Reviews

Even if you start at a disadvantage, you can still be first across the finish line

Zero to Hero is an inspiring biopic about twelve-time Paralympic medalist So Wa Wai. So was the first para-athlete from Hong Kong to win gold and still holds the record in the 200m sprint. Zero to Hero is a feel good movie that also doesn't shy away from it's characters' faults and harsh reality.

So Wa Wai was born with haemolytic jaundice which resulted in cerebral palsy. His mother was told he would never walk or be able to hold chopsticks. And he would only be able to hear 10-20%. She carried him on her back, literally, until he was four. In a desperate life or death moment, the mother challenged him to walk. As he gained more ability, they learned he may not walk well, but he could run.

As a teenager he joined the para-athlete's association and trained to run in competitions. The way to his success did not always run smoothly. His family was poor and used desperately needed funds to help him achieve his success. The movie highlighted how difficult it was for Paralympic athletes to continue training and competing with few subsidies from the government.

The true heart of this movie was the mother-son relationship. Sandra Ng gave a beautiful performance as the resolute mother who refused to give up on her child and sacrificed greatly to ensure he became all he could be and that he would have a financially secure future after she was gone. This created conflict with Wa Wai as he worried she was using him at one point and with his younger brother who felt at times that his only role was to be Wa Wai's future caretaker. Though perhaps flawed, the strength of this mother's love and determination to gain the best for her son and for him to overcome his limitations shined through. "Run to me at the finish line."

Leung Chung Hang's performance never felt patronizing. He poignantly portrayed a child dependent on his mother who grew into a man with his own goals and need to help his family. Yet in the end, it was the love for his dedicated mother that gave him the strength to attain those goals.

Heartwarming and inspirational with enough realistic edge to keep it from being treacly, Zero to Hero is a winner.

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Decent movie with misleading beginning

The biggest flaw of this movie is definitely its first half an hour where the viewer is left to piece together rather important information in scenes that change quite abruptly in what could have been a fun integration of scenes through the eyes of the characters, but ended up just being confusing. The movie significantly improves in the later half and leaves its more experimental scenes behind in favour of what then turned out to be not a rom-com or romance movie but rather a movie about healing, family and past relationships, that culminated in a sad but sweet ending.

The acting is good but not outstanding, same with the score. Kudos that the director at least tried to make this movie a little more avant-garde, even if it didn't always end up working out. The scenes that do work out are nice enough to look at.

For everyone who wants to watch this movie, I'll give you the general advice that the guy in the funky outfits is NOT the ML, it's the MC's brother. This is not immediately apparent and even when the film does explains the familial relationship, it's deliberately vague about it for the sake of the family line plot, but this unfortunately culminated in me being already sort of invested in a ship that would definitely never happen.

If you want to watch the movie on Netflix, the whole thing is only about 1 h 30 min and maybe a good watch for a rainy Sunday afternoon. It's worth a watch.

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Boring and not thrilling

This movie was marketed as a thriller but upon watching it, I did not feel thrilled at all.

The story was just really meh — nothing really stood out to me, and it was kind of predictable. The characters didn't have much depth outside of their stories and the pacing of the movie just felt really slow and boring. I didn't feel the stakes in anything, mostly because a lot of the decision-making was questionable; it just felt as if the characters were going through the motions in order to make the plot play out tragically the way it was supposed to.

I'll still watch the next few movies but hopefully they make me feel more emotions; I didn't feel any while watching this one.

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Interesting and good

This is an older one so the quality was not so great. But the story was interesting.

At times it was just overly brutal and hard to watch and other times it was kinda cheesy which is good cause I couldn't have handled it if it was more realistic. Definitely dark though. Probably won't watch it again though.

Though the scene at the end between the girl and the teacher had me wondering what that was about. I will have to look it up and see if I can find anything.

The music definitely gave me Star Wars vibes and it made it feel more dated to me. It was used well but not something that stood out in a good way in my opinon.

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The movie makes as little sense as the synopsis above.

There is no reason as to why this story is told in the way it is. It's probably the most pretentious movie I've ever seen and the most nonsensically edited movie I've ever seen. It's trying so hard to be clever, and it fails miserably. I can't even tell what the message was supposed to be because it's so poorly executed. This movie is so structureless that I don't even want to call it a story.

Also the tags are wrong. This movie isn't a gl. It might be homoerotic (and that's a very cautious might). Don't watch this if you're looking for gl.

Honestly don't watch this movie in general.

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Beautiful, emotional, sad and amazing!

