Sweet & Sour: Who Do You Love?

I like a movie that emphatically changes gears midway and Lee Kae-byeok's Sweet & Sour definitely does that. What starts off as a giddily silly rom-com about a chubby guy (Lee Woo-je) with severe jaundice and an overworked nurse (Chae Soo-bin) who's an irresistable flirt turns into a harshly realistic drama about a couple unable to find time for each other because they're so overtaxed by jobs with no security. Admittedly, the nurse tries even as the engineer (Jang Ki-yong) is diverted by a sloppy but talented co-worker (Jung Krystal). But eventually, you question whether the two even belong together. Either pair actually. It's then that Sweet & Sour takes a mindspinning twist, which elevates the movie to a whole other level.

Rather then give you the details on that front and rob you of the fun that I promise you lies ahead, I'll simply say that this feel-good/feel-bad/feel-I-don't-know-what movie ends up stitching together three genres instead of two: romantic comedy, workplace drama, and time-dislocating head-spinner. To Lee's credit, each section of the film contains hints of the other two so the final product (art!) doesn't feel disjointed. To the contrary, I'd say Sweet & Sour is a bit of a miracle, modest as it may be.

The 8th Night: The Week Before

You'd think a movie involving a battle between good and evil would have a series of skirmishes before the big confrontation but Kim Tae-hyung's The 8th Night isn't following that convention. Instead, we're told about a monster (blinded by Buddha, no less) who's hoping he can reunite his black eye and his red eye and thereafter wreak havoc on the universe. The planets have aligned apparently. The keeper of the black eye (I think) knows that some crazy scientist has unearthed the red one and is conducting seriously amoral experiments to reactivate it. Once that's done, that one eye has eight nights to jump from body to body (or socket to socket, to be more accurate) until it reaches its partner-in-crime to inhabit the body of a virgin (Kim Yoo-jeong). What other body would house it?

Not much resistance goes on among the various victims in this journey. Generally speaking, the possessed keeper-of-the-eye cracks their neck, breaks out in a smile, sniffs its prey, then transfers into the new host. Creepy as hell but not much conflict. In this horror flick, the tension comes from knowing that with each "jump," the world is that much closer to Armageddon. I wasn't overly concerned with why the bitter monk (Lee Sung-min) with the axe wasn't hacking at an earlier iteration of the bodysnatching demon anymore than I was with the skeptical police officer (Park Hae-joon) who pooh-poohed the occult theories of his staff. The foolish naivete of the accolyte (Nam Da-reum) definitely made me wonder if this movie would have a happy or sad ending but I was fine with whichever way it went. In short, no spoilers here.

Minari: Crying Puddles

"It's not called a penis, it's called a ding-dong!"

Strong words. And not simply a joke either. Not at all. Because while not many artfilms are built around bedwetting, you could say a good part of Lee Isaac Chung's sublime Minari is. This exquisite movie about a nuclear family who relocate to Arkansas to start a pastoral life outside big city chicken sexing has a major plot point about peeing that encapsulates everyone — including the cheeky granny (Yuh-Jung Youn) who comes to live with Mom, Dad, Son, and Daughter when farmlife gets particularly rough.

What's so tough about raising crops, you ask. Oh, pretty much everything: the long hours, the physical labor, the dependency on the weather, the religious zealotry of your help (Will Patton), and, in this case, the claustrophobia of the trailer you now call home. Is it worth it? According to Dad (Steven Yeun), the answer is yes. According to Mom (Han Yeri), the answer is no. As for the kids, they're less decisive. The girl (Noel Cho) may be older and wiser but the boy (Alan S. Kim) is whose opinion matters most. Not because he's the male heir but because the actor who plays him is pretty much perfect.