Despite potential, held very little appeal in multiple regards
It's a pity that this turned out this way, because the acting was fantastic. And the basics of the story was intriguing. And I tend to ADORE reincarnation stories. Especially stories that involve reincarnation in multiple ways/areas.But the story was inconsistent. I think chief among this set of complaints is the Female Lead. She's CENTURIES old and has a divine boost to her powers - but she was consistently weak, despite claims by the characters to the contrary. You can be kind-hearted, without being weak. I was very disappointed with this aspect of her character.
The CGI was unimpressive and the music added nothing to the aura of the story at all. So there weren't even non-story elements to praise.
And above all, take it from someone who appreciates all kinds of endings: That ending was so purely unthought-out that I'm still reeling. Like, it was a closed ending, but are we supposed to just accept that? There's just so, so much wrong with it.
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What's real?
This movie invites the audience to an active interpretation - not only of the emotions and intentions of the characters, but also of the actual plot. Is the depicted event "real"? Is it her imagination? Is is his imagination? It also leaves you asking, what is more important: being free or being loved? Is it possible to have a relationship that is free from a power struggle? Why does the main character identify with that particular novel character, Josée?The impact of this movie is so strong because of great acting, matching music and beautiful cinematography. I recommend it to people who enjoy some food for thought.
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Haunting psychothriller. Rather psycho-logical. Intense acting of a fantastic trio.
"Anchor" is a psychological thriller set in the competitive world of TV news anchor. A nightmare on the edge of a horror trip begins, as Jung Se-ra receives a strange phone call, followed by fatality. Se-ra sets out to investigate herself... Eventually a psychiatrist plays a dubious role, starting to increasingly influence Se-ra´s world. Her manipulative controlling mother on the other hand cannot tolerate this. Increasingly, realities become blurred. What Se-ra finds out in the end is downright shocking.Like I said, this is a psychological thriller. On top of that, it gets mysterious, psychologically complex and a bit uncanny at times. Viewers see the world through the eyes of Jung Se-ra (impressive: Chun Woo-hee), who is getting confronted with her own blind spots. Tugging on one side is her dominant mother (spooky: Lee Hye-young), while on the other side the provocative psychiatrist In-ho (unfathomable: Shin Ha-Kyun) plays with fire confronting Se-ra's psyche with hypnosis.
"Anchor" clearly thrives on the intense acting of this fantastic trio. Haunting.
PS:
Don´t expect to get all the answers straight - the KMovie is rather psycho-logical.
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Was a bittersweet movie
First off, I like the collaboration between South Korea and Thailand. Being an avid fan of both countries, it was very refreshing to see a collaboration between the two countries.The story was quite sad to be honest, which I find is a very common theme with South Korean BL dramas. You have Min Hoon who commits suicide by drowning in the ocean because he was so severely bullied in the army. Which my guess is because they knew he was gay. Then you have Tae Kyung who ultimately does the same thing in the end, so that Min Ki and Jae Hee can be together in the end, I find very sad. I also find it a bit well can I say off putting that Jae Hee and Min Ki are dating each other when they both know that Min Hoon was Min Ki’s older brother and Jae Hee’s ex-boyfriend. I don’t know, it is a little uncomfortable for me that the younger brother Min Ki is dating his dead older brother’s ex-boyfriend. It doesn’t really sit well with me. All the while, Tae Kyung, Jae Hee’s half brother, is dying from a rare disease. Overall, it was a good movie and I don’t regret watching it. I just feel really sad that Tae Kyung and Min Hoon sacrificed so much for their brothers. I hope for their sake, that Min Ki and Jae Hee make the best out of their relationship.
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Straight-faced dramatics for a perfect mindless watch
It's a strange one. I contemplated dropping for a bit there. What kept me watching though was how likable all the characters are. Every single one. That's very rare to come by. From the little girl who watches too much John Wick, to the hired help with the perfect facial expression changes, to the little boy from Colombia giving the ML a run for his money, and yes, even to the ML who just wants to stack cups but keeps getting interrupted.Eventually, the straight-faced dramatics and comedy grew on me. I found myself chuckling and shaking my head at the ridiculousness quite often. It's perfectly mindless.
