Love & Leashes: Learning & Lusting

I've avoided Love & Leashes for a year because I assumed it wasa trashy Korean-style take on 50 Shades of Grey. But whereas the latter is a self-described erotic romance, the K-counterpoint is a rom-com that vacillates between after-school special and workplace satire. And so, the heroine (Seohyun) isn't merely an office worker being initiated into the fine art of BDSM by an junior exec (Lee Joon-Young), she's also a woman who should've had his job and is likely working out some inner frustrations via the cords and whips and leashes. So can a courtship be pure kink? And I'll be honest: There is something romantic in seeing a man who's that vulnerable and a woman who's in control. But as a YouTube tutorial pretty quickly points out: "It's hard to engage in S&M or Dom/Sub relationships within a romantic context since lovers are ideally equally partners." (Major paraphrase!) An online forum teaches her everything else she needs to know.

Once these two have signed a written (!) contract, the training begins — she's exploring dog play at semi-respectable hotel; pressing the stilettoes of her fancy red heels into his back; and dripping hot wax on his body while he's ballgagged. Will love emerge? Well, in real life, I've known two women who fell into long-term, currently ongoing relationships that started with role-playing so why the hell not. That Park Hyeon-jin's Love & Leashes also confronts the rampant sexism in office culture and the violent misogyny that undermines kink practices of veterans like the lead's best friend (Lee El) results in a surprising film that's shockingly good.

Mr. Housewife: Quiz King

Unlike Mrs. Doubtfire, Yu Seon-dong's sweet-natured Mr. Housewife knows that a man doesn't need to don a dress to understand the worth of taking care of a child, cooking meals, cleaning an apartment, et cetera. Jin-man (Han Suk-kyu), the man in the apron and at the stove, takes personal pride in caring for his wife Soo-hee (Shin Eun-Kyung) and daughter Da-na (Seo Shin-ae), even as he hides his role from his conservative father. Yet this hiding-in-plain-sight act is about to end when daycare daddy ends up in debt and see his one viable way out as a game show for stay-at-home moms — a program where his talent agent buddy (Kong Hyeong-jin) happens to have some connections. A master of trivia, Jin-man dolls up in drag to qualify as a contestant then rips off his wig after getting goosed in the elevator. Whether skirted or pantsed, he's going to meet with resistors and champions.

Mr. Housewife's wife, however, is on the less-than-thrilled side. She fears his newfound celebrity as a spokesperson from stay-at-home dads as a potential derailer for her new gig as a TV host, leading her to rent a hotel room to figure out ... HER NEEDS! Sympathetic, she's not. That coldness is why Mr. Doubtfire never emerges as an outright rom-com. By the time Jin-man re-proposes to Soo-yi on live television in the game show's finale, she's rebuffed him so often that we kind of wish that he'd find someone else. But perhaps Yu's film is ultimately about second chances. Early in the film, Jin-man gambled away a family fortune, without consulting his better half, so if she can let that go, then maybe we should cut her some slack as well.

Runaway From Home: Looking for My Wife

Sort by "view count" for "Korean movies with English subtitles" and the two most popular YouTube videos are Healing Mate ("starring the two beautiful ladies...") and a sketchy untitled movie with a thumbnail of an Asian woman discontentedly nursing a grown man who may or may not be Korean. The first has 16 million views; the second, 14 million. I couldn't bring myself to watch either. The third most popular video with 10 million views however is definitely legit. It's the Daniel Henney vehicle Seducing Mr. Perfect , a rom-com which I've already seen, albeit years ago. What doesn't show up on that first page of search results is Runaway From Home, an absolutely delightful buddy comedy that's racked up a respectable 1.4 million views on YouTube and a less respectable 5.5 score on IMDb. Credit its visibility issues to poor tags and sloppy mislabeling — Run Away — and its low rating to poor taste in general. (Those 32 IMDb voters are hereby scolded!)

