Top 10 Movies of 2022 (Sort of)

Last year, I took a deep dive into 1960s cinema from Korea. I wasn't consciously looking to escape the present. I didn't even realize I was focusing so much on a single decade. You'd think all that black-and-white footage would've clued me in! Yet here I am, mid-December, surprising myself with the data: Nearly 20 of the 52 films viewed in 2022 premiered in the '60s. Inevitably, perhaps, directors Im Kwon-taek and Lee Man-hui are both well-represented in my year-end list, reminding me they don't make 'em them like they used to. Not that they should. But boy am I glad that they did when they did.

1. Mandala (1981): Im Kwon-taek's profound buddy pic recounts the relationship of a nomadic ascetic and his excommunicated mentor.
2. The Road to Sampo (1975): Lee Man-hui's magical road flick — about a love triangle of outcasts — celebrates friendship, not passion.
3. The Bell Tower (1958): By keeping it simple, In Yang Jun-nam's folk tale about a bell-maker's life resonates in soul-stirring ways.
4. The Coachman (1961): Neo-realism with a happy ending? I didn't know it was possible 'til Kang Dae-jin's Silver Bear winner.
5. Deliver Us From Evil (2020): Who's the hero of Hong Wan-cho's neo-noir? The career assassin or his trans sidekick?
6. Sopyonje (1993): A fading artform can't quite hold the family together in another career highlight for Im.
7. The Devil's Stairway (1964): Lee's pulpy K-horror goes to wonderful extremes when a doctor wants his nurse-lover...gone.
8. Homebound (1967): Douglas Sirk would've loved Lee's women's pic about a military wife with her own PTSD. So do I!
9. The Water Mill (1966): In Lee's filmed fable, a peasant gives his all for the love of his life then ends up with basically nothing.
10. Bloodline (1963): The havenots have a roughgoing in Kim Soo-yong's group portrait of North Korean defectors.

Honorable Mentions: Kongjul & Patchul (1978), The Outlaws 2 (2022), Whistle Blower (2014), and Dream (1955).

Father and Sons: The Courtships of Four Bachelor Brothers

How did this movie happen? What misguided movie executive decided that a comedy about four grown men acting like 10-year-olds would make for a barrel of laughs? Yet here we are with director Kwon Yeong-sun's bizarre Father and Sons — a ridiculous sitcom about a sporting goods shopkeeper (Kim Hie-gab) whose four overaged bachelor babies dream of being the next Patridge Family. All they need now is a couple of Shirley-Joneses and Susan Deys. (Lyric sample: "My favorite type of girl is more beautiful than I am.")

So which of the longtime children will find true love first? Will it be the oldest son (Yang Hun) who wears a toupee and runs his own barbershop? The rubber-faced second son (Lee Jong-cheol) who drives a spotless taxi? The third child (Kim Twist) who dusts the album covers at a well-stocked record store? Or the baby (Nam Bo Won) who aspires to a gig at Carnegie Hall? Since Father and Sons is a comedy, I felt pretty confident that each would find his match eventually. The overhanging question was — to quote an Abbott and Costello routine — "Who's on first?" If that reference feels out of place, let me explain: This is a farce that's not shy with the insults. (Sample putdown: "You sure like to change your words, like a horse moving its butt.")

The film's got a lot of slapstick, too: roughhousing at the breakfast table, shoving money into a sibling's open mouth, the classic running into closed doors... What it doesn't have is natural romantic interests for its four overgrown boys. The four women who become these men's individual obsessions come aren't yins to their yangs so much as foolish ladies who get suckered into a dismal future. I can excuse the bride-to-be who falls for the guy who knows hypnotism but going gaga for a trumpet-playing bandleader who does blackface? Um, not so much.

Steel Rain 2: Summit: Negotiating

One unforeseen legacy of the international disgrace Donald Trump's four years in the White House may be how American presidents are portrayed in foreign films in the near future: In the Cold War drama Steel Rain 2: Summit (2020), for instance, scruffy U.S. President Smoot (Angus Macfadyen) comes across as a not-too-bright blowhard who makes — and tweets! — inappropriate remarks that serve no objective but hiw own self-aggrandizement. Compare him with South Korean President Han (Jung Woo-sung), a squeaky-clean, fawning career diplomat who's like the one dolphin swimming in a pool of sharks. Or North Korea's Chairman (Yoo Yeon-seok) who's grounded by a heartless determination exacerbated by anger issues. Each man has his limitations and his faults but only one comes across as a moron. "USA! USA!"

Not that Yang Woo-seok's political thriller is a sophisticatedly satirical cat-and-mouse game. Characters wear flag pins to remind you who's representing which country; history is explained as if the writing team were periodically mandated by an in-house Korean War scholar to drop data points. As for the central drama, it's strictly Tom Clancy hyperbole when a rogue general (Kwok Do-won) from Pyongyang takes takes our three world leaders for a bank-making submarine ride. Whee! Ka-ching! My final takeaways: The evils of capitalism are now recognized as a global problem; greed continues to be the ugliest of sins; nuclear war remains an option for our worst politicians; the American myth somehow survives despite the staggering pile of evidence to the contrary. One question: Is the movie's temporary Commander-in-Chief (Kristen Dalton) stateside modeled after a hawkish Hilary Clinton?

Midnight: Silent Night, Deadly Night

We live in a world where simply watching a lone woman walk down an abandoned street at night in a low-trafficked part of town can make for an unnerving moment, irrespective of the country. Make that potential target of violence a deaf woman and the tension only increases. On such scares has Midnight been built. Kwon Oh-seung's thriller revolves around a young deaf office-worker (Jin Ki-hoo) and her deaf seamstress mother (Kim Hae-yeon), who together unwittingly interrupt a serial killer (Wi Ha-joon) during his latest slay. That's not a bad start. This is not a particularly consistent nailbiter however. To wit, when the latest victim's brother (Park Hoon) — who happens to be a security guard — confronts the killer, our boys in blue are hanging outside the precinct headquarters, chatting, then let the bad man free for fairly sketchy reasons. In what reality, do police officers trust a total stranger (with a briefcase of knives) without taking a report? Why wouldn't they rush out to track him down once they've realized they'd made a mistake? Oh, Kwon, what were you thinking?!

Perhaps Midnight is a film about police incompetence. Which gives its bloodthirsty villain free rein to stalk and torment his witnesses at home and in their oddly underpopulated neighborhood. I don't think I've ever run down so many late-night streets without a homeless person or fellow drunk in sight, regardless of the hour. Then again, I also can't explain the satisfaction that comes from people chasing each other through a maze of alleyways, regardless of the plot-holes and the potholes. But since Kwon's screenplay fails to incorporate vibrations, peripheral vision, and neighbors who can hear a young woman cry out for help, I never doubted for a moment that this "final girl" would survive. I did like the how of it though!

Deliver Us From Evil: Essential Neo-Noir

What's needed to make a movie a film noir? An unsavory underworld? An avenging antihero? A dominoed sequence of dastardly crimes? Well, yes, all those things can come into play and more. But a noir also isn't a noir without some seriously considered cinematography enhanced by the moodiest of lighting. For the great Fritz Lang, the noir of the '40s/'50s was distinguished by arty camera angles and strategically-cast shadows; for writer-director Hong Wan-chon, the amoral action gets a richer palette if not the crackling dialogue. No longer black-and-white, his update on noir abounds with fireside yellows, silvery blues, and scarily splashy reds. (Literally, "splashy" since the blood does splatter.) Set in the asphalt jungle (where else?), Deliver Us From Evil has neo-noir's ravishing visuals and vigilante vibe down pat.

Hong's sinister screenplay is better than basic, too. Much better. A world-weary assassin (Hwang Jung-min) — is there any other kind? — heads to Bangkok to right wrongs out of the past, after his never-quite-forgotten ex-girlfriend (Choi He-seo) suddenly resurfaces on his radar only to vanish once again. Naturally, the villainy only spirals out from there. Beyond a reasonable doubt, Hong next-levels the reliable black-market-organ trope (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, The Man From Nowhere, Traffickers). Equally potent is the wardrobe of the retaliating nemesis (Lee Jung-jae) who shows up at one point in a zebra-print shirt paired with aviator glasses. Killer, for sure. The same can be said for the acting of Park Jeong Min whose turn as a trans nightclub performer who serves as the "good" assassin's most-reliable sidekick adds just the right amount of sparkle to a world dominated by doom and gloom.

