Reviews

A must-watch concert movie if you are a fan of Arashi !

I truly enjoyed my time watching this concert of Arashi. Being a fan, the nostalgia factor was very strong and it moved me quite a bit ! They played most of their iconic songs and it was a real pleasure to see the japanese public singing along with the idols.

If the songs were great, the atmosphere and the view of this huge audience really impressive, I must admit that both costumes and dancing could be better. Most of the dance routine felt relatively easy and similar. It absolutely did not diminish my enthusiasm but I surprised myself several time watching the concert thinking that the moves were a bit repetitive. For costumes, I admit that it is much better than years and years ago, they are not doing as much bulky/box costumes with many layers...But still, some felt a bit plain or simply lacking a wow factor.

What remains a constant in the group and ultra visible through the screen is the friendship between the members, their charisma and their happiness to be there, performing all together. The way they adress the public : they still have the same manner and it made me slightly tear up to see how much fun they had. If dancing did not blow me away, singing was really good. Listening to Ohno and Nino singing, Jun and Aiba specific tones and Sho rap was great and brought me up many good memories.

I would obviously recommend this to people that are fan of Arashi. If you have seen some of their past concerts, you will for sure experience nostalgic and happy feelings, remembering the past. A really uplifting watch !

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Interesting concept that could have gone deeper

This thriller follow up the investigation process of Woo Sang, a popular online streamer, while he is gathering clues on unresolved murders and streaming it live for his audience. While focusing on the mystery, the scenario let the viewer see the behind the veil of the streamer life, the need for likes and the rush to get viral, stay on top, in a very competitive world.

While I liked the approach of the story and the way that it was filmed, I am a bit more doubtful on the substance of the story and the ending itself which felt abrupt and would have benefited from a longer epilogue. The morale of the outcome is left voluntarily ambiguous but I feel that there was a lot more that could have been exploited given the topic and its voyeuristic nature. It is quite a short movie but I feel the pacing could have been better as well and that some of the twists (if not all) were very predictable.

Casting-wise, Kang Ha Neul does a solid job. His character becoming more and more unhinged until a critical point was quite fascinating to watch. The remainder of the cast is good as well, without any weak link. Production-wise, the camera work was quite well done with the way it allows the viewer to feel like the direct audience of the stream. Whileit sometimes may feel a bit too neat and easy to be realistic live-stream but overall, it really does the trick in immersing the viewer into the "live" investigation.

I would recommend this to people looking for a different kind of thriller. The twists are not super astonishing but the way it is filmed, making the viewer follow a "live-stream" of an investigation is pretty interesting. In addition to a better pacing and a longer epilogue, I wish they would have gone deeper on the streaming topic and all its consequences. More than the mystery, this is the aspect I found the most fascinating with all its inherent psychological and social elements.

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Never watch this please

Fist of all i didnt even have high hopes, I watched the first hour thinking it will turn out OKAY the least. But it BROKE my expectations. (In a bad way ofcourse) Lets start it off with Bihyoung (my amazing dokkaebbi), they named him...phil... PHIL?? how did they get PHIL from bihyoung??? And wasnt it a GRASSHOPPER box that gilyoung had in the original storyline? They changed it to..ants. ive never been so disappointed by such a small detail. Anyways, gilyoung turned out to be so rude and mean, he qas the POLITEST kid in the book, like HELLO?? WHERE IS THE ACCURACY. Gilyoung asked dokja to apologize for killing his ANTS.
Like bish HE SAVED YOUR ASS?. And when dokja met Joonghyuk. He screamed. FREAKING SCREAMED?,???? WHY????????and second of all, 2 hours in the movie, the writer still didnt make an appearance , whyyyyyyyy the hell? dropped completely, i hate this, dont watch ts.

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What you can't see can't hurt you...

Komori Chiaki (Katahira Nagisa), a young freshman at Asuka Girls' High School and a promising tennis player, is accidentally hit in the eye by her coach, Hiroshi Imaoka (Yamamoto Shingo ), during practice. The diagnosis is grim: Chiaki risks blindness in her injured eye, which would mean the end of her sporting career.
However, Hiroshi learns through indirect channels that there is a surgeon capable of performing miraculous operations who works without a license, in exchange for generous payment.
His name is Black Jack! (a funny and amused Shishido Jo).
The surgery is successful and Chiaki seems to be able to return to her life before the accident; However, the girl begins to experience what appear to be visual hallucinations: On certain occasions, she claims to see an elegant-looking man (Minegishi Toru, excellent) standing in front of her, but the problem is that no one else seems to be able to see him.

