Holy Night: Demon Hunters: Aerobic Exorcise

"My honey loves his exorcisms," my bofriend says to me. And he's right. I'm an easy one to please when it comes to movies about spirit possession. Which means I'm definitely the target audience for Holy Night: Demon Hunters, a film in which Ma Dong-seok (b.k.a. Don Lee in Hollywood) clobbers Satan's minions with well-aimed punches and his sidekick videographer played earnestly by Lee Da-witt faithfully records the fisticuffs for posterity. The true hero of Lim Dae-hee's directorial debut, however, is the silver-streaked Sharon (Seohyun of KPop sensation Girls Generation) who can instinctively smell out evil and has mastered the tried-and-true rituals for getting those nasty devils to leave their human hosts, without ever damaging her manicure.

Per usual, holy water stings, voice registers drop, youthful faces decompose, and rooms turn ice-cold as Sharon frantically works to get the parasitic spirit to confess its name in order to banish the ghoul back to hell. Also per usual, a loved one -- in this case, the devoted sister (Gyeong Su Jin) of the victim (Jung Ji-so) -- almost foils all these efforts as she battles her own personal biases as a neuroscientist and her naivete as a bewildered sibling. Even the subpar special F/X feel on brand, although simply turning the camera upsidedown is more silly than scary. As a fan of the ridiculous, I have no notes to give. And my boyfriend watched the whole thing with me, suggesting some simple pleasures have a diabolically broad appeal.

The Terror Live: Glib Newscaster Hears the End

Movies about radio show hosts always feel like they could be repackaged as one-man-shows. And Kim Byung-woo's The Terror Live is no exception. A thriller about a demoted anchorman who hopes his comeback has arrived in the form of a terrorist who's blowing up bridges, this modest movie takes place entirely in a recording studio with characters entering the sound booth and broadcast in via video while our antihero, Yoon Yeong-hwa (Ha Jung-woo) "negotiates" with the crazed caller (Lee Da-wit) who somehow has managed to plant explosives in a nearby bridge and in a nearer-by earphone. Hang up on this guy at your own risk!

Yoon isn't that sympathetic. He's betrayed his wife, a fellow reporter (Kim So-jin) whose life is endangered; took bribes from his slimy boss Cha Dae-eun (Lee Kyoung-young), and tossed his new crew aside without blinking an eye when opportunity arose for a better job. I wouldn't go so far as to say that he should be executed for such actions but most of the film you're wondering how he's possiblly going to redeem himself. The answer may leave you shocked... but not as much as the Police commissioner (Kim Hong-pa) whose guest appearance on the impromptu interview show takes a bloody turn.

Split: Bowling for Debtors

Everyone owes something — usually lots and lots of money — in Choi Kook-hee's diverting bowling dramedy Split. The one-time Wednesday Nights league champeen (Yoo Ji-tae) is constantly racking up debts with his competitively disastrous gutter balls. The alley inheritress a.k.a. Split's spitfire love interest (Son Ye-jin) is saddled with extortion-level interest payments caused by her regretful use of the family business as collateral. Even the movie's quirky, somewhere-on-the-spectrum, potentially future lord-of-the-lanes (an excellent Lee Da-Wit) eventually owes his manipulative patron-funders around $20 for a birthday bus trip to visit the current home of his estranged mother and the mausoleum housing his deceased grandmother (who was quite a bowler herself in the city back in the day).

But by the end, Split also owes us, the audience, a few things, too, like that big important game that could go either way and is finally tipped towards victory thanks to the the young bowler's prowess and unusual methods; a romance-solidifying kiss — doesn't have to be post-coital — between the leading man and his pimping promoter; a scene in which the managress sees how bad life would be working as a hostess at the local coffee bar; a pile of Christmas presents that allow one neglected adult to heal his wounds with some help from Santa; and a drunk scene in which the same young man engages in forbidden behavior. The omission of all these scenes is perplexing because the movie actually feels like its building towards them at different times. Which isn't to say this movie is striking out. More that, it's leaves behind too many lone pins that are the marks of a less-than-perfect score.

Bloody Innocent: Best Friends, Lovers No More; Best Friends, But Not Like Before

A sweet little girl named Myung-hee (Kang Cho-hee) is raped and murdered then left in a ditch alongside a country road one awful, rainy night. Whodunit? The two leading suspects are Dong-sik (Jeong Se-in), the young ruffian who had a crush on Myung-hee, and Seung-Ho (Lee Da-wit), his best friend, who also had a thing for the girl. We know it's one of the two because the only people who'd do this would have to be adolescent boys who harbored warm feelings for her. So goes the logic of Kim Dae-hyun's nonsensical thriller Bloody Innocent. Which makes the prosecution and life-imprisonment of Dong-sik's mentally ill brother Kyung-sik even more exasperating. Clearly the local police have a faulty logic of their own, one which equates underdeveloped intelligence with amorality.

