Psychokinesis: A Superhero Movie for People Who Hate Superhero Movies

I don't care for superhero movies. The plots are too thin; the characters, too cartoonish; the savior wish-fulfillment, too perverse. As for the humor, the awful one-liners and sight-gags are deemed clever because we (and the creators) know they're stupid so we're in on the joke. What's the good of watching buff actors strut through multiverses when the fall-out of countless deaths resultant of these good versus evil battles are generally overlooked. Sure, there are exceptions but exceptions prove the rule. Black Panther? Bring it on. The rest? Hard pass, all day every day.

Count on the Koreans to open my mind to the beleaguered genre. Psychokinesis is a very atypical superhero movie. The lead, a bit of a shmuck, is a negligent dad (Ryu Seung-ryong) who drinks some enhanced spring water shortly after his ex-wife dies. That single cupful grants him the ability to move objects with his mind. His initial exploration into telekinesis gets him pegged in the head by a cheap plastic cigarette lighter but once he's developed his talent he's ready to take on the evil real estate developers — even sadistic Director Hong (Jung Yu-mi) — threatening the livelihood of his daughter (Shim Eun-kyung), a fried chicken entrepreneur. Does he become a goofy Superman though? Not at all. Our bumbling hero never takes on the system as a whole or crime in general; his law-abiding nature is part of his Everyman M.O. He's just a guy with a strange gift. Like you. Maybe me.

Revenger: Bruce Khan, Step This Way

After watching the martial arts B-movie Revenger, you may ask yourself: Who the hell is Bruce Khan and where has he been all my life? An immediately iconic anti-hero of the silent-but-deadly type, the seriously buff, humorlessly serious Khan singlehandedly turns Lee Seung-won's skimpily plotted action flick set on a prison island that pits a crew of alpha dogs against a group of oddballs into an engrossing affair. He's not alone in keeping you engaged: A female archer (Yoo Jin-seo) with unfailing precision, her bratty daughter (Kim Na-yeon), and a goofy gang leader (Kim In-kwon) with a hook for a hand are all chewing up the tropical scenery with abandon as is the movie's main nemesis (Park Hee-soon), a mummy-wrapped madman who's taste for blood is insatiable.

He hasn't got a shot against Khan, though, since the latter is generally speaking untouchable whenever he's engaged in hand-to-hand combat or swordplay, regardless of how many people are encircling him. Why is it so satisfying to see one person take on a ill-advised crowd? Anyway, I'd say his most delectable adversary wasn't the film's ostensible embodiment of evil but his henchman played by the drop-dead beauty Choi Je-heon. When they strip down for the final confrontation, you may be struggling to choose exactly who you want to win: the beautiful bad boy or the righteous ruffian who sometimes wears blood like lipstick. I picked the high ground but you do you.

RV: Resurrected Victims: The Love of a Mother

The central setup in RV: Resurrected Victims is a good one — select members of the dead are sending lookalike emissaries (with pronounced "zombie" affect) back from the grave to murder the ones responsible for their deaths. Afterwards, they self-immolate — a somewhat hellish bit of imagery. So why have these particular victims come back to exact revenge? Unclear. How long has this phenomenon been going on? Not sure. You see, there's a cover-up on that front! Most importantly, did ruthless, young prosecutor Seo Jin-ong (Kim Rae-Won) orchestrate the untimely end of his martyr of a momma (Kim Hae-sook)? Oh boy, that's also kinda hard to say.

In RV, people get pretty close to figuring it all out: special agent Lee (Jeon Hye-jin), a legal colleague (Sung Dong-il), even Seo's heavily medicated sister (Jung Young-man) who does a nice job of peeling an apple. But since these undead vigilantes tend to burst into flames after executing their killers, forthcoming answers are difficult to attain. Strangely, Kwak Kyung-taek's supernatural thriller ends up being very little about any insights we mortals might glean from the Other Side. If anything, the film is a roundabout message movie about the perils of drunk driving and an unconvincing argument about the importance of filial love. When you see your mom across the street, hurry to meet her and don't have liquor on your breath.

The Prison: Who Runs The Law?

