Reviews

IT'S TOO BITTER THAN SWEET

While the plot remains the same as the Japanese film, a girlwith anterograde amnesia and the boy who chooses to love her anyway, the Korean adaptation changes the flavor of the story. Unlike the Japanese film, which uses a lot of future-looking flashbacks, the Korean version is more linear. It feels more 'present', making you feel the weight of each day as the couple lives it. Director Kim Hye-young leans heavily into the idea of sensory memory. The film explores how the body and heart might remember things (like the feeling of a hand-hold or the rhythm of a walk) even when the brain resets. Additionally, the visuals are less 'golden-hour vintage' and more 'crip, modern K-romance'. It feels a bit more grounded in reality, even while dealing with a tragic premise.

Furthermore, Choo Young-woo brings a more protective, slightly more mature energy than Shunsuke Michieda's version. You can really see the 'quiet exhaustion' in his eyes as he works to fill her diary with happy memories. While Shin Shi-ah captures the 'first-time' wonder perfectly. Every morning she wakes up is a performance of rediscovering her own life, and she portrays that vulnerability without making the character feel like a victim.

In conclusion, keep the tissues close for the scenes involving the father's photography studio. The Korean version adds some extra layers to the family dynamics that will absolutely wreck you. （＞人＜；）

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Losing something you did not even know you had it

Love Letter is one of those movies that feels less like a movie and more like something that has always existed, something passed down quietly, the way families pass down stories, or pain, or love they never fully talked about. It’s visually stunning, yes, but its real power comes from how deeply it has embedded itself into collective memory. Like Titanic in the West, its scenes have been recreated endlessly, its emotions echoed across music videos and films. Even before watching it, I already felt like I knew it.
And maybe that’s why I waited so long.
I knew this film would hurt me. I could feel it. And I think part of me wasn’t ready to sit with that kind of sadness.

Plot*
The story follows Hiroko Watanabe, a woman still grieving her fiancé, Itsuki Fujii, two years after his death. Time has passed, yet Hiroko remains unable to let go. While going through Itsuki’s old belongings, she comes across his high school yearbook. Inside, she finds his old address, and despite knowing that the house was destroyed years ago.
Almost impulsively, she writes him a letter. Maybe it’s for closure, maybe it’s simply because she doesn’t want to forget him. To her shock, she receives a reply.
The letter is not from her deceased fiancé, but from a woman who shares the same name: Itsuki Fujii. As they continue exchanging letters, Hiroko learns that this woman went to the same school as her fiancé. Through their correspondence, the film slowly reveals fragments of the past about the man Hiroko loved, and about the lives of two women connected to him in very different ways.

Watching My Heart Slowly Break*
As I watched, I felt myself sinking deeper into the story, almost without realising it. The sadness isn’t loud. It doesn’t scream. It creeps in quietly, through small moments and gentle discoveries. When Hiroko begins asking female Itsuki to share memories, the truth begins to surface.

Female Itsuki never knew. She never realised that the boy with the same name in high school, the boy who lingered, who always found reasons to be close, was in love with her from the very beginning. His feelings were constant, invisible. His confession never reached her. She lived her life unaware that she had already been loved.

At the same time, Hiroko, who loved him openly, deeply, and completely begins to understand something devastating. That perhaps the reason he fell in love with her at first sight was because she resembled the girl he had loved all along. That realization doesn’t erase his love for Hiroko, but it complicates it in a way that feels unbearably human.

What broke me most is that there is no visible romance in this film. No grand declarations. No dramatic embraces. Despite being called Love Letter, love is discovered only through memory, silence, and absence. Through things that were never said.
Female Itsuki, realising love was next to her and lost it before she ever knew it existed. And now, she can never go back. He is gone. That kind of loss feels especially cruel, the pain of understanding too late, of mourning something you didn’t even know was yours. This made me so melancholic!!

