July 20, 2020

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!

July 7, 2020

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!

July 1, 2020

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.