?

A scene with Yusa's girlfriend, Harumi, and her mother showed the differences in the generations. Her mother dressed in the wartime austere clothes while Harumi dressed in a far more decorative dress. When the reason Yusa needed the gun to begin with comes to light it highlights the great gap between the classes and how a dress in a window could cause deep seated resentment.

Mifune Toshiro gave a performance that reached several octaves. Always a live wire, you could see his energy coiled and unleashed on occasions as he dealt with the anguish of his gun being used in crimes. He was the perfect Kurosawa hero, tortured and honorable. When he finally faces his alter ego with 3 bullets left in the chamber and a vicious fight takes place, leaving us to wonder who is who, we are reminded not only of their similarities but also the differences in the choices they made. Shimura Takashi was the levelheaded mentor who saw through people and picked up on clues while his pupil was wrapped up in his own head and feelings at times. He gave an incredibly cool performance as the mature detective who knew he could often get what he wanted with honey and smooth words.

The only drawback for me was a lengthy 8-minute part of the film when Murakami goes undercover in the black market for a few days trying to find someone to buy a gun from. Honda Ishiro (Godzilla) followed Mifune around with a hidden camera discreetly filming the homeless and people selling and trading in the market. At one time Tokyo had 60,000 black market vendors. Even during the war people had to use them to find food and clothes. Like a bamboo, people would sell layers of clothes and personal items to get what they needed. After the war people were starving, some to death. He also showed some of the burned-out buildings leftover from the bombings. Though people were dependent on the black market to survive it also bred the Yakuza with gangs having their own territories. Kurosawa apparently had a difficult time leaving much of this footage out, but it felt like it would have been more meaningful if he had culled it down. Japan's economic recovery wasn't far away so this was an historical time capsule of how the people had to live which I appreciated being able to see even if I wish he'd edited it more.

I could talk about his film at length but will leave you with this. The film discussed pertinent social dilemmas and existential questions. The acting was skillful and artfully balanced. The frames, lighting, sets, and composition were skillfully done. It could be slow in places, but Kurosawa also knew when to hit the accelerator and when to brake, when to ramp up the tension and when to take a breath. If you are prepared to be patient when the movie slows and lingers, I can easily recommend this gem.

10/7/22

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Despite potential, held very little appeal in multiple regards

It's a pity that this turned out this way, because the acting was fantastic. And the basics of the story was intriguing. And I tend to ADORE reincarnation stories. Especially stories that involve reincarnation in multiple ways/areas.

But the story was inconsistent. I think chief among this set of complaints is the Female Lead. She's CENTURIES old and has a divine boost to her powers - but she was consistently weak, despite claims by the characters to the contrary. You can be kind-hearted, without being weak. I was very disappointed with this aspect of her character.

The CGI was unimpressive and the music added nothing to the aura of the story at all. So there weren't even non-story elements to praise.

And above all, take it from someone who appreciates all kinds of endings: That ending was so purely unthought-out that I'm still reeling. Like, it was a closed ending, but are we supposed to just accept that? There's just so, so much wrong with it.

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What's real?

This movie invites the audience to an active interpretation - not only of the emotions and intentions of the characters, but also of the actual plot. Is the depicted event "real"? Is it her imagination? Is is his imagination? It also leaves you asking, what is more important: being free or being loved? Is it possible to have a relationship that is free from a power struggle? Why does the main character identify with that particular novel character, Josée?

The impact of this movie is so strong because of great acting, matching music and beautiful cinematography. I recommend it to people who enjoy some food for thought.

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Haunting psychothriller. Rather psycho-logical. Intense acting of a fantastic trio.

"Anchor" is a psychological thriller set in the competitive world of TV news anchor. A nightmare on the edge of a horror trip begins, as Jung Se-ra receives a strange phone call, followed by fatality. Se-ra sets out to investigate herself... Eventually a psychiatrist plays a dubious role, starting to increasingly influence Se-ra´s world. Her manipulative controlling mother on the other hand cannot tolerate this. Increasingly, realities become blurred. What Se-ra finds out in the end is downright shocking.

Like I said, this is a psychological thriller. On top of that, it gets mysterious, psychologically complex and a bit uncanny at times. Viewers see the world through the eyes of Jung Se-ra (impressive: Chun Woo-hee), who is getting confronted with her own blind spots. Tugging on one side is her dominant mother (spooky: Lee Hye-young), while on the other side the provocative psychiatrist In-ho (unfathomable: Shin Ha-Kyun) plays with fire confronting Se-ra's psyche with hypnosis.

