Top Ten Movies of 2020 (Sort of)

This past year, my Korean moviewatching was decidedly not highbrow so plenty of pulpy flicks have made the cut this December. Scanning the picks, I do see some themes tellingly repeating: Revenge, Underdogs, and Prison. Do these three concerns have anything to do with my being cooped up in an apartment and not knowing what to do with the fluctuating anxiety caused by the Coronavirus? Probably. Would I have picked different movies had I been living in a COVID-free world? Um, duh. But these films provided relief. And likewise should be honored.

1. The Shower: It's rarely a bad idea to build a movie around first love. The same could be said about first death. Here, you get both!

2. The Witch: Part 1 - The Subversion: The diabolical military program employing twisted genetic engineering backfired but the resultant movie, helmed by Kim Da-mi, is a bona fide hit.

3. #Alive: Perfect for these pandemic times, this film features two housebound lovebirds who must navigate a zombified neighborhood whenever they step outside. Wear a mask!

4. Miss Baek: With her scarred legs, knotted hair, and butchered pinky, this flick's young charge should qualify for seasonal check-ins from the Make-a-Wish foundation.

5. Psychokinesis: The beleagured superhero movie gets a lift when a negligent dad drinks magical spring water shortly after his ex-wife dies.

6. Revenger: After watching this martial arts B-movie, you may ask yourself: Who the hell is Bruce Khan and where has he been all my life?

7. The Prison: This madcap men-behind-bars melee is a deliriously delightful Rube Goldberg machine of crime, cruelty, and power-tripping.

8. The Outlaws: If you want to watch Ma Dong-seok kick butt as a cop for two hours, have I got a blockbuster for you.

9. Ashfall: It seems only right to include a disaster movie in a top ten list for 2020.

10. The Drug King: Proof that Song Kang-ho can carry a messy movie if you supply a great '70s soundtrack and period perfect '70s garb.

Honorable Mentions: The Classified File, The Client, Failan, The Lost Choices, Piagol, and Yeong-ja's Heydays.

Bluebeard: Who's Killing Who?

I do appreciate a good opening and Lee Soo-youn's Bluebeard starts off strong. Its protagonist is a doctor (Cho Jin-woong) who's quickly established as uncoordinated (head-bumps and pratfalls), unattached (a box of forwarded mail) and unapologetically into mysteries (stacks of books abound). So when his butcher-landlord's dad babbles some creepy comments about body disposal while under anesthesia, this guy is all ears! ("The head is still in the fridge..." Oh really?)

In short, his new job as a temporary colonoscopist has put him in an ideal place to help solve an ongoing serial killer case. Maybe he too wants to write a bestseller. That would explain why, when the cops show up at the clinic, he doesn't share any insights or suspicions about that recently discoverd torso. He's caught between wanting to play Sam Spade and being too afraid to get involved.

Did I mention he's been having vividly bloody nightmares? Or that his primary nurse (Lee Chung-ah) may have a crush on him? Or that his son encourages him to play the lottery? Or that a strange man (Song Young-chang) is stalking him? How about a plot that is all but thrown out the window with a half hour left? My, my, my. Welcome to Gangnam!

Call: Redial at Your Own Risk

I was honestly hoping that this K-horror flick was going to be a Korean remake of The Caller, an American film in which a landline telephone links a contemporary young woman (Park Shin-hye, this time) to another girl (Jun Jong-seo) the same age but in the past. Then, while watching this 2020 Netflix release, I kind of wished it were more of a thriller like The Call, the Halle Berry vehicle about a 911 operator with PTSD issues. But Lee Chung-hyun's Call is definitely indebted more to the former — a supernatural movie about two young women with a disastrous telephonic connection stretching over a decade.

When these two realize that their relationship can alter the future, one major good thing happens followed by one terrible thing after another. Should we be surprised? In what universe does messing with history not lead to disaster? Yet the temptation to make minor adjustments is so great, can any of us really resist? My question became, however, if time isn't linear then is there a way for the person in the future to impact the past of the one in the past? And could the person in the future's present be constantly in flux without impacting their memory like a variation of Groundhog Day? But there are no wedding bells at the end of Call because the butterfly effect sounds a death knoll when it's controlled by a sociopath. Do not pick up. Send directly to messages.

The Larva Island Movie: A Castaway Without a Volley Ball

The two human leads in The Larva Island Movie — Chuck and Grace — are a man who's just returned from a deserted island and a reporter who wants to share his story with her readers. (Caldecott, anyone?) But are they this animated film's most appealing characters? How about his cohabitants on the island, Red and Yellow; this pair of babbling grubs eats hallucinogenic mushrooms, farts, burps, dances, and steals candy while making preposterously silly noises. Plus, the title's about them, not the people, right?

With tongues that serve as peg-legs, eye-visors, climbing-tools, spear-holders, and choreographic enhancers, these two bug buddies aren't your everyday larvae. What did you expect? This is a cartoon to its core. As Chuck puts it, "Turns out bugs are just like really slimy people." Do we believe him? Grace, for her part, is pretty skeptical. And his tale gets even harder to accept when he mentions the singing seal named Clara, the alien who transforms the local crab into a mini-transformer-toolkit, and a tornado with an actual eye at its center. Would anyone buy the hokum of Chuck and Yellow swapping consciousness during a lightning storm? Whether Grace does or not, she's more or less entertained... as are the maitre'd, his daughter, a chef, and one grandmotherly patron. And perhaps you. As for me? I admit, kinda.

Countdown: The Surgical Date Has Been Set

Tae Geon-ho (Jeong Jae-yeong), the hero of Countdown, is a disturbed man — an unsmiling collections agent who desperately needs a liver transplant and is haunted by the death of his son whose particulars he can't remember. Yet despite all those details, he's infinitely less complicated than his primary foil, Cha Ha-yeon (Jeon Do-yeon) — a shameless grifter, just out of the clink, who was the lucky recipient of Tae's son's donated heart which makes her a perfect candidate to donate her liver. Does this qualify as karma? It might although Huh Jung-ho's thriller, let's you decide for yourself.

Because before the surgical date, Cha has her own business to attend to which leads to car chases, kidnapping, heists, extortion, and fisticuffs involving a taser. Given the protagonist's cold manner, you may be excused for not giving a damn whether he gets the life-saving replacement or not but your indifference has no bearing on the tension. If anything, the flaws of the two leads create an openness to whatever the future holds, a long as one of them proves victorious. The real enemies are bumbling gang-members, a sadistic mafia boss (Lee Kyeong-yeong), and a quack physician who thinks that the most reliable cure for a life-threatening disease is to laugh, laugh, laugh.

The Shower: Be Still, My Little Heart

How high are the stakes in Ko Young-nam's The Shower? Not high at all. A country schoolboy (Lee Yeong-su) allows himself to pursue a city girl (Jo Yun-suk) who's relocated to the family farm because her father's hit hard times and has nowhere else to go. There's little action outside that unless you consider scraping your knee on a rock, getting caught in a run-of-the-mill summer storm or a bad case of the flu a cause for major heart-flutters. And yet this exquisitve slice-of-life flick focused on two adolescents is anything but boring. I'd go so far as to say, it's a dazzler — further proof that feeling, not action, is what most enthralls us most of all.

And what views we get amidst the small moments! The visuals of The Shower are so beautiful that you feel entreated to experience your present surroundings anew, especially nature. All hail the trees! All hail the river! There's plenty of rapturous shots of insects, flowers, birds, oxen, the forest, the fields, the minnows, running water, clouds... Every image feels composed thoughtfully but unaffectedly; the entire movie is a gentle reminder that we walk daily through panoramas, not past backdrops. Existence is deep; first love, the real beginning. As for death, it's got its sting.

The Chosen: Forbidden Cave: Lair of the White-haired Worm

The Chosen: Forbidden Cave has an intriguing opening section during which we meet a psychology professor (Kim Seong-gyoon) who specializes in demon possession. The therapeutic treatment of his patients is generally successful, somewhat secretive — so much so that a cocky reporter (Cha Ye-Ryeon) has to bribe his psychic assistant (Kim Hye-Seong) in order to gain access to the determined devil doctor. Once that's transpired, we zero in on a single case (at which point the movie gets less scary). The primary patient is a widowed museum director (Yu Seon) — with an elementary school-aged daughter (Yoon Ji-Min) — who's been experiencing blackouts that apparently find her taking actions disturbing enough to cause her child to ask her whether this is the good mommy or the bad mommy. So what are the roots of this possession? Oh, it's complicated. Too much so.