Immediately following his delirious and acclaimed “House,” the great and prolific director Nobuhiko Obayashi embarks on this curious “The Visitor In The Eye,” a comic book-inspired work financed by the HoriPro agency. This company saw in the genius of the director from Onomichi (a prefecture near Hiroshima, central to the themes of his filmography), in his anarchic, completely unconventional talent, the possibility of riding the long wave and attempting to expand his audience of enthusiasts beyond the limits of arthouse cinema.

The movie is a very freely adapted version of a story from the epic manga series “Black Jack,” created by the God of Comics, Osamu Tezuka. Black Jack is a formidable surgeon who operates without a license. He appears cynical and disinterested, obsessed with money (hence his exorbitant fees), but in reality he has a heart that is much more sensitive to the weak and oppressed.

It is impossible to summarize it briefly, partly because in Tezuka's universe, much like that of his American counterpart Walt Disney (there are many comparisons between the two masters), his characters—both in comics and movies-often interact in the most diverse ways, even if only in brief appearances out of context.

A bizarre hybrid of genres, “The Visitor In The Eye” travels on several parallel tracks, with elements of crime, mystery, and even fantasy, with surreal and supernatural touches that evolve into a truly intense and passionate melodrama, almost like old-fashioned Hollywood. The dreamlike dimension, given the film's theme, reigns supreme, in a flood of uninterrupted references.

Free from any limiting formalism, Obayashi, like an abstract painter, throws all his cinematic passions into the mix, creating the ideal atmosphere for the development of the story: The picture is undoubtedly a feast for the eyes, with particular attention to detail, colorful sets, lighting, and a truly immersive use of music, especially thanks to the repeated main theme. There is no shortage of symbolism, such as the recurring reference to water, above all.

While Tezuka's original manga was necessarily condensed (it is, in fact, a rather short episode), ending up depicting what is, quite prosaically, an unhappy (and tragic) representation of the experience of first love, this cinematic variant develops with a broader scope, happily exploiting the theme of visual perception, and therefore also its relative ambiguity, filtered through the eye (the gaze) of Chiaki “inherited” from her “donor.”

It is a sort of “contamination of the gaze” that leads the audience to greater involvement, guided (or manipulated!?), but also to an attempt to confuse them in that blurred boundary between reality and appearance, or dream, perhaps even hallucinatory (in certain passages it seems like being on a psychedelic trip), as, for example, in the almost contemporary (it is from the year before) “Obsession” by Brian De Palma, a faithful disciple of the master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock (speaking of “dreamlike suggestions”...)

And Obayashi, with his lighting tricks, painted scenery, and theatrical effects so dear to him and typical of cartoons (the house on the hill is truly exceptional), first immerses everything in a burning red (the color of passion!) and then gradually slips into a foggy grayness that leads us to the climax of the story.

The past and present end up intertwining, between flashbacks and fantasies, accentuating the evocative power of the images and the imaginative strength of the movie... It may all be artificial, fictitious, or exaggerated, as some critics have often pointed out, but this aesthetic fascination achieves its purpose of engaging and entertaining viewers who are willing to accept Obayashi's rules of engagement.

However, the film suffers from a less than perfect casting choice. Despite the very pleasant presence of Shishido Jo, it must be said that Black Jack's characterization is not as predominant as one would expect. His role in the story is not that of the main character, but he still acts as the driving force behind the plot, first through the miraculous operation that rekindles Chiaki's hopes, and then with the clever investigative insights that unravel the complex tangle, incidentally using a trick that was also employed—curiously—by Italian master of horror Dario Argento in one of his early films.

Much more intriguing, however, is the character of Shiro Kazama (Minegishi Toru, with a look that says it all.…), who dominates the second half of the picture. He comes across almost as a dandy, a charming decadent artist who seems to have stepped out of certain Gothic melodramas of the 1940s, and his crescendo drives the action very well, while Chiaki's characterization appears quite conventional and, frankly, ends up being overly passive in her development, which is nonetheless central and would require greater psychological (as well as expressive) depth.

As befits the subject matter, Osamu Tezuka's microcosm is also well represented, with some amusing appearances (which are a bit like cameos) by some of his famous personages; attentive viewers are left with the pleasure of spotting the references (and the actors involved).

“The Visitor In The Eye” should certainly not be considered one of Obayashi's most representative films, but the overly negative reviews are frankly unfair. Upon its release, it appears to have been a box office flop, and perhaps with a shorter running length and greater attention to the supporting characters, who are a little too stereotypical, the movie would have benefite, but the picture remains a truly remarkable experiment, capable of recreating and conveying that comic book aesthetic typical of its time, still vintage and linked more to artisan talent than to the chillness of contemporary special effects (let us remember that Tezuka passed away prematurely in 1989), which are decidedly colder and more detached.

7 ½

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A parody of an assasin movie

Mantis is an assassin themed korean movie that is supposed to have lots of action and gripping story, but unfortunately it's not. A spin off of Kill Boksoon (which I didn't fancied as well), Mantis is nothing but a kind of parody to this genre.

The movie is full of clichés : a villain cast only for an evil face, slow motion walks and lame dialogues. Also, instead of focusing on the genre, it became a quest of unrequited love. The talent of main leads - Yim Si Wan and Park Gyu Young - were a total waste in the film.

The pacing is slow, the acting mediocre, and what is meant to be stylish ends up as pure posturing. In the end, Mantis is not a thriller about assassins — it’s a catalog of recycled Korean clichés, where real tension is replaced with scenes so ridiculous they feel like a sketch.

To summarise, just avoid watching this movie and watch any of the existing good Korean action movie that is already out there in OTTs.

My Rating : 1.5/5

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ok... i don’t think this deserves the hate it is getting

As a novel reader, I knew this would be vastly different from the webnovel and it should not be treated as an insult to the OG.

You all need to realize that a web novel and live action are two entirely different dishes. The author had the liberty of using many constellations that have some real influence in many cultures and pitted them against each other. There were even instances of turning an actual god into a despicable villain. There were also instances where they used actual historical figures who were part of the Japan vs Korea history (I am talking about Lee Ji Hye). A web novel can get away with all this because the target audience usually overlooks such things when they come across certain sections (I am from India, and the author just off'd a few Hindu gods). A webnovel doesn’t cause controversy at a large scale that would actually impact how it is received/rated/monetized.

Now think of a movie that you want to release worldwide with a star-studded cast, a predominantly CGI-based shoot. Imagine the millions that go into the pre-, during, and post-production. They would need to tread carefully with the historical and mythological figures; otherwise, it might just get banned or get embroiled in a controversy that derails its collections. I wasn’t surprised that they were just showing us the constellation of Jung Hui Won among so many constellations.

Coming to the point of being too fast-paced, it's a 1.5-hour movie, unlike LOTR. If you put too less chapters and focus primarily on character development, you would end the movie at the first station itself.

You need to first understand why such decisions were taken and then give reviews. Game of thrones would have got trash reviews if it were a 3 part movie. This is definitely not a sub 7 movie.

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Not true to the Original Story

There are definitely aspects of this movie that hold true to the original webtoon, however as you get further into the movie you can see where it starts to drift away or reduce parts of the original webtoon.
I actually believe this would have been more liked if the story was made into a kdrama instead of a kmovie. The original story is so complicated and detailed that the drag of a long kdrama would have given some justice than the fast pace of the movie in my opinion.
What really bothers me though is the CGI in this film. You can tell where they put the most effort and practically gave up with the other designs.
If you are going to watch this movie, watch without thinking about the webtoon or just read the webtoon because it is 100% more worth your time.

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Secrets in the Hot Springs looked like it might be a funny spooky ghost tale set around a family hotel. Looks can be deceiving. While it might be humorous depending on your funny bone, it turned out to be more of a story of healing and friendship.

Hsiao Chin/Xiao Gin/Xiao Jin is on his third high school in five years. His parents died when he was nine and he’s lived with an aunt and uncle on and off since. At his new school he inadvertently saves two boys from being bullied and they latch on to him for dear life. When he’s called home due to his grandfather being ill, Little Princess and Lu Qun follow him to his family’s hotel. Unlike the website’s pictures of a luxurious spa, the hotel is run down and his grandparents nickel and dime guests at every turn. The trio end up bonding as they encounter spooky apparitions. In the face of their fears, Hsiao Chin will have to decide whether he is going to continue in the family business or not.

