Reviews

The overarching story is actually really good, but the execution and how it’s told isn’t as engaging as it could be.

This is a pretty ambitious project with many well-known cast members which is also kinda its drawback. Because the faces/characters are constantly changing, it wasn’t really enough time for me to be invested in any one of them. It wasn’t just their face that was constantly changing, it was also their personality. I think it may have worked better, if they decreased the number of characters and allotted more time to the flashbacks that are integral to the story.

Since we’re seeing this story from the MC’s POV, the story feels and looks like you’re inside a maze, not knowing what it looks like. You’re going to hit a lot of walls in search for an exit and could feel lost for a good portion of the story.

I liked the ending, because I feel it's realistic given the story. Just the execution could have been better -- they ended up telling viewers what has been happening and its solution instead of showing us.

Overall, I think the story itself is really great but unfortunately, the execution wasn’t quite there for me personally and needed more oomph. It's a good attempt though. I'm glad they took the risk in telling this story, and the issues involved, in a different way than what we usually see in Thai dramas.

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An ok movie with some interesting representation

This is the story about the bubbly girl who met her cold female lead and fell in love... once she did that she found out a bunch of stuff yet managed to stay bubbly throughout.

Ms. Bubbly has great energy, she is honest and kind and is allowed to make mistakes without coming off as childish. Ms Cold is cool, and while I do not really get her choices she has this smart coolness around her that I highly appreciate. Together these two have great chemistry and a whole lot of good lines.

The people around ms bubbly are lovely too, she has a really fun to watch easy to fall in love with dad, a fake boyfriend who is just the sweetest mist honest and I dare say enlightened guy out there.

This movie is a dialog driven movie, there are a lot of good lines in here, making it almost feel like an educational. But there is also something that feels a bit underdeveloped, meehish to it. As this is a slice of life there is not a lot to keep you on your toes, as the few turns of events are not very eventful and most of the potential drama passes by almost unnoticed.

So basically it is a movie with a nice take on the subject of love, life and the choices society (and biology at the time) force people to make.

I am however not sure any of the people in this actually love their lives as I kept wondering who was going to die...

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My views on DEW movie

(please!.. correct me if I have written wrong english)
Not gonna lie...I watched this film for Ohm pawat...its not like...I don't like his co-star(I didn't knew him at that time)
The ending did hurt me a lot....but I also think that the ending was right in some way. Seeing their age gap..they wouldn't be able to date(I'm not talking about young dew and phob).
When I was watching Dew movie for the first time, I thought dew and phob would run away....and also when dew was reincarnated, my thought was they would run away...but they didn't .The suicide was unexpected totally. But don't know why I still like to rewatch it sometimes....to get a good cry maybe.

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A very sad movie

I'm just in love with this movie...
I love the actors and the story, I didn't expected that the King will make the Queen to do that but the story is perfect.

I expected that ending...

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Bittersweet-romance type (tissues!)

'On Your Wedding Day', 'Classic Again', and a little bit of 'Twenty-five, Twenty-one'. This film gave me all of that. It has that same bittersweet taste of love that just lingers around as we hope and pray for a happy end.

STORY: The writing was great. I was expecting a lot of clichés and twists, but instead, the movie felt like a pure piece, like it was written off experience. The realism in how the story developed felt oddly satisfying and simply left me awestruck. Of course, I know for a fact that tons of people head to watch movies and shows for comfort (and not to be disappointed) and I, too, watched this for that. Instead, it left me hanging. Watching Zhou Can text Jiaoyang he was getting married felt like a blow to the face. Until the end I wanted to deny it, hope it wasn't real and that they were going to end up together. After so many years? I wanted to get angry, cry, and protest but then realized that Jiaoyang must have felt the same inside. But that's life. And it just goes on. Wanting to stay frozen in sadness will only make you lag behind, and before you know it, you'll be left alone.

