New Year Blues: More Than a Couple of Romances

At first, New Year Blues doesn't look like your typical, traditional, ensemble romcom: When paralympian snowboarder Kim Rae-wan (Teo Yoo) proposes to horticulturist Han Oh-wol (Choi Sooyoung), he pulls out one of the ugliest engagement rings I've seen in quite some time. And yet... maybe that's intentional. After all, flashy diamonds aren't what love's all about. Travel agent Oh Yong-chan (Lee Dong-hwi) and his Chinese bride-to-be will learn that when his company's embezzled by a new employee. Divorced Detective Kang Ji-ho (Kim Kang-woo) will learn that while enforcing a restraining order for physical therapist Lee Hyo Young (Yoo In-na).

In true fictional feature fashion, all the stories are interconnected: Lee is Kim's rehab go-to and Kang has been assigned to Oh's criminal case. Even the one outlying story involving the recently dumped Min Jin-ah (Lee Yeon-hee) who flees the country for a last-minute holiday trip to Buenos Aires has loose ties to the other stories. Are their narrative narrative improbabilities? Of course. Would a Korean tourist in Argentina really hop on a Vespa driven by an old man who just happens to play the washboard in a cafe band? I doubt it. But I still shed real tears as everything started to come together in the end. There's something lovely about a man getting a pep talk on relationships from his exwife and a bad google translation bringing two future sister-in-laws together. (Nice work, Yeom Hye-ran.) And it's hard not to embrace the feel-good sentiment underlying director Hong Ji-Yeong's final images. "Next year let's be happier than this year."

Will You Be There?: With a Bloody Nose

I assume the bloody noses suffered by middle-aged Soo-hyeon (Kim Yoon-seok) are caused by his lung cancer and then exacerbated by those mysteriously acquired time-traveling pills. I'd also guess that his oncologist wouldn't recommend jumping across decades while undergoing any form of medical treatment. But his 20-something counterpart a.k.a. young Dr. Soo-hyeon (Byun Yo-han) doesn't particularly care about what side effects are going to be triggered for his older self by shuttling back and forth through the years. He wants to save his dolphin-training girlfriend (Chae Seo-jin), let his future self be damned. If that might mean sacrificing the daughter (Park Hye-soo) he hasn't met yet, so be it. Most people's allegiances are going to be with the living persons they know...

And life gets complicated when you break a cardinal rule of science fiction. Like "Never talk to the past version of yourself." That's a basic no-no. You know, the butterfly effect and all that! So what will be the ultimate sacrifice for love in Hong Ji-Yeong's Will You Be There? And might it involve a puppy named "Potato"? Or the ever-trustworthy Uncle Tae-ho (Kim Sang-ho)? Or his younger but just-as-reliable iteration (Ahn Se-ha)? I'm also curious whether the guy with the magic pills couldn't have provided a placebo so that all those involved only thought that everything had turned out for the better. After all, as that old guy put it: "Life is what happens when you can't sleep."