Reviews

Tender, compassionate, and honest

I wasn't sure what I was getting in to with this film, and I was pleasantly surprised with the story I was treated to. It was an honest portrayal of the choices and regrets of queer people, especially those growing up in a society that isn't accepting and is often actively against you.
I greatly enjoyed this film and it's compassionate portrayal of both girls and both perspectives. We don't always have the same oopportunities and paths in life, and we all do the best with what we're given. I trusted both leads, felt their pain, and accepted and understood their decisions even when they chose polar opposites. I praise both actresses for their amazing and tender portrayals of their characters.
I hope more people can find and enjoy this film, and with it learn something about themselves and about those important to them.

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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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