Black Gospel: Harlem Gets Seoul

Ostensibly about a cadre of Koreans who learn to sing Gospel at the genre's NYC wellspring in Harlem, the documentary Black Gospel contrarily testifies that you can't master a culturally-rooted music experiencing a single month of immersion. As choirmaster Dr. Reverend Ouida W. Harding asks bluntly after hearing one earnest singer during orientation, "What are you doing?" And by that, she means "What are you doing here? What are you singing? Why are you singing? Why are you wasting my time?" As each member of the fish-out-of-water choir steps forward to warble, this non-nonsense minister — the true star of Black Gospel — eviscerates each quavering tourist, one by one — American Idol-style. The single exception, Yang Dong-kun a.k.a. YDG, meets with some approval because he's got heart despite an inability to hit the exact notes.

The lesson the Reverend is hell-bent on teaching is this: Singing "perfect" is not gospel's point. Church music comes with a message and anyone belting "Amazing Grace" or "I Just Want to Praise You" better have a passion for spreading The Word. The visiting vocalists' other preacher-teachers are infinitely kinder but the gravitation toward the lightest skin music director and a white orchestrator does make the heart ache. The culminating concert doesn't invoke the spirit via an overlong chorus of "Lean on Me," but this little doc does give witness to gospel's undying appeal. Praise it.

Festival: Death Becomes Him

A grandmother (Han Eun-jin) dies at the start of Im Kwon-taek's quirky family drama Festival. Except she doesn't. She reawakens posthumously — apparently an old habit with her — but then succumbs to death, this time for good. Once she does, the funeral's intricacies begin to unfold, many unfamiliar to many Westerners such as draping calligraphy scrolls in the courtyard, painting the name of the dead on a ceremonial flag, and unmasking the face of the elaborately wrapped corpse for a late guest (black sheep Yong Sun played by a ravishing Jung Kyung Soon). Outside these Korean funeral rites, Festival has much more on its mind.

The main event is intercut by flashes of the past and vignettes drawn from a "Benjamin Button" novel penned by the late woman's son Jun-seop (Ahn Sung-ki), a celebrated author who draws inspiration from his family. This structural device blurs the line between art and reality, no doubt making the investigative work of one The Age of Literature journalist Lee Yong-soon (Oh Jung-hae) exceedingly difficult. What's truth? What's fiction? Is Ahn's character to be trusted? With all that booze flowing? Well, he's certainly dashing. And due to Ahn, a bit of an enigma, too.

Village in the Mist: Out-of-Towner Out of Luck

To be honest, Im Kwon-taek's Village in the Mist reminds me exceedingly of the kooky psychosexual movies of Kim Ki-young. This battle of the sexes is so out there that I couldn't separate the social commentary from the sexism. Though nothing is stated definitively, what might be happening is that a townful of women are all getting impregnated by a nitwit vagabond (Ahn Sung-ki) who's the one reliable local sperm source since the rest of the men are impotent because of inbreeding. Struggling between appreciation and resentment, the villagers treat their resident babymaker like a pet in a way that would horrify that ASPCA. They feed him, beat him, taunt him, fondle him, throw rocks at him, work to get him drunk, and try to strip him naked so they can see if he's hung like a horse.

The new teacher (Cho Nam-kyeoung) is perplexed. Not horrified. More curious. Obviously she can't hear the forboding music that's underscoring much of the action. What's going on here, she wonders, as she handwrites letters of longing to a boyfriend who'd rather get smashed with his military buddies then trek out to nowheresville to visit his lady. She never quite puts it together. And once she gets raped, she puts such desires aside. Village in the Mist has her confessing pleasure about her assault but that's PTSD talking. Or male fantasies being projected. Or reprehensible cohorts not calling out the creators on their crap.

Mandala: Monk Mania

Horror. Vintage noir. Dystopian scifi. Sports movies. Movies about teachers. Movies about underdogs. There are plenty of movie genres that I like fairly consistently. One very specific niche is Korean movies about monks. These are different than Korean movies about priests (Love So Divine, The Divine Fury, Thirst) which tend to focus on notions of guilt. They're also different than American movies about monks (The Golden Child, Seven Years in Tibet) but who couldn't see that coming. Yet my experience with this Korean sub-genre has proven consistently enjoyable from the high-brow Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... And Spring to the low-brow Martial Monks of Shaolin Temple. Strengthening my predisposition is Im Kwon-taek's artfilm Mandala.

A buddy pic about a nomadic ascetic (Ahn Sung-ki) and his carousing elder (Jeon Moo-song) who's been excommunicated from the brotherhood, Mandala asks plenty of questions about the meaning of life. So which monk holds the key to enlightenment? Well, if you're asking that question at the (admittedly oddball) end, you've somehow missed the point. There is no one way. Or there is one way for each one and what that one is may be one of many if there actually is a way at all. Sound too heady? Too bad for you! Slow-moving but deep-diving, this picaresque tale is filled with philosophical musings if not much of a plot.

