Reviews

Pretty good movie but it's not for childish people

The movie starts out as a cute romcom about a slightly overweight man who falls deeply in love with his nurse during his hospital stay. The acting was pretty good, and the pacing was impressive, as they did not spend time on unnecessary fluff. The movie goes from the expected cuteness to sourness, which will leave you feeling frustrated and uncomfortable, then to an unimaginable twist that really surprised me and made me like it even more. It made you think back and remember all of those weird moments that you did not get then but made sense later.

It is a very good depiction of modern relationships and morality. The fast pace of life and lack of communication can lead to a breakdown in a relationship.

This movie is not for childish viewers at all who are too immature to explore human behavior and the complexity of relationships. That is something I definitely disliked with many comments in the reviews. It is just judgment and morality policing, not an actual review.

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The Horror Isn't that Scary

The Ghost Game follows the story of five high school students who perform a ritual to summon a ghost, hoping to create a video that will win a YouTube contest.

The premise feels similar to many previous horror movies, though the film tries to add a twist at the end. However, the script still feels lacking. It attempts to build conflict that leads to the twist, but the execution isn’t convincing enough, so the twist doesn’t feel believable. That said, some of the conflicts involving the other students work quite well.

The directing is also quite bland, the horror elements aren’t particularly scary, and the buildup in Act 1 feels overly rushed. The early scenes meant to establish the group’s chemistry fall flat and come across as boring. Still, I think it’s the best they could do with such a low-budget horror movie.

That said, the acting is solid overall. Seo Dong-hyun shines the most as Moon Gi-ho, while Yeri gives it her best effort, though this is probably her weakest performance to date.

Overall, because I kept my expectations very low after reading other reviews, it turned out to be a fun, decent watch to kill some free time.

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Season 2 went downhill and this movie went off the cliff.

I loved season 1. I managed to get through season 2. I started this hoping it would redeem season 2, but by the end I was watching at 1.5-2x, and I still felt like it was a waste of time.

What happened to this series? I noticed there's three screenwriters credited on MDL for season 1, two for season 2, and one for this film. Did they keep firing the best writer each time?

The best part of the movie was seeing the BTS clips in the closing credits.

The moral of the story is basically "AI bad". Everything kicks off the same tired way that we're now used to. Mio inexplicably falls for some guy she barely knows who turns out to be a bad guy.

But this time it's worse. The bad guy was totally pointless. He was all about logic and chasing his vision of the new world right up until the end, but then he conveniently changed his mind at the last minute and completely undid all of season 2 and this movie. Even the youkai he apparently killed are brought back to life.
The writers never explained his powers or how they related to real-world technology like the app, nor how his physical body worked.

Where was the Mio from the end of season 1 that could actually achieve something for herself? Even at the end the guy had to kill himself for her.

The main cast were all good, or as good as the material allowed them to be this time. I didn't really care about the villain at all, whether that's the actor's fault I'm not sure.

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Not enjoyable

It's hard to root for a romance when there's a killed invloved that doesn't get consequences for it. Yes, at the end we see some guilt but throughout the movie the fl disregards the situation and even seems to forget about it. Also we never see proof that she changed. She made prejudices and made selfish decisions at the beginning but we never see her being put in the same situation and choosing otherwise. Furthermore, I found the pacing and the scenes to be made in a way that just doesn't work. I find it hard to put into words, but the experience wasn't like a smooth flow, more like random scenes from some people's lives put together.

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Samurai drama with little action.

Anyone who thought there would be a big slaughter when Takashi Miike makes a samurai film will unfortunately have to continue wishing. Ichimei is a low-key, subtle and melancholic drama about revenge and honor in the 17th century. Why they insisted on making the film in 3D is incomprehensible, however.

The film begins with the samurai Hanshiro (Ebizo Ichikawa) applying to commit ritual suicide in the courtyard of the clan leaders of the House of Li in order to restore his honor. The clan suspects that Hanshiro is bluffing, a well-used trick to get money or employment through sympathy. The story of a former samurai who tried the same idea and his tragic fate is revealed. Eventually, we also get to know Hanshiro’s background story and his real purpose for his request.