Yes, it's preposterous. Yes, it's cynical. Yes, it's horrific. But The Prison is also incredibly, impossibly fun. By taking one penitentiary's inner workings — the guard-inmate sycophancy, the convict hierarchy, the black market trading, the perverted politics — to their most extreme possibility, Na Hyeon's screenplay is a deliriously enjoyable improbability, a twisty-turning political Rube Goldberg machine of crime, cruelty, and power-tripping. The struggle for supremacy between the sadistic old-timer convict Ik-ho (Han Suk-kyu) and the contentious ex-cop newbie Yu-gon (Kim Rae-won) is one of those gloriously gripping, cinematic pissing matches in which who might win remains unknown until the very end.

Is this a movie about corruption? Does it glamorize corruption? Even as it exposes corruption's insidious ubiquity inside South Korea's judicial system? Is it even taking a stance on corruption? Is it, perhaps, some strange adult counterpart to Na's anti-fascist kids cartoon Leafie, A Hen in the Wild? All valid theories, in my humble opinion. In fact, how you interpret this one is definitely up to you. Regardless, I'm guessing that whatever your ideological take, The Prison's final scene is going to make your head spin in that it's one of the most anti-Hollywood endings I can imagine, a bizarre restoration of karmic balance that goes against traditional movie ideas about good and bad and the "ends justify the means" philosophies. Have I got you intrigued yet? Are you thoroughly perplexed and enticed? Good. Now watch the damn movie.

The Drug King: High on the '70s

Tarantino isn't the only director fetishizing '70s noir. Director Woo Min-ho and his cinematographer, costume designer, and music director are all channeling peak Scorsese, Schlesinger, and Penn in the sumptuously filmed, nattily attired, and impeccably scored The Drug King. The latest South Korean export helmed by acting legend Song Kang-ho, Woo's sprawling biopic concerns Lee Doo-sam, an actual cook-dealer-addict who operated on an international scale. Yet despite its lush look and sound, The Drug King avoids glamorizing its drug of choice crank by reminding us that those who get a taste of this upper will get hooked, go crazy, then crash and burn.

We see this scenario play out with Doo-sam himself naturally as well as his brother Doo-hwan (Kim Dae-Myung) and a handful of ancillary characters but really most of this cast is set dressing. The Drug King is Do-sam's story; everyone else is walking prop, an extra maybe with lines. Luckily, Song is an actor who can carry a two-hour movie alone. We may wish that actresses Kim So-jin and Bae Doona had more to do as his clear-eyed wife and his calculating mistress but Woo's script isn't concerned with anyone outside of its leading man. An ostensible plot involving a determined police detective (Lee Hee-joon) on Lee's trail is irrelevant. What works in The Drug King, and it's no small thing, is Song doing his thing — rising up to the top then sinking to a soiled bottom. You'll never look at a bucket of piss the same way again.

Illang: The Wolf Brigade: Man Gets Worse Over Time

In a not-so-distant future in which we still take cabs but fire guns that look like blowdryers, a war has broken out on the Korean peninsula. This time around, however, the conflict is not between North and South (which want to reunite despite international pressures to the contrary). This time around, the fight is between The Sect (rebel forces) and The Special Unit (an elite police force). At least that's what it seems like at first. As the movie progresses, the battle appears to actually be between The Special Unit and Public Security, a rival law enforcement agency. None of the groups comes across as a force for good, although The Sect theoretically represents the proletariat. Do they uphold the sanctity of life? Not a chance. And really can you blame them?

Humans have grown worse over time. Our basest traits have evolved. Im Joong-kyung (Gang Dong-won) is an affectless soldier who was part of a mass killing of young girls. Lee Yoon-hee (Han Hyo-ju) is a faux bookseller who will betray anyone for her ailing little brother. Can these two fall in love? Even if they're working at cross purposes? More to the point, can they feel anything? Furthermore, what do either of them have to do with the young suicide bomber (Shin Eun-soo) in Little Red Riding Hood drag? Let it go. Let it all go. The best part of Kim Jee-woon's scifi snoozer are the shootouts and fistfights during which I found myself as unconcerned with who'd come out on top as I was tickled by the fight choreography.