>>(SPOILER ALERT!! EDIT: I personally think the ending wasn't Can's choice. During the wedding, we could see both his parents at the front seats, and his mom cheering for them excitedly while Can doesn't look as happy as he would if it was with Jiaoyang. From the beginning, Can's mom didn't approve of Jiaoyang, even just as Can's friend, so what more could it have been when they were dating? I don't know, it just feels unreal that Can would have moved on so quickly in a span of two years after what happened last with them. And the fact that he let her know about it low-key gave me a feeling that he was hesitant. From the get-go, I think the wedding was his mother's decision. Just my opinion though, or I could still be in denial of the sad ending. 🥹💔)

ACTING/CAST: Prior to watching this, I've never seen a film or show with neither of the leads, so this is a first for me. At the beginning of the film, I thought that the acting performance would just be so-so, but as the story progressed, the chemistry grew to be something I admire them for (it actually felt like it was THEIR story, not them ACTING a random story). The casting was just superb -- sometimes it's obvious and clear that the actors are 'acting', but this is one of the rare ones where the actors are 'living and embodying' their characters. Both of them, especially as they processed Jiaoyang's grandmother's passing, showed emotions that were so real and hurting. Props to them, really.

MUSIC: Hands down, the music was unbelievably made the scenes come to life. Especially the scene where Jiaoyang and Can meet again after Jiaoyang moved away, when she ran to hug him in the middle of the highway overpass -- that scene was heart-shattering. The music just made it worse (in a good way).

REWATCH VALUE: Personally, I wouldn't want to watch this film again because of its ending. But truthfully, I would, for how their relationship went before they decided to give it up. But I wouldn't want to get hurt again by watching it, so I guess I'll watch it every year on Valentines. (😭💀)

OVERALL: It's a wonderful film. Some people say its similar to 20th Century Girl, but I think this is quite different, on its own. None of the leads passed away mysteriously, nor did they disappear without saying. Instead they were there, but denied their feelings and gave in to their pent-up emotions instead of dealing with it -- leading to their fall. Ugh, I should watch this movie again right now 🥹!

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I appreciate this movie

The film is very similar in theme to another Korean film, Suddenly Last Summer, which is repulsion and attraction. But here, the director of such excellent and award-winning films as Night Flight and No Regret, this theme is upgraded almost to the maximum. Two young men have an intimate relationship during their military service and release their sexual energy. Youn Young has now left the army and is not so sure of his orientation and no longer wants to be in the presence of Gi Tae-ho, who has to stay in the army and is very uneasy about losing Young-a. A psychological drama ensues, the plot of which I will not describe, but I want to highlight above all the good work of both actors, they reached almost to the bottom, not only by being naked, but also by rolling in disgusting mud. Life is often cruel and when we lose someone, how often does it make us act desperate, and for that I appreciate the film.

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The whole review is a spoiler

I'll start by saying, I was forced to rate this 1 Star since there aren't negative stars available.

I'm an elderly adult female who has 5 children, so I'm no prude when it comes to sex.

The story: A teenage King who groomed a pubescent boy to be his lover in the guise of "service" to the King who was homosexual and disgusted at the thought of being with a woman. The King needed an heir to keep his reign (or be killed). The King offered the services of his Chief Guard (his lover) to impregnate the Queen and hopefully no one would be the wiser that it wasn't the King's heir. The Chief & the Queen fell in lust with one another (love?, NO.) after sneaking around behind the King's back well beyond the required "services". They both were escaping a Stockholm syndrome situation with the King so they thought they "loved" each other. The King had the Chief's doonie cut off (castrated) in response to him being "betrayed" by the Chief & the Queen. The Queen had been impregnated so the King's plan did work, but now the King had to shut everyone up since too many people knew it was the Chief and not the King who had gotten the Queen pregnant. The Chief, infuriated by not having a doonie anymore, and not having a future with the Queen, decided to kill the King. The King had also killed the Queen's maid and hung her head on a pike with the Queen's sachet (given to her by the Chief) making the Chief think the King had killed her. This gave the Chief all the more reason to kill the King. The Chief killed the King. The Chief was finished off by the other Guards and both bodies were to be hidden. The Queen could give birth to the throne's heir, and everyone could not live happily ever after. The end.

TL;TR: A gay King needed an heir, offered his lover Chief Guard to service the Queen to impregnate her. The plan backfired . The King wanted to kill everyone involved, and was killed by the Chief. The end.

Korean films take leeway in explicit content, whereas their dramas don't.

SERIOUSLY, the movie should have a disclaimer attached to it (on Viki) as an erotic film, a Trigger Warning for sexual abuse (or grooming), pedophilia, explicit sexual scenes, nudity, & extreme violence. It also is not a BL movie and shouldn't be labeled as such. Anything less is being irresponsible.

