Top Ten Movies of 2021 (Sort of)

The best of the year list is built on the idea that the best is inherently memorable but is that the truth? Might some wonderful things prove completely ephemeral? What if certain types of enjoyment imprint less permanently in the mind? And while no one is saying that unforgettable equals great — the theme song of Pinkfong & Baby Shark's Space Adventure alone proves otherwise — these annual roundups are created from the films that stick. I may have seen better in 2021. I can't remember.

1. A Taxi Driver (2017): This Song Kang-ho vehicle speaks to the times by showing how hard it is to convince people of uncomfortable political realities, even when they're driving right through them.

2. The Fortress (2017): The self-absorbed ruling class has always been willing to shed the blood of the poor as witnessed by a diplomat (Lee Byung-hun) and a military advisor (Kim Yoon-seok) in this Qing Dynasty epic.

3. Minari (2020): Lee Isaac Chung's Oscar-winning immigrant story about farmers and bedwetting is grounded by exquisite performances from Youn Yuh-Jung as a cheeky granny and Alan S. Kim as her adorable grandson.

4. Sweet & Sour (2021): What starts off as a giddy rom-com about a chubby guy (Lee Woo-je) and an overworked nurse (Chae Soo-bin) turns into a harsh drama about a couple unable to find time for each other.

5. Little Forest (2018): In this late coming-of-age story, much is conveyed through drying persimmons and frying cabbage pancakes or hand-delivering some creme brulee to a friend.

6. School Excursion (1969): Sampling Yoo Hyun-mok's rich filmography, I was repeatedly enchanted, especially with this episodic movie about a teacher's journey into the big city with his small town charges.

7. Enter the Invincible (1977): I vaciliated between this one and action hero Dragon Lee's more fashionably attired Kung Fu Fever but this movie's evil triad is too irresistable not to pick.

8. My Bossy Girl (2019): No one's saying that life isn't hard but can't we have two frolicsome hours of rom-com that culminate in a win-win-win in an archery match conducted from a wheelchair?

9. Seashore Village (1965): This black-and-white classic is oncrete proof that Korea has been making world-class cinema for at least 50 years.

10. Coin Locker Girl (2015): While the life of crime that lies ahead for our dear "coin girl" is hardly unexpected, the hyperviolent stops along the way are repeatedly thrilling.

Just Missed the List: The Swindlers (2017), Moby Dick (2011), The Suspect (2013), and A Distant Place (2020).

Seashore Village: The Merry Widow

Shamefully uneducated in the Korean language, I'm fully aware that I repeatedly miss nuances in Korean films. In the award-winning Seashore Village, for instance, one English subtitle reads "It's a boy" but the actual dialogue is "It's got a penis" — something I'd have missed without my current Korean-American love interest. There's a big difference between those two statements extending way beyond mere Americanization. What other phrases got expurgated in the name of decency, I don't know. But translation gets complicated when what's acceptable becomes a shaping factor. Considering Seashore Village revolves around the sexual bond between a widow (Ko Eun-a) and her second husband (Shin Yeong-gyun), I'd hazard a guess that other frank statements have been "cleaned up" in the name of propriety. What can't be hidden, however, is the couple's explicit physical connection, something which guides much of the action — sometimes delightfully, sometimes disturbingly. (Also, inescapable is a lighthearted lesbian tryst between two minor characters who, far from reviled, are viewed as a subject of merriment by the local women.)

Shot in a fable-making black and white yet feeling incredibly contemporary, from its haircuts to its moral relativism, Kim Soo-young's 1965 classic Seashore Village feels equally archival and anticipatory, like an unintentionally modern artwork that nods to rape culture, Stockholm syndrome, gynocentric communities, shamanism, gender norms, and a back-to-nature movement as if such components were always an unavoidable part of life. And they were. And they are. With exceptional performances from its two leads, Seashore Village is concrete proof that Korea has been making world-class cinema for at least 50 years; what an invaluable service the Korean Film Archive provide us by showing us as much on YouTube!

The Divine Fury: Shadowman, Mixed Martial Artist

The ostensible leading man for fright flick The Divine Fury is Park Seo Jun who plays Yong Hoo, a traumatized mixed martial artist who discovers mid-career, he's got a gift at fighting demons. Yong Hoo has a troubled past, however. After he loses his father (Lee Seung-joon) in a car accident caused by a Satanic serpent sectarian, he becomes a metaphorical killing machine in the MMA cages where his rage against the world — and the church — has earned him world champion status. Life's not all big gold belts and sponsorship money for our hero, though. He's an empty shell of a man plagued by mysterious stigmata that often erupt while he sleeps ruining countless top sheets and pillows at the finest hotels.

This malady drives him to seek help first from the medical establishment where doctors acknowledge he has a skin wound but can't fathom its underlying cause. Their stupefication leads him to consult a friend's psychic sister (Jo Eun-hyung) who directs him to follow a cross (quite literally) which leads him to his salvation in the shape of Father Ahn (Ahn Sung-ki). Ahn is a middle-aged exorciser who appears in better shape than his soon-to-be disciple. He's world-weary, tireless, and speaks Italian and Latin as well as Korean. In short, he's cooler than his charge and should've been the lead. Perhaps guided by the wisdom of age, he accepts second billing and celebrates his mentee's preternatural abilities at casting out evil spirits. Will the two be able to defeat the cult leader and disco entrepreneur (Woo Do-hwan) with his self-inflicted wounds, voodoo dolls, and Aquaman jumpsuit? Well, the thing about the Devil is you know he's always capable of making an encore.

A Bouquet of Thirty Million People: No Sight, No Sound

Shin Kyeong-gyun's 1951 drama A Bouquet of Thirty Million People is not your typical silent movie because it was recorded with spoken dialogue then the soundtrack got lost. How that happened I'm not sure since I always thought the two parts were wedded together but what history has bequeathed us is a 48-minute flick — scratched and patched — in which you can make out a general plot despite the complete absence of audio: A young man (Choe Hyeon) is drafted into the military, loses his sight in battle, then regains his vision when his mother donates her own eyes. Are we expected to rejoice or recoil? I'm not totally sure without indicative music. And this movie has lots of music: Army brass, a USO-style concert, a duet between the two romantic leads, and a dance sequence in which little girls dressed like fairies cavort (one assumes to a lovely song).

Hey, maybe it's a musical! After all, like many musicals, the movie also has a central love triangle — this time involving a blinded soldier, his small-town sweetheart, and a military nurse (Hwang Yui-hui). But which woman captures his heart remains a mystery. And let's be honest here: If your mother sacrifices her eyes for you, you're always gonna be a momma's boy. Should a film preservation society eventually hire some talented lip readers to fill in the details, we may eventually learn what he has to say about this...via subtitles.

Black Light: Question Quest

What do you consider the worse fate? Dying in an auto accident or ending up in a coma? Being widowed by a car crash (that may not have been your husband's fault) or being a caretaker for your spouse (who may have caused the other man's death)? Finding out your partner may have been suicidal or realizing that your ex might've had issues with addiction? Having to return to a factory job near the scene of the crime or bumping into the other wife who — like you — has yet to process this life-changing disaster?

Bae Jong-dae's drama certainly is a competition of woes, so much so that other characters like the daughter (Park Ji-hu), the brother, the sister-in-law, and the chummy boss are nothing next to the two central women (played by Yeom Hye-ran and Kim Si-eun). Whether the company is at fault (probably, yes) or the police botched up the original investigation (also, yes) doesn't ultimately natter. Black Light. Every question these women ask of themselves and each other consistently leads to more trouble. The one truth that feels definitive is that big business couldn't give a damn about your quality of life as long as they're making a profit.

A Distant Place: Gay Guys Get Sheepish

What's love got to do with it? Well, Park Kun-young's melancholic romance A Distant Place is the first Korean movie I've seen while snuggling with a Korean-American sweetheart in my bed. I'd share his thoughts on the film but he'd had a long week and fell asleep early on, although his cuddle didn't prevent me from watching this sad little drama 'til the end. His snores weren't commentary! Then again, this cinematic love affair isn't one I'd hope on either of us so I was perfectly fine with him dreaming the night's entertainment away.