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Cheesy predictable thriller.....
Killed My Wife (Anaereul Jukyessda)” is a guilty, sinking suspicion, a question and in the end an answer to a mystery, cryptically served-up in a solid genre thriller that keeps you guessing, thanks at least in part to a bit of cheating on the part of the filmmakerJung-ho is bitterly convinced that “love needs money,” an idea he uses to justify his depressing gambling habit. Money, he believes, is the reason his wife (the gentle Wang Ji-hye) threw him out of the house. When Jung-ho lost his white collar job, he didn’t have the courage to tell her he had been fired and was scrounging for work as day laborer. Little did he guess what job she was forced to find to survive, and even when he does find out, it doesn’t seem to make much of an impression.
Only a bunch of gangsters running a gambling and massage business are raking it in. Our hero has borrowed money from the evil Mrs. Kim (Seo Ji-young), a sneering boss lady who threatens to cut off his hand Kim Ki-duk style if he doesn’t pay up. Her sadistic gloating seems more at home in a comic strip than a film, but the bitter final reveal about her — again, satisfyingly realistic — comes like an unexpected slap in the face of genre conventions.
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"However, What They Don’t Teach You Is How To Be An Adult."
I got a few recommendations from my buddies a while back to see this. I saw the good reviews of it in the news and also on MDL. I knew it wasn't going to be an easy watch. I appreciate the film makers, director, writers, and all who participated in this production in having the creative courage to tell a story about a social issue that is difficult to navigate and properly tell.This drama is gritty and tries to do a realistic portrayal of the characters so nothing goes through pretty pastel filters, you see the starkness as it is.
The focus of the story is about the extreme bullying a teenage girl deals with in her school. It starts off with her classmate who commits suicide due to the bullying. There's a difficult scene where her classmate's dead body is in the center of the school grounds with some students taking pictures of the scene and it was morbid. The FL goes to cover the dead body up out of respect, she becomes the new target of bullying.
Later on, her life intersects with a young thug who is an orphan. The FL and ML seem to have similar backgrounds of poverty and come from broken homes but they have different aspirations and trajectories. The FL is studious and does extremely well in school, she aspires to go to the best university. The ML has lived with a life of violence and has no direction. The FL gets his help to protect her from the bullying so she can focus on graduating and getting into a good university. Their relationship develops further as two lonely individuals who come to support each other.
The bullying continues to spiral out of control and turns into an absolute train wreck for the leads. Most of the adults in the drama give lip service on student bullying and turn a blind eye to it. It was difficult to watch towards the end when you feel the impending doom for both of the leads and the sacrifice one makes for the other.
Extraordinary story telling and deeply heartbreaking.
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Disgusting
This is a film that is deeply offensive to the Vietnamese people and the history of Vietnam. The film distorted history by portraying Korean soldiers who came to Vietnam as heroes, who rescued the Vietnamese from the Viet Cong. But history is different, Korean soldiers massacred, raped, and plundered Vietnam while they were stationed in Vietnam. This is an insulted to Vietnamese people, how can they create a movie that completely wrong to the history and proud of it like it is the true. This movie should be ban because it can make people misunderstand about the history, THE REAL HISTORY. No matter how touching the scenes in the movie are, it can not be deny that Korean soldier has committed terrible crimes.Was this review helpful to you?
Comedic Grief with Heart and Gangsters
On a script by Bae Se-young, who also penned the hilarious “Extreme Job”, “Stellar: A Magical Ride” combines comedy with action elements and some family (melo) drama, in a crowd pleasing effort that has both good and bad moments.Kwon Soo-kyung directs a movie that moves into a number of distinctly mainstream paths. The car-chase elements are combined with a road-trip aspect that has Young-bae stumbling upon almost every issue a (professional) driver can stumble upon. Offensive drivers, mechanical issues, impolite “customers”, not to mention a number who are willing to resort to violence to solve their road problems, with this last factor bringing us to another central aspect of the narrative, action, which is aplenty here and also includes much hand-to-hand combat. The approach to the action is mostly comedic, but the scenes occasionally are quite violent even if not bloody. Comedy is another central element here, essentially encompassing all others in the film, with the things that happen to Young-bae being the main source of it, as much as the way the gang members fail to catch him or get their cargo back. Lastly, his memories of his father, and his childhood in general, bring in a family drama aspect that occasionally borders on the melodrama, even more so after the appearance of Dong-sik, although the general approach remains focused on the comedic.