Some may say that Deliver Us From Evil has too many moments that go too far: How could a layperson know how to perform surgery on themselves? What allows an individual to outmaneuvre a full police SWAT team without even spraining an arm? Why would a bloodbath be followed by a snifter of booze? Those looking for logic are likely to end up as shell-shocked as the movie's kidnapped little girl (Park So-yi). As one character says, "The reason doesn't matter anymore." But Hong's film sure does, if you're thirsting for a thriller.

Hard Hit: Car Bomb

There's something so satisfying about a thriller with a simple plot-device. In Hard Hit, a father (Jo Woo-jin) — shuttling his daughter (Lee Jae-in) and son to school — discovers a bomb has been planted under the driver's seat. If he gets out of his car... BOOM! It's the same gimmick as Speed — more or less — except smaller vehicle, less passengers, and higher stakes. So what's the mystery caller want? Money was my first guess since daddy's in banking. And considering a co-worker's car blows up pretty quickly, you know that the man on the phone means business.

So what does one do in such a heinous situation, except drive on? In this case, our man-behind-the-wheel attempts to negotiate. He stalls for time. He calms his children. He suggests a more reasonable amount of cash. But we all know how this works! That caller insists on getting every damned penny. And you better not call the cops or the bomb squad (Jin Kyung). No time for excuses; you best be wheelin' and dealin' fast. Which is a skill our panicking hero possesses. As the extortionist says, "You certainly lie well." Which of course makes us wonder what his relationship is like with his wife (Kim Ji-ho). But we can explore those questions much later... depending on who survives!

Remake(s): Writer-director Kim Chang-ju's Hard Hit (2021) is inspired by Alberto Morini's screenplay for Retribution (2015) which was also remade as the German film Don't. Get. Out. (2018).

Killer Toon: Not Comic, Not Animated, Not Bad

A bestselling graphic novelist's sophomore manuscript unknowingly predicts a handful of murders. Who's to blame? Surely not the artist herself (Lee Si-young)! But in Kim Yong-gyun's Killer Toon, an intuitive cop (Uhm Ki-joon) is going to have to dig deep into her artwork if he's going to stop any future homicides from happening. Sixth sense or not, he's already too late for the self-mutilating publisher (Kim Do-young) and the suicidal mortician (Kwon Hae-yo). Will he figure out the source of the evil magic before his partner (Hyun Woo) is among the dead too? And what's the worst crime here: matricide? uxoricide? hit-and-run? or plagiarism? Because all are going to come into play!

As you — and the police chief (Oh Kwang-rok) — debate the pros and cons of each long-buried crime, you're also going to have to acknowledge that more than one teen's sadistic psychic powers must lie behind each of the messy massacres. There's revenge. There's arsonry. There's careerism taken a step too far. Plus, you should never underestimate the power of karma. Or the legacy of child abuse. Or the ease of car theft. Or, most importantly, the eye-catching appeals of a story presented in a visually layered manner. Especially when the primary color ends up being a blood red that won't wash away with the rain.

What Happens in an Alley: Children of a Debtor's God

The story of a financially-burdened business executive (Kim Seung-ho) with nine children, a seamstress wife, and a dependent mother, What Happens in an Alley intermittently registers as topical dramedy, its soundtrack buoyed by lighthearted vibraphone. Eventually, however, matters take the inescapable dark turn. What were you expecting? The title alone conjures up images of dirty needles, makedo toilets, illegal abortions, and sordid sexual escapades. Plus the company boss has a Hitlerian mustache and a Maoish uniform. Who couldn't foresee that director Park Jong-ho's slice-of-life flick would switch into social-realist mode?

Until it does, though, coming home drunk will be a chance for slapstick; marital arguments will culiminate in one-liners with dark undercurrents. As for this movie's recurring obsession with baby-making, that plot-point leads to weird scenes like one with an unhelpful obstretrician (Kim Hee-kab) and another with an unmarried woman (Kim Ji-mee) being groomed to carry the seed of an heirless married man. What these characters fail to realize is that there are worse things in life than childlessness. Like appendicitis, bribery, robbery, domestic violence, sexual assault, and living paycheck-to-paycheck. And What Happens in an Alley has those tragedies, too. Which makes it a pretty good movie. Or should I say melodrama?

Seoul Vibe: Drag Chase

Like a vintage automobile with chrome parts agleaming, the visually flashy, woefully oversized Seoul Vibe is a classic car-centric crime pic ... in need of a tune-up. Netflix's studio heads should've brought in a script mechanic! For what could've been a Fast and Furious fledgling revving to franchise is instead an exhausting filmic flivver. The cast is energetic; their characters, assembly-line likable. But no one is going to last beyond that tired first hour except the most devoted fan of Korean cinema. Wait a stopwatched second! That's me! So what can I tell you? Basically, that Seoul Vibe isn't a total wipeout. Come the final laps, I was unexpectedly caught up in the revenge plot hatched by the petulant crew chief (Yoo Ah-in), his mixtape-making DJ (Go Kyung-pyo), and kid sister (Park Ju-Hyun) — who happens to captain a motorcycle gang.

There's just one thing. I didn't necessarily want them to win. Because the best part of Seoul Vibe isn't one of its cute anti-heroes. It's the vampy villainess. Played by the consistently brilliant Moon So-ri, the icy embezzler known strictly as Mrs. Kang exists on a whole other level. She's driving an entirely different movie. A better one. To default to an '80s vernacular in sync with the movie's fashions and soundtrack, she's totally epic. Rad and bad. Could director Moon Hyun-Sung and scenarist Shin Sua cook up a miniseries for her, all about her nefarious machinations in the '90s. I insist they do! Working title: Bangin' Busan.

A Story of Hong Gil-dong: Steal From the Rich, Give to the Cartoonist

Hong Gil-dong is one of those tried-and-true stories that has been inspiring Korean filmmakers for multiple generations. The 2006 version starring Lee Beom-su, The Righteous Thief, updated the beloved Robin Hood tale to contemporary times via a likeminded descendant of its well-known hero. Twenty years before that, a more traditional North Korean variation served up the fable as a martial-arts crowd-pleaser. Another two decades before that, an animated interpretation recast the legend as a Disneyesque fable. What a difference 40 years make!

Per usual, the earlier incarnation of Hong is 100% about robbing the 2%. But unique to the cartoon are obstacles like a trio of rockabilly skeletons, a fanged bat with a cherry red uvula, and a dragon who flies to xylophone music. The connective narrative tends towards the dramatic while the visuals tend towards the comic. These two worlds meet on occasion but overall, writer-director Kim Hong-joon's A Story of Hong Gil-dong is an oddly-drawn curio, not an overlooked classic. This hour-long manhwa (the name for Korean anime) has primarily archival relevancy; less so, artistic.

A Public Cemetery of Wol-Ha: House of Horrors

Is Kwon Cheol-hwi the Roger Corman of Busan? Perhaps. I mean, I definitely felt a kinship between the deliciously shlocky A Public Cemetery of Wol-ha and those signature fright flicks of American International Pictures (which was cranking out flimflam films around the same time). Throughout Public Cemetery, you'll find the signature marks of that period's best B-moviemaking: overacting, lurid lighting, convoluted storytelling, a sadistic torture scene, and mustache-twirling villainry. For that last part, director Kwon has brought on Do Kum-Bong as a drug-dealing, murderous wife and the constantly cast Heo Chang-Kang as a slimy doctor who prescribes poisons as readily as cures.