Rape. Snakes. Death sentences. Shamanism. Stigmata. Exorcism. A cursed painting. Militarism. Kidnapping. Cave-dwelling. Even Jeju Island's hard-to-comprehend regional dialect comes into play. In short, Kim Hwi's fulsome fright flick crams as many ideas as possible into its plot. But do these endless elements add to the chills or detract from them? For me, the scariest part of The Chosen came early when a hypnotized client started speaking in a baby voice to the sound of a metronome. I would've been happy enough experiencing a series of such therapeutic encounters instead of the deep dive the movie's director chose to take with one particularly accursed art curator. No one asked for my prescription though.

Blackpink: Light Up the Sky: K-Pop Meets Coachella

Blackpink: Light Up the Sky reminds me of one of those official celebrity biographies that present a blemish-free portrait of its famous subject with barely a hint at any darker reality. As such, Caroline Suh's peppy popumentary about the world-famous girl group from South Korea feels intimate without being revealing and thoroughly entertaining despite its veneer. The four performers — Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé, and Lisa — are all personable, perseverant, and pretty yet you'll come out of your Netflix cue knowing little else about them outside their home countries (South Korea, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, and Thailand, respectively). And yet... Light Up the Sky enthralls.

These four women have charisma to spare so small wonder that the execs at YG Entertainment picked them to go through their rigorous training program, which sounds a little bit like Survivor set in a dorm for singers and extending about five years. Furthermore, the members of Blackpink appear to have a genuine affection for each other. If there's any backstage drama, I missed it. If their love for each other is manufactured by the factory then kudos to YG Entertainment for that emotional choreography as well. This extended promotional video is somehow something to sing about.

Yeong-ja's Heydays: Not Arm in Arm Forevermore

When you're young, falling for someone doesn't follow any kind of logic. And yet the feelings we experience for that person can last a lifetime. So it's not hard to see why Chang-su (Song Hae-jo) keeps pursuing Yeong-ja (Yeom Bok-sun). She's his first crush and he's leading a directionless life — from welder at the factory to draftee in the military to spongeboy at the spa. So why not run after the one person who's made him feel something deep?

The object of his obsessions is having one heck of a hard life. Raped by her employer's son, she's tossed out of the house then later gets in a bus accident (in which she loses her arm) on her way to her poorly paid seamstress job. Prostitution, here she comes! So yeah, life is worse than tough. It's downright nasty. Does this help or hurt their chances of being a couple?

In Kim Ho-sun's wildly popular Yeong-ja's Heydays, missing limbs and venerel disease aren't life-changers so much as bumps along a very rocky road. Life happens, it's hard, what else is new? Suicide excepting, you forge on. What's fascinating is that this isn't a star-crossed lovers story. It's more about two people just trying to find their way in the world. And when isn't a story about compassion and gratitude welcome?

Steel Rain: Enemies With Integrity

One element that continually catches me offguard in South Korean movies involving North Korean spies is how often the neighbors to the North are portrayed not as "bad guys" so much as people of integrity fighting for the wrong side. There's a respect accorded to the soldiers from Pyongyang, an acknowledgment that these self-sacrificing communists can't be seduced by an amoral capitalism of fast food and fast fashion. To their Seoul brothers, these patriotic brethren are basically wayward kin (unknowingly) awaiting reunification, a notion that runs counter to the more typical "us versus them" narratives you usually encounter in (cold) war movies. Yes, nukes are involved!

In Yang Woo-suk's Steel Rain, the agent/bodyguard/martial-arts-expert Eom Chul-woo (Jung Woo-sung) is better looking, stronger, nobler, and even more sentimental than his South Korean counterpart (Kwak Do-won), a self-assured, perhaps duplicitous political beast who's more cagey than cage-match. But those attributes don't necessarily guarantee our well-intention warrior victory because he's pitted against American and Japanese forces as well as his own country's traitorous military insiders. I never found myself exactly routing for Eom, despite his cancer diagnosis and inhuman perservence. But I did feel bad for how much the cards were stacked against him.

Intruders: An Overabundance of Characters

So there's this screenwriter, see. And he's scammed a month at an out-of-the-way B&B that's owned by his agent or producer. The writer needs time away to finish his latest script! On the bus to his self-made literary retreat, he's befriended by a quirky, clingy guy who has recently been released from prison and who's brother is a cop. Once the screenwriter gets to the snowy cabin in the woods, he leases out the vacation home nextdoor to some partying skiers with a tagalong girlfriend because he wants to make a few extra bucks. Or he's scared about being alone so far from civilization. Or he's irresponsible by nature. I wasn't sure. I wasn't worried about it.

There are gunshots that keep him on edge. There's a wood trapdoor in the backyard that leads somewhere creepy and dark. Even the random little urn of kimchi stored outside seems ominous. Is it big enough to hold a head? Regardless, what exactly is going on? Well, eventually, there's murder, a stabbing, a few shootings, a sexual assault, and the eating of a raw hunk of meat that one suspects may be human flesh. (This time it tastes more like pork than chicken.) Sadly, all this action comes at the very end and who's killing who and why and whether our hero survives is unclear. TV news bulletins suggest some North Korean soldiers may be running loose among the trees but does Intruders really want to blame its problems on the neighbors from Pyongyang? Is this a fright flick, a thriller or a mystery? What kind of wine do cannibals drink?

The Witch: Part 1 - The Subversion: Woman-Made

"Are you a good witch or a bad witch?" Glinda famously asks upon first encountering Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. The same can be asked of Yoon Koo-ja (Kim Da-mi), the high school student who keeps her dark powers under wraps while caring for the enfeebled parents who adopted her after finding her bloody young body in their field when she was young. She seems nice on the surface: She's gets good grades, helps around the farm, and likes to sing a pop version of "Danny Boy." But is that the whole story here? Of course not!

Incorporating a mad scientist (a deliciously evil Jo Min-soo), a stylish henchman (Park Hee-soon), and a pack of teen, English-speaking witches led by a tossel-haired teenybopper (Choi Woo-sik) and his knife-wielding sidekick (Jung Da-eun), Park Hoon-jung's spellbinding, supernatural thriller is a wild grab-bag of scifi elements: diabolical military training programs, psychologically twisted genetic engineering, amped-up generational warfare, and the lone warrior against the system all get their due. The movie also includes a preposterous Star Search-style TV talent contest and a goofball best friend (Go Min-si) who inexplicablly wears a curler in her bangs. The quirks are icing on the cake. The question remains: Is the proverbial cake poisoned? And will we need to see The Witch: Part 2 in order to find out? If the second half is as good as the first, then I'm up for Part 3 and Part 4 as well.

#Alive: Metaphor for the Moment

If you're looking for a movie that translates the anxiety of self-quarantine during the year of the Coronavirus, I may have found the perfect film for you. Entitled #Alive, Cho Il-hyeong's zombie thriller has a timely mix of isolation, paranoia, desperation, and insanity. Its hero — bleached-blond gamer Jun-woo (Yoo Ah-in) — is basically an everday Joe whose everday world completely disappears when an airborn virus mysteriously turns the majority of the population into rabid cannibals with cataracted eyes. A good part of the movie involves him all alone holed up in his apartment while failing to get word from the outside world and figuring out how to survive off a poorly stocked fridge while watching human-monsters run around the streets in search of food like him.

Eventually he develops a survival-friendship (with a touch of a crush) with a young woman (Park Shin-hye) who lives in the residential complex across the street; she's equally suicidal but somewhat savvier and unquestionably more savage when it comes to fighting off the enemy. (I mean, she wields a mean scythe, although why she has one is less clear. Then again, who cares?) Each becomes the other's main support — together, yet at a distance — as they navigate a sucky reality where stepping outside is suddenly high-risk and your neighbors cannot be automatically trusted. I can't say it's as great as Train to Busan but as zombie flicks go, it's not just well-timed. It's exhillarating! It's also a reminder that things could always get worse. So here's to tomorrow!

Disappearance: A Haunted House Is Not a Home

How desperate are people to get likes on social media? Well, in Ansan, barely legal vlogger Minsu (Kim Juheon) — who used to specialize in food porn — is taking his fans on a live-recorded tour of a notorious haunted house that's been causing deaths for 30 years or so. It's a dark and filthy place with trash everywhere but a flashback of his humble apartment suggests a kind of "single and not-ready-to-mingle" status that's also ugly despite being clean. Will he die too? Does he secretly want to? And will he get more likes if he does?

