The Deal: Caught Then Cagey

You're going to have to set logic free as a jailbird for So Yong-ho's thiller The Deal. For how can the police be on the trail of a serial killer when all the female victims' bodies are missing? Does missing qualify as dead? Fortunately, lead detective Tae-soo (Kim Sang-kyung), b.k.a. as "Mr. Intuition," defaults to his feelings over the facts. Which means a hit-and-run accident one rainy night seems significant in his pursuit of the killer for reasons only some internal vibe can explain.

That sixth sense doesn't allow him to protect those closest to him, and perhaps he takes to drink partially to deaden this gift which has failed him in a crucial way. ("I cant live withouut a drink," he proclaims after his sister (Yoon Seung-ah) dies. His brother-in-law Seung-hyeon (Kim Sung Kyun) would like to see less of him. His boss Chief Choi (Gi Ju-bong) would like him to get back on track. The serial killer Kang-cheon (Park Sung-woong) smiles whenever anyone's having a hard day and is very good at keeping secrets. But why do movie cops think that punching leads to truth-telling?

Pavane: Resistance Is Futile

Lee Jong-pil's romance Pavance is a movie that sneaks up on you. Two department store laborers -- the gregarious Park Yo-han (Byun Yo-han) and the withdrawn Lee Gyeong-rok (Moon Sang-min) become best buddies for no other reason than they both wore David Bowie T-shirts one day. Weirder set-ups have led to lifelong friends, ultimately. Yo-han chases after life while running away from his past. Gyeong-rok finds an unlikely soulmate in Kim Mi-jeong (Ko Ah-sung), an awkward, grubby delivery person who is even more of a social outcast than him.

Eventually the three form an improbable trio with incongruent dreams: Yo-han wants to be a rock star who also happens to be a best-selling novelist; Gyeong-rok wants to be modern dancer and practices in an underground parking lot; and Mi-jeong wants to be a cool grandma who lets the kids get away with murder. (Not literally) Admittedly, Lee's film resorts to some extreme plot points (a coma, a celebrity father who disowns his kid, a vehicular accident, a snow storm) but everytime the story went off the rails, Lee managed to find a way to get it back on track fairly quickly. Pavance is one of those movies for which you feel compelled to make allowances because when it's good, it's very much so. The emotional truths keep coming up to the surface. The sentimental tears keep flowing from my eyes.

Wild Sing: K-Pop Reunion

The K-pop trio Triangle had a brief moment in the limelight. Breakdancing Hyeon U (Gang Dong-won), sugar-sweet singer Do-mi (Park Ji-hyun), and bad rapper Sang Gu (Um Tae-goo) all found their shared career in shambles once their hit song was revealed to be a Bulgarian tune plagiarized by their manager. Flash forward years later to a benefit concert which seeks to capitalize on the group's former popularity by reuniting them once again: Can these three embittered bandmates rediscover the crowd-pleasing chemistry they had once upon a time? And how will their former rival, crooner Seong Gon (Oh Jung-se), factor into the story, since he crashed and burned even worse than they did after a fateful night of drug experimentation? And what about up-and-comer Na Tae-poong (Kang Ki-young) who's carrying a serious grudge?

The material's hardly the most inventive yet director Son Jae-gon does infuse the proceedings with a spirit of fun so that I, for one, was surprised how caught up I got in Triangle's collective search for pop star redemption. So much so that I was willing to forgive tired tropes like the nagging, rich mother-in-law (Son Jae-gon) and the clueless truckdriver (Park Sung-hyun) who was a former fan of "Trombone." Ultimately, Wild Sing is sweet-natured with fairly catchy music. It may not rise to the level of personal favorite KPops! or global smash Kpop Demon Hunters but a three out of five isn't bad in the end. You could do worse.

Cobweb: Actors Acting, Actors Being

Movies about moviemaking can be so much fun. And there are so many ways to do it. Hong Sang-soo's The Novelist's Film takes a naturalistically deadpan approach from conception to creation. The documentary Yellow Door excavates the roots that led to Bong Joon-ho's career. The farcical Luck-Key makes the most of its amnesiac gangster-turned-actor (Yoo Hae-jin). Kim Jee-woon's Cobweb is the most direct of them all: A ridiculous comedy in which a pill-popping hack director (Song Kang-ho) decides he needs to reshoot some scenes in order to turn his latest dreck into a masterpiece.

The flick within a flick is completely preposterous: pure soap, as one older leading lady (a terrific Park Jung-soo) points out. But the over-the-top storyline — abounding with murders, doublecrosses, and histrionics — are perfect excuses for this talented cast to constantly switch from silly sitcom mode to affected melodrama whenever the story shifts from off camera to on. Everyone's having fun throughout: the cheating husband (Oh Jung-se), the pregnant ingenue (Jung Krystal), the dead studio owner's daughter (Jeon Yeo-been), the exasperated studio chairwoman (Jang Young-nam)... The joy these performers are taking in the shenanigans is contagious. You couldn't get sick of this buffonery if you tried.