For those that watch a lot of South Korean cinema

[Mike Thomason]

I watched DIARY OF JUNE last night and, being quite impressed with it, decided it's time to put Hong Kong movies aside for a while while I catch up with some of the titles from the ROK from the last couple of years. To help me prioritise them, below is a list of the films that piqued my interest from publicity materials and varied reviews:

April Snow (2005)
Blood Rain (2005)
Feathers In The Wind (2005)
Heaven’s Soldiers (2005)
Love Is A Crazy Thing (2005)
My Boyfriend Is Type B (2005)
The President’s Last Bang (2005)
Voice (2005)

200 Pound Beauty (2006)
Apartment (2006)
Between Love And Hate (2006)
A Bloody Aria (2006)
Cruel Winter Blues (2006)
Dasepo Naughty Girl (2006)
A Dirty Carnival (2006)
Don’t Look Back (2006)
Gangster High (2006)
Hanbando (2006)
I’m A Cyborg, But That’s Okay (2006)
Love Me Not (2006)
The Magicians (2006)
Maundy Thursday (2006)
My Wife Is A Gangster 3 (2006)
No Mercy For The Rude (2006)
Once In A Summer (2006)
Over The Border (2006)
The Puzzle (2006)
Ssunday Seoul (2006)
Three Fellas (2006)
Traces Of Love (2006)
Woman On The Beach (2006)
World Of Silence (2006)

If anyone's seen any of these titles I'd LOVE to read some feedback about them!

Thanks in advance,
Mike

[ewaffle]

I think that "The President's Last Bang" is a terrific movie with an unusual structure--the climax, the assassination of Park Chung-hee by the head of the KCIA, happens in the middle not at the end. The extended denouement tells us what happened to the characters afterwards and also shows how treacherous it can be when an individual disrupts the course of history, even with the very best intentions. The scenes of the assassination itself were extremely well done and full of the blackest of black humor.

The KCIA chief was portrayed in very human terms--much of the reason he wanted to get rid of the president was his personal disgust at the president's behavior. Many good perforamances--HAN Suk-Kyu who played the assassin was very easy to identify with no matter what you may think of his actions and motives--he is an excellent actor--and SONG Jae-Ho made President Park hard not to hate. Strong performances from supporting actors especially (as I recall--there are probably many other outstanding performances) some of Director Kim's subordinates.

To this outsider it evoked the time and place very well particularly the claustrophobic world inside a military dictatorship. Definitely worth moving toward the top of the list.

[MrBooth]

Suk-kyu Han ... Jae-ho Song

Just say no to IMDB

(It's HAN Suk-Kyu and SONG Jae-Ho)

The only one of those films I've seen is APRIL SNOW, which I gave an 8/10 to - splendid acting and direction.

[ewaffle]

Suk-kyu Han ... Jae-ho Song

Just say no to IMDB

(It's HAN Suk-Kyu and SONG Jae-Ho)

The only one of those films I've seen is APRIL SNOW, which I gave an 8/10 to - splendid acting and direction.

Thanks--correction made.

I have gotten overly dependent on imdb for cast and crew over the years since I was mainly writing about/looking at U.S. and European movies.

[Brian Thibodeau]

My Boyfriend is Type B

Daesepo Naughty Girls

Though I knew absolutely nothing about it when I bought it, it took about thirty seconds to figure out Daesepo Girls was based on a comic book, but from almost the first frame, this film tries SO HARD to be a "cult" movie that it becomes a real drag. There's a fine line between truly genre-bending weirdness made by truly daring filmmakers who "get" the material and effortlessly make an eventual labelling of the film as "cult" seem like a natural consequence, and "hey, look at us being weird and crazy" duds made by filmmakers who want to be SEEN as being daring before ever shooting a frame of film rather than actually BEING daring once the camera's rolling.

Knowing now that the comic is much more deviant makes the interminable tease of the movie all the more irritating in retrospect....


