Twilight Gangsters: Old Girls Just Want to Have Funds

Getting old can suck. Partly because, to much of society, once you reach a certain age, you become quaintly irrelevant. Additionally, if you ever fall into any kind of financial conflict with a major corporation — like a bank, for instance — they can take you to court and just wait it out. What's a girl to do? Well, the three grandmothers in Kang Hyo-jin's Twilight Gangsters go rogue. After years of shoplifting then hawking the goods on the street to raise a little extra cash for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Hawaii, they turn to robbing banks to get the airfare. Time is short. Waikiki, here they come!

Or so they hope. There's a lot to learn for these three lifelong friends, not the least of which is how do you hold up a bank, anyway? Sage old ladies that they are, they pressure the bank robber (Lim Chang-jung) who's partly responsible for their financial woes to act as their mentor/coach/advisor. Roles are assigned. Jeong-ja (Na Mun-hee) will be the diversion. Shin-ja (Kim Hyeo-ok) will carry the gun. Yeong-heui (Kim Su-mi) will be the "boss" shouting out demands. Their first hold-up lands them something like $80. The second hold-up covers the airfare costs to Honolulu but will they be able to get to the airport in time. (Ten to one they're flying coach.)

Nothing turns out as planned exactly but on their side is a homeless woman (Byeon Shin-ho) they once gifted shampoo and a geriatric flirt who likes to wear white suits. On the other side, unfortunately, is the entire police force of Seoul. Even with the addition of some sympathetic hostages and a senior center that won't be disrespected, the odds are not in these ladies' favor. How do you flee from an entire police force? Three on a motorcycle, of course. But how do you get in the air? Who'll fly the plane? Can you pare down to carry-on? And what about that corrupt cop whose gun you've inadvertantly borrowed? Those are much tougher questions. Sometimes the best you can hope for is someone to offer you tofu when you get out of jail.

Traffickers: Ship of Fools

A friend of mine wanted me to give him an introduction to Korean movies and rather than showing him one of the great ones — like Oldboy, The Host or Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring — I decided to screen a movie that I'd watched earlier this week: Kim Hong-seon's Traffickers, a pulpy noir about low-level smugglers who switch from dealing in black market organ donations to illegal drugs then back again. To me, Traffickers, more than the three earlier films cited, reflects what's kept me so engrossed in Korean cinema for a decade. What's good is very good.

Yet, on second viewing, I realized that much of what I liked about Traffickers may be kind of insider-y: the casting of Lim Chang-jung, an actor best known for comedies, as a gang leader, the cultural commentary about China, the scarcity of gunfire... Even the way Choi Daniel plays his role as a nerdy insurance agent like a pretty boy K-pop star looking to break into film. Which isn't to say Traffickers was totally lost on my friend here. He dug the Keyzer Sose plot twist, the DePalma-esque filming of violence, the ludicrous conceit of a cruise line that harvests its poor clientele for kidneys and livers, the doomed chorus of losers unlucky in love and money, the seediness, the perversion. I don't know that I made a final convert at my home theater but he did say afterwards that he'd like me to show him a Korean rom-com next time so I probably will need to pull out the big guns: Attack the Gas Station 2, Jeon Woochi: The Taoist Wizard, Le Grand Chef.

Come to think of it, I doubt that I'd be a Korean movie addict if all I'd seen were enjoyable but less-than-mind-blowing thrillers like Traffickers, Confession of Murder and No Fears for the Dead. These movies have sustained me in between masterpieces like Peppermint Candy and The King and the Clown. As sustenance, they're delicious. As I said to my friend beforehand, this is a B-movie that makes you realize just how good B really is in Korean cinema. B means "better than most" not "below A." So what if it doesn't mean "brilliant."

To Catch a Virgin Ghost: Diamonds Are a Ghost's Best Friend

I've seen great horror movies that aren't necessarily scary (Thirst, The Soul Guardians, Terror Taxi). I've seen plenty of comedies I enjoyed that didn't necessarily have me laughing out loud and were probably more strange than funny (The Story of Mr. Sorry, The Good, the Bad, the Weird, Couples). I've even seen crime pics with overcomplicated plots that I forgave in the end. (Girl Scout, Tazza: High Rollers). And then there's To Catch a Virgin Ghost, Shin Jeong-won's triple-genre-hybrid that failed to provide the minimal atmospherics of middling horror, the occasional chuckle of mediocre comedy or the temporary tension of an uneven thriller. Talk about a dud in triplicate. No screams, no laughs, no gasps. You almost wish the creators had thrown in sports, biopic, musical, mockumentary, scifi and western, just to see them fail at those genres too.

I'm not sure what the primary genre was supposed to be either. Is the important part of the story have to do with the stolen diamonds that are swallowed by two of the hoodlums or the romance that unexpectedly blooms between one gang-leader (Lim Chang-jung) and a lovely, insecure young spirit (Shin Yi) whose beauty is only marred by her creepy white eyes. The latter tale in particular has a lot of novel possibilities in terms of where it could go but To Catch a Virgin Ghost is written by screenwriters with Attention Deficit Disorder. They never stick to any storyline for long, meaning that chase scene are interrupted, conflicts never build and the final resolution has more loose ends that a fringe tablecloth.

