Peony

Applaud the show for what it did right, and this won't be a dissapointing watch.

In my personal opinion, the latter half of the show fell victim to haphazard pacing and overuse of deux ex machinas. There were too much "gotcha!" moments to the point the tension lost its purpose because the viewer was reaffirmed that things will turn out well no matter what. In a fluffy romcom this kind of reassurance is exactly what you need, but I felt like it didn't fit right with the initial vibe of *this* show.
Also it had little bit too many characters (at least 2 concubine characters could've easily been cut off) and as much as I love our Queen, I felt like her demeanour was over-dramatized so the credibility of her character leaned a lil bit much to the wrong side. And the villains were quite one-dimensional.
BUT

From beginning to the end, Under the Queen's Umbrella had its heart at the right place.
It did a number of things a lot of sageuks failed at doing for literally ages after the end of the proper long sageuk era about 10 years ago. Such as;
1. Not portraying the palace women as helpless flowers waiting for the king in their rooms all day long. They had STUFF to do. They were capable and intelligent individuals of their own right. They were constricted in lots of ways than not, yes. But it did not mean they always kept their heads down and laid low.
2. Making the harem ladies care about things other than being jealous with each other all the time. Women aren't so narrow minded, yknow? In a society where polygamy was the norm, I'd believe a majority of them had other priorities than hating on another woman who is no less of a victim of circumstances than they are.
3. Not pretending like the King was monogamous with one true love even though the guy literally had a harem, AND not pretending like he'd be an evil person otherwise.
The King of Under the Queen's Umbrella was refreshing in the sense he had a harem, yes. But also he was a nice and fair guy. He and the Queen had deep mutual understanding and respect towards each other. I do wish that the drama showed more scenes of him with other concubines as well tho.
4. Not repeating the trope of overbearing mistrustful Royal Father and the Crown Prince who is always under too much pressure + other Princes feeling neglected. This King (and also the Queen) cared for their children first and foremost, and would listen and give them benefit of the doubt before blindly believing what outsiders have to say. This drama had some of the most wholesome parent-child scenes in Sageuk history in my opinion. Regardless the child was a legitimate Prince or not, their treatment was all the same.

So yeah, if you think you'd love seeing the above 4 points in a Sageuk, Under the Queen's Umbrella is a must watch in many ways than not. Do give it a chance!

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I think little kids might love this movie, actually! Very little kids, like 7-8 ?

The plot and behaviors of the characters are SO lacking it's almost funny, it's like a middle school kid's creative writing essay.
BUT, for the same reason, it's actually quite adorable? If you put away your unforgiving critical lens for a bit and watch this with the lens you'd use to read a child's earnest attempt at a fantasy story, you might like it!
Oh and, go into it expecting bad CGI and all the characters being (very obviously) dubbed.
Clearly not much refinement went into making this. But it does have heart and I think they tried their best. So I think watching it with the same mindset would help.

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Why aren't there more dramas like this these days??

Two middle aged prodigies in porcelain making. Rivals and constantly at each other's throats, but having mutual caring and admiration deep down. Their families~ a beloved wife and two sons on one side, and motherless two daughters on the other side.
And every single one of them, I repeat, every single one of them, deeply love and care for everyone else and protect each other at any given crisis and would gladly take knives to save the other.
I have never seen a more nuanced and heartrending portrayal of interpersonal relationships in a drama. Who need romance when you can have a marriage between two households? It was ~chef's kiss. I even ship the brick walls of these two houses.
This drama, with its beautiful script and acting, took my heart through a wringer and I gladly allowed it to.
Highly highly recommend. Do not miss this gem when it's free and subbed on YouTube. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJPEbKQEnORO13UHtBOPHT5Oi_g7qv_Hh

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Absolutely adorbs, well paced, well written, on-point humor. A must watch.

I found it when I first went down the food dramas/movies/documentaries spiral. Predictably the first thing I did was looking up "Chinese dramas about food" and this one was suggested multiple times as an iconic movie. I added it to my list among many others, and this was the only one I couldn't find subs for~ until today.
And I'm very glad I kept looking for it.
It was a pleasant surprise that in addition to food (to be precise, Hainanese Chicken Rice) it was about a family with three queer boys. And their mom's acceptance-but-not-really situation, which was addressed in a very sweet and humane way without degrading any party involved. It was heartwarming to see.