OMG this was so emotional, so beautiful and sad like poetry !
I rare have that much emotions after movie... and first time on MDL I feel angry about other peoples reviews.... how anyone can rate this movie so low and say "couldn't feel love"...
Main leads chemistry was crazy, male leads acting is sooo great you can feel how he can't breath from love, female lead was good too, her acting isn't on ML's level but it's understandable - she was young actress next to veteran actor.
Cinematography with music was so beautiful and harmonic, every scene was needed and good or great!
Main plot and screen time is romance and main leads (though movie is ML's point of view, more his story) but even few scenes without main leads was so well done to show society (not in very dark colors, how it is often with subject of infidelity but still with it's real bitterness) trough soldier's wives and how they discus events and people. I had expectations of more dark/tragic consequenses from society/outer world and was afraid of it, I've seen movies with infidelity especially not modern world and often it's so dark and cruel that after watching you have very hard/bed mood, and I was glad that this movie didn't dramatized too much. Also secondary characters are good, not too much bad or good, I mean to credit main leads or justify their actions (especially infidelity), often movies and tv shows make other characters too bad, so here wasn't that case. Overall every detail, every scene, character was exactly how it should be.
Mature context and sex scenes were also sooo beautiful, I can't remember sex shown as beautifully (I only had this feeling about western tv series "Outlander"), it was so open, shown full acts and still so esthetic... it was making love!

p.s. I'm rating story 9'5 because when I see "all 10" reviews I think it's not rational and trustworthy, though story hadn't weak parts, but always is chance of something better, so because I don't love rate every aspect with 10, story gets unfear 9'5 ))))

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Fun and intense

This movie is different from the first one — there are some things I liked better and some things I liked less.

I thought the plot was great — it was a lot more high-stakes than the first one, and the villains seemed to have more backstory and be more layered than the caricature money-hungry villain from the first movie.

This goes without saying but the fight scenes were great (cinematography, choreography, audio, and all).

There was a little less humor in this one, but it was still enjoyable nonetheless, and I don't have a problem with this movie having more intensity and seriousness.

Kaoru is not my favorite character and it doesn't help that both movies ended a similar way because of her; even with that, however, this was a fun movie with a great performance especially by the main actor.

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Endearing with great action sequences

There are some points of this movie that are a bit cheesy, and I wasn't a huge fan of the caricature-ish main villain and the addition of guns (close combat is just that much more captivating).

All that aside, however, there was something just so endearing and fun about this being the first movie where we would get all our character introductions and see the gang come together, even if sometimes the storylines felt disjointed.

The main actor just KILLED it though. The transitions from hitokiri badassery to wholesome-guy-carrying-vegetables were great and the combat scenes were perfect, in terms of choreography and cinematography and sound effects. They're just so fun and satisfying to watch, and I especially loved that it was combined with hidden identity reveals.

There was a perfect balance of humor and seriousness — Sanosuke's scenes especially.

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Almost normal movie 《●_●》

A brand new horror film is coming to Shudder and boy, do I have some thoughts on this one. The Medium has already won an award at the Bucheon International Film Festival 2021 for Best Feature Film. If you are wondering whether or not to give this movie a watch, stay tuned to this review for my thoughts.

《About The Medium 》¤

The Medium made its debut in South Korea in Summer 2021. It currently stands as the sixth highest-grossing Korean film of the year. The story comes from award-winning South Korean writer and director Na Hong-Jin. This is Hong-Jin’s first film produced under his new banner, Northern Cross. The film is directed by Banjong Pisanthanakun, the Thai director who gave the horror world Shutter.

《My Thoughts》¤

Before I dive in here, I want to preface my review by saying that I love watching horror movies from around the world. I love seeing different interpretations of typical horror tropes and all of the subgenres. Because of this, I was super excited to watch The Medium. Unfortunately, this movie did not meet my expectations.

My biggest issue is that The Medium is too long for the story. In my opinion, the entire first half of the film could have been reduced to approximately 10, maybe 15 minutes. There were so many scenes that I felt were unnecessary and did not serve the plot in any way. To be honest, I was so bored throughout the first half of the film. I could have fallen asleep. Don’t get me wrong, many of the scenes were shot well. I just did not see a point behind them.

Once the film got into the second half, things started to pick up a bit. More action occurred and the story finally began to develop. The more I got to see what was happening to Mink, the more I liked what I was watching. The shining star in this otherwise bland movie is Narilya Gulmongkolpech’s performance. She does a spectacular job portraying a possessed person. 

I actually enjoyed the final 30 or 45 minutes of The Medium. The kills are intense but believable and the story flows at a good pace. As for the ending, I was not disappointed by the way the story concluded. It seemed like an appropriate ending to me, although some people may disagree.

Unfortunately, The Medium‘s final moments were not enough for me to like the film as a whole. The movie is over two hours long, and I enjoyed maybe 45 minutes.