He's certainly in need of validation. Past clips of him listening to his mother play Chopin on an upright piano while his couch potato father watches televised sports (with an attitude) make clear that socializing techniques were not taught in his childhood home. Neither were strong observational skills. A mysteriously cloaked object in the bathroom distracts him from some pretty cool tile work; a squiggly line on the wallpaper leads to a closet housing a doll that sends him into a hyperventilating fit. Breathe, Minsu, Breathe!

So what else? Hmm. A shadowy figure is glanced on a fallen mirror. A weird growl comes out of nowhere. A phone receiver hangs in the middle of the hallway. Broken glass is everywhere underfoot. Scary? Not for me. Sad? Definitely for its protagonist. In Jang Junyeop's mini-fright-flick "Disappearance," this lone videographer's final attempt at building his online audience is going to call up some painful family memories that may have him wishing he'd chosen a different hobby. I'm thinking improv might've been better.

Miss Baek: Not Without Her Daughter

Mothers rescuing their children... That's nothing new. What's rarer is mother's rescuing other people's chidren. Which is what Lee Ji-won's harrowing melodrama Miss Baek is all about — a disturbed, antisocial workaholic (Han Ji-min) who, when she isn't rejecting her patient boyfriend (Lee Hee-joon), is befriending a destitute little girl (Kim Si-uh) whose gamester daddy (Baek Soo-jang) and his sadistic soulmate (Kwon So-Hyeon) are abusing their young charge with a viciousness that'll make you gasp. Failed by her neighbors, the cops, and the local social service agencies despite obvious evidence of torture, poor ragamuffin Ji-eun has taken to the streets in search of food scraps, a decent change of clothes, and a sympathetic word.

What a relief to see her get all that and a trip to a seaside amusement park. With her scarred legs, knotted hair, and butchered pinky finger, this kid should be set up with the Make-a-Wish foundation for seasonal check-ins and rewards. Cinderella has nothing on her. Plus, she doesn't need a pumpkin to change into a riding coach or a nest of mice to transform into footmen. As for her gritty fairy godmother, Miss Baek lacks the bippity-boppity-boo to make such large-scale miracles come true. Limitations notwithstanding, this new self-appointed guardian recognizes Ji-eun needs a new family, even if it scares the shit out of her to get involved. So what might this non-traditional family look like? To its credit, Miss Baek avoids the obvious feel-good answer. Life can get better. Here's the caveat: You've got to put yourself out of hell.

The Beast: Action Star Potential

So he doesn't bring the flirtatious fun of Jackie Chan, the charming jadedness of Michael Jai White or the laidback sagacity of Steven Seagal. After viewing The Beast, I would have happily made the case back in 2011 that Jeong Seok-won had that special something it takes to be a major action star. With a cold stare worthy of Jet Li and an earnestness on par with Scott Adkins', Jeong matches his bad boy predecessors with his ability to fight convincingly, brutally, relentlessly. His killer punch and rousing roundhouse kick lift this poorly shot thriller from simple B-movie to B+. It's a sordid tale, to be sure: A vigilante must pummel porn purveyors, pig-masked performers, and seedy sex enslavers in order to rescue his abducted sister (Lee Na-lie) before she gets raped for internet profits nationwide.

Jeong's focus is intense; his acting, irrelevant. Despite cinematography that might as well have been shot on a VHS cam-corder, Jeong looks great even when The Beast does not. The military garb, the torn shirt at the hot tub, the black suit picked up at the gym are as versatile as he's gonna get. And while Hwang Yoo-sik's thriller is fundamentally a testosterone-fueled one-man show, I also enjoyed the lead's getaway driver (Jeon Se-hong), a woman who says "It's okay" when she learns a flaky friend's dead; our Girl Friday appears just in time out of nowhere with a new used car to whisk our hero away.

The Spy: Short on Dialogue

"I'm going to punish you on behalf of North Korea." Thus begins The Spy, a dramatic short by writer-director-editor Lee Woo-suk. After that it's pretty quiet for awhile as our young assassin (Kim Mu-yeol) slips into the Milky Way Coffee Shop, sneaks a loose cigarette from its dirty bathroom then rifles through some salacious calling calls before ringing up a massage parlor that's a front for some top secret operations. Hey, action happens fast when you're making a film that clocks in under fifteen minutes! And the hero has his own constraints to deal with too. With the equivalent of a mere thirty-seven dollars in his billfold wallet, he's supposed to acquire an iPod, some Kinder chocolates, and a pair of castanets. Oh, a life in espionage is strange, strange, strange.

Where do you go to regroup after the stress of killing someone? Well, you can always hop in a taxi and listen to a very chatty cab driver (Lee Dong-yong) who may or may not take you where you need to go. What's to say? Dialogue is scant in The Spy. Perhaps the budget didn't permit a bona fide screenwriter. Perhaps every scene had one take and the cast wore their own clothes. I guess for busy actors such as Kim and Lee, there are worse ways to spend a weekend, casually dressed. Ultimately, The Spy recalls those 48-hour-film festivals that were once all the rage stateside. Perhaps it just took a few years for this fad to catch on in South Korea. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Made in China: Partly Made by Kim Ki-duk

Although directed by Kim Dong-hoo, the political flick Made in China largely bears the mark of its screenwriter Kim Ki-duk. Many of the auteur's standard ingredients are here: a largely silent central character, the random eruptions into violence, performances that careen from wooden to histrionic... And who else but Kim Ki-duk would build his movie around a Chinese eel farmer (Park Gi-woong) who needs to get his eel tested for mercury by a scientist (Han Chae-ah) who wants to suck his eel in her apartment. That particular relationship gets even weirder when she's wolfing down Chinese snackfood as a way to prove she's not xenophobic so she can get him back into her bed. (I don't know what she was eating but it definitely wasn't White Rabbit Cream Candy.)

Kim Ki-duk has pulled off outlandish plots before — the prison musical Breath, the summer-winter relationship of The Bow — but it's gotta be tough to get into his head as a fellow director. Sure, Jang Hun did it in the terrific action pic Rough Cut. I think that film is atypical for Kim Ki-duk, though, whereas Made in China is more quintessential. Which makes this particular movie feel like an apprentise work being done with the blessing of its mentor who should never be copied or imitated, only respected with caveats.

Svaha: The Sixth Finger: Oh, Buddha! You Devil

There's something less than noble about that self-important Pastor Park (Lee Jung-jae), a tabloid-worthy cult-buster more motivated by Money than Truth. So it's hard to get on his side early on when you realize his desire to "expose" a small sect is really because they may prove the gateway to a new religious market: Buddhism! That noted, in all fights 'twixt Good and Evil, I'll always choose a morally compromised character over Satan even when, as in Jang Jae-hyun's Svaha: The Sixth Finger, the Dark Force is especially difficult to pin down. Is it someone from the temple, a member of the police force, a religious zealout, or one of two teenage girls who've recently moved back to the neighborhood, with a lot of dogs?

Park has his suspicions but who can he trust? Well, he can definitely rely on sidekick Na-han (Park Jung-min), cheerful deaconess Sim (Hwang Jung-min), and his sister on the force. Outside of that, everyone feels somewhat compromised. That includes the girls' guardians, a tribunal of monks, and nearly the entire police department. (Do they have trust issues with law enforcement in Korea too?) And since Park's potential determination of the legitimacy of this specific spiritual subset may be tied to something truly wicked, I was certainly rooting for him once the stakes had been revealed. Three cheers for Good!

Miniforce: New Heroes Rise: The Fighting Five

Like the initially-espied military forces which are basically color-coded stormtroopers (white for good, green for bad), many of the cartoon characters in Miniforce: New Heroes Rise resemble children's toys more than people. (Humans don't have giant, detachable heads.) Whatever the species, the stakes are high since those bad boys of The Lizard Corps have stolen some recently extracted Ellinium. Considering this villainous crew already possesses the Amplifying Prism, all sentient beings will be in danger should that lizard army somehow manage to get the Controlling Cube. "Who knew the lizard army would be so powerful," one of the elders asks. Who knew? Not me!

Yet all is not lost for those on the Good Side, thanks to a team of hyper-youthful, recent special ops graduates: the super-speedy Ranger Volt (blue), the high-jumping Ranger Sammy (Red), the protectively defensive Ranger Lucy (pink), and the brawny Ranger Max (yellow). Also joining this save-the-world crew is creepily red-eyed, rabbit-headed ingenue Anna whose scientist-father was an Ellinium expert. Together the quintet trains, bonds, battles, falls in and out of love, squabbles, screams, transforms into shiny androids to music, and works to save the planet. No, not works. Does!