These two amoralists conspire to off the courtesan-turned-mother (Kang Mi-Ae) and later, her infant son. That (late) woman's brother (Hwang Hae) — an old prisonmate of her husband (Park Nou-sik) — senses something is wrong in that household but he makes some wrong assumptions. Who wouldn't? No guest would guess it's a household of killers! Theremin music, skull silhouettes, a reluctantly complicit granny (Jeong Ae-ran), and a ghost who glides... if camp K-horror is your cup of tea then this movie is good to the last drop... of blood. In every which way, it's a scream!

Warning: The actual way they handle the real-life baby on-screen is the scariest part of this movie.

Horse-Year Bride: No Rock, No Doris, No Fun

I was never a fan of the Rock Hudson / Doris Day movies which reveled in the sartorially stylish '50s and resisted the carnally swinging '60s. Yet that's what Horse-Year Bride recalls — a out-of-date, sighfully silly sex comedy set in a year astrologically reputed to birth the most strong-willed women. And like its American antecedent, Kim Ki-Duk's feeble farce has a flirtatiousness leading to coitus interuptus more than baby making. There's hormones everywhere from the rockabilly singers lip-syncing English pop to the bedazzled modern dancers shimmying to surf guitar yet, most of the time, no one is getting laid. One reason: According to one particularly prudish newlywed, intercourse during pregnancy can cause a cleft palate in the newborn child.

That's hardly the only piece of nonsense espoused in Kim Ki-duk's 1966 flick as its clownish narrator, a fortune-telling matchmaker of dubious talents, intermittently pops up to tell us things like Napoleon had his hand down the front of his pants because of his family jewels and that any incompatibility in the bedroom might be cured with the right yoga practice. Sound like a stretch? Well, follow this film's prescriptive guidelines at your own peril. Watch this movie against my advice. It's frustration on-screen and off.

Rosy Life: The Bane of Black Pleather Jackets

Where do homeless drifters and runaways go besides to the city streets? In Kim Hong-joon's mid-'90s indie Rosy Life, some of them crash at a sordid comic book store run by Madam (Choi Myeong-gil). As a small business manager, she barely scrounges up a life better than theirs. Profits are slim; prospects, even slimmer; rapes, likely recurrent. Perhaps that's why there's such a dependable market for the pulpy escapist fare crowding her cozy shop's shelves. You can only get drunk so many nights. Same for the Korean Flower Card Game. Same for getting laid. What one really wants is a purpose. Or at least a distr ction that doesn't lead to a hangover, debt or a venereal disease.

Not that anyone in this grim slice-of-life is likely to chase a dream. How do you envision a better life when everywhere you look sucks? And what you're wearing is so damned uncomfortable. For me, one signature component of Rosy Life is its wardrobe which appears to be nearly uniformly made of polyester. Seeing two young women walking through a marketplace or a couple of old guys playing cards in cheap duds made my skin itch. Fast fashion really has made being poor worse sartorially. Is it too much to ask for a fabric to breathe? In this suffocating underworld, apparently yes. And wearing a synthetic-leather bomber-jacket with a black baseball-hat and a pair of army-green painter's-pants usually means trouble (Choi Jae-sung). But is it the worst of it or the least of it?

Yeraishyang: The Student and the Sex Worker

We've all heard the one about the hooker with the heart of gold. Yet how about the whore with blood of gold? She's one of the leads in Jeong Chang-hwa's pleasurable melodrama Yeraishyang. How else to categorize a lady-of-the-night (Moon Jeong-seok) who saves the life of a penniless protester (Shin Sung-il) by donating her alcoholic blood for his needed transfusion? And once you've gone that far for a stranger, why not sacrifice everything else? He needs money? Sell your jewels. He needs a place to stay? Put him up for a while. He wants your love, too? Um. That's when things get complicated.

Because one is always one's dirty past as much as one is one's self-sacrificing present. In this cabaret dancer's case, that means "once a drunk, always a drunk" until she ends up in rehab at the National Psychiatric Hospital. There, she'll suffer the indignities of no makeup, no hairbrush, and an unflattering housecoat as well as the delirium tremens. She'll also emerge a new woman. Not the one who begs her boyfriend to slap her. No, she was always there. I'm talking about the embittered siren committed to revenging her dad after meeting a pipe-smoking old, Chinese man. The third act of this pulpy black-and-white may catch you offguard but it's pretty fun stuff.

Five Marines: Age-Old Warriors

With only a decade between them, marquee headliners Kim Seung-ho and Shin Yeong-gyun would seem best suited to co-star as brothers for a war pic but in Kim Ki-duk's Five Marines, they play a military father-son duo with a history as potentially woundful as the DMZ. They're not the only family following a wacky Hollywood logic when it comes to ages. Performers Hwang Hae and Hwang Jeong-sun take on the roles of a soldier-son and his seamstress-mother despite a mere five years separating the two. (Crazily, he's older than she is.) I mention these odd details because in some ways, Kim's patriotic paean to the South's infantrymen feels like the cinematic equivalent of asummer stock production, as if the director had assembled a group of actors first, and the material second. Except, it's hard to imagine him picking this script. More like it was assigned.

Given the constraints, he's cast as best as he can. So what if everyone's around the same age. Maybe age is irrelevant when we're wearing standarc fatigues and camouflage helmets. The first half of the film is spent meeting the battallion — which aside from the aforemention army G.I.s — also includes a city smart aleck (comedian Flyboy), a new recruit (Nam Jang-il), a heartbreaker (Choi Mu-ryong), and a chaplain. Eventually, this crew paddles behind enemy lines in order to accomplish a dangerous mission. (Less dialogue and clownery; more action with whispers!) And — in true war movie fashion — only one of these guys is going to survive! Consider that a spoiler? If so, you haven't been watching many war pics. Five Marines is nothing if not standard issue frontline heroics.

Returned Single-Legged Man: Slap the Mustache Off That Face

Taekwondo virtuoso Tiger (Han Yong-cheol) has fallen on hard times. He's given up wearing those Western ties and pinstriped suits for lazy open shirts and bellbottom pants. His boyband haircut may not have changed much but he's sporting a mustache now because he's drinking too much to shave. Will he ever get his reputation and self-respect back? Or is falling out of favor with his adopted gangster-father (Kim Wang-guk) destined to be a tragedy from which he'll never recover? Before we learn those answers, we're going to need to take an extended flashback to a career-defining heist gone wrong. Our down-on-his-luck drunk a.k.a. our lovelorn clotheshorse will find this between-time to be especially sorrowful. A promising engagement is dooomed; a Japanese enemy is made; and endless shots of sojou are imbibed. And that's just the first third of the movie!

Director Lee Doo-yong's madcap martial arts movie is packed with as much plot as punches. But if it's fighting you want, Returned Single-Legged Man has plenty of that, too. Indeed, the Foley artist scored as much of RS-LM as did the super-'70s composer. (A scene highlighting the sound of wooden sandals going down a dirt road is particularly comical.) As for the costuming of a trio of thugs in hot pursuit of this movie's sinewy star, the accoutrements are faultless: a high femme, spotted rope scarf, an ebony walking cane sword, and a snakeskin jacket complimented by an orange neckerchief and a metalic shirt. Who needs character traits when you have outfits like these?

Take Note: Lead actor Han Yong-cheol went by many names in his career including Han Yong-chul, Hon Long-chit, Han Long-zhe, Han Ian, and Han Charles (not to mention Westernized variations in which the surname is placed last).

Take Note 2: A dubbed version, entitled The Korean Connection, though still fun, made less sense with its dumber dialogue.

Starting Point: Lost From the Beginning

There's a lot that's undisclosed in Lee Man-hui's thriller Starting Point. What's in those papers that our most moral mobster (Shin Sung-il) is trying to steal from the office safe? Do they merit killing the security guard? What instructions are passed on to the prostitute (Mun Hie) before she joins him on a mock honeymoon? And why must these two pose as newyweds at a campsite where people dance around a campfire to rock 'n roll? Lee — and his screenwriter Kim Ji-hyeon — have no intention on filling in the gaps. Which makes this 1960s noir a puzzler, that perhaps only repeat viewings can solve.