Perhaps the IMDb users simply didn't watch the entire film. Written and directed by Lee Ha, Runaway From Home may seem slight at first: Two slackers — a radio personality and a wannabe movie director — end up on a road trip when the former discovers the wife he's about to dump has already dumped him and disappeared. But where did she go? (Hence the alt title: Looking for My Wife.) The flummoxed husband (Ji Jin-hee) enlists the help of his friend (Yang Ik-joon) as the two decide to find her by tracking down her most meaningful old acquaintances sourced through an old flip-phone previously owned by the now-missing wife (Kim Gyu-ri). This device facilitates their meeting a series of zany characters including a weepy psychic (Kim Yeo-jin), a severe Ponzi-schemer (Ok Go-woon), and a pickpocket brother-in-law (Lee Mun-shik). Each new encounter leads the two pals to learn a little more about themselves and deepen their shared commitment to each other. In true Korean movie fashion, the Hollywood ending never occurs. What does instead is incredibly moving and makes Runaway From Home a runaway favorite for me.

O Youth!: A Romcom for Athletic Women

I don't know if they have elevator pitches in the North Korean film industry but if they did, I imagine if there was some sleazy male producing making one for O Youth, it would go something like this:

"See, there's this dad with five daughters. He always wishes he'd been a professional athlete but didn't have the talent so his kids are living out his fantasy: One's a swimmer, one's a basketball player, one's a soccer player, and one's a weight lifter. That's only four? Oh, make the fifth one — I don't know — a rhythm gymnast. That's cool, right. But there's a problem in the family. No, the mom's not dead. She simply doesn't like girls to be athletic. So when their one son who's not an athlete — interesting, right? — falls in love with a woman, mom wants to make sure his prospective bride is super-femme. Like an embroiderer. You know, a fancy seamstress. Yeah, exactly. But what she doesn't know is that the needlepoint lady is actually a world-class tae kwon do champion. Exactly, we can talk about why it's such a cool sport and how she's doing it all for the generals. Or the great leaders. Whoever you want.

"How do they find out she's not a seamstress? Hmm. That's a very good question. Well, we could have some thugs attack the guy and have her defend him. That's kind of hot. True. Mom wouldn't be around. But she could attend a big tae kwon do match and see the girl in action. What do you mean, what is she doing there? Who doesn't want to see a tae kwon do match? It's like our football or our baseball. We're saving the best sport for her. And we can even have her look like she's going to lose at first and then kick some serious butt. So what do you think? Sure we can find a role for your girlfriend. There's five sisters after all. She's too old? Then we'll add a nosy neighbor. What comedy doesn't have nosy neighbor? So is it a deal? What do you mean you've got to think about it. It's flawless."

And in a way, he's kind of right.

Red Carpet: From XXX to XOXO

I put off watching Park Bum-Soo's impossibly delightful Red Carpet for weeks if not months because I figured it was a low-budget, mildly titillating, soft porn skin flick pretending to be legit. Sometimes, these type of movies can be fun diversions but you have to be in the right mood to watch them and keep the sound low so as not to disturb the neighbors. One day in March 2017, I was finally bored enough and let 'er roll. Well, Red Carpet was not what I expected. Not by a long shot. Far from being some pervy misogynist director's poorly acted, barely scripted excuse for some gratuitous nudity, Red Carpet is an incredibly wise romantic comedy that knows how hard it is to shrug off imposed shame and stay true to your heart, especially when that involves defying convention and the establishment.

Admittedly, there are plenty of gags about erections, sex, porn actors, and secret identities. But Red Carpet is actually a very sex-positive movie. There's nothing wrong with acting, writing or directing porn for the participants here. Any judgment suggesting as much comes from the buffoons outside the biz. Indeed there's a sweet camaraderie among the cinematic sex workers that manifests in unexpected ways, like when the performers and crew members put on corporate drag so that the lead stud can video chat with his wife from a makeshift conference room. As acts of deceptions go, this one is awfully cute.

