But very touching. Bittersweet, but only because life is bittersweet. It looks like they had 30-35 years together. That's a good run. The coda could have been done without.
Good in the beginning, but the ending was unsatisfactory for me.
What about the ending did you find unsatisfactory? I'm just curious because to me this is nearly perfect, and I don't give out high ratings loosely. Hope to hear from you.
SB/MB films almost always leave me with a sense of quiet, bittersweet joy, usually heavy on the sweet. Their writers are incomparable in the genre of gay-themed shorts. Are they ever going to do a bull-blown series? If not, WHY not, dammit? I'm waiting.
As usual, love the characters, the acting, direction, cinematography, lighting, freaking everything. So why the f**k does this have the usual MDL under-rating of 7.5/10 when I'm about to give it a 9.5/10? What about it could be better? If what, how? Please explain.
Detritus like "Bad Buddy" sit on here with 10 ratings and beautiful pieces like this get a 7.5. Ahhh....MDL.
Do they ever do a piece that is NOT excellent? I got more feels and tears of joy out of this fifteen minute gemstone than out of all 15-episode Thai dramas combined. These actors are beautifully cast in every way. I'm in love with both and thank you, SB/MB! Bravo!
How does this have what I consider a lowly 8/10 rating when it should be sitting at what I'm going to give it, a 9.5/10? What about is not near perfection? I just don't believe ANYTHING on Earth can be completely with one single flaw, in fact it's often the flaws that impart the beauty.
First of all, Neo Yau is a gorgeous young man in this film. One of the few Asian guys I think the platinum dye job looks good. His opposite is well cast. Their characters and looks are very different but I buy that there is affection between them. Someone below referred to this flick as "funny and fluffy." ummm...no. All in all, I believe everything shown up to the ending...it's where they go from here that I question. It's not as though Jun is extremely stable and non-emotional. However, I believe they have a good chance and that's good enough. The extremely fake kissing at the end left a bad taste in my mouth. It looked even MORE fake from a distance than in closeup. Why do directors cast homophobes to play gay characters? If an actor refuses to give his entire self to a role, then you fire them and get somebody who isn't terrified to kiss another man.
Thank you for writing this review. I felt the same about the film as do you for the most part. The cat thing is what always comes to mind first when this film crosses my crazy mind. That, and the lady stuck out in the frigid cold overnight in those stocks so they could pour water on her arms/hands as a means of studying the freezing process or some such madness. I see that scene in my mind as black and white. And of course what was done to the little boy was mind-blowing. The documentary feel makes all the horror/gore/torture segments seem twice as horrible as the acts were. Honestly, I told an MDL friend about this film a few days ago. I told her it was a documentary and entirely in black and white. Isn't that weird? I guess the film felt so real to me that my brain transformed it into a documentary using a lot of archival footage.
I do plan to watch it again soon, and I wish a lot more people would watch it than do/have. It is a very powerful anti-war/anti-government film and people need to be reminded of the horrors of war often. It is amazing how easily humans unlearn the lessons of history.
Just like you (and everybody actually), I was also amazed by the first two episodes, so the expectations were…
Very much agree on all you said. And yes, I thought the same thing about the GF: WHY is he spending time with this person he doesn't even like and knows she cheated? I think we were supposed to accept it was so they could work on that presentation, but he never did anything anyway so yeah, made no sense. The street kiss was stupid too. Trope City. By 9&10 I had lowered my expectations so far that I wasn't even disappointed, just not engaged. Maybe somebody else directed the first two episodes while the named director was on a drug binge or something.
Well even the manga for A Shoulder to Cry on didn’t have a kiss so I think that one is fine but Jaechan from…
There is no law that live-action adaptations of Mangas/Manhwas have to follow the source material frame-for-frame, though they often seem to do so, especially the ones out of Japan.
This is so good. It deserves so much better rating than an 8.1!A fucking masterpiece.
The word "masterpiece" gets thrown around on MDL way too often to have much meaning anymore. I'll never forget reading a commenter on the BL "Bad Buddy" page who said that show was a "masterpiece! The best romantic drama ever written!, etc," and she was entirely serious. "Farewell My Concubine" is a masterpiece. TES is a pretty good BL.
As for ratings, they are extremely inflated on MDL. It seems most people forget there are numbers 1 through 6, not just 7 through 10. I use the entire range of numbers and stars from 1 to 10. I gave this series a 6.5, which is a solid B-, a good grade.
After scrolling through comments, I wanted to add that Lee Mi Ra is a spectacular actress. The character she created in Yoon Won was my favorite of this entire series. So natural and believable in her acting. However, the scene in ep. 9 where she reaches a breaking point was spoiled for me by that super-super-close up tight on her face as she broke. The only time in this series such an extreme close-up was used and I felt like the director was making an announcement "OK, here comes a really intense, emotional, tearful monologue from a great actor so I want you to be able to see even her hose hairs quiver with angst." Like, back off a little, We already know she's excellent.
Very nice, but lots of problems too. Like Jae Won ghosting Ji Hyun for the old "I'm going to prevent you from being hurt by hurting you first by dumping you without explanation" BL trope. Like moping around ten years after a traumatic, life-changing tragedy and using it as an excuse to hurt people. Therapist finally told him off about that, but she was about nine years too late.