"Anchor" clearly thrives on the intense acting of this fantastic trio. Haunting.




PS:
Don´t expect to get all the answers straight - the KMovie is rather psycho-logical.

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Was a bittersweet movie

First off, I like the collaboration between South Korea and Thailand. Being an avid fan of both countries, it was very refreshing to see a collaboration between the two countries.
The story was quite sad to be honest, which I find is a very common theme with South Korean BL dramas. You have Min Hoon who commits suicide by drowning in the ocean because he was so severely bullied in the army. Which my guess is because they knew he was gay. Then you have Tae Kyung who ultimately does the same thing in the end, so that Min Ki and Jae Hee can be together in the end, I find very sad. I also find it a bit well can I say off putting that Jae Hee and Min Ki are dating each other when they both know that Min Hoon was Min Ki’s older brother and Jae Hee’s ex-boyfriend. I don’t know, it is a little uncomfortable for me that the younger brother Min Ki is dating his dead older brother’s ex-boyfriend. It doesn’t really sit well with me. All the while, Tae Kyung, Jae Hee’s half brother, is dying from a rare disease. Overall, it was a good movie and I don’t regret watching it. I just feel really sad that Tae Kyung and Min Hoon sacrificed so much for their brothers. I hope for their sake, that Min Ki and Jae Hee make the best out of their relationship.

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Straight-faced dramatics for a perfect mindless watch

It's a strange one. I contemplated dropping for a bit there. What kept me watching though was how likable all the characters are. Every single one. That's very rare to come by. From the little girl who watches too much John Wick, to the hired help with the perfect facial expression changes, to the little boy from Colombia giving the ML a run for his money, and yes, even to the ML who just wants to stack cups but keeps getting interrupted.

Eventually, the straight-faced dramatics and comedy grew on me. I found myself chuckling and shaking my head at the ridiculousness quite often. It's perfectly mindless.

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Cheesy predictable thriller.....

Killed My Wife (Anaereul Jukyessda)” is a guilty, sinking suspicion, a question and in the end an answer to a mystery, cryptically served-up in a solid genre thriller that keeps you guessing, thanks at least in part to a bit of cheating on the part of the filmmaker

Jung-ho is bitterly convinced that “love needs money,” an idea he uses to justify his depressing gambling habit. Money, he believes, is the reason his wife (the gentle Wang Ji-hye) threw him out of the house. When Jung-ho lost his white collar job, he didn’t have the courage to tell her he had been fired and was scrounging for work as day laborer. Little did he guess what job she was forced to find to survive, and even when he does find out, it doesn’t seem to make much of an impression.

Only a bunch of gangsters running a gambling and massage business are raking it in. Our hero has borrowed money from the evil Mrs. Kim (Seo Ji-young), a sneering boss lady who threatens to cut off his hand Kim Ki-duk style if he doesn’t pay up. Her sadistic gloating seems more at home in a comic strip than a film, but the bitter final reveal about her — again, satisfyingly realistic — comes like an unexpected slap in the face of genre conventions.

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"However, What They Don’t Teach You Is How To Be An Adult."

I got a few recommendations from my buddies a while back to see this. I saw the good reviews of it in the news and also on MDL. I knew it wasn't going to be an easy watch. I appreciate the film makers, director, writers, and all who participated in this production in having the creative courage to tell a story about a social issue that is difficult to navigate and properly tell.

This drama is gritty and tries to do a realistic portrayal of the characters so nothing goes through pretty pastel filters, you see the starkness as it is.

The focus of the story is about the extreme bullying a teenage girl deals with in her school. It starts off with her classmate who commits suicide due to the bullying. There's a difficult scene where her classmate's dead body is in the center of the school grounds with some students taking pictures of the scene and it was morbid. The FL goes to cover the dead body up out of respect, she becomes the new target of bullying.

Later on, her life intersects with a young thug who is an orphan. The FL and ML seem to have similar backgrounds of poverty and come from broken homes but they have different aspirations and trajectories. The FL is studious and does extremely well in school, she aspires to go to the best university. The ML has lived with a life of violence and has no direction. The FL gets his help to protect her from the bullying so she can focus on graduating and getting into a good university. Their relationship develops further as two lonely individuals who come to support each other.