The inability to settle on a plot, a conflict or a genre has ironically extended to the title as well. In America, the movie has been released under the titles Sisily 2km and To Kill a Virgin Ghost as well. Might I suggest an alternative? To Romance a Virgin Ghost When You're Smuggling Diamonds Near an Orphanage Where Everyone's Been Murdered. Or simply Dead Girl, Kooky Crimes. It took me a full week to watch this movie in its entirety because I would grow so impatient at each viewing. Maybe someone can make a better version of it by turning it into a seven-second montage for Vine. I am currently available to pen a Twitter script of 140 characters or less, hashtags included. All I require for payment is the return of the 109 minutes spent watching this movie.

Sex Is Zero 2: Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Insane Asylums

Men are losers. Women are nut jobs. At least, that's the POV of Sex Is Zero 2, the intermittently amusing sequel to the very funny teen romp-com Sex Is Zero. Aside from Denis Kang, a UFC athlete who has a cameo as the mixed martial artist who pummels Choi Seong-gook, the film's leading dork, these guys are universal dimwits. Some may be sexy (Bae Geon-woo); some may never get sex (Lim Chang Jung); and some may forgo sex for sticking lollipops up their friends butts (Park Yeong-su) but all these guys seem pretty clueless whether the topic is books or babes. That any of them could get into college seems dubious; that the dumbest one could graduate from law school is even further from the realm of possibility.

And it's not like the women are any smarter. It's just that you'd have a hard time evaluating any of these ladies in the brains department because they're generally too deranged. In truth, that's where most of the comedy comes into play. As coaches of the girls' swim team at this college for the intellectually challenged, Yoo Chae-young and her sidekick Shin-ee are psycho-bitches of slapstick. Masters of eye-popping and teeth-gnashing, these two are the closest to The Three Stooges that I've ever seen in Korean movies. As to the third stooge, you'd have to choose between Song Ji-hyo, who plays a somewhat milquetoast girlfriend who spent some time at the funny farm, or Lee Hwa-seon who plays the short-haired vamp who likes to toss her hair in slow motion. Yoo is probably Moe given her propensity for violence and Shin-ee's probably Larry since she's so quintessentially a second banana. Which leaves you with Curly or even a Shemp but frankly neither Song nor Lee is that funny or extreme. Maybe one could qualify as a Curly Joe. He's not the most glamorous Stooge but he's a Stooge nevertheless.

Let the merciless hair-pulling, the Foley-scored face-slapping and hilariously exaggerated shrieks of pain begin!

Shotgun Love: Arranged Marriages and Deranged Pregnancies

Here's what I have to say in favor of Shotgun Love. It hits most of the right notes for a well-made melodrama. Here's why that doesn't matter. This isn't a melodrama. It's a romantic comedy. Here's what I like about actor Lim Chang-jung. He isn't afraid of portraying the unlikable aspects of his character, an emotionally underdeveloped infomercial actor who falls head-over-heels for his cold-blooded co-star. Here's what I don't like about him. Just about everything else. Here's what I appreciate about Kim Gyu-ri, the actress who plays the pregnant lingerie model that serves as Lim's love interest. Hmm. Let me get back to you on that one. While I certainly wouldn't go so far as to call Shotgun Love unwatchable, I would say that it's constructed like a comedy without ever managing to become one.

With a subplot involving a gay Elvis impersonator (Park Min-hwan) and a stocky transvestite (Kim Jin-soo) dressed up like Marilyn Monroe, this movie certainly isn't asking anyone to take it overly seriously. Yet while there's outlandish behavior and preposterous role reversals ad infinitum, writer-director Jung Rain approaches his material as if it were a soap opera with a couple of kooks thrown in. Kim Su-mi as a braying mother makes picking hair off the floor with packing tape funny while Lee Ah-rin, as Kim's roommate, constantly looks as though she's about to say something amusing but never does. Ahn Seok-hwan hams it up as the one-eyed food tent-owner but he too never gets a truly good one-liner or a scene that builds up to hilarious slapstick. Which leaves me with a big question mark as to why Jung decided to shape his material as a comedy in the first place. Here's my guess. Sometimes you come up with a funny idea. Then you come up with a number of supporting ideas that are kind of funny. Then when you try to string them together, you get all serious because you're trying to make it work. You lose your sense of humor and that seriousness never leaves you when you're casting the roles and directing the movie. So what started off as a funny bit is now a workmanlike product. In Shotgun Love, the serious idea is this: Shallow people can only discover deeper feelings through personal tragedies. Here's what I think about that. Could someone please make it funny?

Sex Is Zero: The Fifth Power of Adolescent Foolishness

Sex Is Zero is a conditional comedy which means you'll have to accept these five implausible provisos up front. 1. That there's nothing weird about a college in which no one ever goes to class. 2. That you're comfortable with that same college being attended by a student body of undergraduates older than 25 and obsessed with aerobics. 3. That you're okay with the main character Eun-shik (Lim Chang-jung) having his testes and penis removed as a result of two pranks. 4. That a person, many people, could fall four stories without any serious damage. 5. That a man could swallow a mouse whole. If you can accept these five things, then Yun Je-gyun's hyper-silly hormonal romp will amuse you. I myself laughed out loud after one young woman vomited profusely then French kissed her boyfriend as well as when another young woman screamed in horror as her gay boyfriend dipped into what he thought was the logical hole. Gross. Gratuitous. Grody. Yes. Sex Is Zero is puerile. Yet the pitiable subplot about a tragic abortion, while serious in intent, will simply leave you screaming: "More breasts! More masturbation! More slapstick martial arts hijinks, please!"