Home Sweet Home: Single, Successful, and Lonely

He's got his own one-bedroom apartment with a view. He's got a housekeeper who also preps his meals then leaves them in the fridge. His admiring co-worker brings him coffee in the morning. Oh, yes, this man has it all except for one thing: a meaningful relationship. Does he know this? Not really. I mean, not until the day he leaves work early, potentially to start a long-overdue vacation. But those tickets to somewhere promise less relief once he discovers that his domestic help is using his fancy flat as a crash pad for sex with a carefree spirit who likes to take showers with her.

Director Kim Seok-tae's Home Sweet Home is another reminder that if your work is your everything, you might be left with nothing when you're not there. So will this unlucky businessman start his own affair with the housekeeper? Given her refusal to even staying after work to share a meal, the likelihood is slim to none. Also, he's probably more in need of a therapist than a romp or a romance, when you factor in the baby booties (discovered by his maid on a shelf) that have no corresponding infant or mother-to-be. If this sounds depressing, there's a good reason for that. It is. Home Sweet Home is an 18-minute short film for viewers looking for a story with minimal dialogue and even less hope.

The Chase: Grumpy Old Sleuth

Out of curiosity, I google-translated the Korean title of this movie since the English version The Chase felt somewhat off. As expected, the actual title is no exact match: "Surely Catch." Even taking into account the awkwardness of this original phrase (which is likely idiomatic), "Surely Catch" at least accurately connects to the plot as writer-director Kim Hong-seon's geriatric thriller doesn't concern a gray-haired slumlord racing after criminals on his moped so much as it does a gray-haired slumlord (Baek Yun-shik) who, despite his unending crabbiness, becomes a well-meaning amateur detective hoping to rescue an abducted tenant (Kim Hye-in) who he's nicknamed 205 after her apartment number. He's not alone in his improbable quest.

Along for the ride are a kooky retired cop (Sung Dong-il) and a marginally less goofy, active-duty police officer (Jo Dal-hwan), neither of whom is particularly reliable. Disorientingly complicated with its copycat criminals, traumatized survivors, Alzheimer's subplot, and shadowy flashbacks, The Chase had me wondering if romantic leads were going to continue to grow older and older as we humans continue to live longer and longer ourselves. Maybe after a century of films focused on first loves we're about to usher in a new millennium of feel-good flicks that are suddenly concerned with last chance romances...with death in the background, of course.

The Tayo the Little Bus Movie: Mission Ace: Dude, Where's My Car?

"At the hands of careless humans, our wheels came off and our bodies were smashed into walls countless times," says Bella (Jeon Sook-kyeong), the queen luxury car in Ryu Jung-woo's and Paik Anna's animated children's pic Tayo the Little Bus Movie: Mission Ace. She's right of course. We humans are notorious for mistreating dolls and matchbox cars, rubber ducks and stuffed animals. The three-wheeled, handheld hatchback and the one-eyed, unstuffed teddybear are as representative of childhood as bibs, bonnets, and baby booties. If these damaged toys could talk, no doubt they'd have a strong word or two about their thoughtless owners.

Insert Counterargument Here: Now just one second! Not everyone is so disrespectful!

And yet... Duri (Chong Hye-ok) has forged a real bond with his flashy, red mini-sportscar Ace (Kim Yeong-seon) even if his negligence has accidentally landed his plaything abandoned on a city street. So is the retrieval of this beloved racecar really enough to substantiate an entire feature film? Not really. A big-screen spin-off of the Tayo series, this 45-minute cartoon drags despite its abbreviated running time and has only one major message to impart: The toys that you'd associate most strongly with mankind (pro or con) are the ones most likely to be deadly forces of annihilation!

The Truth Beneath: Institutionalized Violence

Now that police brutality has become ubiquitous in your social media stream as sadistic cops in Minneapolis, Buffalo, Louisville, Austin, NYC, LA, and "name that city" are seen engaging in all sorts of unprovoked violence at the anti-racist protests that have literally swept the world, Lee Kyoung-mi's political thriller The Truth Beneath feels almost quaint with its corrupt political campaign of murder, kidnapping, deception, and power-grabbing. (You mean only a handful of people do the devil's work?) Yet the film's protagonist — a distraught mother (Son Ye-jin) who realizes she didn't really know her only child (Shin Ji-hoon) despite their chummy rapport — isn't on a journey confronting the evils of patriarchal, white-supremacist capitalism. She's more like Alice chasing the rabbit down the hole into the world of weirdness.

So... Newsflash! Her daughter's in a quirky girl band, fraternizes with peers with matching haircuts, has her room bugged by her dad's primary political rival, and stars in a few arty videos shot by her adoring schoolmates. Mom herself too has her stranger side which includes self-mutilation to get what she wants and mutilating an art installation with a pink acoustic guitar when she doesn't. Whether the husband/father (Kim Ju-hyuk) will end up an elected official is weirdly not central to the story despite the race being referenced regularly. When everyone's engaged in despicable behavior, who gives a hoot who wins? Politicians will fail us once again.

26 Years: Two Hours and Fifteen Minutes

One South Korean counterpart for the Kent State Shooting of 1970 could be the Gwangju Uprising of 1980 during which protesting university students and sympathetic citizens were shot — in the thousands! — by a military that had basically just staged a coup following the president's assassination. Was justice served afterwards? Hardly. So Cho Geun-hyun's historical fantasy imagines four traumatized children of the revolution who have grown up eager for revenge. It's a fairly small group of rebels: a sharpshooter (Han Hye-jin), a security officer (Bae Soo-bin), a rookie cop (Im Seul-ong), an older regretful soldier (Lee Kyeong-yeong), and a food-cart owner (Jin Goo) whose face has a cut that makes him look like a Harlequin.

The source of their ire is "The Man" (Jang Gwang), a politician who's apparently impervious to criticism and living a luxurious life devoid of any real socializing. What constitutes revenge varies from person to person. Does he need to issue a formal apology? Grovel and cry? Admit his crimes and go to prison? Or die? Eventually, most of these vigilantes realize that the only one they can make happen is the last one and that's going to be a struggle. An extended flashback in cartoon reveals the horrors that led them to where they are. But where they go after the final frame is anyone's guess. America might be one option. Purgatory, another. But with a run time well over two hours, you might stop conjecturing as to what lies ahead.

The Net: The Naturalism of Politics

Director Kim Ki-duk's films have always felt intentionally abrasive to me. I don't level that comment as a complaint. I'm a huge fan of movies like Bad Guy, Arirang, and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring. Indeed, his agitating output feels as distinct as the slices of life from Hong Sang-soo or hyper violent thrillers of Park Chan-wook (though Kim's cinema generally lacks the veneer of either of these peers). Sometimes his "art is a hammer" aggressiveness works in his favor. But with The Net, those rough parts are working against him. The key to a great Kim film may be the cast's ability to get to its raw emotional core. But most of the actors here — especially those playing members of South Korea's spy-catching team — are giving amateurish performances that feel unrehearsed without feeling improvisational. The ham factor is high.

The one exception is Ryu Seung-beom, who as a North Korean fisherman who accidentally drifts below the 38th parallel, is so naturalistic in his performance you'd think Kim had discovered him in the exurbs of Wonsan. Even as the plot lurches into implausible places and the dialogue serves up unnecessary cliches, Ryu stays committed to the humility, confusion, and desperation of his character who just wants to be sent back home. The Net has plenty to say about the blind hypocrisy of capitalists when it comes to ideas of freedom and the better life but I caught myself shouting "That's so stupid" at the monitor more times than I'd care to admit.

Jo Pil-ho: The Dawning Rage: Bad Dudes Are Bad News

Has the anti-hero trope run its course? Has the lone wolf who breaks all the rules morphed into the antisocial jerk who acts from a strictly self-serving interest? Are we really in the corners of assholes who don't appear to care about anyone but themselves simply because the world is shitting on them? Is charisma really enough to elevate a jerk to hero status? I grow depressed typing out these questions but I don't know what else to conclude from writer-director Lee Jeong-beom's corrupt-cop thriller Jo Pil-ho: The Dawning Rage. It was the worst of times. It was the worst of men.

So let's concentrate on the women.

