Deranged: I'll Drink to This One

It's hard to believe that the highly effective disaster pic Deranged was released years before COVID-19 changed our world; director Park Jeong-woo's heartracing horror movie feels as if it were made in direct response to our ongoing pandemic. Apparently, tragedies like the Coronavirus and HIV have followed the same patterns as the flu of 1919 and H1S1 (which is indeed referenced in an early moment of Park's film). Has mankind learned nothing from history? The answer is always, yes and no. In Deranged, the nightmare is ecological and biological, governmental and economical: a lab-generated, mutant horsehair worm has morphed and jumped species so that now humans are being ravaged by the freaky, squiggly parasite.

The onset symptoms are fairly inconspicuous: an increase of appetite, a building thirst. Who hasn't had days — or weeks — when they were especially hungry for no good reason or decided to pursue the idealized eight glasses a day? So you can't expect a drug rep (Kim Myung-min) or a low-level cop (Kim Dong-won) to immediately register that something's wrong with their family members, especially since the two brothers are both burdened by insurmountable debts and working two jobs to make ends meet. What you can expect, per usual, is that the pharmaceutical companies will be putting profit above public concern when the egg-infested shit hits the fan. The worst part is that nowadays, the idea that Big Pharma is actively creating a self-serving hellscape isn't the least bit far-fetched. Everyone has pretty much accepted that drug companies are evil. In Deranged, worms control some people's brains; money controls the minds of others.

Jung_E: She Works Hard for the Money for Her Kid's Operation

As devoted mothers go, you'd be hard-pressed to find one as committed to the well-being of her child as Jung_E (Kim Hyun-joo) in the somewhat philosophically inclined sci-fi movie that bears her name. After spending her young daughter's formative years fighting the inevitable robot takeover of Planet Earth in order to raise money for her kid's cancer treatments, she then spends a posthumous second-life as an eternally cloneable brain inserted into a metal humanoid body that is the basis for that same child's military experiments. That her adult daughter (Kang Soo-yeon) has grown up to run a pilot program for the military industrial complex proves a disturbing way to honor her mother's memory, considering the work is all about mom being being pummelled and tortured in a recurringly fatal combat re-enactment. To reference the James Bond theme sung by Madonna, this noble lady survives only to "die another day."

The movie documenting mom's inability to become the ultimate war tool raises timely questions about immortality, genetic inheritance, human commodification, and, most of all, mankind's downward slide. But personally, I had a tough time admiring a woman who could make it her life's work watching her mother get beat up. I also didn't see the benefit in saving one of thousands of replicate brains so the android encasement could forge out its own existence... where and to what end? Yeon Sang-ho's action-packed flick should be commended for not devolving into pure video game nonsense (which is basically where it starts) but given his previous zombie classic Train to Busan, I wish he'd pushed his Woman vs. Machine narrative a little further than "one mimeographed mother has finally broken free of the System." That's good. It just could've been great.

The Battle of Jangsari: Teens at War

Call me a sentimental fool but The Battle of Jangsari is one of those war movies that makes me gasp then cry. Co-directors Kim Tae-yong and Kwak Kyung-taek — and their team of screenwriters who've divided the English- and Korean-speaking dialogue — trot out familiar types: the wild outcast (Kim Seong-cheol), the sensitive leader (Kim Min-kyu), the big-hearted ox (Jang Ji-gun), and the quiet one (Lee Ho-jung) with a secret you'll guess early on. But then they ratchet up our sympathy by making these characters teens without training. This is a war pic about earnest young soldiers who are largely expendable, a troop of rosy-cheeked recruits who are treated like cannon fodder, a secondary concern, collateral. Actually, the behind-the-scenes talent didn't make that happen. The Battle of Jangsari is based on a true story; in the Korean War, over 700 real high school students really were recruited, uniformed, armed then sent on this Pyrrhic mission before they'd even finished boot camp.

Their easily avoidable predicament makes the adults a despicable lot. Imagine sacrificing a high school as a diversionary tactic! The Korean general (Myeong Gye-nam) behind the operation is loathsome; the smooth-talking American general (George Eads) doesn't come across much better. He just a better bullshitter. There are two adults who truly rise to the occasion. One is a self-sacrificing soldier (Kim In-kwon) who knows they've no business puttings these kids' lives on the line so he keeps putting himself in harm's way. The other is a stylish reporter (Megan Fox) for the New York Herald-Tribune. She's the one who advocates against their deployment and pesters about their rescue; she's the one who recognizes their collective tragedy even before it's begun. She also looks fabulous, as if she'd miraculously walked out of a noir film from the early '50s. I think both sides of the war could agree on that.

Exchange: Deep Trap: Don't Have Kids

How far would you go to get pregnant? I'm not talking surgical operations or fertility pills. I'm talking drinking booze spiked with giant centipedes, eating a boiled eyeball, downing a shot of fresh boar's blood, and chewing on a fetal egg. Would you do that? Do you want a baby so bad that you'd basically do anything suggested by some crazy guy (Ma Dong-seok) who runs a backwoods cafe that you discovered on the internet? Would you let your husband (Jo Han-seon) sleep with this guy's mute sex slave (Ji An) — who may his sister, his wife or his adopted daughter — simply to combat erectile dysfunction? Before you answer that, let me ask one other question: Does the person who says "yes" to these questions sound like someone who would make a good parent?