The picture's two gay men — a painter-turned-sheepfarmhand (Kang Gil-woo) and a pretty boy poet-turned-teacher (Hong Kyung) — have a tough road ahead of them. Not only is the town less than accepting of any friends of Dorothy but the farmhand's sister (Lee Sang-hee) has reappeared after five years to reclaim the adorable little girl (Kim Si-ha) that he's been raising amidst the sheep. The elderly rancher (Gi Ju-bong) would like his queer handyman and the kid to stay on; the rancher's daughter would like more than that but she also doesn't get bent out of shape when she finds out he'd rather shack up with a dude. As to granny (Choi Geum-soon), she eventually wanders as much as her mind which sets off a series of disastrous events springing out of the cruelty in the closet. Slow-moving but far-from-dull, A Distant Place is a quiet film ideal for quiet nights made quite better by a warm friendly body curled up next to you in bed.

The Fortress: A Royal Mess

As class critiques go, Hwang Dong-hyuk's The Fortress is a devastatingly effective one. This retelling of the 17th century Qing dynasty's invasion of Korea portrays the ruling class as one almost entirely out of touch with the commonfolk; a group of backstabbing lords more committed to appearances (fancy clothes, calvary etiquette, the overall hierarchy) then they are to the people and culture that they're supposedly representing. King Injo (Park Hae-il) is guided by a roomful of ass-kissers and the only two brave enough to speak their opposing truths are the reconciliatory diplomat Choi Myung-gil (Lee Byung-hun) and the military advisor Kim Sang-heon (Kim Yoon-seok) who places integrity higher than life itself. Each man is persuasive in his way yet you begin to suspect that neither is ultimately right.

For as the voice of the people, blacksmith Seo Nal-soi (Go Soo) is able to recognize that these gents are ultimately arguing for a world that still treats the majority of men as war fodder. As such, Seo isn't so much an agitator out to change the system so much as he is someone self-aware enough to recognize that the structure is rotten to its core. Also worth mentioning is orphan girl Naru (Cho Ah-in). This waif — tossed from grandfather to grandfather's murderer to pragmatic metalworker — serves as a powerful reminder that if we're not serving our children's futures with our costly battles then what are we fighting for?

The Swindlers: Worth the Wait

For awhile now, The Swindlers has been appearing whenever I narrow my Korean movie search results on Amazon down to those films rating four stars and up. Because of that, I've tried streaming this 2017 crime pic a few times before. Sadly I've never made it past the first 20 minutes. Every time I'd learn that a Ponzi scheme had left numerous people broke and driven a few to suicide. Then I'd fall asleep. I just couldn't give a hoot. Last night, I decided to stay awake and find out how this thriller could possibly merit 4.6 stars. Would Jang Chang-won's directorial debut improve if I hunkered down and stuck it out?

Yes. It does. The Swindlers improbably evolves from terminally boring to deliciously exciting. A cat and mouse game that keeps changing whose the cat and whose the mouse, the cleverly crafted plot leaves you secondguessing the young mastercrook (Hyun Bin) and the aspirational prosecutor (Yoo Ji-tae) as they keep turning the tables on each other while trying to nab the Grand Poobah of Ponzi. What they lose sight of, however, is the movie's sole con woman played by Nana. She steals the movie despite second billing. Never underestimate an underdog.

The Culprit: He Did It! She Did It!

Watching Ko Jung-wook's whodunit The Culprit, it occurred to me: A movie can't be film noir if the actors are screaming all the time. Noir implies a sense of cool; it's an attitude as well as a genre. So having your two main actors constantly running their voices ragged as they feed each other's hysteria is going to disqualify you a thriller's highest label. Noisy noir simply isn't a thing. What's all the shouting about? Yeong-hoon (Song Sae-byeok) wants to find out who killed his wife! Jeong Da-yeon (Yoo Sun) wants to get her baby daddy (Oh Min-seok) out of jail. And Park Sang-Min (Jang Hyuk-jin) wants someone, anyone to remove the duct tape off his mouth and his wrists and his ankles in the recreated crime scene the widowed husband has made.

I'd say each has a perfectly legitimate reason to scream, especially the hostage, but these three probably could've discovered who the killer is with appropriate indoor voices. (Why none of the neighbors in this apartment building call the cops may be this movie's greatest mystery.) Now that I think about it, one of the few people who doesn't scream is the murder victim. A guilty conscience can really shut you up. But only if you're crime is adultery, not homocide. Cheating is so much worse than stabbing. Or so The Culprit implies.

Second Life: Slow Study

Her homelife stinks. This we know when a teenager (Jung Da-eun) overhears her neglectful parents fighting in another room. At school, life's not much better when she wakes up in class only to find other girls having fun around a birthday cake which she is not invited to share. Will her situation improve when she gifts EXO concert tickets to her popular peers? Yes but...No good deed goes unpunished.

What goes wrong? Is it lying to her mother to get money to scalp those tickets? Or making up a story about two recently acquired rings out of her price range? Whatever her first misstep, by catapulting herself from outcast to kook, this troubled teen goes from being a source of indifference to a target of derision. Does she learn a lesson? Um, no.

Instead she attempts to frame one young woman whom she especially envies, a strategy that backfires terribly. Does she learn from this? Again, no. At least not immediately. But as the old A.A. adage goes: "Helping others is the foundation stone of recovery." Our anti-heroine may not be an alcoholic but she's definitely got issues. Perhaps some time hanging out with orphans will shape her into a better person. From the looks of it, she does become a better student. Which should serve her at the fancy private high school. But will it be enough?

News of Seoul: Three Minutes of Yesteryear

When it opened it 2015, Kyoto's Toy Film Museum was a humble institution, displaying historic cameras and bygone home projectors in a wall of cubbyholes. (There was also some toy audiovisual equipment with which visitors could play.) Screenings of old samurai movies were shown on a television, the guest speaker might be a screenwriter of yore. But just being a movie archive does position one to make discoveries. And so here we are as TFM's Director Oto Yoneo donates this bit of footage (dating back to the 1920s) to the Korean Film Archive circa 2019. If you're a Korean movie buff like me, then you know full well that homegrown celluloid prior to 1950 is precious goods indeed as the occupying Japanese were actively engaged in destroying Korean culture/art in all forms from 1910 up through the Korean war. How this particular snippet survived (on enemy territory, no less) is a bit of a mystery!

As for the footage itself, which lasts but a few minutes, there are street scenes with trolley cars and brief, overhead shots of Seoul's early skyline, devoid of skyscrapers, Namsan Tower, Lotte World, and the National Museum with its memorable modern spin on traditional architecture. Everything you see is scratched and marked up; the sound — if there ever was any — is long lost; and the title cards — like some of the in situ street signage — are in... Japanese. Still it's nice to get this glimpse of the past, no matter how damaged, no matter how mute.

War of the God Monsters: Cousins of Godzilla

The reclusive scientist (Kim Ki-Ju) has a crazy theory about an impending dinosaur resurrection. The daring reporter (Nam Hye-gyeong) — who's infiltrated his home as a housekeeper — sees his story as the scoop of her lifetime. The little girl (Kim Da-hye), his motherless daughter, wants to win a Blue Dragon Film Award by pouting and flirting and wailing. But no one's story — or ambition — is going to be as entertaining as the Godzilla-like creatures unleashed from the frozen waters by climate change. It's only then, when the kooky-looking creatures arrive, that Kim Jeong-yong's kaiju quasi-classic kicks into high gear. I mean, who cares about humans once this parade of monsters hits the screen?

War of the God Monsters is blessed with a giant lizard painfully covered in polyps, a many-legged dragon who has yet to sprout wings, an oversized bat pup in prehistoric Hammer pants, a triceratops who walks on hind legs, and an oversized rooster that may have wandered onto the wrong miniature set. Some monsters spit fire; others project electric bolts; a few can fly; at least one lays two eggs. At first the little girl is delighted by these oversized theatrics. Then quickly, she realizes that their show is rooted in demolation and decimation. I'm assuming she wasn't screaming for the airplane pilots to stop shooting the large lizards! I could be wrong. She could be a junior member of PETA.

Kingdom: Ashin of the North: Vengeance Thy Name Is Archer

Fellow followers of all flicks Korean, beware. Netflix has falsely categorized Kingdom: Ashin of the North as a film. Search by "korean movie" and this 2021 offering will wrongly pop up in your final results. IMDb, for its part, has more accurately labeled this feature-length flop a special episode. That makes loads more sense. Oh, it's not that you'll have a hard time following the spin-off plot: Kingdom's tale — of a young girl (Kim Si-ah) who grows up to be an angry archer (Jun Ji-hyun) after witnessing the total decimation of her village — is fairly standard fare. The problem with Kingdom isn't that it's confusing. It's more that only a devotee of its source material would care about what's going on. Trust me. I don't mind a stonefaced heroine shooting arrows at treacherous lords to make them into zombie meals. But the exposition here is so belabored as to be aggravating.

