Bloodline: Poor, Poor Miserable Need

Opportunity is scarce for the residents of the hilltop shanties in Bloodline: a sock-selling daughter (Um Aing-ran) gets pressured to become a "hostess"; a cigarette pedlar (Shin Yeong-gyun) can't scrounge together the doctor's fee for his wife (Lee Kyoung-hee). In this part of town, one tough-luck story is no better or worse than the other. Newspaper serves as wallpaper; your daily outfit has at least one patch. And generally, it goes downhill from there.

Neo-realism Korean-style rarely disappoints and Kim Soo-yong's group portrait of North Korean defectors making hard-scrabble lives for themselves just south of the 38th parallel is no exception. This career-making film, shot in expert black and white, covers a lot of territory too including swank nightclubs, military barracks, construction sites, and street merchants. You can see the inequities in all these environments and how inflexible the system is to change. Is it any wonder that the older generation (Kim Seung-ho, Hwang Jeong-sun, Choi Nam-hyeon) have grown dissatisfied with the life they chose? Was it worth all that trouble and effort just to get a family-sized can of papayas? The spark of hope is reserved for those who get out!

Awards: Blue Dragons for Best Film, Best Actor (Kim), Best Actress (Hwang), and Best Supporting Actor (Choi); Grand Bell for Best Film.

Kongjul & Patchui: Cinderella Minus a Stepsister

My boyfriend was leaning towards gay romantic dramas. I was feeling action flick. What's the compromise? A puppet fairy tale told in stop-motion animation! How lucky we were to stumble on Kongjul & Patchui, a Cinderella variation with one nasty stepmother, one narcoleptic stepsister, and one heaven-sent helpmate with magical powers. The Korean fable also incorporates a sinister shaman, a talking lotus, and a band of good-natured animals as skilled as gymnasts as they are as an orchestra. These additions aside, the basic rags-to-riches story remains the same as the Grimms' "Little Ash Girl," right down to the magic slipper.

Like her princess-in-waiting counterpart, Kongjul is faced with Herculean tasks that get accomplished thanks to four-legged friends: When stepmomma insists she plow a field full of rocks, a telepathic bull materializes out of nowhere to get the job done. When that same stepmonster orders Kongjul fill a huge jar despite its sizable crack, a suicidal frog jumps to her rescue. Beyond this furry support system, Kongjul also has a powerful ally with supernatural powers. (Exit Fairy Godmother. Enter Buddha's emissary.) I was pretty sure a happy ending was ahead but like the claymation mouth of Kongjul's step-sibling Patchui, this movie felt like it could go anywhere.

Traces: War Dance

The Japanese leadership's inability to fathom why a Korean wouldn't want to pretend to be Japanese during occupation could be viewed as dimwitted patriotism. Yet as one savvy soldier notes: Why would a Korean want to adopt a Japanese name when "Japan is using Koreans as human shields"? In Shin Sang-ok's Traces, the resistance to this arrogant oppressor gets personal, too, once Korean gisaeng (Mun Hie) discovers that the Japanese artist (Oh Yeong-il) painting her portait is the son of the soldier that killed her dad.

She's not wrong to think less of him. He's one of those guys who believes that love allows him to compromise the safety of everyone — and so he stalks an independence activist (Lee Dae-yeob) who owes him a favor which he keeps cashing in. When said activist gives him a lecture on the purpose of "the movement," you almost expect him to say, "Yes, that sounds like an important cause but can't you help me win back my lady?" Luckily, he doesn't have time to say that, because there's a raid...followed by a rainstorm and a drawing class and a prize for his oil painting (which is withdrawn since he won't change its name). The draft propels him towards the front line. Desertion won't bring him any closer. "36 years of pain won't go away that easily."

Yaksha: Ruthless Operations: The Thing of It

You may not have heard of the Chinese city of Shenyang but it's bigger than Hong Kong, Rio, or L.A.. and home to one of the largest Koreatowns in the world. It's also the setting of the spy flick Yaksha: Ruthless Operations in which the reinstatement of self-righteous Prosecutor Han (Park Hae-soo) depends on surviving gunfights and fistfights among South Koreans, North Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, and Russians what want "that thing you were going to give me" — as top black ops guy Ji Kang-in (Sol Kyung-gu) puts it. (That "thing" probably has to do with reunification!)

So can a small crew completely dressed in black take on every other nation's secret service in order to save an imperiled, orphaned daughter who likely has whatever it is they need? Writer-director Na Hyeon's crime pic has tension aplenty but no true suspense. No sane moviegoer doubts whether the good guys will prevail. This is vigilante justice, which tends to be infallible on screen. "If we were work by the law then we can't accomplish anything." And based on how the American Supreme Court is swinging, you'll likely fantasize about the three musketeers instead. (Enter Lee El, Park Jin-young, Song Jae-rim with guns cocked.)

Set Play: An Underage Hustle

Set Play looks as though shot with an Instagram filter. The footage comes with a cool blue cast, like the cinematographer pushed IG's Lark icon right before writer-director Moon Seung-wook shouted, "ACTION!" And what disturbing action lies ahead: Two teenaged boys (Lee Jae-kyoon, Sung Chul) hustle side money via petty theft and... entrapping then bribing middle-aged women in a sex-with-a-minor scheme. The "stud" of this crime duo comes up with the shorter end of their 70/30 stick; he's got a financially compromised mother (Park Hyun Sook), a brain-damaged brother, and a physically abusive drunk father (Kim Jung-seok). Who else is going to play man of the house?

Can he escape from the soul-crushing day-to-day by pushing his ditzy crush (Go Min-si) around in a shopping cart? For that matter, can she escape from her directionless existence by shooting a music-video on a manually activated merry-go-round? Do either of these activities gain glamor when shot on a mobile phone? (Because both are!) The world inhabited by these youngsters is bleak, culminating — at one point — in a fight scene during which the victor punches air. It's a powerful metaphor for rage without an outlet. There's no sunshine ahead either. By the end, Moon might've well as told his cameraman to switch the IG filter to his namesake filter or Willow or Inkwell as every color gets drained from these poor kids' lives.