After a single screening courtesy of the Korean Film Archive's YouTube channel, the movie remained a conundrum. For while the hooker may have be the bait of her mock groom, she's also the one person on his side once trouble escalates. Their faux fieldtrip to Mount Seorak is fraught with peril once the hoods come out to hunt down them down. So will either survive? And would either of them want to, should the other die? Would a stack of money help? You see, they've fallen in love. And how do you repay someone for breaking your heart? I promise you, it's even harder in the snow. And tougher on a staircase!

The Outlaws 2: The Roundup

The Outlaws 2 is a very stabby movie. By which I mean, the weapon of choice is the knife for pretty much everyone. That's true for our villain (Son Sukku). Same for his blade-wielding bestie. Same for the brother assassins our villain hires when his bestie lands in the hospital. Same for a bistro's worth of serial sous chefs hired by a rich man (Nam Mun-cheol) to avenge one disarmed son. Everyone bad favors the knife. I mean everyone. Even the deranged hostage-taker in the movie's opening scene. Even the pathetic scam artist (Park Ji-hwan) who's mainly here for comic relief: The diminutive size of his switchblade is a cause for the titters.

Which begs the question. Who, in this universe of stainless steel stained with blood, prefers to fight by other means? And I don't mean the hatchet which also makes at least one appearnace. Well, our hero police officer (Ma Dong-seok) prefers using his fist. His sidekick of a captain (Choi Gwi-hwa) opts for the handgun should one become available. And the rich man's wife (Park Ji-young) who has her own negotiations with the stabbing maniac, she just uses her brains... and when that doesn't work, she runs! Funnily enough, though, the most exciting scene in Lee Sang-Yong's action-packed sequel isn't one of its many slice-and-dice bloodbaths. It's an extended car chase involving many vehicles and not dependent on endless crashes to create the drama.

Please Note: The Outlaws 2 goes by the title The Roundup and you don't need to have seen the previous film to make sense of the murderous mayhem.

The Bell Tower: Missing Another Dawn, Memories in the Belfry

When we look back at our lives can it be in any way except with sadness? For the joys of life are passing and don't etch themselves in our minds as deeply as the griefs do. In Yang Jun-nam's The Bell Tower: Missing Another Dawn, the bittersweet reflections are those of an old and ailing bell-maker (Heo Jang-kang) who experiences love and loss, not quite in equal measure. His fiance (Moon Jeong-suk) dies of appendicitis; his teacher dies of old age; what could be a career breakthrough is derailed by an old rivalry involving his grandfather. And yet, he soldiers on.

He has a new helpmeet (Moon, again), a nomadic spirit, and his craft. Fatherhood too comes into play but at a steep price. One gets the feeling every gift has its cost. And who hasn't felt that way at times. It's one of the things that redirects us back to work, to craft, to art. In a world in which the karmic balance feels arbitrarily applied by a whimisical, distracted deity, the practice — whatever that means to you — may be the place of most control. That and the telling of the story. The two are necessarily separate. And that's what makes The Bell Tower so good. Yang — Cheong Nam and Kang No-hyang — understand that the best lives are those which reconcile these two components. The work becomes the story; the story is part of the work. That work-story is generational, inherited, and by extension, bequeathed as well. Because the young have their story as well.

Dream: Waking Up Is Hard to Do

Anyone well-versed in children's fairy tales knows that getting your wildest wish granted is ultimately a nasty curse in disguise. For Jo-sin (Hwang Nam), the dream is leaving the religious brotherhood and spending the rest of his life with the beautiful Dal-lye (Choi Eun-hie). But living a commonplace existence with his ideal woman isn't the fantasy that he'd imagined. And it's not this his newlywed bride is a shrew or stupid or narcissistic. Despite his eventual physical abuse of her, she's a loyal companion, as pretty as ever, and as deeply in love with him as he is with her. He hasn't chosen his lovely soulmate unwisely. The problem is, basically, life.

In Shin Sang-ok's Dream, leaving the monkhood is going to mean being on the lam, murdering a rapist, then murdering an envious former holy man, too. Admittedly, Jo-sin gets a gloriously thick head of hair in his post-priesthood existence but otherwise, his day-to-day outside the temple is far from the ideal he desperately craved. Perhaps, his wish wasn't specific enough. Maybe he should've insisted that Dal-lye's fiancé would've stopped loving her. Maybe he could've have stipulated that his romance would last into eternity. He did not. So his bliss is temporary. And temporary bliss leads to temporary pain. What's to learn from this sad turn of events? Maybe that enlightened Buddhists must relinquish their attachments to earthly pleasures and earthly gains. That's the kind of epiphany that rarely lasts the time it takes to count the 108 wooden beads on your Buddhist bracelet. Or to put it in Karmic terms, better luck next time.

Carter: Bloodbath

To describe the extended action sequence and stunt showcase that is Carter as bloody is an understatement. Within the first 15 minutes alone, our amnesiac/brain-tampered hero (Joo Won) has slaughtered a spa full of Japanese thugs with a scythe. Once he's jumped out of that building (not his first escape, dear viewer), he moves on to hand-to-hand combat, first with a white guy; then with a black one. It's only then that we learn what's going on: He's the muscle for an intricate plan to rescue a young girl (Kim Bo-min) whose the sole source of antibodies for a wide-spreading zombie virus. Further biographical details are shared when a U.S. operative reads his profile to him (and us) during a brief moment of captivity.

Oh yes, Americans as well as North Koreans can be bad guys here. Where do I go? What do I do? For stretches, Carter's answers come largely from an implanted earpiece that also instructs him step by step as if he were living in a video game. But when his molar explodes or he falls out of a pilot-less airplane, this parttime puppet is going to have to rely on his instincts and his training. Both serve him well. The freefall battle between him and one particularly deranged opponent is like nothing you've ever seen, right down to the paraglided landing in the back of a pickup truck full of hogs. As for who our man on a mission impossible truly is, writer-director Jung Byung-gil saves that crucial bit 'til the final act, which peaks with a panopticon of baldcapped undead unruliness. The question is, do you believe it!

The Water Mill: Lord Have Mercy

There's a world of a difference between the comic book movie and the the fable on film. For whereas the former is typified by hero worship and snide asides, the latter distills human behavior into small scale tragedies of a much more personal nature. Unlike the more-or-less invincible leads of their Marvel-made counterparts (kryptonite notwithstanding), the leads in folktale cinema suffer dearly when they take a loss. There is no full recovery, anymore than there is a conquering of evil. Which one is more like real life, I ask you? Those superhero movies piss me off.

Lee Man-hui's The Water Mill is an exquisite example of the folktale film, an aching mix of Cinderella, Samson, and The Gift of the Magi. How else to explain this tale of a strongman (Shin Yeong-gyun) who comes across a slipper in the river, only to bump into his soon-to-be beloved (Ko Eun-a) the day she's missing a shoe. Their subsequent romance is fraught with issues: she's married, in debt, and doomed. The first issue is resolved when her husband dies; the second, is made right when her new lover sells himself to pay off her I.O.U. But the third item, well, that's going to require stealing undergarments and praying to the west wind. And when's the last time you've heard of that approach working out?

Descendants of Cain: Not Scary Red Scare

Maybe we're supposed to sympathize with the Old Guard landowners in Yoo Hyun-mok's Descendants of Cain. But I sure didn't. Well-intentioned Park Hun (Kim Jin-kyu) may have parlayed his roles as sympathetic squire into beneficent school teacher but he's also been stringing along O Jang-nyeo (Moon Hee), his masochistic housekeeper who's been lusting for him all these yearsduring which her absent, wifebeating drunk of a husband (Choi Bong) has been making a dubious name for himself in the party. Park is that latest in a line of kind lords of the manor but are the impoverished villagers really supposed to come to the defense of the "good" slave-owner? Who in their right mind wouldn't rejoice at a land re-distribution plan?

The refusal to cast the protagonists as good guys and the antagonists as villains is what makes Descendants of Cain so effective. The lowest of the low can have his moments of truth-telling; the best educated can also be the most delusional. The new social order may mercilessly judge all members of the upperclass regardless of their moral center but it also finally challenges a system that accords wealth, health, and -- to some degree -- happiness as a birth right guaranteed only to the moneyed minority. Fights break out but I, for one, was surprised by who stabbed who.

