RandomShell
This review may contain spoilers
7/10 ...Because you shouldn't commit suicide for that reason...I'd recommend this drama to those who are really in to romance dramas with a bit of conflict unrelated to the actual romance. This doesn't contain a major love triangle that would bother shape haters, like me. Even though I'm extremely allergic to triangles I survived this one without any difficulties.
I think the writers succeeded very well in surprising their audience in romantic ways and I got hooked so bad, once I started watching. I'm not a big romantic but I have to say, I really liked everything about this love story....
... except the part where her sister has committed suicide for the DUMBEST reason ever...
No spoilers, you will have to watch for yourself.
I enjoyed this but honestly there is still some work to be done. Too many loose ends and hazy paths and I honestly don't understand the way some characters think. Especially in the Chae family...
Other characters were very well developed though, and they felt very human. I think all the actors did a good job in keeping the awkward air when it was needed as well as getting the comic relief just right and giving us all "the feels", from time to time.
This Kdrama will set it's roots in you and you will definitely remember that you watched it. It's also totally bingable but you can slow pace it if you want. Just not sure you'll be able to cause I'm pretty sure you'll be shipping couples too hard
ENJOY!!
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...because for some reason I could not binge it 100%...
If you're not sure about watching this drama, let me help you decide. WATCH IT. It will be worth your time.
Although there are not many plot twists, the writers did a good job in preventing it from getting too predictable or boring. It had just the right amount of comic relief to level out all the seriousness and if you're a hopeless romantic, you're going to love the fact that this drama is packed with couple cuteness.
If you're not a hopeless romantic, don't worry, neither am I and I was not that bothered by it since it gave more depth to the characters, which I feel, was a big plus, since non-stereotypical characters have been rare lately. I feel like the writers got creative and made some memorable favorites. Not to mention the amazing cast who did an incredible job in all the settings and scenes.
Yes, there is a triangle (I feel like there always is) but it does not cover much screen time and it wasn't the kind of triangle that makes the drama frustrating to watch. The girl doesn't pace back and forth between the boys. It's a very comfortable change from one love to the other.
I also want to warn you about the comedy. It's very loud and over the top so when you enter the world of Do Bong Soon, brace yourself. It is so worth it though because some scenes were adlibs that the producers decided to keep. Those are hilarious.
With all that said, I don't think I left any important details out....
.....ENJOY!!
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... Because a drama educating adolescens on love and loneliness in high school, can't score higher.
7/10 is not a bad rating and I did not dislike this drama. Honestly it was very entertaining to watch and it was very well made. The actors did an incredible job despite being so young and I have great respect for them, since they pulled off the "Mature" tag without making it seem trashy or unrealistic.
Before watching this drama you should prepare for:
sexual scenes (Underwear, over the bra touching, covered up sex scenes, making out, and other mature content.)
A lot of inside dialogue
Lesbian love
High schoolers making countless mistakes and being generally butter brained.
The feels.
This drama will not make you cry but since it is a Jdrama, don't expect things to go the way you want them. This is basically a drama showing how people grow with time and experience. YOU WILL FEEL FRUSTRATION
It was very well made, so if you have nothing against the things listed above, I think you should take your time to watch this. It will be a nice memory and each episode is only about 23 minutes long. Nothing to lose and it will surely be an experience.
ENJOY!
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Because if you make the rules, you can break them!
So we all know that there are two kinds of logic in this world; Real world logic and Drama world logic.When it comes to Drama world logic, you just accept it and move on but if a drama contradicts it's own logic then I'm done!
There were so many reasons I dropped this drama.
It had so much potential to be an inspiring drama about the Hwarang boys struggling and dealing with their problem. Growing, making friends, they could even have added a death of a beloved character to tugg at our hearts a little bit and in that case, it would have been totally fine to add a bit of romance but NO.
This drama contains 90% triangle love drama, 6% recapping romantic moments. 3% fighting and 1% problem solving. Not to mention that the female lead is so pathetic, there wont be an episode where they don't show a 5-minute front angle of her walking and crying...
