Movies – 2026 Completed

I watched No Other Choice at the cinema together with my parents. I was interested in this movie because it has a pretty good rating on Letterboxd. My father has watched Squid Game so he recognized Lee Byunghun, and my mother has watched Crash Landing on You so she recognized Son Yejin. The dark comedy was definitely to their taste; they left the theatre saying that they enjoyed the movie :)

I found the movie to be entertaining as well. Like my mother said, there was always something happening so I was never bored. It's not really my type of comedy, but it was a bit funny at times. The ending was a bit unconventional, but it suits the movie.

I find movie theatres to be very overstimulating and am usually not a big fan, but I felt like pushing myself a bit this time, and I ended up having a good time (even though the volume of the ads almost made me cry before the movie even started...).

It took me almost 5 and a half years for me to watch this movie. It was on my radar before it was released, but by the time it aired, I was busy with life and no longer followed BTS's activities (they made one of the OST for this movie) + I had already seen the Korean movie, so I knew the story. But now I've finally watched it.

It was exactly as I expected it to be like. It was a good watch and I even cried a little. Since it's been so long, I don't remember the details of the Korean original movie, so I can't make a fair comparison. But the story felt familiar as I watched it, so I did remember some things. It was definitely a movie worth my time and I'm glad I was able to complete it :)

Diary entry: the main reason why I decided to watch this movie today is because I wanted to see if I could get some inspiration from it for my weekend writing course I'm starting tomorrow. This is the highest rated Japanese movie on MDL with a happy ending that I hadn't yet watched, so I thought it would be a good reference. In the course description, it says that we will find the reason why we want to write. I guess I will find out over this weekend if the movie was of help or not. I hope that it will at least be fun.

Rewatched March 26th.

I felt like watching something cute and happy so I decided to rewatch the most well made shoujo movie I know of. I really enjoyed rewatching it this time as well.

Because I've been watching anime and reading a lot of manga lately, I haven't been very much on MDL, so it's been a while since the last time I updated one of my lists.

I didn't know that this movie was based on a true story until I started watching it. It was a very touching and well made movie with great acting. I just felt it was a bit slow at times and it's just not my type of movie. But it was really well made for its genre. Especially the ending was very moving. It was definitely worth watching.

Everything shown of Golden Kamuy in this movie is exactly how much of the anime I've seen. After watching this much of the anime, I got a bit tired of the story. I've heard it gets better, but I was just not in the right mindset at the time to find the motivation to continue watching. I knew about the manga from a long time ago, and since Yamaken plays the main character and &TEAM has made the OST for the drama (that I'm watching after this), this live action movie has been on my radar for a while. I finally decided to watch it and I thought it was good!

First of all, it stays truthful to its source material (at least as far as the anime goes); pretty sure they didn't miss a single scene and the setting/shots are super accurate as well! Then we have beautiful ikemen Yamazaki Kento playing immortal Sugimoto. Gosh, he sure suits all those scars! When watching the anime, I didn't imagine Sugimoto being this handsome, but I'm not complaining! Yamaken is the first actor I took a liking to and he is still my nr.1 favourite Japanese actor. Which reminds me that I've only watched 2 of the Kingdom movies; I should get back to watching the rest because they were pretty good too.

As for the story, the credit goes to the mangaka, and I think it's a really interesting setup they have created with searching for the tattooed escaped prisoners. I'm curious to see how it plays out in the drama. I also love that it's set in Hokkaido! I've always wanted to travel there! The story has a lot about the Ainu people as well, which I don't know much about. It makes me wonder how accurate it is, and if it is, that's great. They remind me of the Sami people we have. I'm ashamed to say that I don't know very much about them either... I should educate myself more.

On to the drama!

I don't know why I expected this movie to have a happy ending. The King's Warden is based on a true story and is quite an emotional movie. Great acting from both the talented Park Jihoon as well as the rest of the cast. I'm highlighting Park Jihoon because he has continued to surprise me with how talented of an actor he is in many of his works before, this movie is no exception.

This movie manages to show warmth in the midst of injustice.