The wife (Lee Young-yoo) of the title character (Lee Sun-kyun) is pretty fascinating. She's supportive and independent, criminal without being corrupt, tough without being mean. She'd make a good lead! So would the film's ingenue (Jeon So-nee). She's got a sense of ethics, a streak of rebellion, and a decidedly unglamorous way of dressing. We don't spend nearly enough time with either of these ladies though. Instead, we watch as Jo Pil-ho mouths off, gets beats up, cheats, betrays, and poops out bullets for the 3-D laser-printed gun he's hidden in his faux arm cast. Not that this clever stratagem is going to prevent him from getting pummelled for the umpteenth time. Jo's a schmuck pretending to be an antihero who thinks he's a good guy when he's actually a boor.

Time to Hunt: Stop Following Me!

Yoon Sung-hyun's heist-gone-wrong thriller Time to Hunt takes its time building up to its catalyst crime — the robbery of an illegal gambler's den — then turns into a suspenseful cat-and-mouse game in which crazed, corrupt cop Han (Park Hae-soo) stalks the four thieves even after he's retrieved the most-valued goods. Unaware of why they're being so viciously pursued puts these criminal buddies in a more precarious position than usual because they know there's nothing they can offer to make things right. This especially baffles Joon-seok (Lee Je-hoon) who's orchestrated the crime just days after serving three years in prison. He sees a better tomorrow for him and his buddies in Taiwan but first he'll have to make sure that the narcoleptic Jang-ho (Ann Jae-hong), the momma's boy Ki-hoo (Choi Woo-sik), and insider Sang-soo (Park Jung-min) survive for two more days.

You might think that they've got a decent shot at doing so considering their impressive cache of firearms but Han is not your typical hitman. He's more like a super-villain who can take any number of shots to the body and a fall into a river, and still have more than enough energy to reload and get back to shooting his sniper again. That makes for some heart-racing chase scenes that are only enhanced by an incredibly effective soundtrack and some truly lush cinematography. Judged as pure escapist fare, Time to Hunt ranks fairly high — especially since it clocks at well over two hours and this pandemic has left me with hours to fill.

Forgotten: Who Is He, Anyway?

Much of the fun of the psychological thriller Forgotten lies in trying to piece together what's the hell's going on so if you're planning on seeing this movie any time soon for God's sake, stop reading this reaction immediately. Allow yourself to be surprised! Still there? Okay. Well, at first, I thought the younger son (Kang Ha-neul) was having a flashback during which he was going to have to relive the murder of his family. Then I thought, no, he's hallucinating stuff because of his medication...which may hurt or help his ability to see the future. Or maybe his brother (Kim Mu-yeol) really has been abducted by aliens who are going to turn him and his parents into pod people. But that too wasn't quite right. Was his whole family composed of extraterrestrials engaged in experimentation? Or were they all mad scientists who somehow were in cahoots with the police department to drive our young hero crazy and if so, why? But that wasn't it either.

I mean some things I kinda had right and some I had wrong but eventually when the truth came out — none of which involved visitors from another planet but it might as well have — the movie became a bit less exciting for me. A forgotten pill dropped under the kitchen cabinets is suddenly a lost opportunity to have a vision! Who cares if no one is exactly who you think they are because no one's ultimately going to be happy accepting who they truly are when they eventually find out. Remind anyone else too much of real life? So sue me. And get me a makeover.

High Society: Art About Art With Good Art

In today's cinematic universe, the order of the day is cynicism and corruption. No one expects characters to have noble motives and if they do, no one expects them to keep them for the duration of the film. Which is one of the surprises of Byun Hyuk's High Society, a political drama in which two deplorable leads — a callous economics professor (Park Hae-il) and a ruthless curator (Ae Soo) — start off willing to compromise everything for potential social status, only to discover a moral high ground along the way. As such, High Society is a bit of a fantasy. Who can imagine a corrupt couple finding their inner moral compass after living without one for so long? Be that as it may, it's a fantasy that satisfies because it's what we wish would happen to our culture's elites. Nothing could be better than people in power using that power for good after a lifetime of not truly giving a damn.

Not that High Society itself is a satisfying movie. Neither the representative of academia nor the art world comes across as particularly appealing. The most likable character in fact is a multimedia artist (Lee Jin-wook), who towering video installations — sometimes incorporating live performance — are truly a wonder to behold. As spectacles go, the visionary visuals within High Society make you want to stop watching the movie and track down the actual creator for more of the same. Anyone happen to know who that is? I couldn't find out when searching online.

Psychokinesis: A Superhero Movie for People Who Hate Superhero Movies

I don't care for superhero movies. The plots are too thin; the characters, too cartoonish; the savior wish-fulfillment, too perverse. As for the humor, the awful one-liners and sight-gags are deemed clever because we (and the creators) know they're stupid so we're in on the joke. What's the good of watching buff actors strut through multiverses when the fall-out of countless deaths resultant of these good versus evil battles are generally overlooked. Sure, there are exceptions but exceptions prove the rule. Black Panther? Bring it on. The rest? Hard pass, all day every day.

Count on the Koreans to open my mind to the beleaguered genre. Psychokinesis is a very atypical superhero movie. The lead, a bit of a shmuck, is a negligent dad (Ryu Seung-ryong) who drinks some enhanced spring water shortly after his ex-wife dies. That single cupful grants him the ability to move objects with his mind. His initial exploration into telekinesis gets him pegged in the head by a cheap plastic cigarette lighter but once he's developed his talent he's ready to take on the evil real estate developers — even sadistic Director Hong (Jung Yu-mi) — threatening the livelihood of his daughter (Shim Eun-kyung), a fried chicken entrepreneur. Does he become a goofy Superman though? Not at all. Our bumbling hero never takes on the system as a whole or crime in general; his law-abiding nature is part of his Everyman M.O. He's just a guy with a strange gift. Like you. Maybe me.

Revenger: Bruce Khan, Step This Way

After watching the martial arts B-movie Revenger, you may ask yourself: Who the hell is Bruce Khan and where has he been all my life? An immediately iconic anti-hero of the silent-but-deadly type, the seriously buff, humorlessly serious Khan singlehandedly turns Lee Seung-won's skimpily plotted action flick set on a prison island that pits a crew of alpha dogs against a group of oddballs into an engrossing affair. He's not alone in keeping you engaged: A female archer (Yoo Jin-seo) with unfailing precision, her bratty daughter (Kim Na-yeon), and a goofy gang leader (Kim In-kwon) with a hook for a hand are all chewing up the tropical scenery with abandon as is the movie's main nemesis (Park Hee-soon), a mummy-wrapped madman who's taste for blood is insatiable.

He hasn't got a shot against Khan, though, since the latter is generally speaking untouchable whenever he's engaged in hand-to-hand combat or swordplay, regardless of how many people are encircling him. Why is it so satisfying to see one person take on a ill-advised crowd? Anyway, I'd say his most delectable adversary wasn't the film's ostensible embodiment of evil but his henchman played by the drop-dead beauty Choi Je-heon. When they strip down for the final confrontation, you may be struggling to choose exactly who you want to win: the beautiful bad boy or the righteous ruffian who sometimes wears blood like lipstick. I picked the high ground but you do you.

RV: Resurrected Victims: The Love of a Mother

The central setup in RV: Resurrected Victims is a good one — select members of the dead are sending lookalike emissaries (with pronounced "zombie" affect) back from the grave to murder the ones responsible for their deaths. Afterwards, they self-immolate — a somewhat hellish bit of imagery. So why have these particular victims come back to exact revenge? Unclear. How long has this phenomenon been going on? Not sure. You see, there's a cover-up on that front! Most importantly, did ruthless, young prosecutor Seo Jin-ong (Kim Rae-Won) orchestrate the untimely end of his martyr of a momma (Kim Hae-sook)? Oh boy, that's also kinda hard to say.

In RV, people get pretty close to figuring it all out: special agent Lee (Jeon Hye-jin), a legal colleague (Sung Dong-il), even Seo's heavily medicated sister (Jung Young-man) who does a nice job of peeling an apple. But since these undead vigilantes tend to burst into flames after executing their killers, forthcoming answers are difficult to attain. Strangely, Kwak Kyung-taek's supernatural thriller ends up being very little about any insights we mortals might glean from the Other Side. If anything, the film is a roundabout message movie about the perils of drunk driving and an unconvincing argument about the importance of filial love. When you see your mom across the street, hurry to meet her and don't have liquor on your breath.

The Prison: Who Runs The Law?