My girlfriend, her sister and I watched MY BOYFRIEND IS TYPE B a few months back. It's a romantic comedy that plays on a uniquely Asian fascination with blood type dating that, according to what I've read, fell out of fashion not long before the movie was released. Upon finishing it, my girlfriend commented that the more Korean movies of this type that she watches, the less she "gets" Koreans as a culture, which is a sad irony, because she's Korean! Like so many other films in the absolute glut of Korean romantic comedies, there's sumptuous visuals, snappy locations, pretty people in the leads, but it's loaded with one contrived sequence after another and the momentum is hampered by the repetitive nature of the screenplay, which seems designed so that every ten minutes or so there's a "funny bit" to relieve the creeping suspicion that the film's cohesiveness is tenous at best. Characters do things that people just don't do in real life, but the filmmakers—some of whom I suspect may never have dated—have them do it because they're beautiful people and that's what the filmmakers want us to think beautiful people do. For example, the title character (who's a better model than an actor) is a real ass who treats the the female lead like dirt for the better part of the film (they have the same blood type, which apparently raises her tolerance), but just when she seems ready to give up on him at one point, he somehow manages to plug his guitar AND a 40's era microphone stand into his sports car and serenade her from the street. One can certainly "get" the point of the scene in context of the movie, but when you start thinking of the mechanics involved in a romantic comedy, as you might repeatedly in this, it's not a good sign.

But hey, that's just me.

I can count exactly three titles on your list that I don't own—THREE FELLAS, ONCE IN A SUMMER and CRUEL WINTER BLUES—but I'd imagine those'll turn up sooner or later. As for the rest, by the time I get around to watching them, you'll probably have watched the lot, but if I get a chance to offer thoughts before long, I certainly will, but to be honest, for the moment I tend to use Korean cinema as an occasional one- or two-film break from the all the Hong Kong movies I've finally had the time to watch!

Interestingly enough, I find I rarely if ever watch Hong Kong cinema with my girlfriend (Korean bias? Who knows! ). Just the classier stuff usually. But so much of Korean cinema seems better suited to couples, don't you think? Interesting to note the timing of the switch here...

[Mike Thomason]

I can count exactly three titles on your list that I don't own

Wow...were'd you get your copies of The Magicians and I'm A Cyborg, But That's Okay? There's been no licenced DVD releases of those two yet...Pacific Mall "special imports"?

[Brian Thibodeau]

Make that about four movies on your list that I don't have. Scratch CYBORG. No wait, make that six, I don't have 200 POUNDS or MY WIFE IS A GANGSTER 3 either. Though that said "2." There could be others, but few.

Nice try, though.

I do, however, have THE MAGICIANS, I just haven't watched it. It's one of four VHS tapes that I picked up at a Korean video "bang" downtown that was selling off rental stock, and a place I don't frequent. And this baby's been rented, I can say that much, but since I didn't know much about the film—and still don't, as I haven't watched it yet—and the sleeve on it didn't have English text (as usual!), I just scooped it up with the others because they were, quite frankly, cheap. It looks legit, but as I'm no expert in Korean VHS, I wouldn't be surprised if I'd picked up more than one bad one in the bunch. And they won't be going back if they are. The guy had about eight in total in the box, which looked pretty picked over, but I just took the ones that had the most interesting covers. Looked like he was going DVD-rental-only. Thankfully, his DVDs looked very legit, with proper slipcases, liner booklets, bonus discs, etc. In fact, when we were there just this past Thursday, we discovered a brand new outlet selling nothing but legit DVDs, VCDs and, best of all, CDs. I fear they won't last long, though, but perhaps the mall management will actually give some consideration to what they're trying to do, and set about squeezing out the bootleggers. One can dream...

Despite my oft-chronicled visits to Pacific Mall and its neighbours, I don't buy their special imports, though the temptation is palpable. I may have been burned on some Korean tapes that I scooped up in a bargain binge, but for the most part, I can spot the DVD boots a mile away because of their sheer ubiquity around here, and prefer to have originals largely because I never know when I might get around to watching them and like to know they (hopefully) won't be deteriorated DVD-Rs by the time that happens. While I won't deny I've seen quite a few boots over the years, I've taken pains to avoid buying them when there are legitimate retailers in these same malls that really need the business.

Read this year's "odyssey" thread to see the rather sad little places where I actually get most of my stuff (bargain boxes, 40% off sales). The vast amounts of Hong Kong VCDs I'm buying for less than $2—including another 7 for $10 that I picked up on the way home Friday night; gotta list those! —leaves a fair bit of money to keep on the Korean stuff and, to a far lesser extent, the Japanese stuff, which tend to be the movies I get to enjoy with Angie.