Will You Be There?: With a Bloody Nose

I assume the bloody noses suffered by middle-aged Soo-hyeon (Kim Yoon-seok) are caused by his lung cancer and then exacerbated by those mysteriously acquired time-traveling pills. I'd also guess that his oncologist wouldn't recommend jumping across decades while undergoing any form of medical treatment. But his 20-something counterpart a.k.a. young Dr. Soo-hyeon (Byun Yo-han) doesn't particularly care about what side effects are going to be triggered for his older self by shuttling back and forth through the years. He wants to save his dolphin-training girlfriend (Chae Seo-jin), let his future self be damned. If that might mean sacrificing the daughter (Park Hye-soo) he hasn't met yet, so be it. Most people's allegiances are going to be with the living persons they know...

And life gets complicated when you break a cardinal rule of science fiction. Like "Never talk to the past version of yourself." That's a basic no-no. You know, the butterfly effect and all that! So what will be the ultimate sacrifice for love in Hong Ji-Yeong's Will You Be There? And might it involve a puppy named "Potato"? Or the ever-trustworthy Uncle Tae-ho (Kim Sang-ho)? Or his younger but just-as-reliable iteration (Ahn Se-ha)? I'm also curious whether the guy with the magic pills couldn't have provided a placebo so that all those involved only thought that everything had turned out for the better. After all, as that old guy put it: "Life is what happens when you can't sleep."

The Human Trap: Murder on the Orient Campsite

The conventional trope for horror movies that take place in the woods is to have a handful of young 20-somethings (with no cellphone service) terrorized by a deranged slasher driven by motives rooted in the past. But writer-director Lee Moon-young isn't adhering to the rules with his low-budget fright flick The Human Trap. The crazy guy roaming the woods? Not necessarily the killer. The two couples communing with nature? Neither romantic nor platonic. Oh sure, Ki-young (Kim Dong-ho) has known Jeong-ho (Park Yeon-woo) since the two men were in high school. But that doesn't make them friends. Similarly, Ji-ae (Kang Byeol) may be the boss of Chae-Rim (Kang Seung-hyun). But that doesn't mean these women are pals. To the contrary, the message of The Human Trap is this: Good friends are impossible to find!

You may guess that the camp guide (Song Young-kyu) is the villain. Or Doctor Ma (Moon Won-joo). Or the insane, unshowered guy (Kim Ki-nam) running around the forest and stealing supplies. And you wouldn't be wrong. But you wouldn't be right either. Not totally. Because The Human Trap is more misanthropic than your run-of-the-mill scary movie. Like those tricky Agatha Christie mysteries of yore: Everyone is suspect because everyone is base. The nicest person in The Human Trap isn't the hero. It's the one who survives. You'd be a fool to trust any of them! And watch out for the bear traps.

Intruder: Outside Insanity

How crazy do you like your thrillers? Do you like killers who infiltrate the lives of their victims' survivors? Serial childnappers with a troubled past? Secret religious cults with a base in the woods? Hallucinatory issues caused by prescription drugs doled out by a sketchy psychiatrist (Lee Yo-sung)? Police officers who are easily persuaded by the dark side? Because Sohn Won-pyung's Intruder has all that and more. When a creepy woman (So Hee-jung) reaches out claiming to be a family's long-lost daughter/sister/aunt, the good news comes at a cost. The loyal houseservant disappears; the parents (Choi Sang-hoon, Ye Soo-jung) turn into nosebleeding zombies; and their son (Kim Mu-yeol), a recently widowed architect, loses control of every aspect of his life, including his sulky daughter (Park Min-ha).

While it's pretty clear early on that this newest addition to one very rich family is up to no good, Intruder keeps you on the edge of your seat as you try to figure out the antagonist's motivations. Why this family? Why now? Is she out for revenge? Is she on the frontline of an alien invasion that's targeting humans weakened by grief? Is she engaged in devil worship? If so, how high up the ladder is she? Or has she taken evangelicalism taken too far? Maybe this is simply a case of pure insanity made worse by rampant complicity? I'd call this a pulp version of Parasite, focused on the plot twists more than the politics. Popcorn recommended.

A Man of Reason: Welcome Crimes Against Logic

Watching most contemporary action pics requires a tremendous suspension of disbelief. But if you can let go of particulars like how the combined blood loss from car accidents and bullet wounds would naturally prohibit a character from fighting and running at a physical peak then enjoyment may follow. I say "may" because sometimes these impossibilities are impossible to ignore. However, in actor Jung Woo-sung's directorial debut A Man of Reason such concerns did not trouble me. I was perfectly willing to accept such nonsense as a young girl (Ryu Jian) outrunning a trained dog in a dark house and the hero maneuvering through traffic as easily as a fleeing motorcyclist tossing bombs. A Man of Reason isn't concerned with keeping it real. It's focused on keeping it entertaining.