The combination of all these elements results in an episodic movie, whose individual moments are appealing, benefitting the most by Son Ho-jun’s acting as Young-bae, the function of the car, which eventually exhibits elements of humanity, and the fact that the villains are both dangerous and clumsy on occasion, with Kim Kyeon-woo as Sledgehammer, embodying this aspect to the fullest. Lee Sung-jae’s cinematography captures all these elements with a fittingly polished approach, with the exception of the flashbacks, whose “fogginess” could have been avoided. Shin Min-kyung’s editing results in an equally fitting fast pace that finds its apogee in the action scenes, where Jeon Jae-hyeong’s choreography also shines in its combination of comedy and violence.
At the same time, as a whole, the movie does not make that much sense, having too many things happening at the same time, too many characters involved, and the father arc occasionally bordering on the cheesy. Furthermore, and although there is nothing wrong with any performance, some more star quality would definitely benefit the film, considering its nature, with the comparison with “Extreme Job” highlighting the fact quite eloquently.
Despite some issues here and there, that do not allow it to reach the top of the category, “Stellar: A Magical Ride” is fun and quite easy to watch, and that is where its true value lies.
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1Garbage trying to look pretty
I tried to watch this a few years ago, because someone recommended it, but it is pure crap!Some actress goes to Germany - if memory serves correctly - to basically walk around, do nothing, tell her friend that she's been fucked by 200 men (well, okay, the exact number isn't given, but she implied she's a hoe) and to put some distance between herself and the married man she's currently getting shafted by.
Nothing happened for the longest of time and I ended up turning it off.
I'm only writing this review now because it popped up on one of my viewing lists and I recalled the absolute disdain I had for it.
Avoid.
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Some realities are black and white
Kalel, 15 is the story of a boy who looks in the mirror to assess his attributes. But unlike boys his age, he doesn't do it for vanity, but to survive. Surviving in a dysfunctional family, surviving with HIV, surviving others' judgement, surviving poverty, surviving being abandoned, surviving institutional indifference. Behind his impassive mask, Kalel's motto is to survive with dignity, the dignity he gives himself, not the dignity that results from others' endorsement.His story is a sad one, but the way it is told doesn't want to bring tears to our eyes, we are here to contemplate someone else life w/o judgement. It's a life journey whose details I'll forget, but when I'll encounter a boy his age on the street with that same gaze, I'll wonder if all is well in his life.
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Fullmetal Alchemist 3: Final Transmutation
1 people found this review helpful
A great adaptation from anime
When watching the 3 movies of Fullmetal Alchemist, I didn’t know that they were live-action (adaption from anime) so I can’t tell how good they are as compared to the anime. However, in my point of view the 3 movies are the best Japanese live-action that I have ever seen. The cast not only portray their roles pretty well but also good looking. I was impressed with Yamada Ryosuke in the role of Edward the most. The plots are interesting and surprise me at some points. The CGI, costumes and styling are great and attractive. I enjoyed watching this live action and have re-watched it a few times.Was this review helpful to you?
Meant for young teens, but an enjoyable watch regardless
Look, before I say anything else, know that this movie is very evidently for young audiences. It's a cute, simple, star-crossed fantasy film with eye-catching magic graphics. The acting is a bit poor. The plot is predictable. Nothing particularly high-emotion happens. (Also, on a side note: the movie poster is very misleading.) That's the nature of films with this age demographic.That said, I greatly enjoyed this movie. The music was stunning - in the way that only wuxias can be. The magic looked gorgeous. I loved the reoccurring theme of yin and yang. And the fact that the true climax isn't the big showdown, but rather the events right after the showdown was a really interesting choice that I don't see often. I know that should this film have been around when I was younger, I would've had this on repeat so much that it would've made the list of films my parents had to hide from me.
