Reviews

Peng Xiaoran's first movie.

Reason I'm watching was because of Peng Xiaoran - my favourite actress. Lay Zhang was okay, although I would prefer to watch just both of them as ML and FL.
Story wise is quite boring, especially the past, I often speed it up. The emotional connection was not quite there. I understand being a movie of Jackie Chan of course there will be creative fighting scenes. But that is all there is...creative fighting scenes.
The worst part for me was the CGI face of younger Jackie Chan. It felt emotionally detached. There were no feel to it and in relation to the other characters. It's lifeless.
I would give it a very low rating, because of the boring story line and inconsistency. But for Peng Xiaoran's sake, I would give it a decent score, because movie ratings and review shows on her MDL page.

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FAILURE

The Trailers were misleading.
This drama promised to offer something fresh and healing.
We all thought it would be about young people struggling to find themselves amid all the difficulties, their traumas and past, all while welcoming their nephew into their lives and becoming parental figures for him.
But it really wasn't.
The producer and writer really FLOPPED REALLY HARD.
Instead of giving a concrete drama with a decent storyline, they went for the short and made a stupid love triangle that NEVER ENDS.
I get that the FL rekindling with her past first love (SML) is part of the concept of ''navigating life as a young adult and finding herself'', but there is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON for it to last for 7+ episodes. The baby plot was buried, and they made the ML stay like an NPC who suffers for an average, stupid girl who can't set boundaries.

Don't waste your time on this mediocre drama.
Giving it a 1 because it's impossible to give 0.5 (Sorry baby Woojo, you were amazing, but that stupid Sunbae ruined the drama)

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Extremist Tsundere Younger Brother ML

I watched this for Wang Xuan and i prefer this drama than the drama with Zhao Zhendong. The chemistry between Wang Xuan and Cui Shiyi were on fire, Cui Shiyi kissing skill were elevated and they have real Older woman/Younger brother vibe.

ML can't be touched by anything, but once he's with his favorite older sister aka FL, he becomes spineless like jelly when he near FL To get FL's attention, he did everything. ML always breaks up FL numerous relationships, eliminates villains who threaten FL, feigns weakness to get a job and becomes FL assistant, ML even broke his own leg, ML is really ruthless to himself.

FL never loses to everyone so you can watch this without getting blood tension high. FL even assume ML wants to search his love but never notice his feeling to her.

The cons is almost everyone around FL were questionable, they always giving FL bad solution for her problem. And the manager drug her to make her happy, like what kind of mushroom did you eat to have stupid logic like that.

Recommended to watch.

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This is such weird one

Wandering is one of those movies that doesn’t sit right. You watch it, and afterwards you feel this strong urge to talk about it, to explain what it made you feel, but the words just don’t fully come. It’s unsettling.
Plot**
The story follows 9-year-old Sarasa, who loses her father to cancer and is sent to live with her aunt, her aunt’s husband, and her 14-year-old cousin. Her aunt sees her as a burden and as someone who will only cause trouble. The worst part is also that her cousin does bad things to her every night. Sarasa already feels unwanted and out of place.
One day at a park, she meets 19-year-old Fumi. When Sarasa tells him she doesn’t want to go home, he tells her she can go with him. Weeks pass, and the entire country becomes consumed by the news of a kidnapped 9-year-old girl. Years later, when Sarasa is an adult, she meets Fumi again.


The story feels strange, and I’m still not sure if my understanding is completely correct.
When you watch the movie, you mostly see things from Sarasa’s perspective. In her memories, she is living in a house with a 19-year-old who feeds her and provides for her. It sometimes feels calm. Almost normal.
But then there is the world’s perspective: a 9-year-old girl has been taken by a 19-year-old man ( if you know what I mean). That is kidnapping. That carries obvious and disturbing implications.
As Sarasa grows up, her flashbacks sometimes make their relationship seem almost platonic. Yet there are small moments that hint something isn’t right, subtle signs that make you uncomfortable and question Fumi’s intentions. The film never clearly defines him as purely evil, but it also never lets you feel safe about him.

That’s what makes it so hard to interpret.
It becomes even more conflicting because Sarasa’s life before meeting Fumi was already painful and unstable. Compared to the emotional neglect she experienced at home, her time with him might feel different in her memory. And that creates this uncomfortable grey area that the film refuses to resolve.
So I wonder, is she remembering it as safer than it was? Is trauma reshaping her perception? Is the movie intentionally blurring the lines between personal memory and social reality?
I found it difficult to fully grasp what the film wanted me to conclude. It doesn’t guide you toward a clear moral statement. Instead, it leaves you in that tension, between sympathy and discomfort, between perspective and reality.
Wandering isn’t an easy watch. It’s not a film that wraps things up neatly. It leaves you questioning what you saw and how you feel about it, and maybe that lingering confusion is exactly what it’s meant to do.