With that goal in mind (and a performance that feels like an invitation for Tom Cruise to remake), Jung packs his picture with visually stunning sequences: a gang of stuntmen (I mean thugs) fight to gain control of a spinning car in a fancy lobby; a pair of survivors dive into a giant birdbath as a building explodes into glorious fire. Would a recently beat-up second-banana of the underworld be able to survive multiple nails shot into his throat by a deranged assassin couple (Kim Nam-gil and Lee Elijah)? Could a single assailant take on an entire room of killers with only a flashlight and a glistening knife? If you're asking yourself such questions you're missing the point... and all of this movie's many pleasures.

The General's Mustache: A Novel Twist

Life is a mystery. Oh wait! I'm getting ahead of myself. Who killed photojournalist Kim Chul-woon (Shin Seong-il) before he could finish writing his parable of a novel? That's the supposed mystery in The General's Mustache, a movie that's not too worried about solving its principal crime. That's because the elusive nature of life keeps distracting our two lead investigators, Detective Park (Kim Seung-ho) and his young partner (Kim Seong-ok), an aspiring ladies' man. So while this procedural pair may grill the dead man's ex-girlfriend Shin-hye (Yoon Jeong-hee) and his landlady and his mother, they're also asking themselves what constitutes a relationship and what justifies a breakup. And when they reflect on the life of the girlfriend's father, about the very nature of faith and religion and friendship. Deep, baby, deep.

It's hard to crack a murder case — or establish the cause of a suicide if that's what's going on — when you keep getting swept up in existential questions or being distracted by the potential legacy of a childhood accident that left a forehead scar. Luckily for us, the philosophizing in The General's Mustache is exactly what makes this movie such a treat. Director Lee Seong-gu's film is bursting with ideas whether he's introducing a nude model or a game of "confession," riddling about a new kite or utilizing alternate visuals like cartoons and splashy paintings to help him tell his whackadoodle story. If you can call it a story. I'd call it poetry.

The Hut: Ferocity, Thy Name Is Woman

Life in the small town of Suri is pretty wretched for the womenfolk at the end of the Chosun dynasty. At least, it is if director Lee Doo-yong's supernatural flick The Hut is to be believed. On the one end, there's rape; on the other, an enforced chastity so maddening that widows are driven to self-flagellate, take hot irons to their flesh, and drive a knife savagely into the nether regions then let the wounds fester. Sex positive, Suri is not. And yet, rather than call for a feminist revolution, all the townspeople are obsessed with that one male heir (Choi Seong-ho) who's been in a coma and may be possessed by a local spirit who's holding a justifiably major grudge.

And so they — ironically — call in a female shaman named (Yu Ji-in) who, in order to perform the necessary exorcism to free the town's heir presumptive, needs to play detective and findout who this infuriated phantom might be. Waving a shaking stick will only take a spirit-purging process so far! So... Is it the late Sam-dol (Won Namkoong), a local halfwit who lived in a ramshackle cabin that once served as a holding place for bodies in transition from this life to the next? Or is it the young woman to whom Sam-dol was pimped out because the family matriarch (Hwang Jung-seun) mistakenly thought her charge was about to die, sexually unfulfilled? Whoever the ghost is has every right to be pissed because they've spent a generation captured in a piece of paper trapped inside a bottle that was sealed inside another airtight vessel and then buried underground.

Madame Freedom: She Done Him Wrong, He Done Her Wrong Too

Han Hyeong-mo's midcentury melodrama Madame Freedom features a daisy chain of backstabbers: Professor Jang (Park Am) has a wandering eye for his goody-goody grammar student (Yang Mi-hie). The misses (Kim Jeong-rim) two-times the professor with two men: her slimy boss (Kim Dong-won) and her scalawag neighbor (Lee Min) who's also an impromptu dance instructor and amateur photographer. She's encouraged in her worst behavior (embezzlement, adultery, child negligence) by her none-too-bright best friend (No Kyeong-hie) who, for her part, is being swept off her feet by a Ponzi scheme charlatan (Ju Seon-tae) with a drawn-on mustache. The betrayals don't end there but you get the point. Fidelity is passé!

Is Han implying that the rise of capitalism coincides with the death of morality? Are Western values cheapening Eastern culture. I don't think so, although the drive to make a buck definitely isn't helping anyone to be a better person — except maybe the nightclub's sensational dancer (Na Bok-hui) who shimmies, bumps, grinds, and mugs deliciously and perhaps for tips. Her routine &$141; backed by a big band with four saxophones — is definitely one of Madame Freedom's high points. Amidst all the partner-swapping, this solo dance feels refreshingly innocent. If everyone's going to cheat, you might as well dance alone!

Mist: The Foggy Town

When a big city pharmaceutical executive (Shin Seong-il) vacations in his sleepy hometown without his wife in tow, memories flood back as he reunites with former school buddies then falls into an affair with a local music teacher (Yoon Jeong-hee). Who's orchestrating this extramarital fling is a matter of opinion. Both seem to be manipulators who are going to end up feeling a bit abusive and used when this brief tryst comes to a close. