The Match: The King Mustn't Die

You may think you've seen this set-up before, although the framing activity undoubtedly differed. In this case, it's the boardgame Go. Newly crowned world champion Cho Hun-hyun (Lee Byung-hun) brings child prodigy Lee Chang-ho (Kim Kang-hoon) into his home where he undergoes a belittling training regimen and becomes a part of the family -- even referring to Cho's wife (Moon Jeong-Hee) as "Auntie." The grown-up Lee (Yoo Ah-in) becomes the rival of Cho, eventually beating him repeatedly. But it's here where writer-director Kim Hyeong-ju's double-biopic The Match distinguishes itself from the pack.

For whereas the above narrative arc would usually complete such a movie, this specific storyline is finished around the midway point of the movie. So what happens next? Cho has to refind his sense of purpose and emerge as a challenger for the man he schooled to be his primary competitor. I can't help but think this movie somehow reflects an older generation's unwillingness to cede ground to the younger. Or is that we simply want to stay in the game even if we're not getting all the trophies? Whatever. The Match is a compelling sports movie in which the playing field is the size of a chessboard.

Lucid Dream: It's All in Your Head

How much you like or loathe a scifi movie can be dependent on its central premise. You can live without good acting, good directing, and good dialogue, and not mind some sub-par special effects if the flick has got a really cool concept in play. The idea doesn't have to be completely sound but it does need to be interesting. In Kim Joon-Sung's Lucid Dream, the radical notion is that, through induced dreaming, you can step into your memories and look around and gather details you've previously overlooked. You have the option of walking around too but once you start to change location, you also impact the integrity of the memory. It's like we all have photographic memory and if we could just study said photos, we'd be able to parse every detail. That's probably not quite enough for a scifi movie. Well, Lucid Dream does indeed go further.

You can also enter other people's dreams, once you've identified the dreamer's frequency on your fancy computer. Once inside someone's head, you can ask questions that maybe you can't in real life because they're in a coma or something like that. But if the person in the coma dies then you'll be trapped in that dream forever. (Not sure why you don't just die or end up in a coma with no dream afterwards but I have to trust the experts in the movie here.)

And so, we have a reporter (Go Soo) who is also a single father with a young son (Kim Kang-hoon) who was kidnapped at the amusement park for reasons unknown. Distraught and desperate, dad enlists the help of a loner-doctor (Kang Hye-jeong) specializing in lucid-dreaming. Dad also hires a guerilla dream-infiltrator (Park Yoo-chun) because he needs to get some answers fast before his little boy is... harvested for organs? shipped out to an orphanage as revenge? dead? The only difference between reality and dreams is that the second hand on your watch doesn't move in the latter realm. Is that true? Check your watch next time you're asleep. If you're strictly digital, you're probably screwed.