I don’t know if it hit me this hard because, in some way, we’ve all lost something we didn’t even know was ours to begin with. Maybe it was love, a job, a friend, or an opportunity. Grieving something you never truly got to hold in your hands, something you only realise mattered after it’s gone, is a unique, type of aheartbreak.
When the film ended, I walked outside and just stood there, staring at the sky, feeling hollow. Not crying, just… heavy. Like the film had reached inside me and rearranged something.

Acting*
Nakayama Miho, playing both Hiroko and Itsuki, is astonishing. For the first few minutes, I genuinely thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. The resemblance was uncanny. I had to pause the film to check the cast. Yet as the story unfolded, I never confused them again. Her acting creates such a clear emotional divide that they feel like two completely separate souls, carrying different kinds of loneliness.

Otaru, Hokkaido *
And then there’s Otaru. Snow-covered, quiet, almost suspended in time. The winter landscapes give the film a dreamlike quality, as if everything exists inside a memory rather than reality. It makes sense why couples still travel there, even in the harsh cold, to chase a feeling this movie captured so perfectly.

Final Reflection*
Love Letter is not just a classic, it’s an emotional experience. It’s about grief, unspoken love, and mystery. It reminded me that some of the most painful realisations in life come not from what we lose, but from what we never realised we had.
Even now, whenever I see snow falling in Japan, my mind drifts back to this film.
And I don’t think it will ever leave me.

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How to train a Zombie

At first glance, this movie makes no sense, but in the end it was worth watching. Since it is based on a webtoon, I can understand the flow of the story, which changes its story arc every ten minutes—just like episodes in a comic book. The story is therefore straightforward, with many different elements and characters appearing and disappearing, each adding a bit of flavor.

I didn’t especially like the first 20 minutes, with the strange depiction of what we might call a zombie apocalypse, but then the real story begins: a father secretly raising his zombie daughter. Zombies are expected to behave in a certain way, and the young actress (Choi Yu-ri), who plays the teenage zombie, had a really challenging role. She did better than I expected, but I would still have preferred her to commit a bit more to the weirdness of zombie behavior.

It is also obvious that being a zombie here can be seen as a metaphor for puberty, but beyond that, it also symbolizes raising a child with some form of disability. When viewed this way, the movie raises awareness and conveys a very positive moral lesson about the importance of parenting and the value of every human life. I also appreciated the connection to the recent COVID-19 pandemic and the social commentary on government rules that seek the common good, sometimes at the expense of personal rights. All in all, this is a well-made, funny, touching, and morally grounded movie.

PS. What's with the cat?

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I Don't Recommend This Movie

I like tokusatsu as a genre and I watched many Kamen Riders at this point. I had some expectations for this movie but I am going to be honest, even for someone like me it was hard to watch. Plot is basically paper thin and it's just an excuse to show more fight scenes. Fight choreography is great, but don't expect much from VFX side of things. Seeing all the beloved Riders together was cool but that's the only good thing I can say about this movie.

If you are Kamen Rider super-fan and you want to see some of your favourites once more, give it a go. It provides small information about main plot of Ex-Aid, but honestly, it hardly justifies going through this whole movie.

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Good movie, just kinda overhyped.

I liked this movie, the plot was really touching and beautiful it just was a little disappointing. I usually don't cry at the movies so I didn't expect to cry on this one. And it didn't happen. I don't know about the japanese version, but this one is just not really that sad, because this whole movie is just about life. Something that can happen to everyone. It's quite iluminating to be honest. It teaches you that you should be happy to remember every moment and enjoy it, because not everyone gets to do it. Also it teaches you that no matter how hard you will try some things you just can't change, because in the end Jaewon dies and Saeyoon only remembers him as a character that was in her life.

"Scars don't disappear. But the pain doesn't last forever. If everyone is forgetting you little by little then I'll try to remember you little by little." This line is so beautiful, it made me think of other lines in songs that really fit their story for example "If the moon went dark tonight and if it all ended tomorrow, would I be the one on your mind, your mind, your mind? And if it all ended tomorrow, would you be the one on mine?", "Sometimes I just can't believe, You happened.", "And God knows that I am the girl I am because of you, You know I'll always think of you, I'll love you 'til the end of time" and "You're just a stranger I know everything about."