So because the writers based most of the characters off of a real life royal family and they used the true bone ranking system to create conflict, you'd think they couldn't go wrong.... until they add fictional characters and create relationships and events that never happened while still trying to follow some of the original story. There is nothing wrong with that but if you're going to add some spice, do it right! This just ended up giving the show a lot of contradiction, odd relationships and lose ends.
(Apparently, it's okay to marry your brother if you're royal but not if you're poor.)
To me, some "emotional scenes" turned me off completely. They had so many opportunities to really rip my heart apart by adding some real brutality and feeling into it. I have a specific scene in mind and I'm thinking that they could at least spend some time on this scene to make it believable... This scene got a little over 1 minute screen time... Go Ah Ra got 10 minutes screen time for walking and crying...
Oh well... If you love triangle love dramas with a lot of romance and crying and pushing and pulling and recaps after recaps of scenes that don't really move the story forward then this is PERFECT for you! Don't hesitate to watch it! As a bonus, you get a bit of plot on the side. It's weak... not very well worked out... not very logical... and it doesn't really start until episode 16.... BUT there is one heartbreaking death scene in the first episode so maybe I should give this show 10/10
ENJOY!
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This review may contain spoilers
My overall rating of this movie is 2/10 and I'll explain why. Let's start with the story.
There is nothing wrong with it...
It's a pretty creative base to an alien action movie and if executed well it could have turned into "Movie of the year". It had a lot of potential but sadly this movie did not live up to it.
The Characters, (Beware of spoiler - ish comments!)
This is a war movie so obviously, people/monsters from both sides are going to die. But don't worry, you're not gonna feel sad watching them get brutally ripped apart because you're gonna have only a few seconds with each character. What happens is; They briefly tell you why they are criminals and then for the rest of the movie, you get to watch them die without knowing their full names, their background stories, their dreams, who their loved ones were or how they got into this mess in the first place. Out of 7 or 8 forgettable main characters (Can't be bothered to remember how many they were), you only get a half-butted background story for 2 of them. Not to mention that at the end they try to make you think they were best buds, even though some characters barely had any screen time together.
The Make-up and the CGI
Okay, so a lot of people gave this movie some really big thumbs up but as I understood it, all they could say was good about this movie, was the CGI...
I have to admit that the CGI was better than most Japanese action movies. It actually gave me some hope for the upcoming Live action adaptions of FMA and Joe's Bizarre adventures (Even though they picked Yamaken to play a macho man when he has a typical ikemen face...). The make- up was not too bad either. I don't know how to feel about people being half morphed into insects but they were very creative while trying to make it work and it looked pretty okay.
The music
No comments. Not memorable.
Actors.
I don't know what to say. All of a sudden Yamapi starts speaking English then a Japanese terrorist starts speaking random English, both for no reason at all... I guess the acting was okay, though. Not much to talk about since they did not get much screen time and the script was a mess. Well... The whole movie was a mess so if the actors couldn't show their best performance, it wasn't their fault.
To sum it all up
The story was good. It had a lot of potential but because everything was so rushed it couldn't live up to my expectations. Had they divided this one movie into 3 movies and added more detail it would have been more interesting. The characters were hollow so I could not emotionally connect with any of them and the actors did not have so much space to act so their general performance was bearable. The visual effects were better than expected but the music was not memorable at all.
In the end, it was barely entertaining enough to keep me watching so I give this movie an overall 2/10
I do not plan to watch any upcoming movies.
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This has become one of my favorite movies.
It reminds me a lot of Quentin Tarantino films by the way it makes you feel gloominess and darkness right from the start but with just the right amount of comedy and lightness to not make it too heavy. The story invites you in to the life of psychologically damaged people and contains a fair amount of gore, violence, incest, romance, sex and PANTIES.