Miike has made a name for himself with uber-violent cult films such as Audition and Ichi the Killer. However, he has also made other types of films and proves here that – Obviously – He has more strings to his lyre. It is easy to believe that he has seized the opportunity when he makes a samurai film – In 3D too – And let the blood flow and heads roll. But he has somewhat unexpectedly gone in a different direction and focused on the human drama in the story.

It is beautiful and atmospheric, and the not entirely unpredictable story nevertheless engages with its loving, sympathetic characters and their gripping fates. It is easy, as a fan of Quentin Tarantino's genre-honoring Kill Bill films, to miss the pumped-up pace and violent fight scenes, but there is nevertheless something liberating and uplifting about a samurai film that actually focuses on the dramatic story.

Then it is possible to think that Miike, who has made sadistic ultra-violence his specialty, has not taken advantage of the genre and offered more sword fighters even though a typically sadistic suicide scene for him is performed in the first story. The 3D format (the first film at Cannes ever to be shown in it) is hardly used at all and the only proper fight scene, which comes only at the end, has a dose of dry humor that quickly ebbs away and leaves behind a spectacle that is somewhat transcendental to realism and is rounded off with a rather vague message.

It is a stylish, entertaining and powerful film that is unfortunately way too long and uneven. Miike is a master at delivering stylish and atmospheric films but when it comes to samurai he seems to be actively looking to find his own nuance instead of using a working concept. And that is perhaps where Tarantino got it when he paid tribute to the genre by returning to classic clichés and adding fuel to the violence scenes. Because no matter how good the direction, actors and story are, you still always see samurai fighting more than anything else.

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Back To Darkness

This is a collection of four short, depressing films, as the title itself suggests: There Is No Salvation! However, even though they are short films, they feel quite long because there is almost no dialogue, and the scenes often remain static, requiring the viewer to fill them with their own interpretation.

All the stories presented here are ambiguous, and it is never entirely clear what is really going on. In the first part of each segment, the challenge is to figure out what the story is about, and even the endings do not provide definitive answers, leaving plenty of room for reflection and personal interpretation. Since there is very little dialogue, the film relies heavily on visual impression and the depiction of action, though this could have been executed better. Still, I appreciate that the film does not lead the viewer by the hand, but instead allows them to reach their own conclusions. There are also several striking and unsettling scenes by which these films will likely be remembered.

Of the four films, the first one ended up being my favorite, although the last one also leaves a strong impression. What they all have in common is that they depict unusual, perhaps even symbolic situations in which people search for some kind of salvation—and whether they find it is revealed by the title of the entire omnibus.

The final story includes English subtitles, but despite having only about ten spoken lines, there is still a gramatical slip in one of them, where the main character says: “Hlep me!” If only people in desperate situations would remember to cry out to God.

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A Lesson on Plants and Life

For what it is, it is a nice indie movie. A simple story about a friendship between a little girl and an old man (a Silkworm and a Bee). The English title is not very representative of the movie, so I prefer the original Korean title: 비밀의 화원 – Secret Flower Garden, because the movie is more about plants and flowers than animals. Still, we can say that it is simply a movie about nature and life in general, and the plants and animals serve as an allegory for life.

There are also drawings and songs, so I would say that the movie uses a lot of subtle elements to connect the story and stir emotions. The fundamental purpose of the movie is to teach us to be more gentle toward all life, because we depend on it. We are all connected. I liked the message, so I liked the movie too.

P.S. I even noticed an image of Jesus in one short but meaningful frame of the movie.

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Our Neighbours

The reason I watched this film is that it is a new release. I didn’t know anything about it, and I was surprised by the simplicity with which it was made. It contains only eight scenes, each set in a different location: in a parking lot, on a road, in an apartment, in front of a building, in a park, on a mountain, in a dead-end street, and in a café. These are all places where city dwellers meet.

What is interesting is that each scene lasts a little under ten minutes and consists of a single shot in which the camera does not change, although it sometimes moves slightly so that it doesn’t feel completely static. In each shot, there are two people engaged in some kind of argument. So across the eight scenes there are sixteen characters in total. All the actors were unknown to me, but I can say they performed their scenes very well, since it is not easy to film a ten-minute scene in one take.