Awards: Blue Dragon Award for Best Film (1969); Buil Film Award for Best Film (1969).

Assassin: Anti-Commie Propaganda Kills Me

Is Assassin an intentionally bad piece of propaganda? It might be. Director Lee Mun-hui employs bad dubbing, jerky jumpcuts, strange close-ups, and one gratingly monotonous soundtrack incorporating a single note plunking over and over as if he intended to make a message film nobody would watch. The storyline may be focused on backstabbing Communists but more than critiquing the flawed global politics of South Korea's neighbors to the north, this movie made me me cringe with its winter-summer seduction between a general and a young woman with daddy issues, and the cat-and-mouse game between baby-voiced girl and a sinister guy who's hiding a gun.

Both women end up in bed — one to screw, one to sleep — but neither is safe when that clock strikes twelve. Because Lee's agit-prop, anti-Red world is filled with murderous men with no morals: a hired killer (Jang Dong-hwi), a revolutionary extremist (Nam Kung-mon), a North Korean defector (Park Am), an anonymous truck driver, and likely that guy (Oh Ji-myoung) who's toying with the home-alone kid. An extended scene which involves an apple caressed by a leather glove only furthers the idea that Assassin was meant to be absurd. Will anyone forsake Bolshevism after watching Assassin? Doubtful. Did Lee go on to redeem himself with later films? I'm happy to say he did. (Please watch The Road to Sampo instead.)

The Marines Who Never Returned: Bang, Bang, Clap, Clap, Ho, Ho, Ho

I shouldn't like war movies. I shouldn't like Henry V either. But I do. That doesn't mean I think guns are cool and colonialism is anything less than evil. It's more that while many real-world wars are pissing matches in which the poor and working class are fodder for the rich-and-powerful, big screen wars relate an altogether different reality. Is it propaganda? Probably. Yet defying logic and politics, here I am, watching Lee Man-hui's The Marines Who Never Returned on YouTube's Korean Film Archive and pretty much digging it, bayonets and all.

A Lee pic is always full of surprises. The action might get hyperrealistic in one scene (service men walk in on a pile of corpses) and then turn super silly in the next (a brothel madam is won over by unusual tactics). I doubt a military troop would have an orphan as their pigtailed mascot or that they'd be so at ease with a guy that they think acts like a girl. But hey, it's the movies. Anything is possible. Especially at Christmas time! And what a gift Lee is as a director. The world seems less limited, less constricted, less predictable when he's behind the camera. These marines are sentimentalists and Secret Santas, and I for one am here for it.

The Road to Sampo: Three on a March

Evidently filmmaker Lee Man-hui was an experimentalist to the end. His final work, the improbably joyous The Road to Sampo, turns a grim-on-paper road movie into a repeatedly giddy celebration of life. I found it inexplicably irresistable. So what if it's winter and jobs are scarce and everyone's broke and the world is cruel. I've been there and there's still friendship. No one promised anyone an easy life. And in Sampo, the trio of good-natured, insta-buddy vagabonds somehow find a way to counter a litany of downturns...together. Bulldozer Roh (Baek Il-sob) can't find a job; barmaid Baek-hwa (Mun Suk) can't find love; and elder excon Jeong (Kim Jin-kyu) seems unlikely to find the life he left behind. That doesn't mean they should stop searching. Plus, if they're hungry along the way, they can always crash a funeral for food and drink.

Which isn't to imply that The Road to Sampo is a pilgrimmage with marker events. Huge swaths of the film are devoted to watching these three trudge through the snow. Sometimes, they come upon a house and you think, what's there, but they move on. It may sound boring. In actuality, it's a blast. When Jeong comments about the younger two being like children, he's basically explaining how to get through the day to day. Don't get jaded. Don't get hard. Keep your innocence. Play when you can. Approach the unexpected with open eyes and an open heart. (Best done with a soundtrack inspired by Morricone.)

The Devil's Stairway: Nursed to Death

Did you think it was bad when Shelley Winters drowned in A Place in the Sun? Well, that's nothing compared to what's in store for the unwanted girlfriend in The Devil's Stairway. Lee Man-hui's hospital thriller sets up pretty quickly that the romance between an enterprising doctor (Kim Jin-kyu) and a clingy nurse (Moon Jeong-suk) is going to go sour before the spit on their lips has time to dry. And part of the fun is having Lee tease us with the possible murders that don't play out: a strangling, an overdose, another fall down that deadly staircase, an intentionally botched abortion, a grisly end utilizing various pieces of shiny medical equipment... The options are endless!

We know our hero is also our villain. But are you truly a bad guy if you're haunted by your actions? Oh, of course you are. You're just a bad guy with a conscience. Which is marginally better than a bad guy without one. How do you know he's got second thoughts? The Devil's Staircase has a deliciously insistent soundtrack with heightened foley sounds, well-placed vibraphones, and cacophonous orchestral works that drop out just in time to underscore the madness. Insanity sounds best without background music (and when shot in expert black and white).

Homebound: The Road to Return Has You Coming Back

Lest we forget, military spouses experience their own forms of PTSD. In Lee Man-hui's delectably arty, beautifully shot melodrama Homebound (a.k.a. Coming Back a.k.a. The Way Home a.k.a. A Road to Return), the protagonist isn't the depressed, wheelchair-bound veteran (Kim Jin-gyu) who's writing a serialized roman a clef for a Seoul newspaper. It's his saintly wife (Moon Jeong-suk) who has trauma-triggered hallucinations of her own — although how far they extend is really up to the viewer to decide. What we do know, for sure, is that she's responsible for dropping off her husband's latest chapter to the editor-in-chief who would like to see the story get a little more "human." By which he means, can't she cheat already?

She for her part is unsure of the answer. Will her hubby stop idealizing her sexless sacrifices? Will the oh-so-close almost-kiss she has with a rookie reporter (Kim Jeong-cheol) at a makeout bar ever develop into a duel of the tongues? Will she ever get more physical contact than what she receives from her pet German shepherd Bess? The neurotic way she applies lipstick late in the film sure suggests she needs some kind of help fast. Because if she doesn't get it, she's going to end up in Tennessee Williams country instead of Incheon.

Declaration of Fools: Less Chirpy Talk, More Chaplin Walk

Released in 1983, the nonsensical Declaration of Fools feels as though it were shot in the freewheelin' '60s. But that might be because the more recent South Korean decade was shaped by a people-power credo similar to that of America'a youth revolution of 15 years prior. But is director Lee Jang-ho advocating for democracy or anarchy here? He's appparently got no (coherent) script and his scenery-chewing leading man, Kim Myung-gon, isn't fighting the status quo with his Chaplinesque kicks. Where are the two of them going? To vaudeville, to the circus, or to a kindergarten class?

Should it be that last option, they might meet up with the child who provides the film with its occasional narration. (Most of the movie is devoid of dialogue!) Hell, if that same youngster is responsible for the playful drawings used for the credits, he'd be a pretty cool kid to meet. Who shows up in the meantime? Actress Lee Bo-hee and her costar Lee Hie-seong, both giving energetic performances via dubiously connected skits incorporating Jerry Lewis hijinks like pants-less cocktail parties and an afternoon of inflatable condoms. What's it all about? Life is meaningless! We've lost our way! Everyone's stupid! Take your pick. There's truth to be found aplenty but a little more forethought and a little less slapstick might've worked in this movie's favor.

Pumpkin Time: One Fairy, No Godmothers

Early on, my boyfriend and I mistakenly interpreted the movie Pumpkin Time as a gay parable. Yet while Kang Min-gu's light comedy definitely exists along the LGBTQIA+ spectrum, this one's really a trans love story. The young boy (Lim Tae-poong) transformed into a young girl (Lee Soo-min) by an overeager fairy (Yeo One) doesn't want to change back to her original sex despite the discomforts of her transition. To the contrary, she discovers, upon closer examination, that she actually prefers being a girl. And not because she thinks her fancifully acquired womanhood increases her romantic chances with her childhood crush (Shin Hyun-seung). He, for his part, is very much searching for a same-gender soulmate he knew years ago on his little league team, before his family relocated across the ocean to the United States. Indeed, while the question facing our young leading lady is "To be female or not to be female," the question facing our young leading man is "Can one's object of adoration change from a he to a she?"

