Split: Bowling for Debtors

Everyone owes something — usually lots and lots of money — in Choi Kook-hee's diverting bowling dramedy Split. The one-time Wednesday Nights league champeen (Yoo Ji-tae) is constantly racking up debts with his competitively disastrous gutter balls. The alley inheritress a.k.a. Split's spitfire love interest (Son Ye-jin) is saddled with extortion-level interest payments caused by her regretful use of the family business as collateral. Even the movie's quirky, somewhere-on-the-spectrum, potentially future lord-of-the-lanes (an excellent Lee Da-Wit) eventually owes his manipulative patron-funders around $20 for a birthday bus trip to visit the current home of his estranged mother and the mausoleum housing his deceased grandmother (who was quite a bowler herself in the city back in the day).

But by the end, Split also owes us, the audience, a few things, too, like that big important game that could go either way and is finally tipped towards victory thanks to the the young bowler's prowess and unusual methods; a romance-solidifying kiss — doesn't have to be post-coital — between the leading man and his pimping promoter; a scene in which the managress sees how bad life would be working as a hostess at the local coffee bar; a pile of Christmas presents that allow one neglected adult to heal his wounds with some help from Santa; and a drunk scene in which the same young man engages in forbidden behavior. The omission of all these scenes is perplexing because the movie actually feels like its building towards them at different times. Which isn't to say this movie is striking out. More that, it's leaves behind too many lone pins that are the marks of a less-than-perfect score.

Running Wild: Cop a Feeling

I'm not a fan of screenwriter Han Ji-hoon. His scripts are way too sappy. Once Upon a Time in Seoul looks to milk tears from two orphans trying to survive together in the underworld. The Brotherhood of War is even weepier: Here they're blood brothers fighting to survive on the front lines during the Korean War. You can practically hear the metaphorical violins over the Foley-ed bomb explosions and rapid gunfire. Running Wild is pretty much more of the same: Male bonding in a corrupt world that doesn't have time for love or respect or bear-like hugs, only this time it's set in a police station. Given that this is a Han pic, you know someone's going to die; someone's going to be left behind to grieve. And it won't be a woman.

Baby blue tissues aside, this might be the worst of Han's three testosterone tearjerkers. And it isn't just the flat characterizations of it two heroes: a nerdy prosecutor (Yu Ji-tae) driven to despair when his reputation is publicly called into question, and his unlikely partner, a tempermental detective (Kwon Sang-woo) crazed by procedural inefficiencies, reluctant witnesses, faulty lighters, his junkie half-brother (Lee Jung-mun), his ailing mother (Lee Ju-sil) and a syndicate don (Son Byung-ho) who reacts to every treachery and every threat with a devil-may-care smirk. No it isn't the odd couple dynamic that bothers me most. It's the running time, more than two hours when 80 minutes would've easily sufficed.

Why so much grief about the length of the movie? Well, there's just so many scenes I simply didn't need to see. Like the woman singing jazz (poorly) in the nightclub. Like the gun-toting race through traffic in the movie's opener. Like the volatile cop filling out a lotto ticket in such a considered way. Like the mom's funeral, hell, anything with the mom. Like anything with the young woman who's always visiting the mom at the hospital even though she's not related and the crazed cop has said point blank to said woman that he doesn't love her so why is she still making food and coffee for him. Director Kim Seung-soo should've been infinitely more merciless cutting Running Wild's script. After all, he co-wrote it — meaning it's not all Han's fault after all.

Midnight FM: This Number Has Been Disconnected

Remember the good old days before cell phones were used as masking tape in movies, as quick fixes to get us from Point A to Point B with the least effort possible? Watch Midnight FM and then think how much better this thriller would be if popular radio talk show host Sun-Young (Ae Soo) wasn't constantly leaving one of her two cell phones in different rooms and then scrambling to answer the misplaced cell so she can discuss how her psychopathic stalker fan (Yu Ji-tae) is going to murder her sister, her niece and her daughter. All she needs to do is honor that faxed playlist that unfortunately someone threw out. It's her final night on-air and this guy wants to make her work!

Take all that taunting conversation happening during the commercial breaks and put it on-air, have her try to figure out what's going on strictly through audio, see her listeners struggle along with her, have coworkers interrupt because of initial shared ignorance of what exactly is going on, have her weave it all into a polished show... Now that would be a fascinating movie. That's not Midnight FM though, which spells out way too much and and then throw out late night into an extended car chase that only occasionally has her patched into the network to deliver intro to songs and share half-baked insights about Taxi Driver, Pump Up the Volume and Casablanca.

