Top 10 Movies of 2023 (Sort of)

The thought occurred to me when putting together this curated list of Korean movies (which once again I had trouble paring down to ten from the 50 I'd watched throughout the year) that it might be helpful to think in terms of "favorites" instead of "best." Because sometimes I really do like movies that are far from cinematic paragons. Some aren't even "good" in the generally accepted sense. Yet every film on this list merits inclusion. They're all memorable in terms of storylines and casts. More importantly still, they tickled my fancy. And so, with this new framing device in mind, I present to you my recommendations for 2023.

1. Decision to Leave (2022): Enjoying a Greek tragedy doesn't depend on being surprised by every twist and turn. Nor does this ingeniously constructed Park Chan-wook crime pic.
2. Voice of Silence (2020): Director Hong Eui-jeong's thrilling feature debut concerns a mute man-child suddenly in the middle of a botched kidnapping crime gone awry.
3. Love & Leashes (2022): The kinky Korean counterpart to stateside's 50 Shades of Grey is surprisingly nuanced, often humorous, and consistently smart. With gender roles reversed!
4. Exit (2019): Lee Sang-geun's heartpounding rom-com follows two recreational rockclimbers who find unwanted adventure when a poison gas hits downtown Seoul.
5. Midnight Runners (2017): In the eternal fight between good and evil, I expect some hyperbole. In Kim Joo-hwan's police cadet mystery, I relished it.
6. Deranged (2012): Director Park Jeong-woo's timely disaster-disease pic somehow feels as if it were a direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
7. Night Journey (1977): This period drama about a dissatisfied bank clerk (Yu Jeong-hie) taking stock of her life is a feminist critique with surreal touches.
8. Kill Boksoon (2023): With all due respect to slick action pics The Killer and Ballerina, Jeon Do-yeon's performance as the title character pushed this one into the lead.
9. Space Monster Wangmagwi (1977): The camp factor runs high in this alien-invasion flick in which a Godzilla is remote-controlled from outerspace.
10. Shark: The Beginning (2021): This underdog story with male bonding between sexy guys in the juvie appears set to kick off a series, given its title. Bring it on!

Obsessed: Repressed

I'm aware that the erotic romance Obsessed is all about a Vietnam vet have an extramarital affair with a subordinate's wife. But Kim Dae-woo's suffocatingly repressed film reminds me more of the perverse Reflections of a Golden Eye than Coming Home or The Deer Hunter. There's the way Song Seung-heon fills out his white T-shirt a la Brando; the fawning officer (On Joo-wan) whose marital sexlife is dead. There's a scene in which two men (Song and Bae Sung-woo) dance together for God's sake. I'm not struggling to locate queer subtext here! The sex scenes implicate as well: The first one finds the husband doing all the work (and it looks like work); the second one finds his mistress (Lim Ji-yeon) making all the noise while he looks detached; the third one almost looks like he's giving it to her up the butt, doggy-style.

I don't know that any of this is intentional on Kim's part but goodness, the gender-studies term-paper practically writes itself. What else are we to make of the bit when the mother-in-law tells her cheating daughter that she's glad the young woman's a cheater because the cuckolded son is nothing short of "evil"? From what I observed, he's simply ambitious in the same way that the antihero's wife is. Is smuggling the devil's work? Or am I reading too deeply? Could be. There's a terrific moment midway through the film where a dance instructor (Yoo Hae-jin) comments on the America's televised moon landing: "Damnit there's nothing. Using all that money to get to such a place." I suppose the same could say about my review. Obsessed might just be an exquisitely costumed movie without salacious subtext but definitely with a temperance message.

The Anchor: Dying On-Air

It's not always a bad thing when you know where a movie is headed. In Jung Ji-yeon's psychological thriller The Anchor, for instance, you can tell early on that the dominating, alcoholic mother (Lee Hye-young) may be the major liability for her newscaster daughter (Chun Woo-hee) in the days ahead. To what extent remains to be seen but we know that this mom undermines self-esteem, meddles in the marriage, and serves up slices of rotten fruit without an apology. But to get to the bottom of the matter might require a hypnotist. Luckily, the psychiatrist (Shin Ha-kyun) — who also happened to treat the suicidal woman who boomeranged the aspiring anchorwoman's career handled a similar case years ago — is available to administer treatment.