But as an adult, the rewatch appeal is quite low because of all that I mentioned in the first paragraph of this review.
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"If you don't let what's in your heart out, you'll choke on it"
Kurosawa calls upon his characters to stand up for what's right even if the odds are against them in Scandal. Honor, weakness, redemption, and a rebel painter on a motorcycle all figure into this film.A young, handsome Mifune Toshiro played the painter Aoye Ichiro who rebelliously road his motorcycle everywhere. When he offered a beautiful singer, Shirley Yamaguchi as Saijo, a ride back to her hotel in the mountains where he was also staying, the dominoes were stacked. The paparazzi had followed her to the hotel where she refused to have any pictures taken. In a genuinely chaste moment, the two were photographed together in what could have looked like an intimate scene. The tabloid wrote a salacious story about the two having a romantic getaway which went viral in a 1950's manner. When one of the photographers asked if it was okay to write a false story, the boss told him, "It doesn't matter if it's true. Once it's in print the public believes it." And therein lies one of Kurosawa's themes-the unscrupulous press who valued sales over truth and a gullible public who would believe it.
Ichiro decided to sue the magazine for the trouble brought down on himself and Saijo. Another theme-understanding the difference between right and wrong and standing up for what was right regardless of the consequences. In stumbled Hiruta Otokichi (Shimura Takashi) a lawyer begging for the job of representing him and the story became something else. Ichiro decided to hire Hiruta after meeting his tuberculosis bedridden daughter, a purity of love and light. The story now became focused on Hiruta's weakness. Weakness for money, betting, drinking, and in general doing all the things he considered loathsome...including selling out his client. Another theme-the disintegration of the ability to tell the difference between right and wrong in post war Japan. The film also began to center on Hiruta's weaknesses more than the court case and the gradual road to his redemption guided by his daughter and a motorcycle riding artist.
There were times in this film I thought I was watching a version of It's a Wonderful Life only with a down and dirty Clarence. It felt Capraesque in several places. For a Kurosawa film it was more sentimental and predictable than I would have thought. The shift from the story focusing on Mifune and Yamaguchi to Shimura's character was jarring. I normally enjoy Shimura's performances, but his hang dog, self-castigation went on too long for me. He would perfect this "poor me" performance for Ikiru. Fortunately, there were some lighter moments to break up all of his self-recriminations. As lovely as they were, Ichiro and Saijo came across rather one note and too perfect. Even with his habit of gunning his motorcycle and painting nudes, Ichiro practically squeaked when he walked, he was so clean and honorable.
The harsh commentary on the tabloids, moral disintegration, and the judicial system was not subtle. There was the obvious lament that while the fake news stories sold in the tens of thousands, Ichiro had trouble selling his actual works of art. Ultimately, the focus became about Hiruta's weaknesses without condemning them, simply exploring them and his reasons for them. Finally, watching as his lifeline was assembled, one that in the end might condemn him but set him free at the same time was worth rooting for. It takes a lot of courage to become a shining star reflected in a polluted pool of water.
I enjoyed this film, but not as much as I hoped I would. It was definitely worth watching for seeing Mifune Toshiro transporting a decorated Christmas tree on the back of his motorbike.
10/5/22
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It was based on a true story.
It was a really good storytelling of two people that struggled withe their own issues. The woman a very sensitive person, traumatized from a marriage that stripped her feelings down due to her intimation dysfunction. Hopeless (you can see her pain and desperation so clearly) she builds walls and her insecurity hits red! In my opinion the man also traumatized by family issues (the cook) really loved her, they made love not just sex but he couldn't give her what she needed at that time. They had to discover things for their selves separately. The movie was very good overall and the nudity was really acceptable for its kind of story.Was this review helpful to you?