On further thought, I'd hazard to say that director Kim Seong-hun should've thrown out Kim Eun-hee's dialogue and had the characters scream and cry and laugh without words. The most exciting scenes are those with little or no speaking: a tiger's attack of an undead deer; a hunting party's fatal stalking of that same crazy cat. When we see Lady Vengeance dispatch with her enemies one by one, we don't need to hear hre victim beg for his life. This might be one case in which turning off the subtitles could work to your benefit.

Top 10 Korean Movies with Dragon Lee

Because this blog is devoted to Korean movies, I focused this "best of" list on Dragon Lee flicks which were shot — at least partly — in his native tongue. Along the way, I also learned that many of this North Korean heartthrob's films were originally directed by Kim Si-Hyeon only to be re-edited (a.k.a. butchered) then recredited to Godfrey Ho. No respect! I'm not confident this list is infallibly ordered but I do hope it conveys my newfound respect for this underrated performer.

1. Enter the Invincible Hero: An action movie is only as good as its villains and this one has three and what a wild trio they are.

2. The Dragon's Infernal Showdown: You know you're in for a treat when the bad guy quips, "Our only purpose in life is to make as much money as possible."

3. Kung Fu Fever: Nearly every scene, Dragon's sporting a new outfit...except at the end when he brings back the yellow onesie which truly deserved an encore.

4. Martial Arts of Shaolin Temple: The story of loyalty is timeless but there's something so quintessential '80s here: the pleated-pants, black vest, white-T-shirt and gorgeous hair.

5. The Dragon's Snake Fist: North Korea's pulpy male pin-up headlines as a star pupil who eventually must take on a rival school's entire graduating class. Guess who wins?

6. Dragon Lee Vs. The Five Brothers: The real stars here are the mysterious woman in a veiled hat (Qiu Yuen) and the malicious man with the iron hand (Choi Min-kyu).

7. Secret Ninja Roaring Tiger: A variation of The Three Musketeers including a woman and some weird soft core sections.

8. Champ Against Champ: All-but-killed by a poisoned dart, our young hero must have his leg amputated then learns to fight with a steel prosthetic. Oh, the sound effects in this one!

9. The Deadly Silver Ninja: This script, involving fighters dressed like Mexican wrestlers, feels like it was written after the film was shot and based on spur-of-the-moment ideas guided by mouth movements.

10. Mission for the Dragon: If you want to see Dragon fight in the water, this may be your flick.

Also worth watching: Bruce Lee's Ways of Kung Fu, The Clones of Bruce Lee, and Jaws of the Dragon.

The Suspect: Never Enough Heroes

Who's your hero in Won Shin-yeon's intricate thriller The Suspect? You actually have a few choices here. Is it Ji Dong-cheol (Gong Yoo), the former North Korean spy who's desperate to find his wife and child? Or Min Se-hoon (Park Hee-soon), his South Korean counterpart who sees Ji's capture as his redemption? Or even Choi Kyeong-hee (Yoo Da-in), the reporter who looks to both men as a way to resurrect her career? You could even pick Captain Jo (Jo Jae-yoon), the resourceful, gum-smacking military sidekick who's here for comic relief. It doesn't really matter. Because everyone has the same nemesis: Kim Seok-ho.

As the film's just-mentioned, amoral, mercenary, duplicitous NIS Director, Jo Sung-ha gets a lot of mileage out of a shit-eating grin. He flashes his teeth whether he's outsmarting a colleague or making a shady deal, whether he's pointing the gun at his enemy or having that same gun's barrel pressed up against his forehead. No doubt his mother told him he had a beautiful smile as a child but the more he grins the more you'll grimace. I mean that as a compliment. As bad guys go, he's deliciously detestable. The car chases in The Suspect are terrific, the camerawork frenetic, but that sickening smile really takes the cake.

Fallen: The Future Is Weird

For all its meta conversation about science fiction, revenge porn, and film criticism, the opening scene of Lee Jung-sub's Fallen creates a palpable sense of suspense. You sense one of the characters discussing scifi screenwriting sensation Baek Jo-kyeong (Yang Ji) is up to no good but which one and why is a mystery. Shortly thereafter when the antisocial artist wakes up, battered, handcuffed, and leather-masked in an oil barrel, you — like her — are desperate to find out how she got there (and how that mask mysteriously turns into duct tape soon thereafter). Yet what follows isn't so much an explanation or an elaborate escape so much as two dueling narratives — one akin to Six Characters in Search of an Author meets Molly's Game; the other, a tribunal of sorts in which the Twelve Angry Jurors (or thereabouts) must decide whether to grant immunity to two figures who may or may not be from the future and who may or may not have life-saving cures for the sick relatives of all those present. How do these two stories relate?

Well, there's some business about the mother of the scifi writer being a serial killer and the author's daughter being blessed with artificial intelligence (because the humans of tomorrow can be hybrids, don't you know?) but despite scads of exposition, unhelpful flashbacks, and some ever-menacing drones, I'm still not sure why that one guy had cool-looking magic marker lines on his shaved head or what the two young women playing with sparklers were intended to signify. Unwatchable? Apparently not since I stuck with Fallen to its cockamamie end. Recommended? Not to anyone I know... not the scifi geeks, not the literary eggheads, not the radical sisters, not the South Korean cinephiles. I suffered for you. I wrote two paragraphs. Let's all move on. Goodness lies ahead.

My Bossy Girl: A Total Bullseye

Is Hye-jin (Lee Elliya), the pert and pretty archer in a wheelchair, a domineering girlfriend? I wouldn't label her as such. She seems more like a self-possessed and determined young woman who Fate has directed into the caring arms of Hwi-so (Ji Il-joo), an adorable science nerd who's never had a girlfriend, gotten drunk, or driven a car. The two of them make an unbeatable pair whether they're giggling over pork chops at an eatery at the top of a laboriously tall staircase or gently smooching after a victorious game of paintball with his equally square cadre of friends. These two were made for each other and while conflicts exist — an overly worried dad (Lee Han-wi) on her side; a traumatic past on his — the chemistry between these two actors is so intoxicating that the idea of them not ending up together is simply not acceptable. You know it'll work out but you still cry when they hit a bump in the road. At least I did. Multiple times.

Lee Jang-hee's My Bossy Girl is basically one of those feel-good rom-coms in which you want everyone to be happy at the end: the science geek girl and her henna-haired lab partner; the supportive sister with international dreams of her own. And why shouldn't everyone get exactly what they wish? Why can't we have our desires and goals met and not just ours but those of our friends and family? I understand that someone has to lose but can't those be people in minor roles that we'll never see again or if they're robots can they fade into the background? No one's saying that life isn't hard but can't we have two frolicsome hours that culminate in a win-win-win? According to My Bossy Girl, we sure can.

Sweet & Sour: Who Do You Love?

I like a movie that emphatically changes gears midway and Lee Kae-byeok's Sweet & Sour definitely does that. What starts off as a giddily silly rom-com about a chubby guy (Lee Woo-je) with severe jaundice and an overworked nurse (Chae Soo-bin) who's an irresistable flirt turns into a harshly realistic drama about a couple unable to find time for each other because they're so overtaxed by jobs with no security. Admittedly, the nurse tries even as the engineer (Jang Ki-yong) is diverted by a sloppy but talented co-worker (Jung Krystal). But eventually, you question whether the two even belong together. Either pair actually. It's then that Sweet & Sour takes a mindspinning twist, which elevates the movie to a whole other level.

Rather then give you the details on that front and rob you of the fun that I promise you lies ahead, I'll simply say that this feel-good/feel-bad/feel-I-don't-know-what movie ends up stitching together three genres instead of two: romantic comedy, workplace drama, and time-dislocating head-spinner. To Lee's credit, each section of the film contains hints of the other two so the final product (art!) doesn't feel disjointed. To the contrary, I'd say Sweet & Sour is a bit of a miracle, modest as it may be.

The 8th Night: The Week Before

You'd think a movie involving a battle between good and evil would have a series of skirmishes before the big confrontation but Kim Tae-hyung's The 8th Night isn't following that convention. Instead, we're told about a monster (blinded by Buddha, no less) who's hoping he can reunite his black eye and his red eye and thereafter wreak havoc on the universe. The planets have aligned apparently. The keeper of the black eye (I think) knows that some crazy scientist has unearthed the red one and is conducting seriously amoral experiments to reactivate it. Once that's done, that one eye has eight nights to jump from body to body (or socket to socket, to be more accurate) until it reaches its partner-in-crime to inhabit the body of a virgin (Kim Yoo-jeong). What other body would house it?