Playing the role of the young porno director with non-porno dreams, Yoon Kye-sang is utterly lovable while Koh Joon-hee does a deft job at showing a former child actress's development from an insufferable attention-seeker to a young woman who knows success is irrelevant in a world where we deny ourselves the room to feel deeply. The entire supporting cast is spot-on, although Hwang Chan-sung was probably my favorite as the bumbling new crew member whose passion for Godard doesn't stop him from working on a very different kind of art film.

Queen of the Night: She's the Better Half

By the time you're 35, you know that any potential romantic partners are going to come with a luggage-rack's worth of emotional baggage so the question is simply: Are you willing to deal? When you're young, perhaps expectations of someone only bringing a psychic murse or a traumatic clutch to the romance are rational. But even then, should someone as sweet, cute, caring, resourceful, and loving as Hee-jo (Kim Min-jung) step into your life, do yourself a favor. Cut them major slack and make room for a whole travel cart of Samsonite. Catches like this won't come around again. So she's had her wild days clubbing. So she grew up in Southern California. So she knows how to throw a punch. Do you honestly think that none of those things might come in handy at some point in the future? Trust me when I say that no one, and I mean no one, is going to be able to win you that kimchi refrigerator at the reunion by executing a dance routine on the runway like she can.

Ah well. Boys will be boys. And the boy in this case, Young-soo (Cheon Jeong-myeong) insists on learning the hard way how valuable his soul mate is. Until then, he's going to get self-righteous when he learns she wasn't a virgin when they met, that she hung out with the tough crowd and that she even has a police record. He also forgets that he could barely make it through an online date before his soon-to-be-wife came along. Short memories cause long stretches of pain. As does a nerdy best friend like Jong-bae (Kim Gi-bang) who evinces a streak of misogyny likely caused by his undesirability to most women. Sometimes the satirical aspects of the Queen of the Night click (the scenes with the fertility doctor played by Kim Jung-tae, especially so). Sometimes, the comedy founders (the bits with the key repairman played by Park Jin-young). But the biggest flaw is actually a surprising one: Kim Min-jung is a lousy dancer. Note to writer-director Kim Je-yeong: Next time, you should hire a double.

Love So Divine: Catholic Taste in Women

When I was growing up, there really was an old shriveled-up married couple, across the street, who were a former nun and a former priest. If memory serves me right, good Catholics that they were, they had six children — four boys and two girls — and found temporary solace in the fact that their oldest son went on to become a priest. As fate would have it though, he too left the church eventually, perhaps because he was gay. He certainly seemed gay. I mention this because the infinitely less transgressive plot of the infinitely less prolific romance Love So Divine concerns a young novitiate (Kwon Sang-woo) who finds himself attracted to the ne'er-do-well niece (Ha Ji-won) of a church father (Kim In-mun) who's overseeing his final days before he's ordained.

What does he see in this young woman that leads him astray from the Lord? Nice legs. Nice ass. Looks good when she wears a veil like Mary. A taste in shoes that needs some guidance. Honestly, you'd think this young man had never seen a woman out of her habit before. Then again, what appeals to him about God? When urged by his short comic sidekick and fellow novice (Kim In-kwon) to describe God as the big man on campus to his charge as a way to increase the Lord's appeal and thereby lead her to a belated baptism, our hero presents a less-than-seductive picture. God ends up sounding like a boring fraternity brother who touts the Bible as cool.

Well, in writer-director Heo In-mu's alternate universe, a girl really can fall head over heels for a guy because he gives her a beaded necklace (a.k.a. a rosary) first and then a silver necklace with a mirrored pendant (for self-reflection and/or adoration) next. After an hour of prayer, she's going to melt when he whips out that matching set of hair-shirts the night of their honeymoon. Heaven knows, there'll be no devilish fun. These are the type of lovers who when they first profess their deepest feelings for each other hug instead of kiss. Soul mates are strictly platonic and would never kiss with the tongue.