You can see why some fans would find her infuriating. As scripted by Kim Sang-man, she's a bit arrogant, a bit too American in her tastes. Throughout her show (which despite all the blackmailing and fainting has likely a fairly typical song list), she never once mentions South Korean movies or music, despite the absurd popularity of K-pop and the ubiquity of karaoke in Korean flicks. Her heart belongs to Leonard Cohen! You're hardly surprised she's leaving the radio station to study in America. That her mute daughter -- suffering from a neck injury of unknown origin -- might benefit from U.S. medical expertise seems mostly an afterthought. Given how much she likes to dominate conversation, you may harbor a sneaking suspicion that Sun-young is glad her cute young daughter can only tap out yes and no as a way to communicate. This family only has room for one speaker and she's killing it on the airwaves!

Antarctic Journal: Get to the Point (of Inaccessibility, That Is)

I'd never heard of a "point of inaccessibility" before Antarctic Journal. Evidently, the term refers to a geographical location that's extremely difficult to access, often because of its distance from the coast. Reaching such a landmark is a source of pride for explorers because it's so challenging. For the general public, however, there's little to recommend a POI (as it's sometimes called). The same could be said for Antarctic Journal, the pseudo-horror flick by director Yim Pil-sung (and co-written by auteur Bong Joon-ho). It's for extremists only. In other words, if you're committed to being a completist and seeing every movie starring Song Kang-ho then then you're eventually going to have to watch this dud about a South Korean crew searching for the South Pole's POI.

Which isn't to say that Song isn't good. As the merciless captain who hallucinates memories of his son's suicide when he isn't letting his crew members die one by one, the actor keeps the action grounded, which isn't easy given how much appears to be shot in front of a green screen. Keeping it real can only take you so far though, and what is real, really? Not the sudden nose bleed that he gets at one point. Not the novice (Yu Ji-tae) who he cavalierly bequeaths the ominous British expedition diary that they find in the snow. Not the cynical cohort (Yun Je-mun) who can't persuade anyone how crazy the captain obviously is. Not even the cheerful radio operator (Kang Hye-jeong) who flies off in a search helicopter when captain and company "vanish into thin air." I'm not saying, Antarctic Journal needed to be a naturalistic take on a devastating expedition, but shots of a frozen eyeball and a ghostly woman's hand come across as pretty random and just leave me wondering whether the film is about to take a serious left turn. Maybe it did. Over and over. Which is another way of saying Antarctic Journal just goes in circles. And made me rethink my initial plan to curate a Song movie marathon, despite how wonderful I still think he is.

Woman Is the Future of Man: So Real It Hurts

If asked, I'd say I had a bedgrudging respect for autuer Hong Sang-soo but after re-watching Woman Is the Future of Man, I'm going to let the begrudging part go. Although I may never be able to rally around Night and Day or Woman on the Beach (too many cliches; not enough plot), I actually liked the violently jarring The Day the Pig Fell into the Well and his melancholic The Power of Kangwon Province unreservedly. Woman Is the Future of Man, I downright love. A character portrait of a trio of people, Hong's film makes you cringe and ache so often you may think you've got Tourette's, surfacing as it does the little cruelties we inflict and little pains we experience on a moment-to-moment basis when we're in the thick of it. No one is the hero. No one is the villain. No one is the antihero. Art professor Lee Mun-ho (Yu Ji-tae), budding filmmaker Kim Hyeon-gon (Kim Tae-woo) and the woman they both once loved many years ago, bar manager Park Seon-hwa (Seong Hyeon-a) are three flawed humans trying to get through life, unable to free themselves from the daily treacheries that make survival a small scale war. As such, they're constantly betraying each other and themselves so that eventually the small fortresses that they've built to protect themselves are completely smashed away. Sad? Yes. But electric, too.