Not much resistance goes on among the various victims in this journey. Generally speaking, the possessed keeper-of-the-eye cracks their neck, breaks out in a smile, sniffs its prey, then transfers into the new host. Creepy as hell but not much conflict. In this horror flick, the tension comes from knowing that with each "jump," the world is that much closer to Armageddon. I wasn't overly concerned with why the bitter monk (Lee Sung-min) with the axe wasn't hacking at an earlier iteration of the bodysnatching demon anymore than I was with the skeptical police officer (Park Hae-joon) who pooh-poohed the occult theories of his staff. The foolish naivete of the accolyte (Nam Da-reum) definitely made me wonder if this movie would have a happy or sad ending but I was fine with whichever way it went. In short, no spoilers here.

Minari: Crying Puddles

"It's not called a penis, it's called a ding-dong!"

Strong words. And not simply a joke either. Not at all. Because while not many artfilms are built around bedwetting, you could say a good part of Lee Isaac Chung's sublime Minari is. This exquisite movie about a nuclear family who relocate to Arkansas to start a pastoral life outside big city chicken sexing has a major plot point about peeing that encapsulates everyone — including the cheeky granny (Yuh-Jung Youn) who comes to live with Mom, Dad, Son, and Daughter when farmlife gets particularly rough.

What's so tough about raising crops, you ask. Oh, pretty much everything: the long hours, the physical labor, the dependency on the weather, the religious zealotry of your help (Will Patton), and, in this case, the claustrophobia of the trailer you now call home. Is it worth it? According to Dad (Steven Yeun), the answer is yes. According to Mom (Han Yeri), the answer is no. As for the kids, they're less decisive. The girl (Noel Cho) may be older and wiser but the boy (Alan S. Kim) is whose opinion matters most. Not because he's the male heir but because the actor who plays him is pretty much perfect.

Enter the Invincible Hero: Three Villains

While I certainly esteem the charismatic leading man, a Dragon Lee movie is only as good as its villains and Enter the Invincible Hero has three and what a wild trio they are. A normal martial arts flick would be happy enough with a bad guy like Master Pang (Casanova Wong), the criminal mastermind who wears a white glove over his more murderous hand and whose superstrength can be undone by way of a curious hole in his foot. If that last bit sounds a tad outlandish, consider his even more wicked assistant who has a blinking necklace that supplies him extra power and an outie belly button that's the Achilles' heel of his seven chakras. Yet neither of these malefactors holds a candle to the film's true star: an eyepatched hunchback who uses his hump as a lethal weapon in mano a mano combat. Like a vagabond Richard III, this troll-like leader of the village bandits effuses a contagious glee as he engages in acrobatic moves that range from impossibly high flips to rib crushing body slams.

As for our beloved Dragon, he's up to his usual antics — winning the movie's one pretty girl (who he actually kisses!), outfighting whole posses of evildoers, and being driven to more impassioned fighting by the taste of his own blood (and then amplified from some barechested flexing). You never doubt for a moment that this Korean hunk will emerge victorious but with three worthy opponents, it's fun to see him wipe his nose with his thumb once more (a la Bruce Lee) as he takes on the next man. He won't save everyone in the village but he'll likely save the love interest... and himself.

Coin Locker Girl: Momma Loves You Something Fierce

Most bibliophiles agree: You can't judge a book by its cover. But can you judge it by its title? On this front, the readers have been generally quiet. Somewhat related, I've been putting off watching Coin Locker Girl for years because that damned title seemed so odd, so stupid. Plus, the accompanying capsule synopsis didn't start off that promising: "A newborn girl is placed in a coin operated locker in the subway station..." Oh, really? Need I go on? Well, apparently, I should. For while the life of crime that lies ahead for our dear "coin girl" is hardly unexpected, the hyperviolent stops along the way are repeatedly thrilling. (I swear gun laws would make for better movies only because the knife is so much more intense.)

Given her unfortunate circumstances, her outcome could be tragic or heroic. As it turns, it was a bit of both. For Il-young (Kim Go-eun), the titular antiheroine, is doomed to succeed. Raised first on the streets then later by a ice-hearted gang moll (a sensational Kim Hye-su), this tomboy finds her romantic awakening with an indebted chef (Park Bo-gum) tests the limits of tolerance for the collection agency which is her family. Han Jun-hee's nasty noir is a survival of the fittest in which the sisterhood reigns supreme. The men in Coin Locker Girl may vie to be king of the hill but the only viable threat to the queen is the princess who finally put on her first dress. Throats will be punctured. Heads will be bashed. Eyes will be gouged. And the final showdown won't be one of triumph so much as an inevitable continuation of the old tune "The king must die! Long live the king!" This time around, though, it's for the ladies.

Gang: Gong

Someone please explain to me why I'm supposed to rally behind Ji-hoon (Cha Ji-hyuk) when he joins the fight club at the prison-like high school to which he's been transferred after breaking the ribs of another student at his former school. Is it because he's the outsider? Because he's thinner than everyone else? Because his competitors are either too chubby (Kim Dae-han), too crazy (Lee Jung-hyun), or have a creepy, cloudy eye? Am I supposed to intuit a homoerotic relationship between him and his not-quite-loyal new best friend? Because by the end of Gang, I didn't care much as to whether he or that rich student with the earbuds was about to get his ass whooped? Not that I wish anyone a crack to the jaw.

That's what one of the problems with Jo Bareun's hyper-violent, light-hearted Gang. The film presents a world in which bloodshed is the single option to decide who gets to be king of the hill. Despite being set in a high school, you never meet the smart student or the teacher's pet. Every young man attending this institute of lower education has one goal in mind: survive. For the toughest, that means going to the basement and flailing about while a DJ scores the bout with a hip soundtrack. For the less physically inclined, that means aligning with a contender, maybe being his friend, his coach, his promoter, his bitch. Why more kids don't skip class entirely, even if it means running away from home is a question that's never addressed. Are they all secretly pining for the jaded school nurse (Bae Hyo-won) who wears a silver leather jacket? Seems possible. She's doing something right as no one ever seems to lose a tooth or retain a bruise.

The Artist: Reborn: The Painting, Reframed

No one's about to say that the creator of The Artist: Reborn doesn't have something to say. Kim Kyoung-won's dark comedy about a painter who skyrockets to fame after her supposed death is peppered with wry commentary about the art market, the creative process, and good old amoral capitalism. But, as the writer-director himself states, "It's like Frankenstein without the monster part." What's the missing monster exactly? Is it the art? Could be. The oils depicting floating mandalas and simpler geometric shapes are too minimal for Kandinsky, too muted for Hilma af Klimt. Is it the script? Also possible. Yet Kim's writerly shark jumps are intentionally outlandish: the artist's resurrection in the morgue is pure sight gag; the marketspeak of her fabricated backstory is satirical grotesquerie. ("Let's say she was raped by a priest!")

What's that leave us? The cast? Okay. So if so, who? Ryu Hyeon-kyeong's turn as the visionary abstractionist is out of sync with the other performers... as she should be; Park Jeong-min is overly earnest ...which seems appropriate, too. Lee Soon-jae and Moon Jong-won may be broader in their interpreations of a cultural minister and a cultural pariah but can you blame them? For me, it was as if nothing quite worked and nothing quite failed. "Nothing's wrong," the artist states near the end. I'd add, "Nothing's right either." But what are you looking for? Perfection?

Bruce Lee's Ways of Kung Fu: Sisters Who Slay the Dragon

It's not Dragon Lee's first movie. Not even close. It's more like his 15th! So Bruce Lee's Way of Kung Fu could be accurately described as the midway marker of Dragon's big screen career. Which had me puzzling: Why do the credits list him as "Bruce Lei"? Was the allure of Bruce Lee that great six years after the movie icon's death? Or was Dragon ashamed of this particular pic? One fact is clear: This movie has nothing to do with the late Bruce Lee or his singular technique. So the title is doubly misleading: No Bruce Lee, no Bruce Lee moves. What do you get instead?

A surly king has a cadre of kung fu babes who defend him against a series of male martial artists; over 700 have died so far according to the blind codger who works as the local coffin-maker. If anyone would know, he would! According to the wise one, Dragon Lee — in Mowgli garb and a pageboy haircut — is the first guy to go into the palatial caves and come out alive. Barely. I mean, he gets his ass whupped in a cave, on a beach, in the forest, and in the ocean. Amid these various landscapes, our hero is subject to fishing nets, steel coils, and dart-throwing fans. Maybe Dragon chose the pseudonym for this flick because he didn't like getting beat up so much. As one character tell him fairly late in the movie, "Your only weakness was you didn't have the strength." That's pretty damning in a martial arts movie.