Flash forward a few times and the finger-pointing continues: Dong-sik (now played by Sin Seong-rok) must've done it because he's a member of the lower classes and it's just the kind of heinous act a poor kid would do! He's trash from start to finish! No. Actually Seung-ho (now played by Kim Da-hyeon) is the rapist-killer. Rich people are plain evil. Their good deeds and success inevitably cover up a past spotted by inhumane jealousies! Money is the ultimate corruptor! More deaths pile up: the young prostitute who happens to be Dong-ski's sister; the boyfriend-john who beats the hell out of her for no reason at all; a cyanide-ingesting Kyung-sik who mysteriously poisons himself with tainted milk despite being lactose-intolerant. There's also a group of feminist kidnappers and an ominous woman who sells umbrella, who make quick appearances and just as fast, disappear.

When the one who actually did it confesses his guilt to the one who did not, the latter man, like us, is somewhat baffled as to WHY. What was the point? Is it really so bad not to win the girl when you're a kid? And do you spend the rest of your life holding a grudge for the one that got away? On the flip side, are you sad when someone who's been murdering people you care about gets murdered himself? I, for one, was relieved when the anonymous cop's gun was shot and took out the knife-wielding nut. I'd like to think the "bloody innocent" protagonist breathed a sigh of relief, too.

The Front Line: Breaking All the Rules for a Pyrrhic Victory

Everything's fair in love and war. That's certainly an extremist point of view. It's also an idea which the war pic Jang Hun's The Front Line has made its underlying principal minus the love part. Within the context of war, no action is considered unacceptable -- not shooting a squadron of your own men, not using an injured, baby-faced soldier (Lee Da-wit) as bait to catch a sniper, not transporting messages from the enemies to their friends just for some chocolate or a bottle of wine, not letting an assassin (Kim Ok-bin) go because she's a woman. Whenever this status quo is challenged, a shouting match may ensue between the crafty officer (Go Soo) with the unappetizing tactic and the upstanding, undercover agent (Shin Ha-kyun) who everyone knows is undercover. No matter how heinous the suggestion put forth by the diabolical soldier, he is the one who is going to get the support of the troops. Morality, evidently, is antithetical to the battleground.

It doesn't end there either. When the fat captain (Jo Jin-woong) who's been giving lousy orders for the entire film finally goes too far endangering the men you can shoot him and take over. When the command from above is to defend at all costs, you can flee. When your best friend is revealed to be a complete traitor, you can forgive pretty quickly. You can even shout hurtful things to little girls with missing limbs without losing the respect of most of your fellow comrades. It's stress-related behavior, I guess.

I'm not sure why Korea chose to put this movie in contention for an Academy Award -- it didn't make the short list. The story isn't just anti-war, it's anti-person. And as war movies go, the battles recall video games in that you can see the objective (climb the hill) or go into a monochromatic environment (explore the tunnel) as the casualties roll by and the landmines explode like so many special effects graphics intended to enliven your faux world as the story/adventure pushes forward. The snag is that there isn't a character here who I'd want to play. I want my token back.

Poetry: Not Enough Rhyme or Reason in the Old Lady's Lousy Life

Oh, Mija (Yun Jeong-hie), you pitiable, misdirected old lady. Did you really think that enrolling in a creative writing class at the community center would reconnect you to the beautiful things in life? Your troubles are far too deep for that. Your grandson (Lee Da-wit), after all, is one of six admitted rapists who've driven a fellow high school student to jump off a bridge to her untimely death. You claim to be close to your own daughter (his mother) but from the looks of it, you'd prefer whoring yourself out to a disabled old man as a way to raise funds to bribe the suicide's mother than to ask your dear child for a measly dime. Oh Mija, did you actually think that learning to write a sonnet would cheer you up? Did you really believe that getting to know the wisecracking cop while hanging out at poetry night at the local cafe would lead to something better? What were you thinking? Oh, wait. That's right. You can't remember what you were thinking because you've got Alzheimer's. So I'll ask the film's director Lee Chang-dong: What were you thinking? Sure, Poetry has quietly profound moments but did they require two and a half hours to serve? And is the film's bleached out palette a commentary on the washed out lives of your characters or an unneeded snub to the art of cinematography? I love Oasis and I like Secret Sunshine and The Green Fish quite a bit but this Poetry just wore me out.