I've certainly never wanted a kid that bad. Nor have I suffered the pain of a miscarriage. (And director Kwon Hyeong-jin's Exchange acknowledges that such a loss can be traumatic for the man as well as the woman.) What I do know, however, is that when such a person (Kim Min-kyeong) is willing to go to such extremes, the price is going to be higher than expected. Violence in all its forms will be in no short supply. One ridiculous touch: The impotent husband is repeatedly seen wearing the brand Le Coq Sportif! There's little humor in this film, though. This is Ma at his grimmest. Not fun.

The Swordsman: A Simple Slice of History

One of the advantages of writing a passable swordfighting screenplay is that you don't need to create a lot of dialogue. All you need to do is to set up some clang-worthy conflicts. In Choi Jae-hoon's historical drama The Swordsman, the taciturn title character (Jang Hyuk) has two good reasons to unsheath his prong-tipped blade: to defend his king (Jang Hyun-sung) and to rescue his daughter (Kim Hyun-soo). He's sadly less concerned with the fate of the common people or the staff at the local Buddhist temple. Partially blinded by stray metal shards that lodged in his eyes during one fateful duel, he's reluctant to get involved unless absolutely necessary. Although, after watching him slice-and-dice crowds of well-armed enemies (guns included), I question his reticence to support nobler causes. Is stopping slavery and sex trafficking honestly beneath his dignity?

And is his royal highness worth fighting for? The Swordsman doesn't make much of a case for the noblest of nobles. Loyalty for tradition's sake comes up short, even if this movie's bad guys are mostly distinguished by their hairdos: there's shaved head (Ji Geon-woo), teased punk bouffant (Ji Seung-hyeon); a braided mohawk (?), and Disney half-ponytail (Joe Taslim), their confident leader. The one time he gets mad is when someone messes with his Instagram model acupuncturist (Angelina Danilova). In this way only is The Swordsman ahead of its time.

Decision to Leave: Deadly Details

Park Chan-wook's films always have such humorously quirky details. In Decision to Leave, there's a handheld electric massager, the home health aide's clear plastic apron, the cop's ingenious chainmail glove, a Martin Beck crime novel, and the audio translator that switches the voice from female to male when it goes from Chinese to Korean... Of course, all of that would mean nothing if Park didn't bring that same attentiveness to narrative as well. And like many Park movies, Decision to Leave has a complicated plot to pair with these elements.

When a police detective (Park Hae-il) investigates a potential suicide, he becomes obsessed with the surviving wife (Tang Wei) who his cop partner (Go Kyung-Pyo) feels sure is the dead man's killer. Then the whole thing repeats — a new squad sidekick (Kim Shin-young)— again in another city. That's when Decision to Leave really soars. Complications become complexities; Park's decision to create simultaneities — allowing the past and present to coexist in a frame — grows even more poetic as history repeats itself in the linear storyline. And isn't the past, inherently, always something of a blur? Aren't we always haunted by the choices we make?

These are classic Park questions. And aside from the atypically restrained violence (a turtle bite may be as gruesome as it gets), this is a quintessential Park movie, right down to the score by Jo Yeong-wook (a composer who's been collaborating with Park fairly consistently since 2000's Joint Security Area). Everything is so carefully constructed that you have to admire the craftsmanship, even if you occasionaly can predict where it's going. A Greek tragedy doesn't depend on being surprised by every twist and turn or the ending. Nor does this Korean one.

When the Buckwheat Blooms: Rape Isn't Love

Lee Seong-gu's black-and-white melodrama When the Buckwheat Blooms is built around one distasteful event: After fabric peddler Heo (Park No-sik) falls in love-at-first-sight with Bun-i (Kim Ji-mee), he chances upon her nude-bathing, chases her down in a field, then rapes her...from the heart? For him, it's the beginning of a life-defining tragic romance; for her, it's the first in a series of sexual assaults that will plague her young womanhood as she's sold from boatsman to cattle rancher to pimp...then back again. That she longs for the father of her subsequent son doesn't seem like a lingering passion so much as a warped survival instinct shaped by the legacy of trauma. As for Heo, his years-long search for his victim impacts our sympathy for this "hero" because we know he'd try his best to provide her — and their child — without hustling her from man to man. No. It's not the Disney ideal!

But despite his best efforts to rescue his damsel in distress, as he runs from one end of the country to the other, his quest proves ultimately fruitless. By chance, however, he does reunite with two old friends — a snake oil salesman (Heo Chang-kang) and a paper dealer (Kim Hie-gab). These old pals of yesteryear are there to remind him that there are other loves in this life and that the fraternal bond is no less important than the familial or erotic one. Heck, When the Buckwheat Blooms even celebrates the affection between man and packmule. The break between Heo and his beast of burden is among the most tender scenes in the film. (Maybe he too is sold from one guy to the next!) But for me, it was nice to see a four-legged friend have his work and devotion acknowledged, too.