Jaws of the Dragon: In Praise of John Woo's Neighbor

When is a Dragon Lee movie not a Dragon Lee movie? When the actor's only got a bit part. Which means there are two ways to watch Jaws of the Dragon. One involves paying attention to every minor character and seeing if you can spot Mr. Lee. The other is to let it go and settle in for a decidedly noir experience. With moody cinematography and a soundtrack illegally lifted from Shaft, James Bond, and other crime pics, Jaws of the Dragon bleeds existential dread. James Nam (a.k.a. Nan Kung-Hsun) takes on the roles of star and director; he's a low-rent action autuer who made a handful of fight flicks but never achieved the same level of fame as say, John Woo, who apparently lived in the same apartment complex at the same time. That doesn't mean we shouldn't pay attention to what Nam did, though.

Jaws of the Dragon, his first film as a director, has a twisted viciousness coursing through its action as characters bring especially nasty weaponry into the fights: a clawhead hammer, a steak prong, an especially ingenious razor-whip, et cetera. With knives, dynamite, and darts thrown nearly as often as kicks, this flick's violence consistently draws blood and never laughs so if the choreography isn't impeccable, at least the cast makes the most out of each murder. The backdrop of a story entails heroin, a suitcase of money, gang rape, and rival gangs but all you really need to know is the female folk-singer (Kim Jin-hui) is about to witness enough material to fill two albums' worth of tragic ballads.

Secret Ninja, Roaring Tiger: Dragon as D'Artagnan

From what I can tell, most Dragon Lee martial arts flicks start off kinda boring then get better as they go along. I myself go from itching to stop the video to smiling wholeheartedly as the sound-enhanced hijinks kick into high gear. Neither a lack of plot twists nor a shortage of fights is ever the issue with Dragon on-screen. In this particular bit of nonsense, Dragon goes from winning the hand of a young heiress (Seo Jeong-Ah) to three mustketeering with a lady ninja in unconvincing drag and her soon-to-be, babelicious boyfriend (Jack Lam). Since a sadistic kung fu magician (Hwang Jang-lee) has stolen away Dragon's fiancee who happens to be the lady ninja's sister and who happens to share a familial tattoo with her captor, the graphic softcore porn scene is especially perverse. Yet even acknowleding my suspension of disbelief, I remain dumbfounded by the final turnabout: An evil spell can be undone when a young maiden exposes her whipped breasts to the wind!

Tits aside, Dragon's up to his usual acrobatics and physical gags in Kim Si-hyeon's Secret Ninja, Roaring Tiger: He fights — and strips — a transvestite in one scene; he kickboxes while holding a bathtowel around his waist in another. The final face-off has some pretty spectacular gymnastics and features the only time I've seen two men perform a double handstand to strangle their opponent between their ankles. Call it the upsidedown chokehold.

What to Fear in Bong Joon-ho’s "The Host"? Not Just the Monster, My Friend

None other than the sinister scribe H.P. Lovecraft wrote that “the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” And that’s generally true for most fright flicks. What lurks in the dark, what comes out of nowhere tends to trigger the loudest scream. But unlike the unseen stalker in It Follows or the shadowy figure in The Babadook, two of the scarier movies in recent history that subscribe to that belief, Bong Joon-ho’s now classic The Host terrifies us with a panic rooted in everyday realities that only intensify its over-the-top Godzilla nightmare. We feel the struggles undergone by its family of mistfits — desperately seeking to rescue the youngest of their tribe from a sea monster — because we’re either living them or fear living them… all the time.

The Fear of Pollution
Oil spills in Bay Long and the Gulf of Mexico. Tainted water in Flint, Michigan. Millions of dead fish washed up on the coast of New Jersey. Is it any wonder that Native Americans were protesting the construction of the Dakota Pipeline? Corporate and governmental negligence can be akin to eco-terrorism at times. In The Host, the disregard for the environment comes early on when an American scientist (played coincidentally by The Walking Dead’s Scott Wilson, no stranger to deadly viruses of epic proportions) orders his Korean subordinate to pour hundreds of dusty old bottles of formaldehyde down a sink, and thereby into the Han River, as a way of disposal. So what if it’s toxic, right? Flash forward a few years: Mutant Monster Causes Nationwide Panic! When will we ever learn?!

The Fear of Poverty
How poor is our hero Gang-doo (Song Kang-ho)? Well, he lives with his dad in a tin can of a snack bar, has no accounts with Wells Fargo, and has been stealing change from the family business in order to upgrade his daughter’s cellphone. (She scoffs at his half-filled, disposable soup-bowl of coins.) And being poor is going to pain him more than that home-job hair frosting. It’s also going to limit his ability to help his imperiled daughter, thereby leaving grandpa (Byeon Hie-bong) to fork over all his cash and max out his credit cards in order to get a black-market fumigation truck, a couple of rifles, and a pair of Hazmat suits that aren’t even the right regulation color. Ultimately, poverty means your best weapon against the proverbial creature from the Black Lagoon may be some stolen gasoline poured by a homeless man (Yun Je-mun) then ignited by an arrow shot from the heart. (Here’s to Olympian archery!)

The Fear of the Law
Follow the rules at your own risk is one not-so-subtle message in The Host. (And we KNOW how that’s been playing out on the streets of America lately. Not good.) So while the grandfather advocates listening and obeying – at least at first, his three kids know better from the get-go. When the military’s organized quarantine strips them of their rights, they plot their escape. When the government won’t provide them with the info they need to locate Gang-doo’s daughter, the alcoholic brother (Park Hae-il) pulls a Snowden. This is a government that has no issue with gassing the populace with the same poisonous fumes it’s using to kill off the giant monster. Power and ethics should be hand in hand for certain careers. Politics, for instance. Yet the most ethical person in The Host may be a thief who teaches his starving son to “borrow” things in order to survive but to never steal money.

The Fear of the Medical Establishment
Ah, if only the Hippocratic Oath actually meant something. But at this point we all know about the Tuskegee Experiments and the cell harvesting of Henrietta Lacks. Which may be why one of the most frightening scenes in The Host doesn’t involve the man-eating amphibian but instead concerns a forced brain surgery executed to “discover” a deadly virus that the military has already determined does not exist. That Gang-doo’s narcolepsy seems to counter the anesthesia only makes the sound of a cranial drill that much more terrifying. It’s not a bloody scene but it is a bloody horrifying one. “There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them,” said Andre Gide. But Gide had forgotten all about human beings.

The Fear of the Loss of a Child
Sure, everyone’s scared of death but as any parent knows that’s nothing when compared to the loss of a child. And The Host taps into that fear, and the bravery such a threat can inspire, without ever exploiting it. Part of the movie’s success can definitely be credited to actress Ah-sung Ko who seems more like a gritty survivor than a helpless victim despite her years. You always get the feeling that she may save herself, despite the odds against her. Will she survive? Well, you’ll need to see the movie to see. You won’t regret it.

Note: This article originally appeared on Tribeca Film Festival's now-retired blog Outtake.

Martial Monks of Shaolin Temple: Couture Vs. Catalogue

Under the influence of my recent viewing of Kung Fu Fever, Martial Monks of Shaolin Temple had me thinking about high fashion versus mall-wear and how Tyra Banks used to opine about runway versus catalogue on America's Next Top Model. Who would emerge as the real hero of this tale of battling Buddhists? Would it be the long-legged, sinewy, bald-headed guy with the big wooden beads? Or the pleated-pants, black-vested, white-T-shirted dude with '80s hair? My allegiances were conflicted. My curiosity piqued. Then I remembered: The answer was inevitably whichever high-kicking clotheshorse is played by Dragon Lee.

The master né student né master has an arduous road ahead of him on his way to reclaiming the Shaolin Temple for a monkhood not devoted to murder: He'll be doing cartwheels in the court, backflips in a field, and disentangling himself from a rope that comes out of nowhere and must be turned against its wielder to survive. So what if his look isn't couture? He's earned the loyalty of one impeccably attired monk whose self-sacrifice (and teeth) are what will make victory possible. No more boot licking for Dragon Lee!

Dragon Lee Vs. the Five Brothers

Co-directors Kim Si-hyeon and Liu Yueh-lin have made a delirious diversion that has nothing to do with its B-movie headliner or his hairweave and old-fashioned braid. The real stars of Dragon Lee vs. the Five Brothers are the mysterious woman in the veiled hat (Qiu Yuen) and the malicious man with the iron hand (Choi Min-kyu). The former is a sometime ally of Lee; she's a better fighter too — able to springboard off walls and run across the tops of trees — and wields her hat like a deadly boomerang equipped with spring-activated knives. Dragon's primary foe is the other draw of this kung fu caper. His ability to pummel opponents with his prosthetic paw is equaled by his mastery of misleading mustaches and beards. (His old man disguise is a wonder to behold!)