Viva! Love: Harold and Maudlin

I did not need to see Oh Joum-Kyun's Viva! Love. Not this week. Not this year. This "feel-heavy" dramedy about a middle-aged woman (Kim Hae-suk) who finds new meaning — or is it old meaning? — in life after she gets accidentally impregnated by the drunk drycleaning boyfriend (Kim Young-min) of her career-chasing daughter (Kim Hye-na) is infused with a desperation that no amount of chocolate candy or honey-flavored beverages can remedy. No, this expectant mother is not joyous about life and love. Most of the film, she comes across as decidedly depressed, an unfulfilled hausfrau who busies herself by preparing snap-top containers of lunch or hanging up wet laundry to dry. Her rule-breaking romance kicks off in a distastefully gross manner: She carries her soon-to-be lover's passed out body home to the room he rents from her then plays with his vomit-covered lips with her finger. Their inevitable courtship is childlike at best: She's either coyly eating ice cream from a cone or taking care of him like a parent. As to those bicycle rides he offers, they should be an invitation back to lost youth but the way she accepts them is more indicative of a self-conscious grandparent worried about breaking her hip.

The problem here isn't that love and sex can't cross generations so much as this particular woman never stops playing mom while her young man just seems starved for attention. What she's looking to rediscover isn't romance so much as motherhood. Now she's got two additional children: her tenant and the baby on the way. That gag Oh introduces suggesting the sound of her orgasming sends her economically-challenged neighbors into sexual overdrive is either an AARP fairy tale or an Ensure-induced food coma that wasn't clearly framed in the edit. What does feel real is the acceptance of this third wheel by the once-cheating husband (Gi Ju-bong). When you get older, convention seems like a crock. The man of the house hasn't slept with the lady of the house in some time. As long as she's still helping out at the karaoke bar, why not let her recreate and procreate in her free time?

Nineteen: Shh! No Imagining!: Six Tales of Copulation

The recurring motif in five out of six of the rom-com shorts in Nineteen is a pair of fancy panties being hungrily pulled down a pair of shapely legs. Nuff said.

Ep. 1: While Pile Diving
Graphic design class is cancelled this afternoon so eight students play a version of Rock Paper Scissors with increased physical contact. Erections. Beer. Love equals animated hearts layered over your eyes.

Ep. 2: At Girlfriend's Place
Do you prefer a woman who offers her straw to sip or one who force-feeds you popcorn? Or whichever one invites you to her parents' pad for sex then bangs you in a stairwell on your 100th day anniversary.

Ep. 3: While Playing Jenga
Don't have a deck of cards handy? Play a game of strip Jenga. Every time someone removes a block from the precariously stacked tower successfully, an item of clothing comes off. Socks included. Then poke her.

Ep. 4: On Emergency Stairs
Nerdy high school virgins, especially those with bowl cuts and thick glasses, can get distracted during foreplay by seeing the opposite sex's genitalia for the first time. Not to worry. Eventually, college gets them laid.

Ep. 5: With Best Friend
You can have a best friend who's the opposite sex but if you're both good looking, dress up like sushi together, and then get drunk, then you're likely going to end up renting a hotel room for the night.

Ep. 6: At Movie Theater
You have a few choices when fellow moviegoers start having sex in the theater: giggle uncontrollably, masturbate or have sex with whomever is sitting next to you.

You're My Pet: Dog Is Not Only Man's Best Friend But One Woman's Lover

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I am perfectly aware that director Kim Byeong-gon's You're My Pet is packaged as a quirky rom-com in which a lovelorn career woman (Kim Ha-Neul) takes in a failed ballet dancer and somehow ends up finding her soulmate. That is not what I got from the movie, however. Instead, You're My Pet comes across as a lighthearted nightmare, a freaky bit of froth about how role playing — when taken too far — can lead to a psychotic break. Follow me here: An emotionally shut-down editrix tells he brother's pal (Jang Keun-Suk) that he can stay in her apartment rent-free if he pretends he's her dead childhood dog Momo. She gets off by being in control. He relishes her unconditional affection. She also enjoys making him do silly tricks (shake, roll over) and he isn't above feeling her breasts while she's asleep.