The scenes are both realistic and absurd at the same time. They portray situations that constantly happen around us in cities, yet they express a certain unnaturalness caused by the urban conditions of life. This is not a standard film, but it offers an interesting portrayal of city life that many of us can relate to.

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The Portrait of a Director

According to koreanfilm.or.kr data, only 597 people have seen this movie, which makes me one of the few who have seen it. This is, of course, an indie film, and it certainly isn’t for a general audience, but it has its own beauty and attractiveness.

At the center of the movie is a film director who meets and talks with people in preparation for his new project. The conversations resemble those in Hong Sang-soo’s films, where characters simply converse naturally, with meaning that often remains unspoken. I liked the short moments of instrumental music between the shots and the beautiful natural scenery, but I couldn’t really grasp the theme of the movie through the acting. Maybe the film simply portrays the life of a movie director.

There is also the symbolism of the title: *Utopia*, or even better, in the original Korean: 몽유도원, an old traditional Chinese and Korean utopian concept of finding a hidden paradise. In this movie, the characters share their dreams and visions, mixing reality and fantasy, and pointing to art as something that helps us go beyond basic existence.

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Sound Recording

The movie starts with loud city noise and a quiet human humming. This is an effective start to a simple film that searches for the voice of a lost young actress. The whole movie has a melancholic tone, despite the youthfulness of the girl. Also, as much as I think I understood the dialogue, I don’t think the film explicitly explains what happened; instead, it leaves things open to debate and interpretation. The actors are appealing and I liked them, but their portrayal felt somewhat limited. I wanted them to engage a little more.

So, this is not a mainstream movie for the general public, but rather an independent film for movie lovers and lost souls who happen to stumble upon it. The movie did succeed in making me hum, which I hadn’t done in a long time, so that’s something.

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The Human Cost of the Signal

With Humint, Ryoo Seung-wan returns to the territory that suits him best, and it shows. The geopolitical thriller shot through with physicality, with the kind of moral pressure that settles into bodies before it ever reaches dialogue, this is his natural habitat, and the film announces it from the very first sequences. The result isn't flawless, but it possesses a quality that's become genuinely hard to find in contemporary spy cinema: it still believes in space. In the weight of environments. In the dramatic value of a door left ajar, a corridor, a face held a second too long. And above all, it believes that action isn't decoration but a form of storytelling which, in 2026, is far from a given.

The plot, on paper, is almost classical: a South Korean agent moves through Vladivostok following the trail of a criminal network that crosses drugs, human trafficking, and state intelligence. On the other side there's a North Korean agent, then an ambiguous official, then a woman trapped in the most dangerous role of all that of the informant. Around them, Vladivostok doesn't function as an exotic backdrop, it's not the Russian city dropped in for international flavor but as a moral landscape: a border place, gray, frozen, porous, where everyone watches everyone and no one is ever truly safe. This is where Humint scores its first real point. The city isn't a postcard: it's a hostile surface, full of concrete, hard spaces, corners with no cover. And it's partly from this that the film generates its sustained, almost physical sense of danger.

On the screenplay level, Humint operates on a recognizable mechanism: four main characters, four different ethical trajectories, and at the center the figure of the informant as both narrative and moral detonator. What's interesting is that Ryoo doesn't build the film as a purely strategic chess match but as an accumulation of human debts. The debt to the person who puts themselves on the line for you. The debt to the person you love and put in danger. The debt to the State, which demands obedience and gives back cynicism. In this sense, Humint is less a film about intelligence operations per se than a film about the human cost of intelligence — about that precise moment when people stop being "assets" and go back to being human beings: unmanageable, vulnerable, irreducible to protocol.

The writing, though, doesn't always match the precision of its themes. And it's worth saying so plainly. In the middle section, the film tends to thicken its web of interests, blackmail, chains of command, double-crosses, and lateral moves with a taste for complication that at times slows things down instead of intensifying them. It's not a problem of density , you can follow the threads , but of dramaturgical hierarchy: certain pieces of information arrive with the weight of a revelation, and then produce no real emotional turn; certain subplots seem more functional to keeping the mechanism running than to actually developing the characters. In other words, the film has more energy than synthesis. You feel it. It's no coincidence that part of the critical conversation has praised the film's spectacular ambition while flagging a certain weakness in dramatic substance relative to the action apparatus and that's not an entirely unfair observation.

That said, it would be unfair to stop at the flaw, because Humint constantly recovers ground in the way it stages what it has written. Ryoo Seung-wan understands something elementary and precious: every character has to have their own physical grammar. It's not enough to fight; they have to fight "like him," "like her," according to a rhythm and a posture that tell you who they are. And indeed, this bodily differentiation is one of the film's strongest elements. Manager Zo, whom Jo In-sung plays with an almost elegant restraint, always acts as if trying to keep violence inside a clean, contained line; Park Geon, by contrast, carries a more nervous tension, more intermittent, more exposed to emotional fracture; Hwang brings to the screen an administrative coldness that is itself a threat, with no need to raise his voice; Seon-hwa introduces a vulnerability that isn't passivity but the capacity to choose within the narrowest margin of survival. These aren't just characters: they're vectors of different energy. And when the film stops explaining and simply lets them move, it finally starts to breathe.

The direction is the real center of the film. Ryoo comes from a cinema that knows the pleasure of the gesture, but here he largely avoids pure choreographic display for its own sake. The action sequences land because they're legible, articulated in space, never reduced to accelerated cutting designed to simulate intensity without actually building it. You can tell where you are, who enters from where, who sees what, who risks being cornered, who has the positional advantage. It sounds obvious, but it's almost revolutionary today. Even more interesting is the way the director alternates wider shots and compressed close-ups: on one side, the hostility of the world; on the other, the face as the only real battlefield. This dynamic between geographic openness and emotional constriction gives the film a near-classical elegance. It's no surprise that more than one observer has read Humint as a natural continuation of the path begun with The Berlin File and Escape from Mogadishu: the frame changes, but the same faith in the international thriller as a moral device — not just a spectacular one — remains.

The atmosphere work is very strong as well. The cinematography pushes toward cold, metallic, matte tones without ever making the film visually monotonous .There's an intelligent use of surfaces, empty spaces, and architecture that conveys the sense of a life lived under constant surveillance. Costumes and interiors help suspend the film in a slightly displaced temporality: contemporary, yes, but never ostentatiously dependent on technology. It's a shrewd choice, because it allows Humint to sidestep the risk of becoming a thriller of screens, pings, software interfaces, and digital exposition dumps. Here, intelligence goes back to being, literally, human: bodies, sources, glances, lies, shifting loyalties. This is also why the film, when it works, generates a tension that is more tactile than cerebral.

On the acting front, Zo In-sung carries the film with remarkable presence. He doesn't work through overexpression, and rightly so: his character lives inside guilt, discipline, a reluctance to fail again, and the actor translates all of this into a controlled physicality that occasionally lets a crack show through. Park Jeong-min provides an effective counterpoint, shifting the register toward something more ambiguous and emotional. Park Hae-joon delivers the kind of administrative hardness that always works in spy cinema: evil that doesn't need to raise its voice. Shin Sae-kyeong, finally, had the most delicate task and instead manages to preserve her own opacity, her own concrete fear, her own capacity for decision-making all the way to the end.

Humint is not its director's definitive masterpiece, and anyone looking for a perfectly engineered, airtight, zero-redundancy spy mechanism will find things to complain about. The screenplay has some redundant passages and a middle section that isn't as sharp as the opening promises. But it would be foolish to write it off on those grounds, because the film possesses a concrete, muscular, almost artisanal quality that many far more "orderly" thrillers simply don't. It stumbles occasionally in its own complexity, but when it finds its footing again it hits hard in the direction of the action sequences, in the control of space, in the construction of tension, and in that idea, as beautiful as it is bitter, that behind every piece of intelligence there is always someone who pays the full price.

If a single blunt formula is called for: Humint convinces more as cinema than as screenplay. But since cinema, fortunately, is not only screenplay that's more than enough to make it a robust, adult, imperfect, and genuinely interesting thriller.

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