2037: Prison Ingenue

Life behind bars can be downright cute when you're a pretty young thing (Hong Ye-ji) who has bludgeoned her rapist (Hyun Young Kyun) to death as a way to protect her deaf mom. Your cellmates will paint the walls of the bathroom with your favorite flower, protect you from sexual predators in the prison yard, and sew baby clothes using stolen scraps of fabric should you happen to end up pregnant. Additionally, the warden (Jeong In-gi) may brew you chrysanthemum tea while a guard will put aside some sticky rice buns. Even the judge at your retrial will dramatically shorten your sentence because you find life in prison scary. Will you appreciate all the attention? Not if you're in Mo Hong-jin's girl-bonding flick 2037.

All you wanted from life is a government position. Your dreams are modest. You career goals momentarily derailed. But you didn't ask for special treatment from your fellow convicts. You didn't ask your the prison doctor for an abortion or work relief. What you did do is stockpile painkiller pills and keep to yourself, banned your mother from visits and wrote appreciative letters. Some might say you were not appreciative enough. Others would say you were suffering from PTSD. I would say, I wish you'd been in a different women-in-prison movie that really tested your mettle and got you to toughen up. Would the Roger Corman or Jonathan Demme of Korean cinema please step forward already? In 2037, we've got a Korean Kathy Bates (Kim Mi-hwa).

Asura: The City of Madness: Politics as Usual

Watching this movie, as I did, the day after Trump got a bloody ear at a rally, Asura: The City of Madness lent credence to conspiracy theories that our former president staged his own assassination attempt, dead bystander notwithstanding. For somewhere early on in Kim Sung-su's political thriller, an equally corrupt, avaricious mayor redirects the attention of the media by having his head clandestinely sliced by a box cutter to salvage his rah-rah conference of self-promotion. That self-directed mutilation is especially creepy because Mayor Park Sung-Bae (Hwang Jung-min) — like DJT — emerges bloodied and defiant, using the injury as a way to paint himself as a martyr. Like Trump, too, he's surrounded by thugs with fear-based loyalty and questionable sense. The only thing saving (dis)grace for Park is that the justice department — represented by Special Prosecutor Kim Cha-in (Kwak Do-won), Chief Prosecutor Oh (Choi Byung-mo) and a hunky detective (Jeong Man-sik) — only ever-so-slightly less slimy.

Stuck between the two feuding parties is Han Do-Kyung (Jung Woo-sung), a dirty cop willing to turn traitor on his boss if it means making money for his wife's costly medical treatments. The compromised morals of his cheery BFF Sunmo (Ju Ji-hoon) have more to do with career opportunities with a long game in mind. Eventually, both characters go off the deep end: one on his way up; one, his way down. Neither have luck on their side or as someone says at one point they're probably "trying to be clever with an inadequate brain." Recurring thought: Stay out of behind-closed-doors-with-a-knife politics.

Alienoid: The Return to the Future: ET2

If you missed my earlier review, I thoroughly enjoyed the first Alienoid movie last year. Why that flick didn't land on my top ten list for 2023 may be simply because I sometimes make faulty judgments in my annual "best of" roundups. And so, I was excited about the return of this sci-fi franchise: A world where human bodies double as ET prisons and robots work for good. Did I want to see more of the star-crossed lovers (Kim Tae-ri and Ryu Jun-yeol), the humanoid cats (Lee Si-hoon and Shin Jeong-geun), and the two comically cocky sorcerers (Yum Jung-ah and Jo Woo-jin)? You bet I did. I even welcomed the addition of a blind swordsman (Jin Seon-kyu) and the expanded role of his equally skilled descendant, a customs-officer/auntie (Lee Hanee) who's been waiting her whole life to fight alien invaders on behalf of our planet Earth.

Now, time travel movies are tricky. But time travel sequels that recount the exact same story while incorporating different elements are even trickier. Meaning Alienoid 2 does get confusing and redundant depending on who you are as writer-director Choi Dong-hoon flips between the 14th and 21st centuries. New viewers will never truly understand all this business about the red gas bubbles. Old viewers are left to utter joyously "Oh, that's right..." as memories of A1 plot-points get triggered. Like Park Hoon-jung's The Witch: Part 2, A2 doesn't quite blow the door of its predecessor via a reorienting return. But a fresh coat of paint on something you like can sometimes suffice for an evening's pleasure.

Wonderland: Love Never Dies

After you died, would you want to live on as a SIMS character? Or, perhaps more importantly, is there anyone who's dead whom you wished you could still contact for videophone consultations? Kim Tae-yong's fascinating fantasy Wonderland explores the lives of a handful of characters for whom the answer to these questions is a troubled yes. A grandmother (Sung Byoung-sook) and her charge get to talk to dead mommy (Tang Wei) while she lives out her posthumous fantasy as an archaeologist. A simulator executive (Choi Woo-sik) seizes the chance to converse with the dad he barely knew before an awkward funeral he attended professionally. Even the flirty stewardess (Bae Suzy) gets to chitchat with her comatose lover (Park Bo-gum) as if he were spending time on a space station instead of in a hospital. [I'm assuming she had to get extensive paperwork signed allowing her to create a faux version of her boyfriend despite his continued existence on earth.]

As we watch the various characters struggle with the unreality of losing someone who is technologically kind of within reach, Wonderland poses interesting questions about the nature of existence and the price that comes with not dealing with grief head on. To its credit, Kim's curious scifi scenarios repeatedly reveal that maintaining pseudo-relationships exacts a toll as the interpersonal relationships in the here-and-now warp out of shape. I wouldn't classify Wonderland as a horror movie but the AI substitutions are subtly, unmistakably scary.