Our heroine wants to free her imprisoned brother. Our villain wants to get a list of the rebels. What does Dragon want? I'm afraid his needs aren't as clearly articulated. We know he wants to get a bracelet from his uncle to go with the decoder ring he already possesses but what the ultimate goal is of these two objects somehow got lost in the shuffle for me. When the body count starts to rise, jewelry becomes so much less important. It's a semi-precious movie. But it shines, man, it shines.

Kung Fu Fever: Dragon at His Dressiest

I'm the last one to complain when a shirtless Dragon Lee demonstrates the fabled "finger technique" during Kung Fu Fever's opening credits. I'm equally amenable to seeing his top ripped off near the end of the same witless flick. But I'd also like to point out what a fashion plate he is in this particular piece of Brucesploitation. For anyone who's enjoyed his jaunty swagger, you're going to find him even more appealing when he's wearing a tailored yellow onesie with black racing stripes up the sides; a snug, wide-collared, cobalt-patterned disco-shirt paired with graduated aviator glasses; a black polyester top with its drawstring front tucked into tight, white bell-bottoms; and a white shirt with chocolate accents on its pocket-tops to match his cocoa-colored, form-fitting pants. Nearly every scene, the guy's got a new outfit! (Except at the end when he brings back the onesie... Why not? He looks fabulous in it.)

As to the film housing this fashion show, the surrounding characters — many with enviable late '70s wardrobes as well — are clamoring to get their hands on a technique booklet left behind by the late great superstar Bruce Lee. One guy is even willing to pay $50,000 for it! (That's the equivalent of nearly 200k today.) But for Bruce Lee's best student — the American Rickie Chan played by Dragon Lee — mere monetary gains are beside the point. He'll fight off the likes of Ron Van Clief to ensure that instructional manual doesn't get into the wrong hands. If that means punching you in the nuts to stop you, so be it!

The Dragon's Infernal Showdown: Looney Tunes Retribution

You know you're in for a treat when a movie villain ruthlessly quips, "Our only purpose in life is to make as much money as possible." When that same nefarious character adds "Kill the kid as well" about a baby cradled by its dead parents, I, for one, get even giddier. Lucky for us too, there's three children not one and the two surviving sons are going to grow up to be next-to-unstoppable black-belt vigilantes: the cooler, older brother favors a blue dobok with a high-end ricehat; the goofier younger one (Dragon Lee) wears whatever's available — including the shredded menswear of his crossdressing girlfriend (Cheryl Meng) after she's fended off three ruffians.

Though neither brother initially knows the other is alive, they're united by their quest to revenge the man who slaughtered their parents then abducted their sister. To win back the family plot, they're willing to leap on roofbeams, demagnetize a treacherous sword, squawk like chickens, spank a man's foot, steal a roast fowl, chew on an arm, tickle an armpit, and execute silly-savage moves straight out of a Three Stooges short. That their acrobatic showdowns are accompanied by a Foley track lifted from a Warner Bros. cartoon is key to your enjoyment. Or at least it was to mine. This one is a pure confection!

The Clones of Bruce Lee: Dragon Is Clone Number One

It seems a bit of a stretch to classify Joseph Velasco's The Clones of Bruce Lee as a Korean movie despite the presence of North Korea's Dragon Lee as this scifi flick's Number One Clone. But considering Dragon's leading man status in the Brucesploitation genre, I'm somewhat obliged to give the movie its due. So here we are. So how does Dragon fare as one of three genetically engineered offspring of the most iconic kung fu fighter ever? I classify him as a decent impersonator who's got the tone all wrong. Watching Dragon in The Clones left me wishing the performer's career had been less beholden to Bruce's onscreen persona. Dragon's more like a precursor of Jackie Chan than Jet Li if you know what I mean.

If you don't then you might be the type who take this particularly plot seriously. You'll accept men bronze simply because they wear bronzer; you'll believe nurses carry wirecutters in their uniforms; you'll mistake Bruce Li (Clone 2) for Bruce Lei (Dragon) for Bruce Lai (Clone 3) for Bruce Thai (Clone's best friend) and assume that any of them could escape alive when battling Enter the Dragon 's Bolo Yeung while wearing a Bruce Lee wig. And if you're that type of person, why are you reading this blog? Probably because you need someone to verify that this film features topless ladies. Brucesploitation is sexploitation, too.

Champ Against Champ: The Clang of Victory

The central gimmick of Champ Against Champ, one of many Dragon Lee flicks helmed by director Godfrey Ho, is a gloriously ridiculous one: All-but-killed by a poisoned dart from the paranoid potentate Master Kai, our young hero must have his leg amputated in order to survive. Luckily for him, his betrothed is the granddaughter of Steel Leg the Great, the late martial arts amputee and grandmaster of the eighteen kicks. So once Dragon forges himself a new leg and studies the conveniently discovered training manual, he's ready to take on everyone from a man with blowtorch breath and a small harem of lady ninjas who can disappear in the blink of an eye.

The fight sequences aren't Dragon Lee's best, although he does have a running gag involving one opponent's ass! Still, it's wonderful to hear his fake leg clang periodically when an opponent strikes it or when he stomps his foot on the ground. The sound can resemble the pealing of a church bell or the bong of a slammed metal dumpster's lid. I imagine it hurts when that steel leg hits you but the noise is never not funny. Which is why you can easily get restless wishing they'd included the clang of contact every damned time. Instead, we're left to figure out why Dragon's father is named Master Tai, his nemesis Master Kai, and one featured elder Master Wai. Why the rhyming names? Why? Wai? Beats me!

The Deadly Silver Ninja: Masked Man or Masked Woman

Am I alone in knowing that if someone killed my dad, I would not track down the murderer? I feel bad admitting this but as far as I know, most people wouldn't exact revenge with their own hands either. Are we scared of the bloodlust? Or are we not that close to our fathers? I ask because the Oresteian quest for justice has been around since Ancient Greece and surfaces in movie after movie after movie. In Godfrey Ho's and Kim Si-hyeon's The Deadly Silver Ninja, the son on the hunt for human flesh is played by the ultra-charming Dragon Lee. Before he attains street justice though, he's going to go mano a mano with endless bullies — with a man on ice, with a man who wears a horned bull hat, with a crowd that hates flowers.

But is he also the mysterious Silver Ninja who dresses like a Mexican wrestler — white bodysuit, white ski-mask, white cape — and repeatedly saves the day? Or is that unknown, silent folk hero someone else we've yet to meet? Could it be the kicky daughter (Qiu Yuen) of the blind man who outfights nearly everyone with a bamboo stick and hypersensitive hearing? I don't know if the screenwriters themselves knew until they got there. The script literally feels like it was written based on spur-of-the-moment ideas based on mouth movements and little else. But the fights are fun. And isn't that what you came for?

The Dragon's Snake Fist: Hapkido Hunk Fights Everyone

If you've watched all the Ip Man movies (as I have) then you're fully aware that a rivalry between two martial arts schools is a perfectly worthy central conflict. That was true in the 21st century for Donnie Yen. And it was true back in the last one for equally hunky Dragon Lee (a.k.a. Moon Kyung-seok/Bruce Lai). In The Dragon's Snake Fist, North Korea's pulpy male pin-up headlines as a star pupil who eventually must take on a rival school's entire graduating class pretty much by himself. Numbers aside, this battle is not to be taken lightly; the evilest sensei (Kim Ki-ju) is teaching a vicious fighting-style incorporating acupressure techniques capable of making victims cough up blood.

Not that this diabolical contact-sport stands a chance against The Dragon's Snake Fist Hapkido heartthrob. Oh no. Our hero will triumph, maybe because he lives in a proto-Instagram land where gold filters and blue filters pop up without warning. In this chromatically shifting world, Dragon must beat up numerous Crane Fist practitioners, including a preposterously mustachioed man (Chang Yi-tao/Bruce Lai) whose main weaponry is a pair of metal rings, and a brother-sister duo who have little compuction regarding the kill and its consequences. My favorite character, ultimately, is a barechested baddie — often seen dry-shaving his cheeks with a straight-edged razor — who employs fire-breathing in his attack methodology. Now that's hot!

