Reviews

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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Not as emotional as the JDrama version, but hitting well either way.

There are two kinds of viewers in the world.

People who avoid emotional pain, and people who knowingly rewatch stories that emotionally ruin them just to confirm they can still feel something. I, unfortunately (or perhaps very predictably), belong to the second category. I watched the Japanese version of Even If This Love Disappears From the World Tonight years ago and loved it deeply. So when the Korean adaptation quietly arrived on Netflix, my immediate thought was, “Surely this won’t hurt me again,” which, in hindsight, was an objectively hilarious lie.

For those unfamiliar, the film follows high school student Kim Jae-won (Cho Young-woo), a quiet, reserved boy who agrees to date Han Seo-yoon (Shin Shi-ah), a girl living with anterograde amnesia that prevents her from forming new memories. Every day, Seo-yoon wakes up with her memory reset, relying on journals and notes to reconstruct her life. Meanwhile, Jae-won makes it his quiet mission to give her something worth smiling about each day. It’s a premise that sounds deceptively simple, but like many gentle autumn romances, it carries a hidden frost beneath its warmth.

Let’s start with the leads, because this film lives and dies by their performances, and thankfully, it thrives.

Cho Young-woo continues proving he’s something of a chameleon among his generation. His portrayal of Kim Jae-won leans into restraint rather than dramatic flourish, embodying a boy who feels deeply but expresses sparingly. There is a quiet steadiness to Jae-won, the kind that feels like a steady campfire in late October: warm, dependable, but with embers hinting that something fragile burns beneath. Cho balances that tenderness beautifully, portraying a character who shoulders emotional burdens without ever announcing them. Jae-won’s promise to bring joy into Seo-yoon’s daily life feels both earnest and heartbreakingly determined, and Cho captures that balance with remarkable subtlety.

Then there is Shin Shi-ah, who honestly surprised me in the best possible way. My only prior exposure to her was in The Witch: Part 2, where she delivered a physically intense, emotionally restrained performance as Ark 1. Seeing her step into Han Seo-yoon feels like watching an actor open an entirely new emotional door. Seo-yoon could have easily been written as purely tragic, but Shin injects her with humor, charm, and an almost stubborn optimism that makes her incredibly endearing.

What struck me most about her portrayal is how she layers Seo-yoon’s emotional reality. On the surface, she’s bright and playful, someone who embraces each day with enthusiasm. But beneath that brightness sits a quiet, almost subconscious sadness. There’s this delicate sense that Seo-yoon understands, in her own way, that every beautiful day she experiences comes with the cost of losing it again. Shin communicates that tension with subtle expressions and emotional transparency that feels painfully real.

And yes, this might sound like an oddly specific compliment, but Shin Shi-ah delivers some of the most emotionally convincing crying scenes I’ve seen from younger actors in recent dramas. Emotional vulnerability on screen can easily slip into exaggeration, but her performances feel raw without ever becoming overwhelming. It’s the kind of emotional honesty that makes you instinctively lean closer to the screen.

The supporting cast also deserves recognition, particularly as the film introduces several fresh faces that feel like promising additions to the next generation of Korean screen actors. Joo Yoo-jung as Choi Ji-min, Seo-yoon’s best friend, stands out in particular. Ji-min begins as the dependable, grounded presence in Seo-yoon’s life, but her role evolves significantly as the story progresses. Joo handles these shifts with impressive control, carrying the emotional weight of certain later scenes with a quiet strength that leaves a lasting impression. Supporting characters often function as emotional scaffolding in romance tragedies, and Ji-min’s presence here is both narratively vital and deeply human.

Plot-wise, the story admittedly leans into familiar territory. Memory-loss romances have existed in various forms across media, and this film doesn’t attempt to reinvent the wheel structurally. However, cliché is not inherently a flaw, particularly in a genre built on emotional resonance. What matters is execution, and the Korean adaptation distinguishes itself through tonal balance.

The first half leans noticeably lighter than its Japanese counterpart. At times, it almost flirts with rom-com territory, and I found myself laughing more than expected. These lighter moments don’t feel out of place; instead, they create a sense of comfort and familiarity. The film invites viewers to settle into the characters’ daily rhythm, enjoying their small joys and playful interactions. It’s a bit like being handed a warm drink on a chilly evening , you relax, you smile, and you momentarily forget there’s a storm slowly gathering outside.

When the narrative begins to shift into heavier emotional territory, that earlier warmth becomes incredibly effective. The contrast sharpens the emotional impact without feeling manipulative. The second half explores themes of sacrifice and love with a quiet, almost poetic tenderness. Without revealing specific details, the film asks a deeply uncomfortable but beautiful question about how far someone might go to protect another person’s happiness. It doesn’t scream its answers. It simply lets them unfold slowly, leaving viewers to sit with the emotional weight afterward.

If the film has one noticeable flaw, it lies in its runtime. The Korean adaptation is slightly shorter than its Japanese predecessor, which results in a faster pacing of certain relationship beats and background elements. While the emotional core remains intact and the second half wisely slows down to give viewers space to breathe, I personally found myself missing some of the extended character exploration present in the original. The Japanese version allowed certain emotional threads to simmer longer, creating a slightly fuller narrative tapestry. That said, the Korean film still delivers its emotional crescendos effectively, proving that impact is not solely dependent on length.

Ultimately, Even If This Love Disappears From the World Tonight succeeds as both an adaptation and a standalone romantic tragedy. It honors the spirit of its source while embracing its own tonal identity, supported by two remarkably well-cast leads and a strong supporting ensemble. It is a film that wraps you in gentle warmth before quietly placing a weight in your chest, leaving you with the kind of lingering emotional aftertaste that feels oddly comforting despite the tears.

Verdict:
Even If This Love Disappears Tonight is a tender, emotionally layered romance that gently lures viewers in with warmth before quietly breaking their hearts. It’s the kind of story best experienced slowly, preferably with tissues nearby and enough emotional space to let its themes linger afterward. If you have the opportunity, I wholeheartedly recommend watching both the Japanese and Korean versions. They share the same emotional skeleton but carry different tonal textures, and together they create a fuller, richer exploration of love, memory, and sacrifice. Both are worth experiencing, and both leave behind a lasting emotional echo that feels bittersweet in the most beautiful way.

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I totally fell for it - Again

Let me preface that I have not seen the original J Drama, and normally that would mean I'd be rushing there to see it after learning of its existence - except I am not sure I have the heart to re-live it. I came into this drama blind, the title and cast caught my attention, I added it to my list and then saw a scene on social media that made me realize I wanted to watch it. I did not expect what came with it, I envisioned this a light hearted story of young love, of which it is - but that is not the whole of it. Like with 20th Century Girl, of which I walked in blindly as well - I was completely decimated by the tragedy that awaited me. I'd grown attached, found genuine beauty in the gradual love built by these two and his choice to continue to give her all the best memories, day by day. It felt a lot like 50 First Dates but without the promise of the ending these two deserved.

These stories hit harder usually because of the tragedy awaiting, they make us feel so much more than the traditional romance story, because it is weighed down by the loss of that hard fought love.

I understand that, truly, but yet I cling to the hope of a beautiful ending in which happiness can be found. However, I am left forever maimed by this encounter because I cannot forget it and all of the beauty that came with it. I still inevitably love stories like this, though I never go in willingly to them. They just happen to find me, tug on my heart with promises before yanking it up into my throat where it will throb endlessly from the experience.

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