The bullying continues to spiral out of control and turns into an absolute train wreck for the leads. Most of the adults in the drama give lip service on student bullying and turn a blind eye to it. It was difficult to watch towards the end when you feel the impending doom for both of the leads and the sacrifice one makes for the other.

Extraordinary story telling and deeply heartbreaking.

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Disgusting

This is a film that is deeply offensive to the Vietnamese people and the history of Vietnam. The film distorted history by portraying Korean soldiers who came to Vietnam as heroes, who rescued the Vietnamese from the Viet Cong. But history is different, Korean soldiers massacred, raped, and plundered Vietnam while they were stationed in Vietnam. This is an insulted to Vietnamese people, how can they create a movie that completely wrong to the history and proud of it like it is the true. This movie should be ban because it can make people misunderstand about the history, THE REAL HISTORY. No matter how touching the scenes in the movie are, it can not be deny that Korean soldier has committed terrible crimes.

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Comedic Grief with Heart and Gangsters

On a script by Bae Se-young, who also penned the hilarious “Extreme Job”, “Stellar: A Magical Ride” combines comedy with action elements and some family (melo) drama, in a crowd pleasing effort that has both good and bad moments.

Kwon Soo-kyung directs a movie that moves into a number of distinctly mainstream paths. The car-chase elements are combined with a road-trip aspect that has Young-bae stumbling upon almost every issue a (professional) driver can stumble upon. Offensive drivers, mechanical issues, impolite “customers”, not to mention a number who are willing to resort to violence to solve their road problems, with this last factor bringing us to another central aspect of the narrative, action, which is aplenty here and also includes much hand-to-hand combat. The approach to the action is mostly comedic, but the scenes occasionally are quite violent even if not bloody. Comedy is another central element here, essentially encompassing all others in the film, with the things that happen to Young-bae being the main source of it, as much as the way the gang members fail to catch him or get their cargo back. Lastly, his memories of his father, and his childhood in general, bring in a family drama aspect that occasionally borders on the melodrama, even more so after the appearance of Dong-sik, although the general approach remains focused on the comedic.

The combination of all these elements results in an episodic movie, whose individual moments are appealing, benefitting the most by Son Ho-jun’s acting as Young-bae, the function of the car, which eventually exhibits elements of humanity, and the fact that the villains are both dangerous and clumsy on occasion, with Kim Kyeon-woo as Sledgehammer, embodying this aspect to the fullest. Lee Sung-jae’s cinematography captures all these elements with a fittingly polished approach, with the exception of the flashbacks, whose “fogginess” could have been avoided. Shin Min-kyung’s editing results in an equally fitting fast pace that finds its apogee in the action scenes, where Jeon Jae-hyeong’s choreography also shines in its combination of comedy and violence.

At the same time, as a whole, the movie does not make that much sense, having too many things happening at the same time, too many characters involved, and the father arc occasionally bordering on the cheesy. Furthermore, and although there is nothing wrong with any performance, some more star quality would definitely benefit the film, considering its nature, with the comparison with “Extreme Job” highlighting the fact quite eloquently.

Despite some issues here and there, that do not allow it to reach the top of the category, “Stellar: A Magical Ride” is fun and quite easy to watch, and that is where its true value lies.

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Garbage trying to look pretty

I tried to watch this a few years ago, because someone recommended it, but it is pure crap!
Some actress goes to Germany - if memory serves correctly - to basically walk around, do nothing, tell her friend that she's been fucked by 200 men (well, okay, the exact number isn't given, but she implied she's a hoe) and to put some distance between herself and the married man she's currently getting shafted by.

Nothing happened for the longest of time and I ended up turning it off.
I'm only writing this review now because it popped up on one of my viewing lists and I recalled the absolute disdain I had for it.

Avoid.

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Some realities are black and white

Kalel, 15 is the story of a boy who looks in the mirror to assess his attributes. But unlike boys his age, he doesn't do it for vanity, but to survive. Surviving in a dysfunctional family, surviving with HIV, surviving others' judgement, surviving poverty, surviving being abandoned, surviving institutional indifference. Behind his impassive mask, Kalel's motto is to survive with dignity, the dignity he gives himself, not the dignity that results from others' endorsement.

His story is a sad one, but the way it is told doesn't want to bring tears to our eyes, we are here to contemplate someone else life w/o judgement. It's a life journey whose details I'll forget, but when I'll encounter a boy his age on the street with that same gaze, I'll wonder if all is well in his life.

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