The part I love the most is that it handles very serious matters in a comedic way without making it seem like a joke. It actually makes it more horrifying. You get to see the characters fall apart little by little and this might lead to you feeling sympathy towards a psychopathic killer. This wouldn't have worked without these great actors though. I was starting to wonder if their minds got slightly more deranged after making this movie. For them to be able to pull through one sick thing after another, I am truly impressed.
I can't find anything about this movie that I dislike.
The story was incredibly well done. It was interesting throughout the whole film even though it was 4 hours long.
The actors were amazing. Even though the characters weren't lovable, I loved them anyway.
The scenes were beautiful. I'm not in to gore, but some scenes were just shot perfectly.
The music fit right in. It set the mood just right. it wasn't too heavy and not too light but I can't say it was comfortable either. I still felt the psychological chaos.
Lastly, the ending was better than I expected. In movies like these you never know how it is going to end. Especially when it's Japanese but in my opinion it ended just the right way.
Take time to watch this film. It was funny and twisted at the same time and it definitely left a print on me. It's a journey you wont forget easily.
P.s I am sorry for my messy review. I had so many things I wanted to write but It was hard to put it all together. Hope it was helpful anyway.
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The story revolves around LANDS, a five member rock/punk/pop band who hasn't made it big yet but is one hit away from a break through. Due to the pressure of showbiz the members start losing themselves and the reason they play music. Because some members in the band are more valued than others they also start losing faith in each other.
This is not a love story. Even though they are generous with scenes of the male and female lead connecting, it doesn't show the usual "boy meets girl" kind of love but rather the fine line between hating someone and loving someone with the focus on the frustration of losing yourself and becoming someone you hate. Because the movie is about such a sensitive thing the feel to it is very dark and gloomy. The colors are very grey-ish and faded and even though it does contain a lot of music, it has a few beautiful scenes with no soundtrack at all.
The acting is decent. There isn't much to say about it. Some scenes were better than others and some scenes were like watching a dog try to communicate with a fish, random, difficult to understand and confusing. Their feelings didn't always reach me while some scenes were surprisingly convincing and heart breaking. I wouldn't blame it all on the actors though. I think they did a pretty good job considering that the characters weren't as well developed and worked out as they should have been.
Since the selling point of the movie is to make you see the change in the characters as the movie goes, the lack of actual characteristics was a big miss. Instead of showing the audience what the people are like, they list it up in a conversation between the lead roles near the end of the film.
This is one of many details they didn't execute well for this movie, which made a lot of the scenes hollow and confusing. Personally i felt like i didn't know the characters well enough to actually sympathize with them and because of the constant time skipping I didn't really feel like i even had the time to process what was going on. This made it very difficult to understand the relationship between the characters and there for I didn't get as much out of it as i would have wanted.
I don't want to comment too much on the music since it's very difficult to judge but i think they did a good job creating the right atmosphere in some of the scenes. The additional music by the band is something I'm a bit more critical about. Since their intention is for you to notice the sudden change in the bands music, the film makers try to convince you that LANDS were playing rock in the beginning and then started playing pop after they sold themselves cheap. The reason I'm not convinced is because the songs played in the movie weren't really rock to begin with and they made it clear that the band members didn't know what they were doing either. That isn't all bad though. It actually made the feel to it more realistic, apart from the fact that they were supposed to have played for at least 10 years together already.
So to finish this review off,
The story was good, it had a lot potential and I think that the topic of losing yourself and becoming someone you hate is a very interesting subject to make a film about. Sadly the movie didn't really live up to my expectations because of hollow characters and lack of detail. There was a lot of time skipping which made it difficult to grasp the feeling of the atmosphere and understand the relationship between characters which made heart breaking scenes less heart breaking since I didn't feel like i could connect to the character or feel sympathy for them.
The scenes were beautiful though and the music was good and appropriate not to mention that some of the dialog was moving.
Over all i give it a 8.5/10 because I actually enjoyed watching it and despite my negativity, it was a pretty nice movie.
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