Where things get weird is when she begins to hallucinate him as her long-dead Labrador Retreiver in bed or stares into a glass of wine to find his face floating amid vintage red. Another man (Ryu Tae-Joon) — better looking, more succesful, more considerate, more romantic, more mature but not into role play at this level — engages her in prolonged courtship but she's only got puppy dog eyes for her domesticated dream-lover. Not that those two are having sex or kissing or cuddling. Intimacy between beauty and the beast here is restricted to shampooing then blow-drying each other's hair. Always clothed!

The self-delusion may be worse in the submissive than the aggressive one in You're My Pet. Once a rising Danseur Nobel, the collared stray now has taken up playing guitar and lands the lead in a K-Pop recital of Barry Manilow's "Mandy" that takes place simultaneously in an Opera House and in the garden of a fancy estate. Given the skill level of the dancers, neither scenario can possibly be real. Has a case of mass hysteria infected everyone in the audience? My final analysis that is love is a sickness worse than rabies for some.

Love 911: Sirens Will Lure You to Your Own Destruction

Beautiful people can't resist beautiful people. That's a cruel certainty to swallow. Yet what else to ingest after watching Love 911? Jeong Gi-hoon's rom-com of destiny pairs off a big-hearted, widowed fireman (Go Soo) with an understandably single amoral woman (Han Hyo-ju) whose one effective hook is her looks. And why? Because character defects are so "whatever"!

It doesn't matter that our ingenue's impressive paychecks as an ER doctor are about to end because of her callous negligence. It doesn't matter that her negligence almost cost her best friend (Jin Seo-yeon) her job as well. It doesn't matter that her disregard for others has landed a possible victim of domestic abuse in a coma. It doesn't matter that she lies about her own mother's death to score points with her intended. She's cute. She's flirty. Her susceptibility to fainting spells shows that she's vulnerable too. What else could you want?

Okay. Okay. Our petty lady doctor evolves through Love 911. She does learn to cry for her sins; to share a true personal tragedy about her dad; to invest in saving lives, instead of making cold hard-won won. By the end, when the fireman's finally hot for her, we know why. She's a fully rounded person! But it's hard to believe she'd go from ice-cold to caring or that he'd have kept doing shots with her until she'd grown a heart.

Wait a second. Is this movie about drunk goggles? Is that it? Is it about how alcohol impairs our judgment of character as well as of beauty? Or does attractiveness simply wear us down? An equally handsome fellow firefighter (Kim Seong-oh) is quite immune to the charms of his female coworker (Hyun Jyu-ni) until she shows up wearing a skintight dress. One imagines that ultimately Love knows no logic but the attraction of heels — the high kind, and the despicable.

Cyrano Agency: The Act of Love

Since movies and TV shows often inundate us with preposterously poignant courtships culminating in impossibly eloquent professions of love, is it that far-fetched to imagine a future where matchmaking agencies are consulted to "script" your first encounter, your subsequent dates, and your wedding proposal? Bolstered by a sublimely humorous script and warmly amusing performances, writer-director Kim Hyun-seok's Cyrano Agency is at once an endearing send-up of the crappy faux reality romances we're spoon-fed across all the various mediums, and a big-hearted rom-com that knows that intentions, not well-crafted monologues or fairy dust, are the greater indicator that someone is guided by his or her fast-beating heart.

So don't let the cynical machinations of the matchmaking agency get in your way of seeing that this is a movie all about true romantics, and that these true romantics are both inside and outside the agency: There's Byeong-hoon (Eom Tae-woong), the agency director who employs stage magic into the art of seduction; Sang-yong (Choi Daniel), the lovelorn hedge fund guy, who wants to be a knight in shining armor; Min-Yeong (Park Shin-hye), the agency's second-in-command who's crushing on her boss big time; and Hee-joong (Lee Min-jung), the boss's ex- who happens to be their current client's dream-girl. Even Hee-joong's cynical sidekick appears to be a softie at the core, once you've plied her with a few glasses of red wine.

