No Other Choice: The Cruelty of Capitalism

The Americans make a brief appearance at the start of auteur Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice. They're a group of cold-hearted businessmen who have come to South Korea to dramatically downsize the devoted staff of a paper company, loyalty be damned. It's clear that Park finds the heartless "money first, people second" ethos as reprehensible. His anti-hero Man-su (Lee Byung-hun), however, doesn't necessarily agree. Or if he does, he certainly gets over it quick enough as he strategizes how he might get back into a high-paying job in his industry, in light of such ruthlessness. His plan: Kill, kill, kill.

Since this is a Park film, Man-su's deadly serious determination becomes horrifically literal as he systematically identifies who the competition before murdering them one by one. Changing professions is not an option. Selling the family home is not an option either. Competing as an equal has not worked in his favor so far. For him, offing his rivals is the best bet. As the title states, he has "no other choice." [His loyal wife Miri (an excellent Son Ye-jin) is more flexible as well as more adaptable but she's not driving the plot.] Once Man-su's masterplan kicks into action, the killings are quirky more than grisly: a shoe salesman gets twisted into a ball as if he were a bonsai tree; another rival (Park Hee-soon) is buried up to his neck after a night of excessive drinking; a third (Lee Sung-min) is fatally shot by his own wife (Yeom Hye-ran), a histrionic actress who's in the midst of a shallow love affair. Park's film may not have the constant cliffhangers of his earlier works like Oldboy and Lady Vengeance, but No Other Choice is nevertheless a powerful indictment of unchecked capitalism gone mad, both here and abroad.

New Year Blues: More Than a Couple of Romances

At first, New Year Blues doesn't look like your typical, traditional, ensemble romcom: When paralympian snowboarder Kim Rae-wan (Teo Yoo) proposes to horticulturist Han Oh-wol (Choi Sooyoung), he pulls out one of the ugliest engagement rings I've seen in quite some time. And yet... maybe that's intentional. After all, flashy diamonds aren't what love's all about. Travel agent Oh Yong-chan (Lee Dong-hwi) and his Chinese bride-to-be will learn that when his company's embezzled by a new employee. Divorced Detective Kang Ji-ho (Kim Kang-woo) will learn that while enforcing a restraining order for physical therapist Lee Hyo Young (Yoo In-na).

In true fictional feature fashion, all the stories are interconnected: Lee is Kim's rehab go-to and Kang has been assigned to Oh's criminal case. Even the one outlying story involving the recently dumped Min Jin-ah (Lee Yeon-hee) who flees the country for a last-minute holiday trip to Buenos Aires has loose ties to the other stories. Are their narrative narrative improbabilities? Of course. Would a Korean tourist in Argentina really hop on a Vespa driven by an old man who just happens to play the washboard in a cafe band? I doubt it. But I still shed real tears as everything started to come together in the end. There's something lovely about a man getting a pep talk on relationships from his exwife and a bad google translation bringing two future sister-in-laws together. (Nice work, Yeom Hye-ran.) And it's hard not to embrace the feel-good sentiment underlying director Hong Ji-Yeong's final images. "Next year let's be happier than this year."

Wall to Wall: In the Sub-Basement

I'm all for a dark movie, even a grim one. But this Kim Tae-joon thriller is too depressing for me. When a corporate drone (Kang Ha-neul) who moonlights as a food deliveryperson gets buried under the debts associated with buying a Seoul apartment, the accumulation of bad luck, bad choices, and bad living overwhelmed me. By the time he got consumed by his greed around a shady online trade (for which he'd liquidated his mortgage), I had already checked out. I just couldn't handle any more bad news. I also didn't believe that his luck would turn around or if it did, that he'd be able to sustain it.

Additionally, I didn't care. And since this main character isn't sympathetic, what does it matter if he strikes it rich or ends up in the poorhouse. Who really cares if he was set up and someone had put a noise-making device installed in his apartment so that all the enraged neighbors would turn against him. Who cares if his phone screen is shattered and almost out of juice. At this point, I'm only halfway through the movie, and yes, I watched 'til the end. Because the midway point is when the suspense part kicks in. And despite the cards remaining stacked against the hero when things turn mysterious, Wall to Wall does become less of a downer. Because the weightlifting undercover reporter (Seo Hyun-woo) who lives upstairs and the former prosecutor (Yeom Hye-ran) who owns the penthouse have major problems of their own. Misery loves company, y'know.

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.

Black Light: Question Quest

What do you consider the worse fate? Dying in an auto accident or ending up in a coma? Being widowed by a car crash (that may not have been your husband's fault) or being a caretaker for your spouse (who may have caused the other man's death)? Finding out your partner may have been suicidal or realizing that your ex might've had issues with addiction? Having to return to a factory job near the scene of the crime or bumping into the other wife who — like you — has yet to process this life-changing disaster?

Bae Jong-dae's drama certainly is a competition of woes, so much so that other characters like the daughter (Park Ji-hu), the brother, the sister-in-law, and the chummy boss are nothing next to the two central women (played by Yeom Hye-ran and Kim Si-eun). Whether the company is at fault (probably, yes) or the police botched up the original investigation (also, yes) doesn't ultimately natter. Black Light. Every question these women ask of themselves and each other consistently leads to more trouble. The one truth that feels definitive is that big business couldn't give a damn about your quality of life as long as they're making a profit.