Tune in for Love: Not a Static Romance

Now that my boyfriend has gone abroad for three months, I've become much more open to seeing the long-resisted romantic movies that normally make me cringe. Oh yes. Since my own lovelife is confined to Kakao video chats, I'm desperately seeking out sappy Korean movies, feel-good fables of the heart, each sneakily awaiting to make me cry. This week's treacly panacea is Tune in for Love, Jung Ji-woo's '90s-era tale of a high school girl (Kim Go-eun) who meets the dream-thug (Jung Hae-in) at the bakery run by her surrogate sister (Kim Guk-hee).

She's an orphaned aspiring writer; he's a high school dropout fresh out of juvie. Will they find happiness together? If so, she'll have to find a better job than her factory gig and overlook the overtures of a smarmy boss (Park Hae-joon). And he'll have to stay out of prison, land a radio gig, and deduce the password code she gave him so they could stay in touch during his military service. In the world of movie romance, these are not insurmountable obstacles. Wedding bells aren't a shoe-in, however. Hence the box of tissues I'd advise you to bring.

The 8th Night: The Week Before

You'd think a movie involving a battle between good and evil would have a series of skirmishes before the big confrontation but Kim Tae-hyung's The 8th Night isn't following that convention. Instead, we're told about a monster (blinded by Buddha, no less) who's hoping he can reunite his black eye and his red eye and thereafter wreak havoc on the universe. The planets have aligned apparently. The keeper of the black eye (I think) knows that some crazy scientist has unearthed the red one and is conducting seriously amoral experiments to reactivate it. Once that's done, that one eye has eight nights to jump from body to body (or socket to socket, to be more accurate) until it reaches its partner-in-crime to inhabit the body of a virgin (Kim Yoo-jeong). What other body would house it?

Not much resistance goes on among the various victims in this journey. Generally speaking, the possessed keeper-of-the-eye cracks their neck, breaks out in a smile, sniffs its prey, then transfers into the new host. Creepy as hell but not much conflict. In this horror flick, the tension comes from knowing that with each "jump," the world is that much closer to Armageddon. I wasn't overly concerned with why the bitter monk (Lee Sung-min) with the axe wasn't hacking at an earlier iteration of the bodysnatching demon anymore than I was with the skeptical police officer (Park Hae-joon) who pooh-poohed the occult theories of his staff. The foolish naivete of the accolyte (Nam Da-reum) definitely made me wonder if this movie would have a happy or sad ending but I was fine with whichever way it went. In short, no spoilers here.

Heart Blackened: One Rich Thriller

My problem with prenuptial agreements is that the person marrying into money is as a rule a less corrupt person than the person who's already loaded. Sure, that fiance or fiancee may be a gold-digger but those who occupy the top 1% of the economic food-chain are infinitely more likely to be delusional narcissists who believe their wealth accords them a certain prerogative when it comes to... oh, pretty much anything. Absolute power may corrupt absolutely but plenty of money corrupts plenty too. You can see just how much in Jung Ji-woo's Heart Blackened, a well-executed thriller/courtroom-drama in which a CEO (the ever-dependable Choi Min-sik) goes to extreme lengths to defend his amoral daughter (Lee Soo-kyung) in a murder case that's left him a widower again. Did his wife (Lee Ha-ni) cheat on him? Yes! Is he glad she's dead? No. Truly, the only thing that bothers him is when he can't get his way.

He's got plenty of foils: a fiery prosecutor (Park Hae-joon) who can't be bought, his wife's videographer lover (Ryu Jun-Yeol) who seemingly can't be bought, and a dogged defense attorney (Park Shin-hye) who can be bought but maybe not trusted. Well, the world is a buyer's market so this tough tycoon is going to use all of his resources to get what he wants — not once, but twice. He'll lose some things along the way — whatever happened to that diamond-encrusted watch? — but you're left with little doubt that if he himself lands in prison garb for any stretch of time, he'll be back in a bespoke three-piece suit off Savile Row before you can say "The justice system should treat all people equally" three times in a row. Naturally, the same can be said about his daughter, although her fashion choices would be more adventurous.

P.S. The original Korean-language title of Heart Blackened is Silence, so this particular bit of translation is strange to say the least.