To say that I cried a few times during Cyrano Agency doesn't say much since I sometimes cry at the sappiest of movies. To say that I laughed more than a few times says more, but not a ton, is also faint praise, since my laugh of condescension gets just as much use as my laugh of joy. But to say that I feel this movie is really, really smart is higher praise. My brain is less often stimulated than my tear ducts or funny bone by movies. And when I'm stimulated in all areas, well that's kinda hot.

Relation of Face, Mind and Love: Snaggle-Tooth Dilemma

Did you ever see Shallow Hal, the Farrelly brothers flick about a fat guy who's hypnotized into seeing women's inner beauty (and thereby falls in love with a fat gal)? Well, Lee Jang-soo's Relation of Face, Mind and Love is a dental version of that, substituting a concussion for hypnosis as the transformative inciting incident. But are bad teeth, the only shortcoming of animal photographer Wang So-jung (Lee Ji-ah)? She's also shallow, cloying, immature, klutzy, a heavy drinker, and one kitten away from being a cat lady. Why exactly should dreamboy/architect Kang Tae-pung (Kang Ji-wan) get over her snaggly tooth and propose marriage? Is she really the only woman out there who is willing to date an unreformed smoker? Or did his car accident cause further brain damage to be addressed in a funnier sequel?

Love is a mystery. And so his decision to end his superficial ways and take his beloved to a penthouse apartment with a view and its mortgage paid are never going to be adequately explained. What makes more sense is that when So-jun suffers a similar head trauma and her ideal is temporarily disfigured, she finds him completely unacceptable until her vision impairment is corrected. She's even unwilling to entertain the overtures of an elementary school teacher who is at once kinder, cuter, and more accepting than she is. She's become as shallow as her paramour. Perhaps they do belong together!

I'd like to single out the animal trainers for praise for Relation of Face, Mind and Love. The cats and dogs are universally adorable and the funniest scene in the movie involves So-jung being comforted in a park by a sympathetic orangutan. That primate could act! Let's hope he went home to a living situation at least as nice as the fancy digs occupied by Kang Tae-pung.

Two Weddings and a Funeral: To Have and to Hold and to Hurt and to Heal

Anyone who says that being gay or straight is a private affair and is actually nobody's business doesn't realize what a public thing love inevitably is. Imagine never being able to state who you were with last night or why you have to leave work early or having to jump through extra hoops to adopt a kid or having to pretend that you are what you're not because saying who you are is making something private public and that's not where this private thing belongs. In short the privacy of sexuality is a cockamamie idea that really has to do with keeping people in the closet.

This hypocrisy is exactly what's being exposed by Kim Jho-kwang-su's alternately fluffy and fired-up Two Weddings and a Funeral, a gay romcom that isn't overly concerned with political correctness so much as it is with the political realities that are the core of homophobic oppression. Gay doctor Min-soo (Kim Dong-yoon) and lesbian doctor Hyo-jin (Ryu Hyeon-kyeong) marry so he can please his parents and she can adopt a baby. But the minute he gets a boyfriend (Jin Song-yong), life gets complicated because said lover doesn't want to live a life of duplicity but wants to be out in the open, join a rock band, sing in the gay chorus, etc. There's a weird mix of eroticism and shame underlying their clandestine public flirtations. For Hyo-jin and her fashionably butch wife (Jeong Ae-yeon), post-marital bliss is constantly interrupted as Hyo-jin must play house to please Min-soo's parents. But the couples' problems are nothing when compared to that of their queeny friend Tina (Park Jung-pyo), who seems to know only longing and self-loathing. What's available to a queer femme not cute enough to snag a lover nor masculine enough to pass for straight. Hard times ahead!