Little Forest: And Then She Cooked

Creators who think there is one right way of doing things aren't creators at all. They're low-ranking soldiers and well-behaved clerks who happen to work in art. So here's to director Yim Soon-rye and his Little Forest, a fascinating little film about a 20-something who retreats home after failing to make it in the big city. Seeking conflict? There aren't any major confrontations between the characters. How about romance? No sparks fly between the ingenue (Kim Tae-ri) and either of her friends from high school — a young man (Ryu Jun-yeol) and a young woman (Jin Ki-joo) who don't have any chemistry between them either. Crackling dialogue? Actually, the best parts of Little Forest are the endless shots of food being prepared with allusive voiceover. And yet, despite all these "shortcomings," Little Forest is a movie that definitely works.

You'd be surprised how much can be conveyed by drying persimmons and frying cabbage pancakes and hand-delivering creme brulee. The long stretches of narration (which one can easily imagine being written off as "too talky" in a screenwriting class) inform us that our heroine's passion for cooking has been inherited from her mom (Moon So-ri), a single parent who wasn't always there when she was needed but maybe was there for her daughter enough. And as art goes, it's more than enough. It's delicious.

Night in Paradise: The Writer's Gang

One of the advantages of having the screenwriter direct is you will avoid unnecessary improvements to the script such as having the male and female leads tongue or having the good guy emerge complete victor whatever the odds. Park Hoon-jung (I Saw the Devil, The Witch - Part 1) is a master of subverting formula in genre films. Here he's taken a classic jopok scenario — the little guy against the mob — and given it plenty of satisfying twists and turns involving a terminally ill sharpshooter (Jeon Yeo-bin) who never so much as kisses the underdog thug (Eom Tae-goo) who finds himself fighting not one gang, but two.

What he's got is character-driven tension. As for the fight scenes, they're brutal in a way that's strangely pretty. Consider the hero's face which, though covered in blood, has the whitest full-toothed smile possible. Yet if you fault Night in Paradise for not being gritty enough, you'd be overlooking its many pleasures — its thrilling propulsion, its innate sense of justice, its upholding of a Korean cinematic tradition that insists that women are bad-asses, too. Throw in strong performances from Lee Moon-sik as a cop with a shit-eating grin and Hyun Bong-sik as a gun-seller who a single stab can't kill and you've got the makings for some pleasurable pulp. It may not be a brilliant movie but flicks like this are why I started Korean Grindhouse in the first place. Mad respect.

Insane: Burning up the Madhouse

The problem with plot twists at the end of the movie where they show footage of what actually took place at a crucial moment is it throws into question everything that happened beforehand. Must we trust the new scene without question? Are there other scenes that also didn't unfold as previously shown? Throw into the mix that Insane's female lead (Kang Ye-won) was kidnapped to a psych ward where she was tortured by a diabolical doctor (Kim Jong-soo) who harvested his other victims for their black market organs and you realize how slippery the truth is destined to be. Are we really expected to believe that a discredited reporter seeking fame is our most reliable source?

So Insane is insane and inane; Lee Cheol-ha's maddening whodunit Is also a whodunwhat as we struggle to figure out exactly what crimes were committed first then figure out who is responsible for each one. Arson. Murder. Abduction. Torture. Dirty medicine. Shady journalism. Castration. You'd assume with that last one I'd know who the culprit was but I don't feel confident that I do. And I did see who the victim was! But was it a trick castration? Or should we write that grisly crime off like the woman who claimed her uterus was messed up by vaseline? I'll leave solving this puzzle to someone else.

Road Kill: Really Evil Real Estate

Indeed, there are evil real estate developers who have done as much harm as evil doctors, evil lawyers, and evil cops. And their actions impact whole communities, not solely individuals and/or the land. What a pity then that these shysters don't get more prominent screen time as movie villains! When they do, they're far from boring. I can think of few unsavory types as savory as the sadistic wheeler-and-dealer in Psychokinesis. As for Road Kill's simpering super-sleazy agent Oh-gwang (Lee Cheol-min), he's definitely vile. ((He's rapist, childmolester, and hit-and-run driver as well as being a nasty businessman.) The trouble is he's also a buffoon. The best bad guys are smarter than this.

Which isn't to say his victims are likely to outwit him. Road Kill is populated with dimwits: a simpleton stepdad (Oh Gwang-rok), an airhead mom (Kim Yoon-ji), a hypersexual daughter (Kwon Ye-yeun), and a son (Shin Won-ho) who's got a stare that indicates not too much is going inside outside murderous rage. In truth, none of them register as fully formed characters. They're vessels. Or inbred. Or lost souls. Or ghosts. Whatever they are, they don't create a lot of drama even when the movie turns violents and people are picking up knives and axes and weed whackers as the plot takes a Darwinian turn. Splatter may jar some out of a braindead state. As for me, with Lee Soo-sung's Road Kill, I welcome death.

Wish You: Your Melody Is in My Heart

I used to think my gaydar wasn't that good. Now I think it's too good. Which can be frustrating when watching queer romances that feature actors who play at gay unconvincingly. Trust me, this doesn't have to do with not femming it up enough. My gaydar isn't based on such stereotyping. It might be the way we inhabit our bodies. Or the way we look in each other's eyes. But when is the problem an actor who doesn't understand how to to feign attraction to men and when is it an actor who's afraid of revealing it. And is there a difference?

Sun Do-joon's Wish You definitely doesn't pass my gaydar but who's fault is that? Could the editor who condensed the eight-episode K-drama into a movie shoulder the blame? Would it help if the street musician (Kang In-soo) was flirtier? Or if his obsessed fan (Lang See) was less unsettlingly naive? Definitely, the fan fantasy puts a worrisome kink in this story. Do we really need a movie that tells you that you can meet and fall in love with your same sex YouTube dream? That the harmonies you're crafting on your Casio at home are going to result in a lifelong relationship? Factor in that the lovelorn one works for a recoding agency as a low-level assistant and the creep factor gets worse. But considering the aspiring pop star is in a contentious relationship with his barista-videographer (Baek Seo-bin), his life can only get better from here. Stalkers, right this way.

Crack: Not a Crank Call... Worse (But Better)

There are some dark imaginations out there. I'm looking at you, Ahn Yong-hae whose animated short "Crack" concerns a suicide prevention counselor who gets the second worst call of her life. The first one — flashbacked to briefly — involves the death of a loved one; the second one (and the center of this film) comes from the young lady who drove the now-gone daughter to kill herself. Neither remorse nor forgiveness follows. No one's enlightened. No one achieves revenge. Baby, "Crack" is simply grim.

Situtated at the end of what appears to be a long hallway leading to nowhere, the operator traffics in cliches. Claiming to be on the Han River, the outside caller engages in a nasty kind of socratic dialogue. Who's the victim? Who's to blame? What's the difference? What's enough pain? The viciousness of "Crack" is jarring as is the absense of an upper lip on its cartoon hero. As short films go, "Crack" is tight, and among its small cast of three, actor Kim Bo-ra (SKY Castle) is definitely not phoning it in — even if this flick is all about disconnections.

Shoot Me in the Heart: What Makes a Movie Gay?

Though it retreats from a satisfyingly manly kiss at the end, for me, Shoot Me in the Heart is definitely a gay romance. The two leads — a bad boy (Lee Min-ki) with violent tendencies who's been institutionalized by his greedy stepbrothers and a long-haired semi-mute (Yeo Jin-gu) who everyone at the psych ward refers to as "Miss Lee" — definitely have a courtship of sorts going on as the dom of the relationship constanty flirts — and even climbs into bed — with the same-sex sub who eventually comes around to his handsome bunkmate's charms. Even those around them — hospital staff and crazy inmates alike — recognize they were made for each other!

But can these two caged lovebirds survive the physical brutality of this particular institution? Will electroshock treatments leave them brain-dead and, in one case, blind? Can they possibly escape to freedom and what might they do when they're finally out? Instigate conga lines to Chubby Checker's "Let's Twist Again" at the local karaoke club? Mun Je-yong's love story might not lead to the desired lip-on-lip action (or grip-the-hip either) but it could've and should've. Who wants to discover they're best friends instead of friends with benefits? Not me! One wonders whether the censors came into play or the director had homophobic mass appeal on his mind. It's possible the screenwriter didn't know his own inclinations but at this point in the 21st century, I wish the unapologetically queer story weren't resisted. We're well past that. Succumb. Succumb.