Perfection from the start to the end. There was not a single second I was bored, dissapointed or wasn't smiling. Highly recommend.

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Definitely not the typical "Emotionless chef rediscovers the spirit of cooking" story.

I didn't expect it to touch my heart as much as it did, the premise was a very familiar one. A cold, emotionless, perfectionist chef, sent on a culinary mission, finds the true meaning of cooking along the way.
Well at least that's how I predicted it to go.
By the midpoint, there was this almost-breaking the 4th dimension moment where our chef went, "So I'm supposed to be moved and realise food must be cooked with love? What bs!" And I realised that no, this is not going to be just another typical take on the trope.
In the end it turned out to be a realistic, heartfelt discussion about how many people care about you in the world, even the people you'd think are most unimportaht and unrelated to you, and at the moment you think you are most alone in the world, how they would all come together to help you and you don't even know it. When you realise it you might even be too late.
It was a story about love transcending generations, through family and not-family, and I was so moved.

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An unexpected, pleasant surprise. Progressive, even.

This was my first ever Justice Bao drama. When I saw in the first episode that Bao Zheng was shunned when he was born due to unusually dark skin (probably due to some genetic reason) and people were calling him a "monster", I was worried about colorism.
Especially as a South Asian with a brown skin this made me unsettled. But only minutes after my worries went away when I saw how well-treated, loved and cared for he was by his guardians. Who did it for no obligation but simply because they were good, non-discriminative people.
And the story continues on like that. There are people who are initially shocked by/make comments on his skin color, but this doesn't upset me much because in the past it's no wonder, as people didn't know better/that varieties of skin colors existed. In my country too, it was the White people who were always gawked upon back then🙃. Now, it WOULD have been a bad thing if the drama made it into a running joke/made demeaning fun out of it but it never did! Those who bullied Bao Zheng due to his color were the bad people, and the good ones didn't even blink or if they used to before, they would soon realise they are wrong and turn around.
The original legend, stories and dramas based on it are actually a CELEBRATION of this "different" person and his intellect, how everyone loved and respected and admired him for his integrity and sense of justice.
It's actually ANTI-Colorism. And I cannot be happier about it.

If I am to talk about the rest of the characters- well, they are quite 3D. Some might not be likeable and frankly messed up, but NEVER because the "scriptwriter said so" but because it made sense for their circumstances. All in all, a really good drama. I wish there were more like this these days too.

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An unorthodox Red film, an absolute must-watch.

-SPOILERS FOR THE STORY-
An American doctor falls in love with a girl who loves a wanted revolutionist when she gets him to treat the Chinese guy for one of his ptsd attacks, where he falls into a stupor and chants his dead wife's name. Despite knowing the girl and the guy's love isn't mutual, the doctor only asks the girl's permission to date her and upon rejection, doesn't persuade her. He helps the guy get an Xray to see what causes his attacks, it's a sharpnel embedded in his brain, without removing it he will die soon but removal might result in paralysis.
Because of his entanglement in the political situation, he loses his job and the girl gets arrested, and the revolutionist tells him that he has realised he has truly moved on from his wife's death, and now he's nearing his death because of the shrapnel too and he will surrender to police in exchange for the girl.
It turns out the girl is now pregnant from an encounter in one of his attacks, and she is taken care of by the doctor while the revolutionist is executed. She dies in childbirth and the doctor adopts the baby girl, and asks the police to put the baby's parents' ashes together in a box. When the girl is older, he takes her to see the box and she opens it, and finds her dad's brain sharpnel inside.
The doctor watches his daughter smiling at a street parade with red galore all around and thinks "Seeing her smile, I understand her parents' passion now. They take joy in realising the ideals they believe in."
-END SPOILERS-

One will not be inclined to check this out because it sounds heavily political and potentially racist but damn, it was a pleasant surprise through and through.
It's a gem of a non-judgemental movie, where the story is told from an outsider pov but he doesn't whitesplain things that he has no business doing so, and despite the backdrop being that of a such chaotic and stressful time period, it focuses on the very human emotions even the revolutionists experience and the final result is utterly empathetic and charming. If this movie was made today everyone will be namecalling it propaganda and whatnot.