Yes, it's preposterous. Yes, it's cynical. Yes, it's horrific. But The Prison is also incredibly, impossibly fun. By taking one penitentiary's inner workings — the guard-inmate sycophancy, the convict hierarchy, the black market trading, the perverted politics — to their most extreme possibility, Na Hyeon's screenplay is a deliriously enjoyable improbability, a twisty-turning political Rube Goldberg machine of crime, cruelty, and power-tripping. The struggle for supremacy between the sadistic old-timer convict Ik-ho (Han Suk-kyu) and the contentious ex-cop newbie Yu-gon (Kim Rae-won) is one of those gloriously gripping, cinematic pissing matches in which who might win remains unknown until the very end.

Is this a movie about corruption? Does it glamorize corruption? Even as it exposes corruption's insidious ubiquity inside South Korea's judicial system? Is it even taking a stance on corruption? Is it, perhaps, some strange adult counterpart to Na's anti-fascist kids cartoon Leafie, A Hen in the Wild? All valid theories, in my humble opinion. In fact, how you interpret this one is definitely up to you. Regardless, I'm guessing that whatever your ideological take, The Prison's final scene is going to make your head spin in that it's one of the most anti-Hollywood endings I can imagine, a bizarre restoration of karmic balance that goes against traditional movie ideas about good and bad and the "ends justify the means" philosophies. Have I got you intrigued yet? Are you thoroughly perplexed and enticed? Good. Now watch the damn movie.

The Drug King: High on the '70s

Tarantino isn't the only director fetishizing '70s noir. Director Woo Min-ho and his cinematographer, costume designer, and music director are all channeling peak Scorsese, Schlesinger, and Penn in the sumptuously filmed, nattily attired, and impeccably scored The Drug King. The latest South Korean export helmed by acting legend Song Kang-ho, Woo's sprawling biopic concerns Lee Doo-sam, an actual cook-dealer-addict who operated on an international scale. Yet despite its lush look and sound, The Drug King avoids glamorizing its drug of choice crank by reminding us that those who get a taste of this upper will get hooked, go crazy, then crash and burn.

We see this scenario play out with Doo-sam himself naturally as well as his brother Doo-hwan (Kim Dae-Myung) and a handful of ancillary characters but really most of this cast is set dressing. The Drug King is Do-sam's story; everyone else is walking prop, an extra maybe with lines. Luckily, Song is an actor who can carry a two-hour movie alone. We may wish that actresses Kim So-jin and Bae Doona had more to do as his clear-eyed wife and his calculating mistress but Woo's script isn't concerned with anyone outside of its leading man. An ostensible plot involving a determined police detective (Lee Hee-joon) on Lee's trail is irrelevant. What works in The Drug King, and it's no small thing, is Song doing his thing — rising up to the top then sinking to a soiled bottom. You'll never look at a bucket of piss the same way again.

Illang: The Wolf Brigade: Man Gets Worse Over Time

In a not-so-distant future in which we still take cabs but fire guns that look like blowdryers, a war has broken out on the Korean peninsula. This time around, however, the conflict is not between North and South (which want to reunite despite international pressures to the contrary). This time around, the fight is between The Sect (rebel forces) and The Special Unit (an elite police force). At least that's what it seems like at first. As the movie progresses, the battle appears to actually be between The Special Unit and Public Security, a rival law enforcement agency. None of the groups comes across as a force for good, although The Sect theoretically represents the proletariat. Do they uphold the sanctity of life? Not a chance. And really can you blame them?

Humans have grown worse over time. Our basest traits have evolved. Im Joong-kyung (Gang Dong-won) is an affectless soldier who was part of a mass killing of young girls. Lee Yoon-hee (Han Hyo-ju) is a faux bookseller who will betray anyone for her ailing little brother. Can these two fall in love? Even if they're working at cross purposes? More to the point, can they feel anything? Furthermore, what do either of them have to do with the young suicide bomber (Shin Eun-soo) in Little Red Riding Hood drag? Let it go. Let it all go. The best part of Kim Jee-woon's scifi snoozer are the shootouts and fistfights during which I found myself as unconcerned with who'd come out on top as I was tickled by the fight choreography.

The Outlaws: Superheroes Without Capes

Although you'd hardly find The Outlaws listed under fantasy films, Kang Yoon-seong's energetic crime pic has a superhero of sorts at its center despite being based on a true story involving Chinese-Korean gang warfare circa 2007. Detective Ma (Ma Dong-seok) can outmaneuver, outmuscle, and outthink any crook on his beat, and anyone who doubts that is about to get a serious schooling. Small surprise his boss (Choi Gwi-hwa) constantly defers to his judgment while a local busboy pretty much idolizes him. He's got his weaknesses — broads, booze, and bribes — but you get the feeling he's always respectful of the first and generally mindful of the second. As for the money he extorts on the street, in The Outlaws, it's all in good fun. (I know. I know.)

Ma isn't the only character who comes across as a smarter, stronger humanoid from another world. His nemesis Jang Chen, (the fabulously wigged Yoon Kye-sang) is equally next-level — albeit on the evil side which always has a better stylist. As the new bully in town, Jang exudes the inhuman confidence that can accompany being a sadist willing to inflict pain for the pettiest of reasons. His primary backup boys share his cruel streak so when push comes to shove, it often involves sledge hammers or other tools of destruction. My main quibble with this 2017 blockbuster is that the women are basically hookers and hostesses. I count on Korean films to deliver strong female roles. When they don't, I'm sad. Perhaps Kang had Hollywood biases on the brain.

Sunflower: Less Fighting Please

Sheesh, this one was a downer. Sunflower is the pitiful tale of a recently released convict whose life spirals further downwards despite his vow of nonviolence moving forward. So while Kang Seok-beom's heartbreaking drama has plenty of ugly fight scenes, the hero (played as a kind of naif by Kim Rae-won) is generally getting beat up without ever striking back. As human punching bags go, he's the thoroughly bruised poster child. So who's he getting pummeled for? His adoptive mother (Kim Hae-sook), his bratty sister (Heo Yi-jae), and his mechanic boss (Lee Ho-sung)... Truthfully, you feel like he'd take a broken nose for anyone.

And so many people want to slug him: His cowardly childhood buddy (Han Jeong-su), the town's sickeningly evil mobster (Kim Byeong-ok), various thugs with various weapons, various high school students with various haircuts. Plus the world's laziest cop. Speaking of which, Sunflower may have one of the most unflattering portraits of the Korean police force committed to celluloid. The duo of officers who patrol this neighborhood are repeatedly witnesses to violence which they watch without ever lifting a hand to help. Their only concern seems to be to get some more food. When the final confrontation between the Job-like, beautifully-tattooed ex-con and the town's gang of lowlifes takes place, the only ones who escape his rage are the despicable boys in blue. Is this a form of social commentary?

The Lost Choices: She's Not Having It

Ji Eun (Shin Hyon-bin) has one damned ugly life. An orphaned young woman with only one friend (Yim Seo-joo) at the fabric factory where they're bored shitless, she's unable to find a better job as a graphic artist despite her talents because of a severe speech impediment. After witnessing her gal pal (who's also her next-door neighbor) get physically and mentally abused at home and at work almost daily, Ji Eun gets gang raped. Then a shady cop is dismissive of her account despite a fistful of hair she's ripped from the head of one of her attacker. Then one of her rapists returns to rape her again. Who wouldn't want be consumed by anger? Who wouldn't want revenge?

But Ahn Yong-hoon's grimly satisfying The Lost Choices isn't content with reveling in serial killings by a survivor vigilante. This effective drama also does an excellent job at reflecting the patriarchal biases and attitudes that inform this most misogynist of crimes. On the criminal side, the perps are not only oblivious of the harm they've inflicted but also don't remember the face of their victim... and repeatedly cast themselves as victims when the tables take a deadly turn. On the law side, the only one sympathetic to Ji Eun is the sole female cop (Yoon So-yi), who knows a thing or two about the PTSD that accompanies sexual assault. What especially engrossed me about The Lost Choices was how the script charts both the heroine's spree and the lady copy's consciousness expanding. The ending is not what you'd expect!

Derailed: In Praise of Ma Don-seok

There are a few Korean actors who I'll see in anything: Song Kang-ho, Choi Min-sik, and Choi Eun-hie. Add Ma Don-seok to this short list. The hunky actor memorably came to my attention in the peerless zombie thriller Train to Busan in which he played one adorable, indestructible husband whose battles with the undead remain a highlight of the film. Since then I've seen him in Ashfall, Unstoppable, and Along with the Gods: The Last 49 Days and this guy always delivers. Impossibly charismatic and appealingly rough, he's a true seducer who manages to balance danger and deliciousness in a marquee-worthy way.