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"If you fight you suffer whether you win or lose"

Tomb of the River aka Paid in Blood is a Korean crime film about a gang war erupting over a casino being built ahead of the 2018 Olympics in Gangneung. While the story didn't reinvent the crime wheel, there were strong performances that made for an engrossing film.

Kim Gil Suk, played by Yoo Oh Sung in a brilliantly nuanced performance, was the head of one of the gangs overseen by an older gangster. The old gangster has become very zen and convinces Gil Suk against violence when he can. After the head of one of his other gangs allows drugs into his karaoke club, the old gangster offers Gil Suk management of the casino. Gil Suk, being the loyal guy he is, turns it down since it's not his territory. As far as he is concerned the casino belongs to the whole gang and not just anyone or any part of the organization. He is about to have his sharing is caring philosophy challenged when ruthless loan shark Lee Min Seok crashes onto the scene. Jang Hyuk gives Min Seok a lethal energy in a strong performance.

Min Seok starts slicing and dicing his way to the top in an effort to take over the casino. His brutally vicious pre-emptive attacks take the gangsters by surprise and it doesn't take long to carve them up. The code and loyalties are severed. Long standing alliances are broken, betrayals run rampant as everyone scrambles to survive and try to hold on or move up.

Despite all that has happened, Gil Suk makes a last attempt to negotiate with Min Seok to avoid more bloodshed. Min Seok trusts no one and believes that conversation never solves anything, he'd rather talk with his knife. Gil Suk's police friend, Lt. Cho attempts to reason with his friend, telling him romance isn't dead, let the police handle the villain. With the bodies of friends and colleagues having stacked up, Gil Suk has lost faith in the more civilized ways of doing business. "Romance is dead," he tells his friend. Min Seok puts it more succinctly, "Only death will end things."

Though they are still thugs in expensive suits, the waters are calm when the film starts, with everyone working together. Min Seok's gruesome entrance aboard a smuggler's boat strips away the façade of humanity, showing what he would do to survive. His rampage reveals the human greed and depravity lying below the surface of the unified gangs. Before it's all over, basic instincts are tested in a stormy war of survival.

Having seen numerous crime films, this was not a revelatory take on the genre, but it was well made and the acting set it apart from some others I have watched. The music, especially in the final scene, fit the mood perfectly throughout the film.

"Why did you turn this place into hell?"
"I didn't decide anything. The word decides these things. People just follow."

And indeed, one by one, the gangsters follow the path into hell, with no way back and no way out from the violent spiral downward. If you are looking for a new take on an old story, this will not be it. However, if you are in the mood for a bloody crime noir with good performances, this might fit the bill.



2/8/23

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Good movie, I didn't like the ending

This movie is pretty good, it's easy to get invested in and grips you from the start it really throws you right into it though it can be kind of hard to follow at times. Or at least, for me it could be

The entire first half is really good, but the ending left much to be desired for me and I'm not particularly fond of bleak and black pilled endings that are just heavily depressing, which is unfortunately a lot of Hong Kong movies that are in this vein tend to do

It kills a lot of the enjoyment I had for the movie, and the final 5 minutes are a very rushed epilogue kind of deal that feels very cheap when it brings back a one note character that was only prominent for like 4 minutes of the entire film, it doesn't feel earned at all and felt like a really lame way to tug at your heartstrings after a very bleak end

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I Loved This!

What a joy ride this is. It is a simple basic story of ‘first times’. This is an astonishing and brilliant look at how serendipitous, random, and interesting life can be with the possibility of a total stranger completely enveloping your world with more than perhaps you were expecting. All of it is so subtle yet profoundly directional. An exceptional and brilliant short. A stunning and beautiful slice of life story where two people by sheer randomness comes into each other’s lives, influences them, and maybe, just maybe, connects them in ways neither one dreamt would or could happen when they woke up that morning.

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Breath the same air as I Miss U (2012), the story is not exactly the same, but it has more or less the same vibe. About a guy who lost his fiancee in an accident and then began a new relationship; the fiancee, who was already a ghost, couldn't accept it, so there's clash between the guy's current lover and the fiancee's ghost.

I gotta say, I like this film better, surely at the beginning I came for the horror, but as time goes on, this film leaning more into romance and drama, and I like that.
Junchu and Sansan's relationship was not harmonious before because Junchu could not move on from Manli (the fiancee) and there was a disappointment because his mother lied to him about her illness so he would get married, but over time it developed into a sweet and heartfelt relationship (just not imagine it to be as good as those good romancce film); compared to I Miss U, which stay in the horror's path but trying to be melodramatic, so the feelings can't really hits because they keep trying to scare.