That question speaks movingly to the fluidity of sexual attraction, making the webisodes-turned-movie Pumpkin Time a deeper experience than you might expect. I only wish the story came with more surprises! The new female student (Choi Yu-jin) with unwarranted jealousy toys with villainry but never achieves it. A silly BFF (Nam Kyu-hee) never gets funny enough lines to rise to comic relief. Ultimately, Perhaps such details don't matter. Pumpkin Time is very much a movie of the moment, a welcome entry in the gender-switch teen rom-com that gives its sex-change plot-twist serious consideration and refreshing validation!

Whistle Blower: The Lies of Science

One of the great myths of the modern age is that scientists are more honest than most people. In truth, cancer researchers and genetic engineers are equally human and therefore occassionally get seduced by fame, money, power, and all the other niceties. Elizabeth Holmes has become the poster child for scientific fraud in the U.S. but she's hardly the only one worldwide. In Korea, they had Hwang Woo-suk, a stem cell biotechnologist who bulllshitted about cloning capabilities (on a global scale, no less) as he deluded himself and his cohorts that the actual discovery was a constant few months away.

Yim Soon-rye's thriller Whistle Blower puts that headline-grabbing story on the big screen. Told from the perspective of a tenacious veteran producer (Park Hae-il) whose pursuit of a story puts his life as well as his livelihood in danger, this film really drives home how hard it is to take on the powers that be. Truth isn't enough. People need to be brave to the point of self-sacrifice and lucky beyond what fate usually provides. And so, while Whistle Blower may be a feel-good story, you're also aware that more often than not Justice is not the result. Corruption exists in the upper echelons everywhere — the science community included.

Bloodline: Poor, Poor Miserable Need

Opportunity is scarce for the residents of the hilltop shanties in Bloodline: a sock-selling daughter (Um Aing-ran) gets pressured to become a "hostess"; a cigarette pedlar (Shin Yeong-gyun) can't scrounge together the doctor's fee for his wife (Lee Kyoung-hee). In this part of town, one tough-luck story is no better or worse than the other. Newspaper serves as wallpaper; your daily outfit has at least one patch. And generally, it goes downhill from there.

Neo-realism Korean-style rarely disappoints and Kim Soo-yong's group portrait of North Korean defectors making hard-scrabble lives for themselves just south of the 38th parallel is no exception. This career-making film, shot in expert black and white, covers a lot of territory too including swank nightclubs, military barracks, construction sites, and street merchants. You can see the inequities in all these environments and how inflexible the system is to change. Is it any wonder that the older generation (Kim Seung-ho, Hwang Jeong-sun, Choi Nam-hyeon) have grown dissatisfied with the life they chose? Was it worth all that trouble and effort just to get a family-sized can of papayas? The spark of hope is reserved for those who get out!

Awards: Blue Dragons for Best Film, Best Actor (Kim), Best Actress (Hwang), and Best Supporting Actor (Choi); Grand Bell for Best Film.

Kongjul & Patchui: Cinderella Minus a Stepsister

My boyfriend was leaning towards gay romantic dramas. I was feeling action flick. What's the compromise? A puppet fairy tale told in stop-motion animation! How lucky we were to stumble on Kongjul & Patchui, a Cinderella variation with one nasty stepmother, one narcoleptic stepsister, and one heaven-sent helpmate with magical powers. The Korean fable also incorporates a sinister shaman, a talking lotus, and a band of good-natured animals as skilled as gymnasts as they are as an orchestra. These additions aside, the basic rags-to-riches story remains the same as the Grimms' "Little Ash Girl," right down to the magic slipper.

Like her princess-in-waiting counterpart, Kongjul is faced with Herculean tasks that get accomplished thanks to four-legged friends: When stepmomma insists she plow a field full of rocks, a telepathic bull materializes out of nowhere to get the job done. When that same stepmonster orders Kongjul fill a huge jar despite its sizable crack, a suicidal frog jumps to her rescue. Beyond this furry support system, Kongjul also has a powerful ally with supernatural powers. (Exit Fairy Godmother. Enter Buddha's emissary.) I was pretty sure a happy ending was ahead but like the claymation mouth of Kongjul's step-sibling Patchui, this movie felt like it could go anywhere.

Traces: War Dance

The Japanese leadership's inability to fathom why a Korean wouldn't want to pretend to be Japanese during occupation could be viewed as dimwitted patriotism. Yet as one savvy soldier notes: Why would a Korean want to adopt a Japanese name when "Japan is using Koreans as human shields"? In Shin Sang-ok's Traces, the resistance to this arrogant oppressor gets personal, too, once Korean gisaeng (Mun Hie) discovers that the Japanese artist (Oh Yeong-il) painting her portait is the son of the soldier that killed her dad.

She's not wrong to think less of him. He's one of those guys who believes that love allows him to compromise the safety of everyone — and so he stalks an independence activist (Lee Dae-yeob) who owes him a favor which he keeps cashing in. When said activist gives him a lecture on the purpose of "the movement," you almost expect him to say, "Yes, that sounds like an important cause but can't you help me win back my lady?" Luckily, he doesn't have time to say that, because there's a raid...followed by a rainstorm and a drawing class and a prize for his oil painting (which is withdrawn since he won't change its name). The draft propels him towards the front line. Desertion won't bring him any closer. "36 years of pain won't go away that easily."

Yaksha: Ruthless Operations: The Thing of It

You may not have heard of the Chinese city of Shenyang but it's bigger than Hong Kong, Rio, or L.A.. and home to one of the largest Koreatowns in the world. It's also the setting of the spy flick Yaksha: Ruthless Operations in which the reinstatement of self-righteous Prosecutor Han (Park Hae-soo) depends on surviving gunfights and fistfights among South Koreans, North Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, and Russians what want "that thing you were going to give me" — as top black ops guy Ji Kang-in (Sol Kyung-gu) puts it. (That "thing" probably has to do with reunification!)

So can a small crew completely dressed in black take on every other nation's secret service in order to save an imperiled, orphaned daughter who likely has whatever it is they need? Writer-director Na Hyeon's crime pic has tension aplenty but no true suspense. No sane moviegoer doubts whether the good guys will prevail. This is vigilante justice, which tends to be infallible on screen. "If we were work by the law then we can't accomplish anything." And based on how the American Supreme Court is swinging, you'll likely fantasize about the three musketeers instead. (Enter Lee El, Park Jin-young, Song Jae-rim with guns cocked.)

Set Play: An Underage Hustle

Set Play looks as though shot with an Instagram filter. The footage comes with a cool blue cast, like the cinematographer pushed IG's Lark icon right before writer-director Moon Seung-wook shouted, "ACTION!" And what disturbing action lies ahead: Two teenaged boys (Lee Jae-kyoon, Sung Chul) hustle side money via petty theft and... entrapping then bribing middle-aged women in a sex-with-a-minor scheme. The "stud" of this crime duo comes up with the shorter end of their 70/30 stick; he's got a financially compromised mother (Park Hyun Sook), a brain-damaged brother, and a physically abusive drunk father (Kim Jung-seok). Who else is going to play man of the house?

Can he escape from the soul-crushing day-to-day by pushing his ditzy crush (Go Min-si) around in a shopping cart? For that matter, can she escape from her directionless existence by shooting a music-video on a manually activated merry-go-round? Do either of these activities gain glamor when shot on a mobile phone? (Because both are!) The world inhabited by these youngsters is bleak, culminating — at one point — in a fight scene during which the victor punches air. It's a powerful metaphor for rage without an outlet. There's no sunshine ahead either. By the end, Moon might've well as told his cameraman to switch the IG filter to his namesake filter or Willow or Inkwell as every color gets drained from these poor kids' lives.