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The show should've been called "Our Ragebait"

wtf is the severe decline in the plot development from a fluffy co-parenting storyline in the first few episodes into an absolutely exhuasting love triangle, annoying second male lead, and dumb female lead. like i get being confused over your first love aka your past vs your new life and her feelings might mostly be nostalgia, but at some point, this love triangle has NO business taking up most of the episode and having absolutely nothing to give to the actual plot development. writer-nim, here is a better plot written in 30 seconds:

ep 6: love triangle peaks but FL realises she gravitates towards ML
ep 7-8: more fluffy moments for the family, SML realises he has no place in FL's new life and their timing was never right. FL and SML has a closure moment where they realise they just weren't meant to be, and FL and ML gets tgt
ep 9-10: fluff moments+angst from the dad+ mystery reveal regarding ML's abandonment by his brother
ep 11-12: climax and conclusion of the dad and their psychological issue plot and they become a proper family

bro

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Complex Time Travel drama

I watched this last year because i really miss Zhen Ziqi works (he actually work from behind more than acting) and this drama was quite unconventional take from usual short drama story. Never watch Yang Qiru but her acting in this drama was quite good so this drama is not come to be wasted.

The plot is FL almost died on her wedding day. A stranger appeared with hatred, wanting to wipe out her entire family in one fell swoop. Time suddenly stopped. A little girl appears and claiming to be FL future daughter with her enemy ML at that time. FL collects different information at different points in time and pieces it together. FL repeatedly tugs at the hands of ML from different timelines until she matches him in his ideal state (this raises the question of whether he is still the same person). It involves time travel and time theory, mixed with some memory fragmentation.

Both the ML and FL parents are researchers working on time travel. Unfortunately, they are all killed by others. ML is adopted by his uncle, and the FL is adopted by an uncle in his family, but they are not told she is not their biological child.

Controlling the camera is quite difficult when filming time-travel dramas so i respect the production team and have lenient judgement. And i have a question when i watch this: If viewed as a single timeline, the plot structure is an infinite flow in terms of time or If viewed as multiple timelines, it's like you're torn into hundreds of parts. Each part retains your memories, and when retrieving those memories, it undergoes a second splitting and tearing (backup) until a perfect state is achieved.

Recommended if you like not so usual time travel drama.

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WORST written fl in a while

2 people closest to the leads the person both of them cared for the most
her sister and his brother Passed away In an unfair accident nonetheless

if this show was written by good writers even just this much would have been enough
to build a good story about grief and loss
with woojo being the only ray of light in their life
but it feels like they are perfectly fine after their death it's business as
usual

instead of focusing on overcoming hardships in life and a new found family, hope and a sense of belonging
they decided to focus on the stupid love triangle

the fl after being confessed to by both ml and sml
does not reject any one of them or set-up any boundaries with either of them instead
receives help and affection from both of them

and choses to ignore as if nothing happend
and the sml asks to go on dates she accepts
without rejecting the ml she's keeping both of them on the hook
it's MAD how undecisive she is

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Tonal Whiplash: The Series

I love JoongDunk. They’re one of my favorite pairings at GMMTV, and I became a huge fan of them after watching The Heart Killers. I’ve especially enjoyed seeing Dunk improve with every project, so the low score I gave Dare You to Death has absolutely nothing to do with them or the cast. I wanted to make that clear first.

But… this series is bad. Not even “so bad it’s good.” Just plain bad.

What makes it frustrating is that I can see a version of this show that actually works. There’s real potential here. I like the concept of a seemingly perfect friend group hiding horrifying secrets. I like that one of them is the brother of Joong’s character, which adds emotional complexity even if the show barely explores it. I genuinely loved the first half of the final episode, especially Pufai and the doctor’s dynamic while forcing Champ and Chereen into that brutal fight. Those were the moments where the series finally leaned into its darker ideas. I even like the officer's romance and dynamic, even though it kept changing the tone of the series.

Pufai, in particular, was compelling. We didn't see much of her in the present, but I liked how her trauma shaped her and how she ultimately became the mastermind behind everything. That psychological element had a lot of promise.

My biggest issue is the tone. This should not have been a romantic comedy.

This story would have worked far better as a full horror-thriller, with the JoongDunk romance as a side plot rather than the central focus. I know that’s controversial since this was meant to be their series, and I understand they were likely following the novel (though I haven’t read it, so I can’t compare). But it felt like the writers didn’t know what kind of show they wanted to make, and instead of choosing, they tried to do everything at once.

The tonal whiplash was exhausting. One moment, we’re in dark psychological manipulation, with characters being brutally murdered; the next, we’re back in rom-com territory. I truly believe these elements could have been blended successfully, but that requires careful writing and tonal control. Either the writers didn’t know how to balance it, or they didn’t put in the effort to make it cohesive. And that’s what makes it such a shame.

I didn’t hate the series. But it should have been so much better. If you loved this show, that’s great. I’m genuinely glad it worked for you. It just didn’t work for me. I’ll still support JoongDunk, and I hope their next series has stronger, more focused writing. I’ve heard the novel is quite good, so I have hope for what’s next.

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