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Had the potential to be an interesting story with a unique approach, but failed.

The movie follows 3 couples in 3 consecutive eras, and the "premarital examination" that was apparently a thing back then to check physical compatibility. But the thing is, except the last arc, the previous two had largely half-baked, one dimensional plotlines. And the premarital examination itself didn't really play a huge role in any of them nor the arcs were really woven around it and the people's thoughts about it(despite it being the title of the movie), more like it was added in last moment for each arc for some additional drama and to remind the viewer this is (supposedly) what the story is about. It was quite unsatisfying to watch. Therefore I don't necessarily rec this movie.

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Masterful storytelling that doesn't fool around and delivers the punch straight to your face.

I don't usually write reviews until I've finished the entire thing, but with this one I'm only 4 eps in but I'm thoroughly impressed and couldn't stop myself from saying something.

Incredibly realistic and relatable. Characters behave exactly how a real person would, if they encounter a situation like this, and the show doesn't shy away from showing us each an every thought process they go through which is very organic instead of having leads who are either super smart or super stupid.
However, this is exactly what makes the show difficult to watch, at least for me. Not because it's particularly gory or thriller-y but because IT'S TOO REAL! It made me feel second hand stress and panic because the characters were doing exactly what I would do and.... holy moly the impact it causes.
Therefore I would say you'll need some guts to watch this, unless you aren't particularly sensitive to that sort of thing. Me? I had to pause like every 15 mins because I was anxious watching the characters' desperation. Also the police being strict and serious with their job... and there can be very few nightmarish things to a civilian than finding yourself on the wrong side of the Police, and them not believing a word you are saying. It's no joke.
Shudders.

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3D, realistic but at the same time heartwarming drama about Army. A pleasant surprise.

Watching the 1st 5 eps of Ace Troops, I fast forward or skipped a lot. I couldn't really grasp what the drama was trying to do, the background military details or scenes with Seniors etc didn't intrigue me, I was there for the coming of age story of the kids which I thought was the strong point of the show. The shenanigans they got into were realistic, relatable and I loved how it gave a mundane, "Even the soldiers are humans, not killing machines" approach to the show.
Also while I'm not Chinese I think I can safely say the drama doesn't have in-your-face patriotism or propaganda (which seems to be something that puts out lot of viewers unfamiliar with/dislike patriotic themes) , only a reasonable amount that you'd expect to come with any military drama (expecting a military drama to have zero patriotism is pointless).
Anyway that was about the good things I had to say about Ace Troops, and I stuck through mostly for Xiao Zhan or so I thought. And I'm glad I did.
Because I started seeing more and more positive things about it. It started with noticing how "non-glamourous" XZ was here. Usually he stands out with his looks, but here, he's just another normal soldier. A fairly good looking one but that's about it. The drama's goal wasn't to promote or hide under a single character or actor, but to create a collective story where every single person equally contributes.

By extension, the entire drama was grounded and humble, and never glorified military and instead discussed it from multiple viewpoints. It was so nice and such an unexpected, refreshing surprise, I started caring more. I stopped skipping scenes and started paying complete attention.
Absolutely none of the characters were perfect. They had lots of flaws. But this wasn't due to lazy writing or because the scriptwriter thought it was right for the characters to behave in ways they did, because each time a character did or had a questionable opinion/attitude/action, there was always, always another character to counter and question what they were doing. Therefore these flaws were intentionally done, do emphasis how human the characters were and how everyone makes terrible decisions in life.
It made them feel like people you encounter in day to day in real life. I always love myself a non-judgemental, empathetic and nuanced storytelling like this.
Never did I imagine I'd binge a hard-core 40 ep military drama in less than a week, and thoroughly enjoy it. It made me root hard for almost all the characters and made me cry multiple times.

Also I think I have never ever been this impressed with a Cdrama production before. I know I know, there have been lots more big dramas with obvious "big production values" right? So what caught me by surprise here?
I was already impressed from since the initial episodes with how they had full on regiments of extras- all trained and disciplined etc which must be like 100x difficult than handling regular extras for a drama.
And now I see the war scenes and explosions and floods..... like omg???
Did they get footage from real army or did they really recreate all these.... anyway I'm mindblown.