Endearing and enlightening, Two Weddings and a Funeral is also surprising. An animated coda especially will blow your mind as it shows the lives of the main characters not in the future so much as in an alternate universe. The world is too hard to change. Sometimes, you just have to leave what you know completely to start something new.

Finding Mr. Destiny: She Left Her Heart in Rajasthan

Must I eschew all stereotypes and accept that travel-agent-turned-matchmaker Han Gi-joon (Gong Yoo) is straight even though he plays with a fairy wand in his office, has a fabulous collection of cardigan sweaters, and hasn't dated any women his entire adult life? Must I dig a bit deeper to comprehend his attraction to Seo Ji-woo (Lim Su-jeong), a thankless stage manager who doesn't own a hair brush or an iron and who daydreams all the time about one chance romance ten years ago with a Korean guy in India? Worst of all, must I once again watch as the talented Jeon Soo-kyeong is relegated to a bit part, despite her kick-ass comic chops and Broadway belt of a voice? Well, if I'm streaming Finding Mr. Destiny, then yes, I really do.

Director Chang You-jeong's romantic comedy asks you to make an endless list of concessions outside of this too, probably the most difficult being that the flashbacks to India, involving Ji-woo and Gi-joon's doppelganger, actually have the makings of a pretty sweet little movie. Set in Blue City (better known as Jodhpur), these segments have a real freshness, in part because it's so rare to see a Korean flick with mainly non-Koreans as well as one set outside the mother country. You can easily imagine warming up to the slow-burn between Gi-joon's double and Ji-woo's younger self as they fall in love amid a swirl of colorful saris or under an ornate archway or across a plateful of steaming Pyaaz Ki Kachoris. If Finding Mr. Destiny were about these two summer lovers who Fate split apart then paired up again, I'd probably end up with a case of the warm fuzzies. You'll have to take a few tokes on a hookah to see that movie play out. This one is more about a child singer whose career took a nosedive when she grew up so she tabled her dreams and took a job backstage and is now about to settle for the cute guy who's been pursuing her. In the sequel, I imagine she'll eventually find her husband in bed with her single dad (Chun Ho-jin). I'm more than happy to help write that screenplay.

The Perfect Couple: Looking Good But Laughing Little

After you watch a wretched rom-com like The Perfect Couple (a.k.a. The Best Romance), you have two choices: You can either rag on it or let it go -- all of it except Jeon Soo-kyeong, that is. Jeon is the very funny actress who plays the bit part of a longtime tabloid journalist (who basically admits her years in the profession can be attributed to an inability to find anything else to do). Screen time is minimal. Actual lines, but few. You'd be hard-pressed to even call Jeon's cougar-hack a sidekick but as the female lead's mis-mentoring boss, Jeon shows up often enough to keep you from leaving your home theater entirely. If you manage to last until the bitter end, she'll even reward you with some very hearty laughs. Those laughs involve Jeon firebombing criminals in a junkyard while running around in heels and a fright wig. That Jeon can elicit chuckles from so little isn't a total surprise. In Little Black Dress, she also made the most of the miniscule by delivering second-rate lines as if they'd been penned by Noel Coward or maybe Kaufman & Hart.

I have no idea how Jeon manages to consistently elevate her material. As her protege, Hyeon Yeong is certainly working just as hard if not harder. Yet though she squawks and wiggles, pouts and poses< Hyeon never registers as more than a pretty face. And despite his ridiculous Bon Jovi hairdo, co-star Lee Dong-wook always looks as if he's a model police officer who just stepped off the set of a shampoo commercial, even when there's blood on his lip. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Lee didn't realize he was in a rom-com and was under the impression instead that he was in a crime drama. After all, his character is a cop. And he might be right when you come to think of it. The Perfect Couple isn't very romantic and, except for Jeon, it isn't comedic either. Where as Lee (or his stunt double) does a smashing job when he's executing flipkicks or brutal head-butts. Is The Perfect Couple referring to him and his partner (Lee Jeong-heon)? Nah, I don't think so.

