Citizen of a Kind: Incoming Call, Outgoing Swindler

Everyone knows you don't give out your social security number or your bank account digits or your password codes over the phone. But old people forget. As do people in dire circumstances — like those with a burned-down house and no substantial savings. Citizen of a Kind's Deuk-hee (Ra Mi-ran) falls into this latter category. A homeless mother with two children and no money for daycare or rent, she's scammed on her cell during a shift at the laundromat where she works (and sleeps illegally at night). When she temporarily loses custody of her kids, she's propelled into action to track down the top of the Ponzi scheme: a menacing sadist (Lee Mu-saeng).

How she manages to get to the bucket-hatted mastervillain involves a number of impulsive actions that had my boyfriend going: Why did they do this? Why don't they do that? To which I could only reply, "It's a movie." I'd further add, it's a pretty entertaining one. Under Park Young-ju's direction, Citizen of a Kind propels its heroine through hard-to-resist comedy and hard-to-watch violence without ever feeling forced or flimsy. Basically a chick flick in which one unlucky laundress gets to solve a crime with three gal pals (the uptight Yeom Hye-ran, goofy Jang Yoon-ju, new kid-on-the-block Ahn Eun-jin), this is one feel-good movie with a get-real message: When the real-world woman upon whom this movie is based caught the head swindler, she got neither the promised reward nor an out-of-court settlement. In life, doing the right thing sometimes has to be payoff enough.

The Last Princess: Elevating Royalty

There's a pretty powerful disclaimer at the start of The Last Princess: "Incidents and persons portrayed do not reflect historical facts." So then what are we to believe about Yi Deokhye, the subject of this biopic? Was she a royal rebel who bravely snubbed the Japanese emperor's dress code and rallied fingerless Korean workers to rise up against their Japanese oppressors? Did she try to escape her gilded cage and get back to Korea as an act of solidarity with her countrymen? Was she the first to discover the assassination of her father, the king? In truth, much of Hur Jin-ho's costume dram is conjectural; it's a pro-dynastic movie posing as a anticolonial diatribe. Considering the history we do know regarding Japan's occupation, I'm okay with that.

And Son Ye-jin makes a convincing princess, struggling to balance her patriotism with her desire to survive. She's got a few people in her corner: an adoring servant (Ra Mi-ran), a couple of ineffectual brothers, and a soldier-spy (Park Hae-il) who doubles as her devoted, sexless romantic interest. Unfortunately, she's also got an evil Korean Benedict Arnold (Yun Je-mun) whose sole mission in life is to be her foil, derailing every attempt she makes to escape, to evade, to exalt. As fantasies go, if The Last Princess has any faults, it's that this heinous henchman never gets his just desserts. Director Hur may see this dark detail as a bitter dose of reality. Since so much is already made up, I'm not gonna quibble here. Finally, if Hollywood were more open to performances in foreign tongues, Son's lead turn would definitely have qualified as Oscar-bait — as she ages from 20s to 70s while screaming, crying, looking fashionable, looking nervous, and ultimately going insane. I was crazy about her in the best way possible.

Hope: Incomplete Recovery

In Korean, the word "sowon" can be translated as either "hope" or "wish." So-won also happens to be a girl's name. That IMDb has decided to translate this bleak pic's title as Wish (not a girl's name) instead of Hope as Netflix wisely does suggests the Artificial Intelligence at the International Movie Database has yet to see the movie. Because there's nothing wishful about Hope, Lee Joon-ik's harrowing film about the rape of an eight-year-old girl and its devastating aftermath. To be fair, there's not much hopeful either but there are at least glimmers of the latter, enough to restore a little faith in humanity, although God knows we're an awful species. Our failures are great. Bring on the flood.

It's also worth mentioning that Hope is not the result of some twisted writer thinking, "What's the most horrific scenario I can concoct?" Sad to report: Kim Ji-hye based his screenplay on real events, a turn-your-stomach nightmare in which a 57-year-old man — who had a history of violence — not only sexually violated and nearly killed a young girl but then got off with a 12-year sentence because he was drunk at the time. Clearly, the American court systems aren't the only ones that make unjust rulings that fill you with rage.

So what's the point of a film like Hope? Its central story is vile, justice is not attained, the acting is — to be frank — hardly the stuff of legend. Well, for me, it was a timely reminder of the importance of making the effort, even when the options are limited. There's something incredibly moving about watching a mom (Uhm Ji-won) and dad (Sul Kyoung-gu) dress up as cartoon characters to cheer up their damaged child (Lee Re), of a co-worker (Kim Sang-ho) who lends money with no expectation of a return, of a friend (Ra Mi-ran) who brings food and tears of commiseration, of a schoolmate (Kim Do-yeob) who leaves a thoughtful note taped to your front door. There is never nothing to be done.