Those two contrasting qualities play out in a strange way in Lee Seong-tae's savage crime pic Derailed since his character here is an uneasy mix of the likeable and the despicable. On the good side, he's a doting father, a flirtatious husband, a righteous fighter who recognizes integrity; on the bad, he's a pimp, a swindler, a bully, and a dumbkoff. Do you root for him when he's pitted against a young car thief (Choi Min-ho) trying to rescue his runaway girlfriend (Jung Da-eun) from "the life" and a recently released, psycho ex-con (Kim Jae-young) who has some justifiable grudges? I couldn't decide. Derailed is one of those movies in which no one looks like a potential friend. Ever. It's also a very violent film where people are punched, pummeled, kicked, and baseball-batted only to recover impossibly quickly. There's blood and bruises aplenty but no swelling. Perhaps there are myriad ice-packs off-screen?

Montage: Start All Over Again

Fairly quickly, you realize something strange is happening in Montage: After young Detective Cha (Oh Dae-hwan) informs still-grieving mother Ha-kyung (Uhm Junghwa) that the statute of limitations around the murder of her child is slated to run out in five days, instead of sequeing into a suspenseful countdown, the movie leaps forward to "nine hours left." Given that this jump happens well before the halfway point, we're relatively assured that something else is afoot besides the solving of a 15-year-old homicide. What is it? A second crime, dear reader. A second crime that mirrors the first! So is the original killer back for more mayhem or has a copycat (perhaps within the police force) emerged to take his place. And what does this all have to do with grandpa (Song Young-chang)?

The force's retired cynic (Kim Sang-kyung) would like to find out more than anyone else but since he's no longer paired with his initial sidekick (Oh), Montage loses some really great opening chemistry. In its place, we're left with an echo chamber of screaming. Screams of grief, screams of anger, screams of frustration, screams of rebellion, screams of justice unfulfilled, and screams of indignation. Strangely, Bom (Heo Jung-eun), the kidnapped girl at the center of this story, doesn't scream that much. In Montage, the screaming is left to the adults. You may scream too at how this movie resolves itself. Unless you turn the screams into a drinking game, in which case you may think this film is a scream.

The March of Fools: Undergraduates Underachieving

How any discerning filmgoer can rank Ha Gil-jong's lighthearted (and lightweight) college romp The March of Fools right up there with Kim Ki-young's giddily perverse The Housemaid or Yoo Hyun-mok's neorealist Stray Bullet utterly baffles me! And it's not like I have a bias against comedies. I loved the culinary craziness of Le Grand Chef and the rebellious slapstick of Attack the Gas Station 2. Maybe it's simply that director Ha's 1975 social satire hasn't aged that well, especially in regards to its leading lady Yeong-ja (Lee Yeong-ok) — a ditzy, vivacious major in French literature who uses her looks to get free beers, Camus essays, and bit parts on the stage. (While I appreciated her self-defense moves to fend off unwanted sexual advances, her eternally sunshiny disposition somewhat tired me.)

So be it because ultimately The March of Fools is about the men: particularly, the carefree academic Byeong-tae (Yoon Moon-seop) and the test-failing cyclist Yeong-cheol (Ha Jae-young), two longtime friends who go on a series of adventures including blind dates, billiard games, streaking (with clothes), military screenings, tub soaking, beer-guzzling, and an extended escape from the police. Both actors are incredibly charismatic and you really do wish the best for them. So what is the best? Winning a drinking contest, getting kissed by a girl, scoring some money from dad... Yeong-cheol dreams of whale-hunting and inventing an umbrella for cigarettes. Byeong-tae dreams of getting married. Anyone who believes dreams like this might come true has another thing coming. I'd add, these men know better too. How can they not? They're philosophy students.

The takeaway: "Eheu fugaces labuntur anni!" ("Alas, the fleeting years slip by!")

10 Classic Korean Films to Stream for Free

I've been a watching and writing about South Korean cinema for well over a decade. So while I rejoiced to see Parasite win those four well-deserved Oscars, I was also aware that Bong Joon-ho's latest masterpiece is no anomaly. South Korea's been making great movies since the beginning of the 20th century! Below is proof: 10 movies that are at least 50 years old and are currently streaming for free via YouTube's Korean Film Archives — akin to a Turner Classic Movies outpost for the international set. (Please note: My blog is more a record of what I watch than a traditional review site. Because of that, spoilers abound in the linked reviews.)

1. Stray Bullet (1960): The Koreans have a rep for making kick-ass gangster films but Yu Hyun-mok's thrilling neo-realist tragedy shows that they've been masters of other forms for a long time too. (Read review) (Watch movie)

2. A Flower in Hell (1958): Forgive me for putting two bleak pics back-to-back at the top but once you've seen Shin Sang-ok's ultimate bad girl pic, you'll understand why I'm such a Choi Eun-hie fanatic. (Read review) (Watch movie)

3. Transgression (1974): Though best known for The Housemaid and its psychosexual offspring, director Kim Ki-young's equally nutso tale of three initiates in the running to helm a monastery remains my all-time favorite by this offbeat auteur. (Read review) (Watch movie)

4. Hometown in Heart (1949): Who doesn't relish a coming-of-age story with a talented young actor (Min Yu) as the lead? If you like The 400 Blows and Lady Bird then this is the one for you. (Read review) (Watch movie)

5. Yangsan Province (1955): As styles go, "folk" is probably the hardest to manifest on the silver screen but Kim Ki-young's first flick manages to shun naturalism while telling timeless truths. (Read review) (Watch movie)

6. Madame White Snake (1960): As a gay man, I feel obliged to put something unapologetically camp on this list. This fantasy involving a seductress who's also a snake who's also a witch should suffice. (Read review) (Watch movie)

7. The Sea Knows (1961): Sections of this war pic are sadistic. Other parts are preposterous. But the ending blew me away, proving that a great end can justify the label "necessary viewing." (Read review) (Watch movie)

8. The Widow (1955): The first Korean film directed by a woman was stiffed by distributors. Let's remedy that: Park Nam-ok's drama prominently featuring male eye candy deserves a bigger audience despite some missing footage! (Read review) (Watch movie)

9. Empty Dream (1965): In a way, you could say this is what would happen if you crossed the original Little Shop of Horrors with L'Age d'Or. I know that doesn't make sense. Neither does the movie but oh my... (Read review) (Watch movie)

10. The Night Before Independence Day (1948): Early Korean cinema was known for its byeonsas, narrators employed by the theater to act out the story. This seedy portrait of society's underbelly is a fascinating example. Admittedly not for everyone but definitely for me. (Read review) (Watch movie)

Deja Vu: Flashback to What?

At some point during Ko Kyung-min's frightful fright flick Deja Vu, I stopped trying to figure out what was going on. I stop being worried whether the Elvis impersonator Do-sik (Jo Han-sun) was a multiple personality for real estate developer Choi Hyun-suk (Jung Kyung-ho), whether the camera-blurry-equals-hallucinations experienced by Ji-min (Nam Gyu-ri) were caused by her medication or helped by it, and even whether the missing Je-yi (Jeong Eun-Seong) was a dead deer or a dead girl. Free of those concerns, I wasn't particularly scared by office irregularities like flickering lights or an inexplicably activated copy machine; nor was I especially curious when an apartment's walls were smeared with blood. Who cares if a leading character has recently been knifed or not?! Deja Vu is a horror movie that creates a certain distancing effect that allows you to observe camera angles, sound choices, and plot points disinterestedly. Nothing matters. I suppose there's something terrifying about that.

And now for some questions: Can taking a psychotropic pills simulate symptoms in the fiancee akin to those experienced by the patient? Are all Korean professions tainted by bribes involving fat fistfuls of bills? Does every policeman (Lee Cheon-hee) secretly want to be a vigilante and have unlimited funds that would allow him to rent an extra apartment and trick it out with all sorts of surveillance equipment? Would anyone wearing high heels jump up and down on a hard drive as a way to destroy it? I agree that hit-and-run drivers should be punished but did any of the producers believe that this movie would do that particular cause justice? I'm awaiting some answers here.