I've never watched anything with Shin Shi-ah, that's why her acting was a nice surprise. I'm really excited for her next projects. She really reminds me of Jisoo and Wonhee when I was looking at her face.

GOOD POINTS
- I really liked Jimin's character, she was really a good friend.
- The scenes before Jaewon's death were really beautiful, even if the movie was happening in the past year it felt really nostalgic.

BAD POINTS
- I don't really like Choo Young-woo's acting, it feels like he always plays the same character. He's good at playing this nonchalant, emotionally closed character because this is the only emotion he can show. Other actors had to work for him to make his emotions visible.
- I feel really disappointed by the fact that we never got to see Saeyoon's past before Jaewon and also how Jaewon's dad felt right after his wife's and his son's death.

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Not bad, but why bother?

This film wasn’t bad if taken on its own. But it hewed so closely to the very good Japanese original that it was impossible to avoid making comparisons and that is where it falls far short. In particular:

• The pacing was off. This remake was too slow in places where it should have moved faster and too fast in places where it should have slowed down. The net result was to rest emotional resonance (not that it wasn’t plenty emotional, just not nearly as much as the original).
• That acting (particularly the leads) was noticeably inferior.
• We got a very washed-out version of one of my favorite characters (the FL's best friend).
• The original benefited greatly from being told primarily from the point of view of the FL. In switching much of the attention to the ML, they miss out on some of the best parts of the story,.
• Neither the overall production nor the OST were as good.

But despite all these criticisms, I did enjoy watching this remake as a way to pass the time.

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Even if This Love Disappears Tonight (2025) : 2/4/2026

This movie was really good and really mad me cry, even though I already knew the plot. This is because there is a Japanese version which I have already watched. However, I liked that instead of just being a remake there were some differences from the Jversion. For instance, I like that the best friend had a love interest, that was cute to see. I also liked that you are really going in blind, not like the Jversion where you kind of know the ending. I also really liked how it foreshadowed the ending, it was explicit, but you could tell it was relevant. The only thing I didn't really like was that we didn't get to see her expressing her emotions after what happens, mainly because I feel by seeing it in the jversion it showed how much it hurt for her to remember each day. It also gave more sense to why the people around her made the descion they did. I'm also a lil mixed on the final ending because while it was bittersweet I kinda liked how sad and heartbreaking the jversion was.

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Ashfall: Explosive, Predictable, and Disappointing

Ashfall was honestly disappointing, especially for a Don Lee movie. I went in expecting his usual grounded intensity and instead got a pile of disaster-movie clichés stacked on top of each other. The constant back-and-forth between the protagonist and antagonist wore thin fast. After a while it stopped building tension and just felt repetitive, like the movie didn’t trust itself to move forward without circling the same conflict again and again.

What really pulled me out of it was how absurdly convenient everything became. Team members just showing up exactly when needed, situations resolving because someone happened to be there at the perfect second. It stopped feeling like a high-stakes disaster and started feeling like a checklist of plot necessities being ticked off.

And the personal drama didn’t help. The captain’s wife surviving everything, making it onto the bus, and then ending up with Robert felt forced and unnecessary. Add in the magically successful phone call in North Korea at the exact right moment and I was fully in “you’ve got to be kidding me” mode. It wasn’t emotional, it was eye-roll inducing.

The effects are decent and there are moments where the scale works, but the writing undercuts all of it. For a Don Lee film, this felt oddly hollow. Not terrible, but definitely a letdown, and far more predictable and contrived than it had any right to be.


Watchable if you like disaster movies, but nowhere near Don Lee’s best and way too convenient for its own good.

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A Hometown in Heart is one of those films that causes a conundrum for me. A young boy was abandoned at a temple when he was three years old. Two women wanted to love Do Sung and provide a home for him. But it was the religious leader who feared Do Sung would do reprehensible things if he was let out into the world due to his mother’s “sins.”