You can't really pick out a specific actor as the best one here. Hong has cast astutely right down to the lady across the street from the cafe and the guy in the back of the restaurant where Lee gathers with his students for an ill-fated meal. That said, Yu's professor is a fascinating mixture of bumbling and smooth, Kim's filmmaker can't quite shed the hipster edginess that you pray one day he'll outgrow, and Park conveys a quiet bewilderment as she relives the misguided choices of youth all over again one snowy, sloppy weekend. I'd also like to give a shout out to both composer Jeong Yong-jin for his hauntingly wistful score and to Mary, the black Labrador Retriever, who has so many perfect moments as a background player that you'd award her an Equity card (deluxe edition) if animals got those types of things. In terms of film-watching, 2012 hasn't been a great year for me but Woman Is the Future of Man restores my faith in Korean movies. So thank you, Hong Sang-soo, and sorry about any slights I made to your work in the past. Next time, I'm coming in an unreserved fan.

Secret Love: Help! My Twin Brother Is a Sexaholic

There's something about the first half of director Ryu Hoon-i's increasingly, cumulatively fantastic Secret Love that reminds me of a Douglas Sirk film. Ryu's movie feels like a woman's picture, albeit a kind of nutty one, in which the wilting flower Yeon-yi (Yun Jin-seo) struggles to reconcile the conflicting responsibilities that come with having a recently comatose husband, named Jin-woo (Yu Ji-tae), who needs daily caretaking and hosting his twin brother Jin-ho from abroad as a houseguest, a brother who unfortunately for her is both hunky, and hyper-horny. Yu is impossibly dreamy as the sexed-up sibling so you know resistance on Yeon-yi's part is going to be futile. What you might not know is how hot it's going to get once he manhandles her in a hatchback car and literally screws her out of her depression. He's like Prozac with a tongue.

It's not the only steamy sex scene in Secret Love either. There's another quick grab-and-grope on a hospital gurney, an emotionally charged coupling in a therapeutically oversized bathtub, and a wildly raunchy romp -- knife included but discarded -- on the living room floor. (Throughout, there's the deliriously preposterous suggestion that these two guys sense each other's orgasms, even when miles apart; in fact, one brother's deeply-felt happy ending wakes the other brother from his coma!) As to whom Yeon-yi is getting it on with in each make-out scene, that may be a mystery to her by the end of the movie but despite both brothers getting identical trendy haircuts and sharing the same casual wardrobe in what turns out to be a delectably gripping noir, Secret Love is never that confusing thanks to the masterful script co-written by Ryu and Kwon Ji-yeon. Diverting but never distracting or detracting subplots include a funnily poignant, budding affair between Yeon-yi's pining mom (Lim Ye-jin) and a broad-shouldered, flirtatious priest (Jeong In-gi) and the tale of a unnamed rival soulmate (Oh Woo-jeong) who's impossibly smitten with one of the brothers. Which one she loves is also a bit of a mystery!

Impeccable casting extends from the lead roles right on down to the bit parts with enjoyably campy turns by Jin Seo as the gossipy Nurse Kang, and Sung Ji-ru as a B&B owner who loves to take pictures. No secret about this one: It's one terrific thriller! If I gave out stars, I'd give Secret Love five out of five. If I gave a thumbs up, I'd put a condom on my finger.

Hello, Schoolgirl: Older Man Likes Barely Legal Girl (But at Least He's Cute)

The problem with Hello, Schoolgirl is succinctly illustrated in a cafe scene during which the two main characters announce their ages: Yeon-woo (Yu Ji-tae) is 30; Soo-yeong (Lee Yeon-hee) is 18. A moment later, the meal continues only now he's replaced by an 18-year-old version of himself and she now looks like she's six. That brief, momentary fantastical transformation clues you into the disparity if you missed it when they said it out loud. He's way too old for her. Now you could argue that she's mature for her age (if she were but she isn't) or that they're consenting adults (if they were but according to Korean law she's not). I get where I'm supposed to make concessions. But despite its twee attractions, Ryu Jang-ha's romantic comedy kept me thinking that there's something wrong with a 30-year-old guy dating a young girl just shy of womanhood. Well, at least the Koreans have the decency to make him really cute instead of an out-of-shape, balding slob. I say, if you're going to go for older, go for hot. (I wish she'd gone for smarter and richer, too. Sadly, he's neither.) What else has he got working in his favor? He's a pleaser! The old couple who own the dry cleaners love him; the realtor who helped him to get an apartment finds him charming, too. Now if he can stop courting underage girls via sexting, maybe he can stay out of prison.