The Mimic: Do Not Adopt This Child

What would you do if you chanced upon a lost, bedraggled little girl in the woods outside your new house? How about if it were right after a pair of neighbor kids had a terrifyingly supernatural experience nearby? Would you invite her into your home and unquestioningly welcome her into your open arms as she assumes the name and vocal cadences of your young daughter then drives your senile mother insane? Or would you get her over to the local Children's Services? For reasons that eventually work against her, mom Hee-yeon (Yum Jung-ah) takes the first approach in Huh Jung's creepy ghost story The Mimic. But like us, husband Min-ho (Park Hyuk-kwon) badly wishes she'd take the second option. He knows what it's like to lose a child since the couple lost their own son five years ago at a mall. Wouldn't the smart thing to do be to get this lost young girl (Shin Rin-ah) to the cops so they can track down men missing parents? Or considering the bruises all over her back, one might also get her into some proper foster care? When grandma (Heo Jin) pulls a knife on their unofficial adoptee, is anyone doing anyone else a favor by providing this young orphan a home?

Obviously, I was not consulted. And while I do have some advice for this movie's central couple, I don't know how much of it would have been useful when the tiger spirit emerged in the little girl's birth father, a shaman who'd clearly gone off the deep end, too. If this all sounds amusing, it's actually not. The Mimic is kind of scary. Not keep you up so you can't sleep at night scary. More like, you think you're not that scared but then you end up having a nightmare anyway. That kind of scary. Proceed at your own risk.

Piagol: In War, Everything Is Justified

YouTube's Korean Classic Film channel is the Korean film fan's beloved online version of Turner Classic Movies, a treasure trove of restored classics, cult curiosities, and other cinematic wonders from the celluloid vault. Piagol, one of the channel's older black-and-white movies, is a gritty 1955 war pic about a dwindling squadron of North Korean soldiers struggling for relevance and survival at the tail end of the Korean War. As portraits of the military go, it's anything but flattering yet the critiques leveled by writer-director Lee Kang-cheon have a despairingly universal quality: Ranking officers rape female officers with little consequence; villages are pillaged for food then violence is justified for dubious political reasons; discipline is extreme and inconsistent and often pointless; the enemy often comes from within. (P.S. Don't expect the Soviet Union to rescue your ass!)

And it's not just one bad red apple in khaki here. The icy-hot Ae-ran (No Kyeong-hie) backstabs her rival female enlistee Soju (Kim Yeong-hui) for no good reason while both the lead officer (Lee Ye-chun) and that snake of a G.I. Man-su (Heo Jang-kang) pull out knives to literally stab others, with even lower motives on their mind. With WWI poet laureate Wilfred Owen likely staring down at him from the heavens, all the duplicity and detonating bombs in the world cannot and will not kill the Byronesque tendencies of Piagol's impossibly romantic Cheol-su (Kim Jin-kyu), the dashing serviceman who gazes wistfully at the clouds as if posing for a paperback cover of Wuthering Heights. So who surrenders and who dies? Well, the one to ultimately survive the nasty infighting amidst periodic enemy gunfire may surprise you. It sure did me.

Split: Bowling for Debtors

Everyone owes something — usually lots and lots of money — in Choi Kook-hee's diverting bowling dramedy Split. The one-time Wednesday Nights league champeen (Yoo Ji-tae) is constantly racking up debts with his competitively disastrous gutter balls. The alley inheritress a.k.a. Split's spitfire love interest (Son Ye-jin) is saddled with extortion-level interest payments caused by her regretful use of the family business as collateral. Even the movie's quirky, somewhere-on-the-spectrum, potentially future lord-of-the-lanes (an excellent Lee Da-Wit) eventually owes his manipulative patron-funders around $20 for a birthday bus trip to visit the current home of his estranged mother and the mausoleum housing his deceased grandmother (who was quite a bowler herself in the city back in the day).

But by the end, Split also owes us, the audience, a few things, too, like that big important game that could go either way and is finally tipped towards victory thanks to the the young bowler's prowess and unusual methods; a romance-solidifying kiss — doesn't have to be post-coital — between the leading man and his pimping promoter; a scene in which the managress sees how bad life would be working as a hostess at the local coffee bar; a pile of Christmas presents that allow one neglected adult to heal his wounds with some help from Santa; and a drunk scene in which the same young man engages in forbidden behavior. The omission of all these scenes is perplexing because the movie actually feels like its building towards them at different times. Which isn't to say this movie is striking out. More that, it's leaves behind too many lone pins that are the marks of a less-than-perfect score.

The Man Standing Next: Not The President's Last Bang

Will the multiple Oscar accolades for Parasite result in larger crowds for new Korean movies at the multiplex? Not immediately from the looks of it if a recent screening of Woo Min-ho's big-budget political thriller The Man Standing Next is any gauge. (A recent matinee screening had the usual six or seven suspects in attendance at Times Square's AMC Empire 25.) In this case, that's probably all for the best since this film about the 1979 assassination of South Korean President Park Chung-hee (Lee Sung-min) is neither as layered as Bong Joon-ho's latest masterwork nor as stylishly seductive as Im Sang-soo's The President's Last Bang which covers similar territory. Which means this one is truly for cineastes with a taste for "Hallyuwood."

In its favor, The Man Standing Next is more forthcoming with historical details than glammy The President's Last Bang; less fortunate is how belabored the set-up part of the movie is. I learned more and cared less since The Man Standing Next only kicks into gear when the action turns decidedly violent. There's a terrific scene in which a kidnapped Kwak Do-won fights his way out of a car, which leads to an exciting final scene in which the KCIA Chief Kim Kyu-Pyeong (Lee Byung-hun) orchestrates the killing with his hired thugs as well as the cooperation of the duplicitous Deborah Shim (Kim So-jin). Most interesting of all however is the archival photos and audio of the real-life men portrayed in the film, a short aside which pops up right before the end credits. Getting upstaged by reality isn't uncommon but as a stand-in for The Man Standing Next's anti-hero of a leading man, a former-revolutionary-turned-frustrated-bureaucrat, Lee Byung-hun has certainly done better.

Shadow Flowers: There's No Place Like Home

North Korean defectors' harrowing escapes are well-documented. But what about those who wish to return? That less-common tale is rarely told. Which is exactly what makes Yi Seung-un's Shadow Flowers — which had its North American premiere in MoMA's Doc Fortnight — so curious. This feature-length documentary concerns Kim Ryun-hee, a decidedly tenacious woman who left North Korea in search of better medical treatment only to find herself trapped in South Korea unable to return. She certainly leaves no stone unturned: She brands herself a spy, engages in passive resistance, attempts suicide, holds press conferences, seeks assistance from the Vietnamese consulate, and networks with fellow ex-pats. Yet time and again, her effort to get back to her husband and daughter is met with bureaucratic delays. Even her renegade act of connecting with North Korean players at a good will hockey game is met with a wall of yellow-vested bodies that prevent her from making physical contact of any kind.

Over seven years in, government leadership may have experienced drastic upheavals in Seoul but Kim consistently appears no closer to success than she did when she arrived. "The kitchen appliances are better," Rhee quips at one point about South Korea but she also notes that her totalitarian regime had free healthcare, reasonable work hours, and built-in retirement plans. When she argues with a lone older protestor about dictator Kim Jong-un, the man-on-the-street's reply is "Go back to your own country" to which she responds: "I can't." After that, somewhat bewildered, he comments, "I need a smoke" then puts down his protest sign. Perhaps Yi's film can pick up where Kim's enemies left off.

Pursuit of Death: The Opposite of Bromance

Imagine spending your whole life hating someone. And not just hating them but chasing them. And not just chasing them for your entire adult life but in this prolonged, decades-spanning process, sacrificing everything that really matters: Your wife, your child, your career, your reputation, your eyesight, your health... Is it worth it? It certainly doesn't appear to be in Im Kwon-taek's Pursuit of Death (a.k.a. Jagko). As the former cop (Choi Yun-seok) hounds a Communist rebel (Kim Hee-ra) across decades, only to end up widowed with stomach cancer and a limp, this film's protagonist is neither particularly sympathetic nor heroic. He's suffering from an obsession that suggests some unresolved childhood trauma but what that might be I haven't a clue.

His adversary (Kim Hee-ra) isn't much better. A roaming womanizer who contracts VD and poisons his nemesis with mercury scraped from a mirror, this guy is downright mean despite his luck with the ladies — who frankly are the only other characters that are developed at all. Pursuit of Death's focus is narrow: We meet a taxicab driver, a former fellow officer, a check-in doctor at the rehab center where the leads meet and match wits but they're all largely expendable. The musical interlude in which most of the rehab center patients sing favorite songs from their past isn't informative so much as bizarre.

Director Im has made over a hundred films in a career that spans over half a century. Some of these movies — such as Hanji and Revivre — are quite good. Others — like this one — not so much.