Twelve-year-old Do Sung has lived at the Buddhist temple since he was three-years-old. He works from morning until night for the monks. Lonely and sad, he watches as the other boys play in the woods and collect birds. He’s never been allowed to play with them or visit the village in the valley. He desperately longs for his mother, praying she will come for him. The priest never directs any kind words his way. One day a widow who has recently lost her son comes for a memorial. She takes an instant liking to Do Sung and asks the priest if she can adopt him. The priest is concerned that due to the sins of his mother that Do Sung carries, he could be a danger out in the world.

This film was nicely shot for a 1949 film with a lovely mountain setting and strong performances. Except for a few blurry scenes it was obvious that it had been restored. Made before the breakout of the Korean War, it’s a gift that it survived and was taken care of.

I recently watched a film where my religion was displayed as punishing “sinful” women so I have to admit it was nice for another religion to take it on the chin for being unforgiving and judgmental of “sinful” women. Not only was Do Sung’s mom judged harshly but Do Sung also carried her sins. It was very frustrating to watch and at least it felt like an indictment on the priest and not Do Sung, or at least I hope that was the message. The poor boy was warmhearted and desperately wanted his mother or a mother, someone who would speak kind words to him and give him encouragement and affection, something his life was completely devoid of. When Do Sung committed a Buddhist transgression in order to make a gift for the mother he hoped to see one day, you’d have thought he’d slaughtered a village. After everything that happened, the film did end on a hopeful, if not terribly satisfying note.

As much as I disliked the heavy-handed priest, I liked Do Sung’s interactions with the widow and a generous, tearful moment between two women who loved this child. If you enjoy old films, this is one to try.

4 February 2026

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Beautifully cruel and deeply pessimistic

Exploring the merits of loyalty with an almost Shakespearean level of intrigue, The Jade Tiger is a stylish, labyrinthine wuxia mystery that delves deep into its obsession with deception, hidden identities and psychological gamesmanship. Less concerned with heroic purity than with paranoia and moral rot, the film plays more like a martial-arts whodunit, rather than any form of traditional wuxia, where every character is lying, manipulating or quietly preparing to betray someone else. Plunging headfirst into a web of false alliances and shifting motives. Heroes are rarely what they seem, villains are disturbingly charismatic and the line between justice and cruelty is intentionally blurred. The story can feel convoluted, sometimes aggressively so, but the confusion only adds to the film's atmosphere, mirroring the characters' own inability to trust anything they see or hear. This is a world where intelligence is more dangerous than strength, and virtue offers little protection. Directed with near effortless style by Chor Yuen, the film benefits from some exceptional visual design with plenty of fog-bound sets and blood red suns leaking into the running time, interiors feel claustrophobic and theatrical, while compositions emphasise screens, doorways and layers that only add to the theme of concealment. The action is sharp, with way more exploding fake eyeballs and hidden blades within a blade within a blade than you'd expect in a period swordplay picture, but secondary to the mood; it all often arrives suddenly and ends brutally, violence seems inevitable once secrets surface. Performance-wise, Ti Lung is his typically reliable self, while Lo Lieh is deliciously villainous; equally, the beautiful Lily Li is easy to appreciate, and Yueh Hua brings plenty of stoic intensity. While it's certainly thematically darker than your average Shaw Brothers film from this era, what truly distinguishes The Jade Tiger is its cynicism in a way that's beautifully cruel and deeply pessimistic, suggesting that the martial world is already poisoned beyond repair.

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Richly Told & Visually Compelling

This short is only seven minutes long, but it feels incredibly rich. The film has a vibrant color palette, a distinctive visual scope, and storytelling that is raw and personal. It carries you through a continuum from childhood to adulthood, drawing you into the protagonist’s life and allowing you to feel the pendulum swing between the highs and lows of lived experience and self-growth.

Although its aim is to be reflective with a central moral, the delivery never feels trite or heavy-handed. It doesn’t come across as if someone is trying to teach you a lesson or trample on your own life experiences. Even at just seven minutes, it stands out as a top-shelf watch—for its aesthetics, artistry, and script.

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