Believer: What You See Is What You Get

Visually, Lee Hae-young's Believer has all the components you'd expect from a thriller: the overhead shot of the car zooming down a lonely road, the stylish high heels stepping out of a car door, the close-up of someone doing a line of white powder, the helpless victim handcuffed to a chair... But despite the signature images, the endless backstabbing, the ever-complicating exposition, Believer never really manifests a world. I never sensed a camaraderie among the detectives, never bought the world-weariness of its lead cop (Cho Jin-woong), never cared about the two-faced naif (Ryu Jun-yeol), never felt the urgency of finding the mastermind druglord behind all the crimes.

In such a frame of mind, I watched Believer unfold with an indifference that made the subtitles somewhat irrelevant. Maybe the film would've been more cryptic if all I had to go on was the sight of shirtless men ranting, deaf cooks signing, suited men and women shooting, a poor dog bleeding. Certainly, the spectacle would make for a nice background when listening to an album by The Detroit Cobras or vintage Isaac Hayes. At times. But would I even look? Or would I close my eyes and feel the bass as a movie of my own making plays inside my tired head? No filmmaker myself, I'd probably be better served by checking out the original that inspired it: Johnny To's Drug War.

Space Sweepers: It Takes a Crew to Raise a Child

The four astro-pirates in Jo Sung-hee's Space Sweepers aren't looking to adopt a child. To the contrary, the least likable member of the crew — Tae-ho (Song Joong-ki) — is frantically doing all he can to retrieve the corpse of his neglected daughter before she drifts outside his galaxy. Yet once new kid "Dorothy" (Park Ye-rin) arrives on the scene, Ship Engineer Tiger Park (Jin Seon-kyu), Captain Jang (Kim Tae-ri), and resident robot Bubs (Kim Hyang-gi) discover their tenderer side and fall hard for this irresitbly precocious little girl.

Adoption has never been an easy process, though. And that's especially true in this apocalyptic future where eco-activists and a mad scientist (Richard Armitage) are set on saving and destroying the Earth, respectively. Good guys and bad alike want to get their dirty paws on this pipsqueak. As for her, she's digging her newly chosen family and is willing to call on her inner nanobots and compel those pesky nanobots into outerspace to fight off deadly lasers, metal claws, and the biggest bomb humankind has ever seen. Here's to the next generation!

Pinkfong & Baby Shark's Space Adventure: Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo

With lyrics like "Wow wow wow wow, yoo-hoo-hoo" and "Good, good, good, good, good to see you," only a moron would expect Pinkfong & Baby Shark's Space Adventure to deliver a deeply considered story. What Byeon Hee-sun's animated feature is concerned with instead is keeping ADHD kids happily occupied with hyper-peppy tunes accompanied by cheerily kooky visuals. Pinkfong and best friend Baby Shark may ostensibly be pursuing fragments of a star decal that fell of their flying saucer (and landed on themepark planets Dino, Spooky, Jungle, 8-Bit, and Ocean) but what they're more worried about ia keeping your eyes and ears from mstraying from their supersaturated environs. Animals and creatures will dance for the slightest reason! Keep watching, keep singing along!

As for the catchy recurring tune "Baby Shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo" — which has equally inane verses for every member of the shark family: Baby, Mommy, Daddy, Grandma, and Grandpa — that song culminates unexpectedly with fearful fishes fleeing to the lyric "Run away doo doo doo doo doo doo." So while other melodies forgettably reword kiddie standards like "I'm a Little Teapot," "Old McDonald Had a Farm," "London Bridge Is Falling," and "La Cucharacha," this main theme has a dark undercurrent. A shark quipping "I think all of this polution is making me miserable" also has its shadowy side. Is the medium the message?

Moby Dick: Reporters Make Terrific Heroes

The pursuit of truth is laudable. That might not sound profound but when you consider how many people hide behind lies (white and otherwise), you realize precisely how exceptional such an objective can be. Which is why movies about indefatigable reporters committed to bucking the system and getting the facts can be so gosh-darn-tootin' exhilarating. Movies like Park In-je's Moby Dick. This 2011 thriller about three resourceful newspaper journalists — a veteran (Hwang Jung-min), a recent hire (Kim Sang-ho), and an up-and-comer (Kim Min-hee) — had me on the edge of my seat as the film's central trio got embroiled in its search for the members of the shadow government that killed off people in the name of profit.

As films based on conspiracy theories go, Moby Dick isn't breaking new ground. And with Kim Kyeong-yeong phoning in a typical baddie performance, the film's main threat can feel like a cliche. But the camaraderie of the central newshounds is real; the excitement they generate by getting closer to cracking the case will keep you up past your bedtime. Who cares that what they reveal feels implausible? Or that their main informant (Jin Goo) i a pretty-faced zombie. Okay, I cared a little. Just not enough to spoil the movie though.

Along With the Gods: The Two Worlds

In the CGI universe depicted in Kim Yong-hwa's purgatorial fantasy Along With the Gods: The Two Worlds, the honorable soul is a rare one. Who am I to argue? Looking around my own circle of friends, the highly principled person isn't the rule. Most are a confused mix — sometimes taking the high road, mostly putting the self first with a rationalized spin. As for myself, should I look into the Mirror of Karma that materializes in this afterlife adventure film, I wouldn't see the noble acts of Kim Jong-ha (Cha Tae-hyun), a fireman/momma's-boy whose career has been built upon good deeds. I've never rescued eight humans from a fiery end. The sinister God of Murder would hardly let me proceed to the next level without comment. He'd damn me then and there. My shot at getting through all seven levels of Limbo is slim. A paragon I am not.

I would drown in the River of Indolence. I would get my face slapped by the Goddess of Betrayal. As for the Hell of Deceit, I'm guessing everyone I know would burst into flames. But like above ground, these hereafter judges seem pretty lenient when it comes to falsehoods. Everyone lies. Everyone lies all the time. And apparently, the Great Arbitrators are pretty forgiving on that count. And maybe that's the problem. Not with the movie, no, that's a whole other issue. Do good. Be better. Speak truth. Relish the special effects. I won't say I liked this movie because that wouldn't be honest. Disagree? Then you'll need to see the sequel posthaste: Along With the Gods: The Last 49 Days.

What Happened to Mr. Cha?: And Does Anybody Care?

Full Disclosure: I watched Kim Dong-kyu's What Happened to Mr. Cha? because the trailer showed a repeatedly shirtless Cha In-pyo looking incredibly hot. There were multiple scenes in that trailer which led me to believe that this would be a movie filled with eye candy. Unfortunately, such was not the case as Mr. Cha, both the actor and the character, spends nearly the entire movie trapped underground in a poorly lit cave after the building in which he was showering collapses. Isn't this the classic genie curse where you get what you asked for and you regret that you didn't make your wish more specific. I should've said: "I want to see Cha In-pyo parading around shirtless in brightly lit environments." So how was the movie otherwise?

Odd. The plot really has the makings of a horror movie. The lead character is confined to a space so small he cannot even stand. No one hears him when he screams. His one contact with the outside world is limited to an assistant (Jo Dal-hwan), so incompetent that you fear the man's going to get his employer killed. And since the construction crew is uninformed of the trapped celebrity, they're endangering acts aren't careless so much as carefree. Is it funny? Never. Is this a comedy? You bet it is! But it's not a movie. More like a part of a movie that needs more scenes before it and more scenes after. And better lighting. And more shirtless Cha.

A Taxi Driver: The Road to Enlightenment

The last four years have delivered a hard lesson: It takes an incredible amount of evidence to open up people's eyes to institutionalized brutality. Because what it takes isn't a single heinous act (like separating babies from their mothers then putting them in separate cages) or endless deadly examples (like cops shooting innocent black people in their homes and on the street). Many naysayers dismissively view such atrocities with relative disinterest. They make excuses. They remain untouched. "If only they'd...," they say with a shrug about the victims. No. What it takes to awaken these bystanders is for the truth to get personal. The coronavirus becomes real when a close one dies; widespread violence becomes problematic only when it happens in the front yard. What it takes is being thrown in the middle of the mess. What it takes is direct impact.

That's what happens to Kim Man-seob (Song Kang-ho), the Seoul cab driver who hustles his way into being the wheels for German reporter Jürgen Hinzpeter (Thomas Kretschmann); the latter's itching to get the inside scoop on the military takeover in South Korea. A former soldier who can't believe the worst about the military or the government, Kim gets a radical awakening when he's caught in the middle of a riot where peaceful civilian are killed for protesting the coup. But even that doesn't guarantee his conversion. The belief that one can save oneself, the habit of trusting the system, the inclination to distrust the evidence before one's own eyes... is that strong. Based on a true story, Jang Hun's A Taxi Driver is a beautiful illustration of how painful accepting the truth can be.