Celeb Five: Behind the Curtain: Four Women Making a Mockery

Korean culture has had international reach in so many areas: K-pop, K-drama, K-horror, and Korean food. But is there K-comedy? The women of Celeb Five definitely think so. So who will make the most convincing argument on K-comedy's behalf? Will it be Shin-young who tickles her castmates with stories of her 110-year-old grandmother? Or how about Bong-sun and her bleaker riffs on her suicidal father? Will Young-mi spice it up by initiating a new fetish around K-breasts? Their leader Eun-i is hoping to pool these collective sensibilities, concepts, jokes, and talents for a new Netflix special but will there be enough material to justify a making-of video too?

Or is the 55-minute-long Behind the Curtain, in fact, the special itself? Will the various shenanigans we witness this foursome perform over meals and drinks, inside cafes and cars, wearing sweatsuits and bridal gowns build to the breakthrough they crave? One restaurant owner peaking from the kitchen is convinced. You get the feeling that the faith of these improvisational performers in each other and themselves is deep. Me? I need to wait until the actual special. Unless... this mockumentary is it? In which case, I'm still willing to wait for what they do next.

The 12th Suspect: This Pen Writes in Red Ink

The 12th Suspect starts off as an old-fashioned Agatha Christie mystery. The fatal gunshot is announced early on by a nattily attired detective (Kim Sang-kyung) after he crashes a sad, literary coffeehouse, leaving us — and him — the rest of the movie to discover which of these eight or so customers is the guilty one. Unless, of course, the husband-and-wife owners (Heo Sung-tae and Park Seon-yeong) are responsible for offing that loner poet.

Unlike Christie, however, writer-director Ko Myoung-sung's takes a moment for poetry, too. Not the cinematic variation. The literary kind. You can do that when so many of your primary suspects are poets! As for a motive, can you think of a better one than good ol' literary rivalry? Yes, yes, love-gone-wrong is presented as a potential reason but whoever thinks Choi Yoo-jeong (Han Ji-ahn) is the femme fatale has shifted from Christie country to the realm of Raymond Chandler. In actuality, The 12th Suspect shifts to John Le Carre territory as it mines the drama of anti-commie militarism played out in front of a post-Korean-War backdrop. So what's the true cause of the eventual bloodbath? Does the why even matter? Whodunit's really are a guessing game!

Arahan: Ahn Is on Deck Again

Either Ahn Sung-ki is the hardest working actor in South Korean cinema or my subconscious is seeking him out. A third of the movies I've watched this year feature this actor who started appearing in films when he was five: Mandala, Village in the Mist (1983), Festival (1996), A Young Zelkova (1969), and now Arahan (2004). This latest one is the pulpiest of the bunch, a silly action flick in which a group of Tai Chi masters — with extraordinary talents — must defend the planet from a former colleague (Jung Doo-hong) who wants that magic back tattoo for himself. (Such body enhancements let you rule the world.) Ahn plays the "good" team's leader and radiates a benign energy that makes you wish you were his mentee too.

He's got those apprentice slots filled, however, as joining him in the fight are two young trainees/lovers whose educational montage includes swordplay, hand-to-hand combat, and balacing on a big bowl of water. No one is ever shown teaching the coveted Palm Thrust which allows you to shove someone into a wall without touching them but that's the move they're most eager to learn. Like many a movie before it, Ryu Seung-wan's YA fantasy falters when it stops giving the ingenue (Yoon So-hi) a respectable heroine-in-the-making storyline. Considering her counterpart, a bumbling traffic cop, is played by Ryu's brother Seung-beom, you can forgive the mishandling. Nepotism always shortchanges someone, although in this case it's women everywhere.

A Triangular Trap: Men Are Mean

The men are universally pigs in the more-or-less misanthropic A Triangular Trap. Ugly pigs. Vile pigs. Run-of-the-mill pigs. The stalker who rapes fashion designer Choe Ji-suk (Mun Suk) — then holds her hostage for months so she'll have his baby... He's certainly a pig. So is the diabolically double-crossing self-defense instructor she's dating, despite his having saved her from a random thug with damaged lips. As for the family lawyer, he's shockingly indifferent when she recounts her life-changing trauma. Your "not all men are bad" argument will fall on deaf ears here; that one friendly neighbor is a case of the exception that proves the rule.

Not that the women come off smelling like roses in Lee Man-hui's stylishly '70s crime pic. A sister of the traveling caftan this is not. Choe Ji-suk's customers and co-workers look at her as a source of gossip and sartorial inspiration. And don't tell me the maid is a good person either, simply for doing her job well; she also spreads superstition and condemns her mistress for accepting the family inheritance. No, with jerks and Judge Judys everywhere, our heroine has two choices should she survive the attacks on her body and character: to deteriorate or to retaliate. In A Triangular Trap, she does a bit of both, taking breaks periodically to play a flamenco guitar.

Sopyonje: Troubadours in Trouble

An homage to a poor family of pansori singers, Im Kwon-taek's Sopyonje sure pays attention to the period details: the corsetting under a man's shirt; the caretaking of a traditional buk drumskin; the proper position assumed by a gonsu, the artform's requisite percussionist. It also passes on the classic generalities attached to musicians of many genres: a blind young chanteuse who feels more deeply; a woman who kills herself for a talented performer; two squabbling, competitive vocalists who drink in excess while flanked by flirtatious groupies.

Sopyonje's anti-hero is the irasicible pansori artist Youbong (Kim Myung-gon, who also wrote the screenplay!). A master musician banished from the troupe which schooled him and now raising two children — one his by birthright; the other, by fate — he's prepping the new generation to carry on the venerable art and inspire a lot of enjoyable incidental dancing from those who listen. But this is back in the days when artists get no respect: "Just because I sing, it doesn't mean that I'm low in stature." That's poorly translated but I didn't write these subtitles. You get the gist.

A Young Zelkova: Romance With Simple Shadows

Was color film really an advancement? Generally speaking, black-and-white movies are consistently more visually arresting. The images tend to be more focused, and the interplay of shadow and light inherently comes into play. And since the monochromatic aspect automatically feels archival, the picture itself feels like a piece of history. Because of that, A Young Zelkova overcomes its corniness and its outdated morality through the gravity of grayscale. For much of Lee Seong-gu's melodrama, conflict looks to be in short supply.

When Suk-hee (Moon Hee) travels to the city to attend Cheonwu Women's University, she leaves her grandparents behind to live with her remarried mother (Joo Jeong-ryeo), her stepdad-professor (Park Am), and her new stepbrother (Shin Sung-il) whose single, handsome, smart, and romantic. The rival (Yoon Yang Ha) for her heart presents no real danger to their happily ever after. Nor do a trio of bike accidents: one when they meet cute; one when he gives a lift to a young friend (Ahn Sung-ki), and one when he teaches her how to ride a two-wheeler on a nearby tennis court. What does threaten their future are societal expectations. You see, you're not supposed to fall for a sibling whether he's a blood relation or not.

The Classroom of Youth: She Loves Him, Loathes Him, Loves Him

The script of The Classroom of Youth is certainly quotable.

"I scanned the crotch first every time time the three of you were born."

"In every respect, I should be the first to taste a man."

"Gangsters use violence regardless of gender."

"When I'm with you, I get electric sparks in my body."

"I'd rather play chest with Ghengis Khan in Hell."

"Let's be eternal bachelors like Jesus Christ."

"Run around naked and then get hit by lightning and die!"

This curious rom-com about a sweet, reckless bastard (Shin Sung-il) who falls hard for a frugal goody two-shoes (Um Aing-ran) has unforgettable plot points throughout, too: a shameless crossdressing episode, a kissing raffle with alcohol wipes, a hair-focused fashion show, a sisterly wrestling match, and a staged double suicide at seas. Director Kim Soo-yong (Seashore Village), aims for an unlikely upbeat ending and oddly enough, the man pulls it off. Good stuff!