《More Thoughts》¤

If you like your horror movies to have gore, this is not the film for you. When you reach that final stretch, there are a few good scenes with a bit of blood and guts. However, you have to wait through the entire rest of the movie. Even then, if gore is your thing, it is not worth the wait. I do not watch horror movies for the gore, but if there are going to be kill scenes, I like them to at least be hard-hitting. Also, I hate having to wait so long to get to the action, the meat of the story.

I get that there has to be some story building, but there is such a thing as too much “before.” I want action in a horror movie; I want the fear to build. The Medium did not give me that. I guess you could call this movie a “slow burn,” but I feel like it goes beyond even that.

Also, I want to mention a few trigger warnings…
There is mention of suicide attempts. The scene does not show the actual attempt and it is quite short, but if that is a big trigger, be aware. Also, some people may have an issue watching scenes involving blood from menstruation. There are several in The Medium. While I feel this is no different than any other blood shown, someone may feel differently.

My final note is that the whole film is set around a documentary team filming all of the happenings, but around the middle, I feel like that detail was almost forgotten. The team seems to fade to the background and not even be present at times. Later, they appear again and are once again part of the story. For that one period, though, they just disappear.

《The Medium – Conclusion》¤

Will I watch The Medium again? No. Do I regret watching it? Also no. It was not to my taste, but that will not be the case for everyone. If you love horror movies about possession, watch it. If you enjoy a prolonged burn story, watch it. Also, if you are a horror lover and have a couple of hours to kill, watch it. My final verdict? I did not enjoy The Medium and will not be adding it to any must-watch lists. 

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A pool of emotions one can dive into

I watched this on a whim. I didn't plan on it at all and despite the 32747 other shows on my plan-to-watch list, the synopsis of this caught my eye so much that it skipped the list.

To begin with, I was shooketh just 20 minutes into the movie because I totally did not expect it to be as explicit as it turned out to be. And to make that explicitness into something so artistic and pleasing with emotions so raw is not an easy feat that this movie could accomplish. Enough that I could not bear to skip the stuff I usually do.

The movie did end up leaving me frustrated, but for me, it is worth the turmoil it put me through for two hours. One should be in the right frame of mind to watch this, and I totally was. It is filled with angst, raw passion, and fear of loss, and it was such a beautiful depiction of the above-mentioned emotions. The political intrigue was just enough to support the main plot while not being too confusing. In my opinion, this movie was a perfect balance between romance, angst, pain, politics, and betrayal.

Definitely worth giving a try. (Make sure you are comfortable with bloodshed and nudity before you decide to give this a shot)

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A good time killer

This movie has been on my watchlist for a few weeks and I finally has the time to watch it last night . I really love the storyline its look lame yet it warms you . Im a big fans of comedy and family theme movie . The theme of finding his dad is so cute . During the first half I was a bit confused with the plot but as they found the owner of the pager (a communication device used on 90s) things start getting interesting and I really love it . Plus this movie got a major plot twist but y'all have to watch it for yourself . It's worth it if you are a fans of a light cute family movie .

P.S is it just me or wei chen/vision wei kinda look like shinee minho 😭🖐🏻

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Somehow with Kusunagi's superb acting, the casts still florishes

Truly Kusanagi's acting is stellar in Typhoon Family/ Stormy Family. He fleshes out those moments of resentment and grudge while balancing it out with the deep-rooted care and concern his character would have as a son and a father. I would really rewatch this solely for his acting. I'd like to add Kotetsu's daughter, Yuzuki, has a brilliant casting. Both had strong striking faces, definitive of Kusanagi.

The cast really gelled well together in this tumultuous yet heart-warming movie. For a non-action/non-fantasy movie, it does a great job of keeping you interested with exposition and revelations as this dysfunctional, "disgusting" family reconcile with their father's passing. There were ample moments for you to even get to know the supporting cast and their role in this messy inheritance settling.

Like how "Kotetsu" is the main character's burdensome bohemian name, this movie is good use of your leisure time. It's certainly unique, exciting and bohemian enough to remind you that no matter how idiosyncratic family can be, all that is well will be well.

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Could be better ...

I watched this movie first for Park Hae Jin, then because the story looked nice.

Indeed, the subject is not well known, and like all subjects dealing with disease, we can only be touched.

Park Hae Jin is as I like it, just as I want.

On the other hand, I confess that I did not understand such a sad ending, and for me without reason. Of course, in life, not everything is a "happy ending". But here, why did this movie end like this?

Sincerely it was a disappointment, and tarnished the whole movie. If it was to end on a strong emotional note, why not, but personally, I found it all terribly unfair.

To be discovered in spite of everything, but without necessarily expecting much.

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