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.

Even the Clouds Are Drifting: From Hard Luck to Hardcover

Working class dramas are in short supply in Hollywood right now so I'm turning to 1950s South Korea for some bleak realism today. The movie is Yoo Hyun-mok's Even the Clouds Are Drifting, an effective story about a pigtailed teenager (Kim Yong-ok) whose family goes deeper into poverty when her coal-mining brother (Park Sung-dae) loses his job. Thank the goddess, things will eventually take a turn for the better once everyone starts reading the orphaned girl's diary: her brother, her teacher (Han Mi-na), her best friend (Jo Hyeon-ju), and the boss's eldest daughter (Jo Mi-lyeong) — who fortuitously has contacts in the publishing world.

In no time flat, this plainspoken memoirist is going to become a best-selling author! But before that happens, the girl's makeshift family must be broken apart, forcing her and her younger brother (Park Gwang-su) to shack up with a drunken uncle (Choi Nam-hyeon) and his unsympathetic wife (Jeong Ae-ran). As if she needed to accumulate more hardship as raw material for her book! I can't wait to read the chapter in which she shatters an ivory statue of an abstract female deity. Is that what it takes to get a prayer answered?

Forever With You: Two Men, Two Women, Innumerable Problems

It takes a certain level of confidence to start a film off with an extended take of three children silently building a dirt fort outside a prison. (Not even credits are happening!) It takes an even greater boldness to have a handful of adults exaggeratedly act like children in a series of flashbacks for the first quarter of your movie. But anyone who's seen Stray Bullet is bound to come to Forever With You with the belief that director Yoo Hyun-mok's risky choices will deliver a pay off. They're not wrong. Forever With You fairly teems with stageworthy compositions and an overall sense of mystery. If it's no Aimless Bullet, it's surely a stepping stone to get there.

An earlier flick in Yoo's oeuvre, Forever With You is more moody melodrama than tragic thriller: Its two adjoining love triangles feature a harmonica-playing gangster (Choi Bong), a shopgirl-turned-mob-wife (Do Kum-bong), a shady businesswoman (actor unknown), and a pitiable exconvict (Lee Yong) who in five packed days will discover that the world has largely left him behind after ten years in the slammer. (Although there is that matter of paternity regarding one nine-year-old girl...)

Rainy Days: North Vs. South for Grannies

Nuclear families torn apart by opposing views have been around since Cain and Abel, the Capulets and the Montagues, and the Hatfields and the McCoys. (You can touch base with me or my younger brother if you're looking to hear it play out anew.) So why does the fierce divide, and fall out feel so painfully pronounced in Yoo Hyun-mok's household war drama Rainy Days? Observed by a quiet village youth (Choe Yong-won) during the 1950s, the maternal and paternal grandparents are at each other's throats as one uncle (Lee Dae-kun) sides with North Korea while the other (Kang Seok-woo) aligns with the South. Admittedly, then as now, the fascists are dumber and meaner and more threatening but the actual cause of conflict isn't the crux of the matter. Not for Yoo.

Yoo isn't promoting neo-liberalism any more than he's attempting neo-realism: An early scene in which one grandmother (Hwang Jeong-sun) has psychic premonitions is bookended by another of that same matriarch coaxing a snake — who might be the reincarnation of her dead son-in-law — out of the front yard. For me, those mystical moments made Rainy Days not just poignant, but strange. Cinematographer You Yong-kil's muted palette creates a nostalgic feel but I wonder if period politics would've been better served by black and white. Not that I'm right and he's wrong.

The Daughters of Kim's Pharmacy: Sisters of Disaster

The 1960s are the decade in which movies swung from predominantly black-and-white to color, with Korean auteur Yoo Hyun-mok making the jump somewhat late himself around '67 with The Guest Who Came on the Last Train. I'm glad he dragged his feet. For Yoo was a director who truly understood how to maximize light, shadow, and depth in a monochromatic world. His films really feel like moving pictures. He uses doorways to frame action, positions actors for portraiture, embraces the odd angle as a way to reorient us. Repeatedly in The Daughters of Kim's Pharmacy, he makes the most out of the setting whether it's a dockside or a hilltop, a bamboo forest or a barren hill.

Yoo's artistry — and that of cinematographer Byeon In-jib who collaborated with him on Forever With You, Freely Given,and The Sun Rises Again — elevates this melodrama to art. This tale of four siblings cursed by an ancestor's suicide teeters on the allegorical and it's no coincidence that the family matriarch (Hwang Jeong-sun) searches for help from a shaman when her seaside life sinks into misery. "I am breathing so I have no choice but to live," she remarks matter-of-factly. I can relate. I can even forgive the second eldest daughter for feeling optimistic about marrying a strange man fresh out of prison. The unexpected can be so much more appealing than the predictable when life totally sucks.

School Excursion: Kid Power

Adults are such a drag. Not all of them. Most though. I suppose, sometimes, teachers can be cool. Like Kim Seong-seo (Ku Bong-seo), for instance. He's the elementary school teacher on remote Seonyudo Island in Yoo Hyun-mok's family movie School Excursion. The spirit hasn't died in Kim. He's a big-hearted lug not afraid to risk his arm to retrieve some careless kid's dirty shoe from under a bus. He knows more than most but he doesn't show off about it and doesn't look down on those who know less. He's not seduced by money. He doesn't see the good life as fancy clothes and electric washing machines. He lives from the heart and recognizes generosity and curiosity as admirable qualities.

You can see why he's so committed to his young charges. They share his sense of hope, his delight in simple pleasures. And he's nurtured by their innocent longing, their unbridled enthusiasm, their unfiltered wonder. Who wouldn't prefer a bunch of scrappy boys and girls over their jaded parents? Who wouldn't feel more useful in a town with scant resources than they would in a city of overabundance? He's not the only one to recognize their charms either: The kids at the city school quickly become enamored of their seaside peers, with each adopting one for the duration of their mainland stay. Good times had by all.