I've been complaining for a while about how C Cinema etc productions from about 20 yrs ago were not afraid to be full on grimy, gritty but rarely we see such content anymore, everyone too focused on glorified, rose-tinted approaches.
And then Ace Troops happened and took it up like 5 notches.

I'm left wondering about how the hell was this drama made? How did they plan it even, to look so believable and real? How much was the budget? How much time did it take?

In conclusion, I'm glad to see the drama took its job seriously. It's glamorizes very little and keeps things realistic at the same time making it a show about people behind the guns which makes it so watchable despite what it looks like on paper, even for people who thought they wouldn't like a show of this theme (like me).
I think it's very important for a country with military history and so much war and pain to depict it in dynamic ways like this (not overtly rose-tinted, not overtly patriotic/propagandaic) so viewers could learn about the sacrifices that were made so they could enjoy peace.
Ace Troops isn't a perfect show, it does have issues here and there (I had quite a bit of issues with last few eps) and I'm sure it also has inaccuracies on military plotlines too which are not visible to a common viewer like me, but I think I can safely say this is comparatively a really well made military drama.

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I'd say while this movie must have been praised back then, it's definitely dated now.

The vignette style was choppy and distractingly done. I like vignette style when it's done in a cohesive way- they do not necessarily have to be connected to each other or the main plot arc but each arc must be dealt with equal weight/attention and brought to full closure by the end. Like they should go round and round throughout the movie; 1,2,3,4-1,2,3,4, 1,2,3,4.
In Tampopo, you get random arcs thrown in from here and there, and even after the movie had run half its course, it was STILL introducing new characters and I gave up. It went like this; 1,2,3,4- 2,5,4- 1,4,3,6

Also there were some scenes that would def not be palatable to average modern audience/would be censored or come with a warning: the gross egg yolk and oyster scene... also they killed an actual live softbelly turtle onscreen.
On top of that, the storytelling was simply too overdramatic at times.

Overall not an experience I enjoyed. If you want to explore Japan's food culture through a golden oldie movie... well, this is not it. I'd suggest finding another one. I'm sure there are plenty.

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A good story that fell victim to overstretching once the first arc was over

Playing Go was a masterfully told, well-paced thriller full of veteran actors, a 90's small-town crime intrigue + slice-of-life + witty-dark-humor which is genre Chinese drama and movie land excels at. It was a surreal but also quite believably imagined cat-and-mouse game between two brothers, one an acclaimed cop, another a loser in life, a Weiqi teacher at the local daycare center for kids who was pushed into a bank robbery case.
And that was until ep 8, when the first arc ended, with 99% of the threads wrapped up. The quality of the storytelling began spiraling downwards almost immediately after. It was like the scriptwriters used up all their brain cells to get through the initial worldbuilding and after that they had no clue how to either satisfyingly wrap up the story or continue it. The story began putting forth unserious and frankly, dumb situations just so the characters are "forced" back into the so-called Game of Go from the relative peace they found after the first arc.

For example,
1. When Yangao ran out at night to look for his toy that his dad threw away like... hours away of a car ride. No sane receptionist would allow a tiny preteen with a CAST on his leg, no less, would've give a child a torch upon request and let them leave the hotel without informing their parents first. And Yangao shouldn't have been able to reach the place he lost the toy on foot. All that happened just so Yangao and Cui Ye could have a father-son bonding moment.
2. The scene where Xia Yu is the only one on duty at the textile factory when it was running a crucial batch for the company's future, she takes a call to Xiasheng and forgets to keep an eye on the spools, and the batch gets damaged. Even if Xia Yu gave the room her full attention this still would've happened. That was a LOT of spools for a single person to keep an eye on. And if the company was so careless to leave just one person supervising the production at such a crucial time, then it's no surprise it was already on the verge of bankruption. In other words, the incident happened for no reason other than to just push Xia Yu back into narrative, and the writers couldn't think of a single other plausible way to do it other than making Xia Yu look like a silly girl in love when it wasn't really her fault even to begin with.

And there were many other scenes like this that kept happening. I could've overlooked them in an average romcom but I came into this show with MUCH higher expectations, and because it did show me how much potential it had in the first eight episodes.
Sad, is all I have to say.

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