There's a secondary plot involving 29-year-old jaded photographer Ha-kyeong (Chae Jeong-an) being pursued by a 22-year-old masochist named Sook (Kang In). He likes her because she's pretty. She tolerates him because he wears the same shirt every day. That's it. It's all about superficial attractions here. In a way, Hello Schoolgirl is about two kinds of predators: one lurks; the other stalks. And if you think I'm imposing a creepy interpretation, take a look at the skulker's depersonalized, nearly empty apartment that reeks of smoke, or the discomfort he displays when the girl's mom sees him holding hands with his student-love, or the lack of outrage he show when his friend asks him if it's statutory rape. There's something wrong with this guy. But then, I often feel that way with romantic comedies. I'm not so easily convinced two people are soul mates who need to defy society's constraining conventions.

Maybe Hello, Schoolgirl is secretly funded by an Asian branch of NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association. (SAMBLA?) Although the main couple is a man and a girl, this rom-com is definitely asking us to question the age of consent, and while the spook factor on this one is really hard to overcome, you have to admit this cast exudes so much charm you hate to not let them all end up as couples. She'll be a child bride. And by the end of the movie, she's of age. Start throwing the instant rice.

Oldboy: Revenge Is Sweet, Repeatedly

I'd always been afraid to watch Oldboy a second time because I loved it so much the first. This movie, along with Save the Green Planet, is why I'm the longstanding fan of Korean film that I am. I didn't want to mess with that memory. I didn't want to rob Oldboy of its stature. In a nutshell, I was secretly worried that knowing the "shocking ending" beforehand would diminish the pleasures ahead. Would it end up feeling like a gimmick flick? Not to fear. Park Chan-wook's revenge masterpiece works equally well when you're clued in to the horrific plot twists. It's still creepy, lyrical, and deranged but now it's also deterministic. That main guy is doomed! Choi Min-sik gives what's likely the performance of his career as a man who, imprisoned 15 years for crimes unknown, is driven crazy by his need to discover why he was captured and confined. He's more than ably supported by Kang Hye-jeong as a blameless femme fatale and Yu Ji-tae as his pretty boy nemesis. The whole spiral downward is stunningly shot, paced, and performed. And does anyone not like perfection simply because they know where it's going? Not me. If an ending's any good, it's good whether you know it's coming or not. The spoiler is a term reserved for second-rate films.

Ditto: Suppose Peggy Sue Didn't Get Married

Here's to the supernatural weepies and to Ditto which merits at least two hankies. Director Kim Jeong-kwon's first feature film is what might be called a tragic romance shaped by soft science fiction. A timid young woman (Kim Ha-neul) with endearing stalker tendencies fixates on a bland fellow college student (Park Yong-woo) who aspires to office worker. Before their fantasized romance has progressed to so much as a kiss, however, chance has forced a magical ham radio upon our clueless heroine. That very night (a lunar eclipse?) she adopts the new hobby which will nudge her temporarily out of her shell while leading her to inescapable doom. Breaker 1-9. Breaker 1-9. I'm a petulant college-sophomore (Yu Ji-tae) who lives twenty years in the future. We go to the same school. I can read tomorrow's news online but I won't give you any stock tips. Isn't this fun? I'm about to shatter your world by informing you that your best friend and that dull dreamboat are about to fall in love and make a baby. Me! (Reach for the tissue here.) Jang Jin's script has its share of quasi-philosophical quotes but it also has an understanding of the evanescence of time and how love only comes to those who leap.

Natural City: Cyborgs With Alzheimers

Let's say a car lasts ten years and a computer lasts three. Based on the idea that the more advanced the machinery, the shorter its lifespan, how long do you think a dancing hooker-robot would last? If your answer is not long enough, you're probably already a resident of the cyberpunk Natural City. When Ria (Seo Rin), a replicant starts to go on the blink, her patron-lover goes to every extreme to keep her alive. A member of the military police, R (Yu Ji-tae) sacrifices fellow members of the force, jeopardizes the life of his best friend, and kidnaps a prostitute as he works towards one insidious goal: to implant his machine-whore's consciousness into the brain of that unlucky streetwalker (Lee Jae-un). Writer-director Min Byung-chun takes the man-automaton romance pretty seriously which doesn't seem so far-fetched considering that until very recently, women were considered property in marriage. Since a robot could be programmed to "love and obey" without a lot of back talk, it's hard not to admit that plenty of guys would jump at the chance to set up house with a remote control bitch. Natural City is a call to read the small print on the warranty label. Don't grow too attached to your purchases!