Signal

This is a fictional account of the Qing invasion of Korea. It should be required for all high school students in SK to watch.  The King runs away and takes refuge in the fortress. A siege beginsand everyone in the fortress begins running out of any weapons and starvation ensues.  People start freezing to death.

This movie is about the reality of war….the choices that those in charge must make, the sorrow when their choice is not really a choice…and the ramifications of those choices.  The King was caught between a rock and a hard place. If he stood up to the invading country,  all his subjects will most likely die….if he submits, then Joseon becomes a puppet state for the Chinese (Which it did).

This is a highly relevant story for 2022.  South Korea, my home country, has become a puppet state for the U.S., where I live now.  NK will not submit to a foreign power; they want to keep their culture entirely Korean.  They want Korean rule in a Korean nation.  South Korea is becoming a place where they are steadily losing their entire culture and are desiring to embrace all things of the West and this terribly saddens me. This is a dilemma that those in the entirety of SKorea should really think about.  

After all the Koreans of both sides have died to try to keep their country free from Imperialsim and colonization; South Korean’s seems to be willing to throw it all away; all the sacrifices made…..away.  There was a time in the past where this has happened before…the Chinese completely wiped out most of the Korean culture; and then the Japanese did the same thing in turn.

About one of the last battles of the Korean War.  It’s not bloody but its gruesome In nature. As usual, as an American myself, I ended up being so ashamed of the things we have done to other countries.  We basically slaughtered thousands of Korean boys not even out of high school yet. Same thing as we did in the American occupation in the Joseon Period.  The story is heart wrenching. Korea basically took high school kids and sent them into war with no training and poorly made rifles….they sent them in purposely to serve no other purpose but to be cannon fodder.

This a 10+ for me.  I like anything concerning the Korean Independence Movement during the Japanese occupation and this was really well done. The whole cast was exemplary, the script was well written and I found another actor I had not seen before and ended up really liking; Yoo Ah Inn.  Go Kyung Pyo also did such a fine job…I would watch something he was in.

Rating: 10. I am a martial artist myself so I am drawn to realistic martial arts depictions, and this was one of the best.  I absolutely adore Jan Hiyuk (Shine or go Crazy) and I love watching his Mastery in Jeet Kune Do ( A hybrid martial arts style created by Bruce Lee). I loved the plot, the script was good and the acting fantastic. A rewatch for me.

Rating: 8. Lee Min Ho fan here.  I feel his acting is close to the same kind of feel as Wookie’s. Strong but soft. I like Jun Ji Hyun (Jirisan FL) also.  I also liked the plot a lot Which is about the tragedy of coming together in lifetime after lifetime and repeating the same mistakes, making the same poor choices because both feel familiar to them.  This is a problem in our world…people come into lifetime after lifetime, fail to wake up and remember, get sucked into the fallen consciousness of mankind and religions and pass whole lifetimes clueless.  So I was happy to see that they managed to change the pattern.

Rating: 7.5. To be honest, I couldn’t watch more than a couple episodes a day. The FL to me was a completetwit and represents a type of consciousness that gives women a bad name by men. She was whiny, immature, selfish and manipulative.  But I really like KIM Sung Chul so I continued watching. I ended up really liking Woo Shik whom I had not see before.  By the time the series is 2/3 through I could tolerate the FL better and in the end she matured a lot from when she was younger but this is not the kind of woman I would have for a friend.  Sung Chul was to me, the hit of the series.

Good plot and script however I felt there was absolutely no chemistry between the two ML.  I kept watching just because I was fascinated with the plot.

Meh.  I wasn’t happy to see Byung smoking and that kind of ruined for me for the rest of the.    Movie.  The way it works for me, is when I am attracted to a male actor, once I see them smoking, all I can think of is how their breath must smell and how the smoke makes their clothes smell.  But I digress. It was a ho hum movie neither good nor bad.

Rating: 10. Absolutely superb.  There was 100% chemistry between the 2 ML. Loved it because it focuses almost entirely on the love, caring aspect rather than a sexual attraction.  This would be  some thing I would recommend for people who are not in a hate mode toward this lifestyle but are.  trying to understand the life choice from a more compassionate aspect.

This was really meh for me.  To me, it was another lack of chemistry mode between the two.    Male leads.  I watched it one episode a day and so I was able to finish it .

Rating: 8.5. This was one of those types of dramas we are really familiar with….where all the problems are caused by lack of communication on an epic level. I still watched it though just because Wallace really throws himself into his roles, this one no exception. He does an exemplary job of someone who remains in love with someone who dumped him 10 years before, then reunites, goes through more misunderstandings (laughs). But I was in the mood so overall I liked it. Not a rewatch though.

Rating: 10. I just adore Lee Jun Ho and he always nails his characters. This one is about a young boy who supposedly has frontal lobe damage of the brain, he consequently does not have the ability to feel emotion….he grows up mimicking what a normal behaves behaves like…he becomes a famous neurosurgeon.  We travel on his journey with him as he meets a woman who he finds himself falling in love with and as he finds out that all may not be like it seems.

I just hung on to every episode. You feel what he feels, his pain, his happiness. I would rewatch this one.

Rating: 12.  Yes, a 12. This was just beyond words for me.  Wallace is absolutely incredible in this role…..just mesmerizing. The FL I often wanted to strangle.  I can’t imagine anyone just running off and leaving someone without discussing such an important situation with the other person. It is just unfathomable to me.  And then to blame the other person for all the ensuing troubles and the poor choices she made…just blows my mind. She is a person who basically blames everyone else for the ramifications that came her way after she made this really bad decision.

She is a person that finds it hard to forgive even when it was she that created the situation in the first place.

The SML and SFL have an equally interesting story.  It may look like in the last episode that they don’t tell you what happens with this couple, but if you look at those last scenes again….you can figure it out.

Definitely a rewatch for me.

Rating: 10. This is killer. This one will take you on a never-ending roller coaster ride of emotions for 16 episodes.  The theme here is do you really know, I mean really know, the person you love, the person you marry?  It is done so well that by the end you find yourself thinking that maybe you should remain alone your whole life….because people seldom are who they seem to be. It can upset the apple cart of your heart….this drama.

Rating: 10. I initially wasn’t interested in watching this…it sounded like a gruesome and probably gory story line.  But I found myself reading a comment one day by someone who watched it and I thought I would give it a try. I am so glad I did.

This is really a beautiful story. One character has High Functioning Autism, which I also have. The other main character has been hurt and crushed by life itself and has taken on an aura of indifference (which is just all false bravado) toward life and people. The two meet and a beautiful story unfolds of two people, despite the gulf that initially divides them…..find their way into each other’s heart.

I was really blown away by Lee Je Hoon’s acting. He just does a fantastic job. He just dominates every scene he is in. I have watched several other series he has been in like Signal and I always thought he was good but not fantastic. But maybe he just wasn’t given the right roles.  I certainly hope he gets more roles to shine in in the future.

Tang Jun Song as Geu Roo, really does a fine job playing someone with this kind of autism. It is realistic.  I thing most people have very little knowledge of the subject and tend to think we are all nitwits or majorly deficient in some way, and nothing could be further from the truth. A great many HFA’s have extremely high IQ’s for instance, and many of us have photographic memories.  Not all of us are as closed off emotionally as Geu Roo could be at times, and not all of us engage in things like banging our head against a wall when frustrated…but all in all I think theydid a fine job, finding a middle ground.

I would rewatch this.

Rating:10.  I wrote a lengthy review on this and it can be found in my Review’s section