Search Out: Fried-Chicken Mind-Control

A social media influencer as the hero of a bleak thriller? Who didn't see this one coming? And so we have Search Out, Kwak Jung's bizarre, feel-good mystery about an internet do-gooder (Kim Sung-cheol) who lives nextdoor to a suicide victim whom he might've helped but didn't. Except it's not a suicide. Our hero knows that. So does his best-buddy/morale-booster (Lee Si-eon). What they don't know is the insanity they're about to release by making the murder public.

The key to their success is the moonlighting, ultracool tech wizard (Heo Ga-yoon, formerly of the girl group 4Minute) who quickly uncovers they've got a serial killer on their hands. And not just any serial killer but one who uses psychological control to drive people on a social networking servie to kill themselves. Interestingly, the movie posits that the truest friendships emerge in real time and a shared physical space and not online at all. One of them is probably going to get badly hurt, and while you know which one, it's scary nevertheless. Who's evil? The cops, fast food corporations, the medical establishment... Thankfully, those who study hard survive.

Gilsotteum: Nice to See You Again

The split between North and South Korea isn't simply a political matter. Families were torn apart when the country broke in two. That personal damage was news again when TV channel KBS started airing emotionally heartbreaking, splitscreen interviews of long lost relatives finally reunited years after that defining war. That now-historic footage, interwoven throughout Gilsotteum, makes for a powerful viewing experience even today.

Set against these archival clips is Im Kwon-taek's soap opera about two star-crossed cousins — once in love, now married to others — who find each other unexpectedly at station headquarters before embarking on a shared search for their own ill-begotten son. The mother (Kim Ji-mee) lost custody of the boy while in jail. The father (Shin Sung-il) never had any luck in tracking the infant down. Can these two adults — back together again, decades later — locate their child now that he's become a man? And what'll they do if they do? Why ask to see his double vortex hair of course! Sounds like something out of Aeschylus to me. Greek tragedy meet Korean cinema!

Black Gospel: Harlem Gets Seoul

Ostensibly about a cadre of Koreans who learn to sing Gospel at the genre's NYC wellspring in Harlem, the documentary Black Gospel contrarily testifies that you can't master a culturally-rooted music experiencing a single month of immersion. As choirmaster Dr. Reverend Ouida W. Harding asks bluntly after hearing one earnest singer during orientation, "What are you doing?" And by that, she means "What are you doing here? What are you singing? Why are you singing? Why are you wasting my time?" As each member of the fish-out-of-water choir steps forward to warble, this non-nonsense minister — the true star of Black Gospel — eviscerates each quavering tourist, one by one — American Idol-style. The single exception, Yang Dong-kun a.k.a. YDG, meets with some approval because he's got heart despite an inability to hit the exact notes.

The lesson the Reverend is hell-bent on teaching is this: Singing "perfect" is not gospel's point. Church music comes with a message and anyone belting "Amazing Grace" or "I Just Want to Praise You" better have a passion for spreading The Word. The visiting vocalists' other preacher-teachers are infinitely kinder but the gravitation toward the lightest skin music director and a white orchestrator does make the heart ache. The culminating concert doesn't invoke the spirit via an overlong chorus of "Lean on Me," but this little doc does give witness to gospel's undying appeal. Praise it.

Festival: Death Becomes Him

A grandmother (Han Eun-jin) dies at the start of Im Kwon-taek's quirky family drama Festival. Except she doesn't. She reawakens posthumously — apparently an old habit with her — but then succumbs to death, this time for good. Once she does, the funeral's intricacies begin to unfold, many unfamiliar to many Westerners such as draping calligraphy scrolls in the courtyard, painting the name of the dead on a ceremonial flag, and unmasking the face of the elaborately wrapped corpse for a late guest (black sheep Yong Sun played by a ravishing Jung Kyung Soon). Outside these Korean funeral rites, Festival has much more on its mind.

The main event is intercut by flashes of the past and vignettes drawn from a "Benjamin Button" novel penned by the late woman's son Jun-seop (Ahn Sung-ki), a celebrated author who draws inspiration from his family. This structural device blurs the line between art and reality, no doubt making the investigative work of one The Age of Literature journalist Lee Yong-soon (Oh Jung-hae) exceedingly difficult. What's truth? What's fiction? Is Ahn's character to be trusted? With all that booze flowing? Well, he's certainly dashing. And due to Ahn, a bit of an enigma, too.

Village in the Mist: Out-of-Towner Out of Luck

To be honest, Im Kwon-taek's Village in the Mist reminds me exceedingly of the kooky psychosexual movies of Kim Ki-young. This battle of the sexes is so out there that I couldn't separate the social commentary from the sexism. Though nothing is stated definitively, what might be happening is that a townful of women are all getting impregnated by a nitwit vagabond (Ahn Sung-ki) who's the one reliable local sperm source since the rest of the men are impotent because of inbreeding. Struggling between appreciation and resentment, the villagers treat their resident babymaker like a pet in a way that would horrify that ASPCA. They feed him, beat him, taunt him, fondle him, throw rocks at him, work to get him drunk, and try to strip him naked so they can see if he's hung like a horse.

The new teacher (Cho Nam-kyeoung) is perplexed. Not horrified. More curious. Obviously she can't hear the forboding music that's underscoring much of the action. What's going on here, she wonders, as she handwrites letters of longing to a boyfriend who'd rather get smashed with his military buddies then trek out to nowheresville to visit his lady. She never quite puts it together. And once she gets raped, she puts such desires aside. Village in the Mist has her confessing pleasure about her assault but that's PTSD talking. Or male fantasies being projected. Or reprehensible cohorts not calling out the creators on their crap.

Mandala: Monk Mania

Horror. Vintage noir. Dystopian scifi. Sports movies. Movies about teachers. Movies about underdogs. There are plenty of movie genres that I like fairly consistently. One very specific niche is Korean movies about monks. These are different than Korean movies about priests (Love So Divine, The Divine Fury, Thirst) which tend to focus on notions of guilt. They're also different than American movies about monks (The Golden Child, Seven Years in Tibet) but who couldn't see that coming. Yet my experience with this Korean sub-genre has proven consistently enjoyable from the high-brow Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... And Spring to the low-brow Martial Monks of Shaolin Temple. Strengthening my predisposition is Im Kwon-taek's artfilm Mandala.

A buddy pic about a nomadic ascetic (Ahn Sung-ki) and his carousing elder (Jeon Moo-song) who's been excommunicated from the brotherhood, Mandala asks plenty of questions about the meaning of life. So which monk holds the key to enlightenment? Well, if you're asking that question at the (admittedly oddball) end, you've somehow missed the point. There is no one way. Or there is one way for each one and what that one is may be one of many if there actually is a way at all. Sound too heady? Too bad for you! Slow-moving but deep-diving, this picaresque tale is filled with philosophical musings if not much of a plot.

Battle of the 38th Parallel: Fiancée Under Fire

It's a testament to the wide range of prolific director Im Kwon-taek's vast cinematic output that you can find his movies at the Korean Film Archive's magnificent archival YouTube channel as well as at the Wu Tang Collection, an online pulp movie aggregator with an incredibly different agenda. A war pic heavy on artillery and light on character development, Battle of the 38th Parallel falls comfortably in the latter's more lurid lineup. Ghastly dubbing and severe editing (that's cut a half-hour from the film) make the pulp appeal here even greater; any dialogue — or monologue, for that matter — comes across as so much filler before the next air raid, the tank invasion, the next tossed grenade, the next sniper shot, the next launched missile. Dead bodies proliferate.

Oh sure there's a plot involving a young woman (Kim Chang-suk) in search of her enlisted boyfriend, a commanding officer for the South ("When you see your fiancee, tell him I died like a soldier") but having crossed enemy lines and made her way to safety, she's not about to rest on her laurels. Once she's received that less-than-romantic letter from her paramour, she's back on the road to shellshocked Seoul to deliver a late serviceman's diary to his anguished family. Strangely, the long journey that made up most of the film is completed in reverse in the blink of an eye. That's what happens sometimes to squeeze in your final message before the end: "We must never allow such a war to occur again!"