I am a fraidy cat when it comes to spooky stories and this was about as tame as a “ghost” story can get. The main thrust of this film was Hsiao Chin’s healing and coming to terms with his parents’ deaths and also developing friendships with an unusual duo. I found some scenes humorous, but admit this film wasn’t exactly my cup of silly tea. Everyone’s sense of humor is different and I’m quite sure others will find it more to their liking. My biggest complaint was that not much happened for the first 40 minutes of the film and the direction of the film was highly foreshadowed. The friendships were cute if overly stereotyped and everyone was able to grow and have problems resolved in a playful manner. Not likely a film for horror fans, but perhaps more for comedy friendship fans.

13 October 2025

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"The face is the door to the soul. When the face is closed off, so too it the soul"

The Face of Another explored the masks that we wear and how some of them lead to social isolation. And whether it’s more personally efficacious to be seen or to engage in banal invisibility.

Okuyama suffered a disfiguring accident at the factory where he worked leaving his face unrecognizable. His wife attempts to lift his spirits but he accuses her of patronizing him. When she spurns an awkward advance, he becomes enraged. He visits Dr. Hori, a psychiatrist and scientist, who is capable of making natural looking human masks. Hori develops a mask for Okuyama but warns the new face could cause his personality to change.

Nakadai Tatsuya gave a subtly nuanced performance as the deeply scarred man. At times he wore the burned skin or had his head completely swaddled in bandages. At other times his face was buried beneath Hori’s concoctions which had to be claustrophobic. And ultimately, he had a mish-mash of the different masks he wore. In all these iterations he was unable to use his expressive eyes and yet still gave a compelling performance. Kyo Machiko as Okuyama’s nameless wife hit all the right notes as a woman who strove to help her husband and was also deeply hurt from his emotional taunts. Hira Mikijiro as Dr. Hori was the epitome of a mad scientist, constantly pushing Okuyama’s emotional buttons, seeing how far the mask would transform his patient’s personality.

The film’s dialogue was heavy handed in describing the masks we wear. Masks that help us fit in, masks that set us apart, masks that enslave us and masks that set us free. Dr. Hori kept telling Okuyama that the mask was changing him. I’m not so sure about that. Okuyama was an unlikeable and manipulative character before the mask. The mask just emboldened him to act on his baser impulses. I didn’t comprehend Hiro’s declaration that if everyone wore one of his masks that there would be true freedom with no crime and there would be no need for trust or betrayal. No one would have a home so there would be no home to escape from. There was also a secondary story that never overlapped with Okuyama’s. A beautiful (nameless) young woman who suffered with scars on the side of her face due to the bombing in Nagasaki appeared periodically. Like Okuyama, she received unwanted negative attention for being different. She worked at a mental hospital populated by WWII soldiers. Desperately afraid that another war would hit the country, she seemed to represent the traumatic scars marring the beauty of Japan. Or she was a random character. This film had a lot of symbolism.

Director Teshigahara Hiroshi created a surreal world complete with a German beer garden and a hallucination inducing mad scientist laboratory. His use of different effects bordered on the gimmicky but I quite enjoyed his style. The acting was exemplary and the darkly lilting music perfectly enhanced the story. The story, however, was difficult for me as it wallowed in hopelessness and despair. Despite everyone wearing different masks, there were some that were unacceptable. Disfigurement meant exile, the crushing pain of rejection, or invisibility. Okuyama and the scarred young woman faced the price of a society unable to see past their scars, both physical and psychological. Death or madness was all that awaited them. Fair warning, The Face of Another was unrelentingly dark. Pass the popcorn and the Tylenol.

12 October 2025

Trigger warning: brief nudity and a brief incestuous situation

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With its gentle tone and emotional depth, Past Lives sets the stage for a friendship that almost became more but remains most powerful in memory. Beautifully written and produced, it reflects the bittersweet truth of past relationships. A beautifully crafted reminder that some connections shine brightest in the past, even when tinged with sorrow.

In all, the story unfolds like a conversation with the past; soft, tender, and profoundly human. Every scene lingers with the ache of what might have been, reminding us that some connections are not meant to last, but to shape us. Thoughtfully written and gracefully produced, Past Lives captures the delicate balance between fate and choice, love and timing. This film doesn't offer closure for anyone who’s ever wondered about the one that got away; it provides understanding.

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