Battle of the 38th Parallel: Fiancée Under Fire

It's a testament to the wide range of prolific director Im Kwon-taek's vast cinematic output that you can find his movies at the Korean Film Archive's magnificent archival YouTube channel as well as at the Wu Tang Collection, an online pulp movie aggregator with an incredibly different agenda. A war pic heavy on artillery and light on character development, Battle of the 38th Parallel falls comfortably in the latter's more lurid lineup. Ghastly dubbing and severe editing (that's cut a half-hour from the film) make the pulp appeal here even greater; any dialogue — or monologue, for that matter — comes across as so much filler before the next air raid, the tank invasion, the next tossed grenade, the next sniper shot, the next launched missile. Dead bodies proliferate.

Oh sure there's a plot involving a young woman (Kim Chang-suk) in search of her enlisted boyfriend, a commanding officer for the South ("When you see your fiancee, tell him I died like a soldier") but having crossed enemy lines and made her way to safety, she's not about to rest on her laurels. Once she's received that less-than-romantic letter from her paramour, she's back on the road to shellshocked Seoul to deliver a late serviceman's diary to his anguished family. Strangely, the long journey that made up most of the film is completed in reverse in the blink of an eye. That's what happens sometimes to squeeze in your final message before the end: "We must never allow such a war to occur again!"

Farewell to the Duman River: Im Kwon-Taek's Strong Start

It's kind of amazing that celebrated Korean director Im Kwon-taek's first film, Farewell to the Duman River, led to such an illustrious career. This melodramatic war pic isn't your conventional crowd-pleaser or arthouse crossover with atmospheric music in short supply, an extended chase scene fairly devoid of tension, and periodic jumpcuts that jar the viewer with no clear intent. And yet, Im's maiden voyage into moviemaking is definitely more than watchable, and not just for its feel-good story of revolutionary college students and their endless shootoffs with the Japanese.

What makes Farewell to the Duman River so undeniably delightful is the trio of actresses driving much of the action. Moon Jeong-suk plays a femme fatale supplying the rebels with needed info while Kim Hye-jung captivates as a man-hungry mountain-girl triggered into heat by the wounded hero. Neither woman is a match however for Eom Aeng-ran. In the role of the lead's pregnant girlfriend, she goes from demurely seeing her man off to war to robbing the family safe to turning the tables on an amoral uncle (Heo Jang-kang) to chasing the enemy through the snow with a machinegun and not one ounce of mercy. The gun-fight on skis got me delirious yet nothing beats a good ol' fashioned machine gun mama.

The Coachman: No Simple Retread of The Bicycle Thief

The opening sequence of The Coachman reveals a young man speeding away on a stolen bicycle while the rightful owner runs after him shouting "Thief! Thief!" Sound familiar? Well, the deja vu is intentional for director Kang Dae-jin's Silver Bear winner of 1961 owes a lot to Vittorio De Sica's neorealist landmark . This Korean variation similarly explores a struggling working class family's existence, specifically a widowed deliveryman (Kim Seung-ho), his eldest son (who keeps failing the governmental exam), his deaf-mute daughter (who's trapped in an abusive marriage), his other daughter (who's dabbling in escort services) and his youngest boy (who we met in that thrilling first scene).

To dub the overall situation grim would be accurate but such a description would also shortchange much of the kindness with which the story is infused. You sense a real mix of respectful privacy and shared concern among the family members who are blessed with truly caring, self-sacrificing friends, including a truck driver (Hwang Hae) who comes to their aid multiple times, and a housemaid (Hwang Jung-seun) who takes extreme action to save a man in whom she sees inherent goodness. Nothing's idealized here, mind you — especially the rich who exhibit a narcissism that's never gone out of date. But The Coachman lifts the spirits with a happy ending that defies the odds and feels plausible.

The King: A Royal Pain in the Ear

If I were in a generous frame of mind, I would say that Han Jae-rim's The King was fashioned in the spirit of Citizen Kane with its prolonged opening monologue or was nodding to early Korean films like Crossroads of Youth, which — though silent — were often screened with a byeonsa (a live storyteller) who supplied narration and dialogue in real-time. But to elevate Han's movie with such associations would be dishonest because The King ultimately comes across as an inexplicably recorded film treatment that's been provided with high-glam accompanying visuals. At least 80 percent of the time, we're forced to listen to lead character, corrupt attorney Park Tae-Soo (Jo In-sung), as he jabbers on and on about his career while Kim Woo-hyung's luxe cinematography attempts to make up for the lack of dialogue via gorgeous images. There's not a scene that isn't gloriously shot, even when the action gets downright nasty. (You may be forgiven for closing your eyes when the rabid dogs eat men alive.)

I'm not sure Han is entirely to blame for the film's failure though. What's also missing is a riveting performance at its center. Whereas Han's earlier (and much better) The Show Must Go On was grounded by the eternally impeccable Song Kang-ho as a mobster consumed by work, The King has at its center a cypher: one well-dressed but underdeveloped lawyer who registers more as lost than conflicted. He's neither as intriguing as his nemesis — and boss — Han-Kang Sik (Jung Woo-sung) nor as inherently likable and dynamic as his sidekick and lackey Doo-il (Ryu Jun-Yeol). And since neither of these guys talk nearly as much as Tae-soo, we're constantly resenting a soundtrack monolopolized by an anti-hero who turns into antimatter right before our very eyes.