This series reminds me of the Thai BL "The Notebook" in that it started out with a lovely cinematic, indie style in the first two eps that then faded away with each subsequent episode and dissolved into trope-land. TES is much better than TN, but it had the same problem in that regard.
But lots of nice moments between the mains. They had great chemistry and I like the difference in their physical makeup. Liked Ji Hyun's psychological/emotional growth even if it did come abruptly out of nowhere after his incident. Liked that both mains were fully committed to their make-out scenes, which were beautiful and moving.
As I said above, the series started out SO strong in the first two episodes but then seemed to decline in structure, believability, and direction with every episode thereafter. I stuck with it though, and enjoyed eps. 9 & 10 very much.
This is not a great series, but a good one. I'm giving it a 6.5/10 rating, which in my system is a solid B-. Well done!
Very nice, but lots of problems too. Like Jae Won ghosting Ji Hyun for the old "I'm going to prevent you from being hurt by hurting you first by dumping you without explanation" BL trope. Like moping around ten years after a traumatic, life-changing tragedy and using it as an excuse to hurt people. Therapist finally told him off about that, but she was about nine years too late.
But lots of nice moments between the mains. They had great chemistry and I like the difference in their physical makeup. Liked Ji Hyun's psychological/emotional growth even if it did come abruptly out of nowhere after his incident. Liked that both mains were fully committed to their make-out scenes, which were beautiful and moving.
For me, the series started out SO strong in the first two episodes but then seemed to decline in structure, believability, and direction with every episode thereafter. I stuck with it though, and enjoyed eps. 9 & 10 very much.
This is not a great series, but a good one. I'm giving it a 6.5/10 rating, which in my system is a solid B-. Well done!
But very touching. Bittersweet, but only because life is bittersweet.
It looks like they had 30-35 years together. That's a good run.
The coda could have been done without.
6/10
Their writers are incomparable in the genre of gay-themed shorts. Are they ever going to do a bull-blown series? If not, WHY not, dammit? I'm waiting.
As usual, love the characters, the acting, direction, cinematography, lighting, freaking everything.
So why the f**k does this have the usual MDL under-rating of 7.5/10 when I'm about to give it a 9.5/10? What about it could be better? If what, how? Please explain.
Detritus like "Bad Buddy" sit on here with 10 ratings and beautiful pieces like this get a 7.5. Ahhh....MDL.
BRAVO!
Do they ever do a piece that is NOT excellent? I got more feels and tears of joy out of this fifteen minute gemstone than out of all 15-episode Thai dramas combined. These actors are beautifully cast in every way. I'm in love with both and thank you, SB/MB! Bravo!
How does this have what I consider a lowly 8/10 rating when it should be sitting at what I'm going to give it, a 9.5/10? What about is not near perfection? I just don't believe ANYTHING on Earth can be completely with one single flaw, in fact it's often the flaws that impart the beauty.
BRAVO!
His opposite is well cast. Their characters and looks are very different but I buy that there is affection between them.
Someone below referred to this flick as "funny and fluffy." ummm...no.
All in all, I believe everything shown up to the ending...it's where they go from here that I question. It's not as though Jun is extremely stable and non-emotional. However, I believe they have a good chance and that's good enough.
The extremely fake kissing at the end left a bad taste in my mouth. It looked even MORE fake from a distance than in closeup. Why do directors cast homophobes to play gay characters? If an actor refuses to give his entire self to a role, then you fire them and get somebody who isn't terrified to kiss another man.
5/10
I do plan to watch it again soon, and I wish a lot more people would watch it than do/have. It is a very powerful anti-war/anti-government film and people need to be reminded of the horrors of war often. It is amazing how easily humans unlearn the lessons of history.
As for ratings, they are extremely inflated on MDL. It seems most people forget there are numbers 1 through 6, not just 7 through 10. I use the entire range of numbers and stars from 1 to 10. I gave this series a 6.5, which is a solid B-, a good grade.
This series reminds me of the Thai BL "The Notebook" in that it started out with a lovely cinematic, indie style in the first two eps that then faded away with each subsequent episode and dissolved into trope-land. TES is much better than TN, but it had the same problem in that regard.
But lots of nice moments between the mains. They had great chemistry and I like the difference in their physical makeup. Liked Ji Hyun's psychological/emotional growth even if it did come abruptly out of nowhere after his incident. Liked that both mains were fully committed to their make-out scenes, which were beautiful and moving.
As I said above, the series started out SO strong in the first two episodes but then seemed to decline in structure, believability, and direction with every episode thereafter. I stuck with it though, and enjoyed eps. 9 & 10 very much.
This is not a great series, but a good one. I'm giving it a 6.5/10 rating, which in my system is a solid B-. Well done!
But lots of nice moments between the mains. They had great chemistry and I like the difference in their physical makeup. Liked Ji Hyun's psychological/emotional growth even if it did come abruptly out of nowhere after his incident. Liked that both mains were fully committed to their make-out scenes, which were beautiful and moving.
For me, the series started out SO strong in the first two episodes but then seemed to decline in structure, believability, and direction with every episode thereafter. I stuck with it though, and enjoyed eps. 9 & 10 very much.
This is not a great series, but a good one. I'm giving it a 6.5/10 rating, which in my system is a solid B-. Well done!