Penny Pinchers: Reality Bites for Today's 98 Percent

Never judge a book by its cover. And never judge a movie by its poster. Look at the crappy Photoshop artwork for Penny Pinchers and you'd easily assume it was just some dumb road trip comedy with a cut-and-paste script and two cute young people parlaying their dimples into big screen careers. But writer-director Kim Jung-hwan's lovely rom-com about a pair of young have-nots wondering how to make it in this world is a far cry from your everyday, copycat crud. At the risk of going out on a limb, I'd even go so far as to say that his sharply observed pic could qualify as a generation-defining movie for millennials. And I don't mean strictly those living in Seoul. Reset this captivating story in NYC and you could have a modern day Reality Bites. Attention Judd Apatow: Here's your chance to resuscitate your directorial career!

To pull that off, of course, he'd have to find an undiscovered Ethan Hawke and Winona Ryder. Which Kim, frankly, has done. Leads Song Joong-ki and Han Ye-seul, despite a mere handful of credits between them, each mine their shared, sizable charisma and emerge from Penny Pinchers as bona fide stars. It's their collective (and unexpected) mega-wattage that makes the small stories in this movie burn so brightly. As a loafer who treats life as a joke, Song's Ji-woong is the kind of guy whose charm won't last past 30 if he doesn't make it big beforehand. Han's Hong-sil is the ugly duckling scavenger who sees everything and everyone as a way to make a buck -- Ji-woong included. But like many a good morality tale before, Penny Pinchers serves up a good life lesson. In a world that worships money but not materialism, respects independence but knows life's nothing without meaningful connections, Penny Pinchers economically shows us the value of the dollar, especially when compared to a deeply felt expression of affection. I now dream of future cityscapes where tents glow on rooftops and makeshift street theaters for two spontaneously appear before closed shop windows on abandoned streets.

My Dear Desperado: The IT Girl Is the It Girl, Too

One great thing about seeing Korean films in the United States is that 99 percent of the time you're going in blind. You might have a two-sentence description of the movie's plot, but generally speaking there's no reviews in the local paper and no buzz at the water cooler to build expectations or undermine your experience with spoilers. Because of that, you sometimes stumble on a truly unexpected experience. You think you're cozying up in front of the TV for a random romantic comedy? Well, think again, my friend. Because My Dear Desperado is hardly cliched cuteness. A zeitgeist-y romcom about IT girl Sae-jin (Jeong Yu-mi) -- who can't get a job despite her smarts and skills -- and her neighbor Dong-chul (Park Joong-hoon) -- who's just got out of prison and is kind of trying to get out of the mob and kind of resigned to staying in it -- My Dear Desperado is a subversion of the traditional romance. Do the two main characters fall in love? Of course they do. But only to a certain degree.

Defying Hollywood conventions, My Dear Desperado's writer-director Kim Kwang-shik always keeps one foot firmly grounded in reality so while there are sparks between these lovebirds, there's never really fire. Kim is fully aware that even if these two are fond of each other that that doesn't mean they're meant for each other until the end of time. A one-night stand stays a one-night stand. A pretended engagement doesn't last the duration of their weekend visit to her father's place. And Dong-chul's devotion to Sae-jin may help help change her life but it doesn't work in reverse like a fairytale. Sae-jin neither attempts nor considers helping Dong-chul extricate himself from a gangster's life. Because of that the two are destined to drift apart. Just how far they do will likely come as a surprise to most viewers. It shocked the hell out of me!

I'm still undecided if My Dear Desperado is a great movie or simply a good movie with an ending that I simply didn't see coming. Until I figure this out, I'm going to recommend it to everyone willing to hear me sing its praises. There's one unexpectedly delicious scene in which Sae-jin's crying jag transforms into an erotic breathing lesson and another spot-on vignette in which Dong-chul's attempt to be a gentleman gives way to his ingrained thug. I believe, Kim knows exactly what he's doing here. But it's really just a guess on my part.