The horror, Fan BingBIng mostly appeared in her human form, pretty. When they try to make her creepy, the film is already overwhelmed with emotion, so she's becoming not scary. That doesn't mean she's an insignificant character tho, she's pretty much the one who helped Junchu and Sansan to be harmonious, she also looks friendly at first but later she can't accept seeing them happy (I really like her gaze from the attic), so she tries to get Junchu back and that's mean by becoming an evil ghost.

I'm glad that Sansan and Junchu had a chance to smile happily together before the film ends for good.

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"You don't sing, you die. Sing off-key, you die. Score lower than 80, you die."

A ghost who's gonna kill you if you bad at singing? damn.

Super hilarious; the comedy is very Thai. Just reading the premise made me chuckle.

At the beginning, there are character introductions. I thought it was going to be dull and plain, but they filled it with jokes that almost always hit me. There is talk about Mae-nak, Buppah, which was familiar to me; the parody of Lights Out short film ver. was quite funny.

When the night comes, Premika goes out to strike and hands her mic to her victims. I like it as it's usually always funny, and most importantly: the songs are such a bop. My favorite was the drunk guy at dinner; he sang a song from a Thai band called The Innocent (I looked it up), and the song title is ฝากรัก / Fahk Ruk (Entrusting My Love); it was so dreamy, interspersed with footage of the man meeting his wife in the past and fell in love.
When the people who were challenged by Premika failed, they died with bad CGI, but I can forgive it because the film is funny and I enjoyed it.

When I thought I was done, this film gave me more: Premika's ghost backstory, told through a song, titled ไถ่เธอคืนมา / Tai Tur Keun Mah (Buy You Back) (Orig. Singer: Pongsit Kumpee), and it was unexpectedly touching, heartwrenching; my eyes were teary.

I'm really satisfied with this film. Thanks.

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The story is quite intriguing, about a guy who had a nightmare or vision of a man mutilating a woman, and then the ghost of the woman haunts him, the guy thought she's asking him to find her, so he try to find her, that's pretty much it.
About the scare, I don't think it's creepy, not because for the cheap jumpscare but this film addicted to CGI, the ghost in CGI was just not it, even though the use of CGI gave an opportunity to make the death scenes to be kind of creative, but overall the CGI doesn't look good.

The twist... I almost got it right, it is what I imagined, but they kinda twisted it, and I didn't expect that. I knew the man is the murderer afterall, there's also hypnotize thing I consider but then... SHE CAN DO THAT?!!

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You had a crush, you found out your crush already in relationship, WTF you're going to do about it? Normal people probably just go on with their lives, waiting for a chance that probably will come someday, but not for Kimura Ai, she's going to sabotage it.

Kimura Ai, a young, brave, egocentric, and aggressive girl; I believe that after learning that her crush, Tatoe, had a girlfriend, she became obsessed with this thing she thought of as love, allowing her feelings to control her and turning her into a "very" irresponsible person to those around her and even to herself.
The way Ai tries to sabotage Tatoe's relationship with his girlfriend, Miyuki, is by approaching and befriending her.

"Thank you for teaching me how it feels like to be touched. If only you could be patient with me, even if it's out of self-regard, even for a split second. If that means you're opening your heart to me... I'll cherish that moment forever."

I love this film for how it made me feel, how compelling the story was, how beautiful the visuals are, how great the actors' performances are, etc. and this film kinda reminds me of The Half of It, this GL thing that gave me butterflies, even though in here would be realize late but the moment Ai and Miyuki is there and very intimate.

Anna Yamada's performance was very good, her expression, and how she showed Kimura Ai's desperation to be loved was so good, and why the hell she could be this kawaii, if I'm Tatoe, this film could be over in 30 minutes, because if she confessed her feelings, I'd accept them right away, and I'd be a simp for my queen, Yamada-sama 4eva.
Like the others, I also want to mention Haruka Imoe; she's really did a great job. She and Anna always have that intimate scene, and she as Miyuki, can keep up with Ai's aggression, resulting in the most beautiful kiss and sex scenes in Japanese films I've watched.

I think that's all I wanted to type. Thanks.

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