Unfortunately, everything's a bloody mess by the time the doctor has put the pieces together and guided the client through the dreamscape. As in blood in the abdomen. Blood on the wrists. Blood in the hands. Blood on the lips. The number of ruined wardrobes runs high in this one. That the color of the final outfits worn by two of these women is white is not lost on me! Nor that the fabrics look likely to stain. Network YBC appears to have continued its nightly new program without a blemish. I fear for the next generation though. You see, there's a baby who going to survive this nightmare and that little one's life is going to be crazy.

This Is Korea!: No, This Is Propaganda!

There's something revolting about pretending the worse thing that happened to Korea in the 20th century was communism when the Chinese and Soviets were actually responsible for combatting Japanese occupation. But such is the myth-making of John Ford's This Is Korea!, an agit-prop film produced by the U.S Navy that's really more about American soldiers abroad than the citizens they're supposedly protecting. We hear of men from New York, Georgia, Maine, Idaho, and California; soldiers who haven't had a hot meal in two months come Christmas; fighters trekking across the hills while carrying their homes upon their backs; "...walking when they still can; carried when they can't."

What we hear about the Koreans is that they are refugees in their own country (a curious choice of words!), getting vaccines for typhus and smallpox (which they don't understand) and primarily homeless children taken care of by local nuns. More time is devoted to seeing bazookas in action and tanks and grenades and flame-throwers. Was there a time when people saw the weaponry and thought, "How cool is that?" Were people charmed by an orphan named Little Babe Ruth DiMaggio and moved by a silver star pinned on a uniformed chest followed by footage of napalm being dropped? It's tough to hear the narrator mispronounce the capital city or mutter "Fry 'em out, burn 'em out, cook 'em" and believe that Ford and company care about the Korean people at all in relationship to this war. Delusional, demented, Red scare cinema at its worst? Mission accomplished. What are they fighting for? As the film itself states: "Maybe it's just pure cussedness."

Bodyguard: Protecting Those in Power

You can tell that writer-director Song Seung-Hyeon has put a lot of care and forethought into his thriller Bodyguard. There's recurring imagery (a chess set), recurring gags (the airgun), and an attempt to build a layered narrative (flashbacks, blurred for effect). But Song's film, like the feet of its damsel-in-distress (Yoo Ye-bin), has two many band-aids. Why does a high-ranking businesswoman of a billion-dollar company have only a fancy watch as an asset to offer her protector (Kang Seok-chul) as payment? Why does the third banana in a collection agency blurt out a fast-food dish when he see this same woman's photo? And why do we care what happens to her anyway? The answer in every case is because it serves the overall plot.

Song's inability to make Bodyguard progress from Point A to Point B — as well as the acting that gets us there — feel natural means that the film is never more than an apprentice's contrivance. When a rescue intervention abandons nearly all the characters, you have to wonder what's really going on here! But since Bodyguard is Song's freshman effort (I believe), I wouldn't write him off too quickly. He casts fairly well, and has brought in a good cinematographer, an excellent fight choreographer, and a talented location scout as well. Let's give praise where praise is due. Admittedly, some costume choices give pause — What's up with the baseball hat with three earings in its bill? — and one "surprise" necktwist you can see a mile away, but overall Bodyguard has me guardedly optimistic about what comes next for Song. Might the sophomore slump be this filmmaker's jump? Let's all buy a ticket and see.

The Battleship Island: POW Power

Internment camps are a nightmare. In The Battleship Island, the wartime hellscape is a prison island doubling as a mining facility at which prisoners are forced to dig for coal under inhumane conditions. The best way to escape such a dire fate is to know how to play a musical instrument: So clarinetist band-leader Lee Gang-ok (Hwang Jung-min) and his prepubescent, singing-dancing daughter So-hee (Kim Su-an) have a glimmer of hope, as they entertain the enemy with a small jazz band.

Playing pop songs for your enslavers may sound like a form of torture but working underground and breathing coal dust doesn't sound any better. And there are prepubescent kids — with pickaxes and chizels — in the subterranean realm as well. Thug-turned-good-guy Choi Chil-sung (So Ji-seob) may have fought his way into a line boss job for the betterment of his countrymen but there's only so much he can do. And who needs his help more? Elder Yoon Kyung-ho (Lee Kyung-young) or comfort woman Mallyon (Lee Jung-hyun)?

Then again, maybe since this is a movie, all of these stories are going to come together for a great escape. So how's that going to happen when you're stuck on an island with no mainland in swimming distance? Teletype machines, copied keys, pornographic distractions, traded cigarettes, and sheer fortitude, that's how! Considering how often it rains and how often there are explosions on this prison-island, it's going to be tough even if things go smoothly. Then again, survival might be enough.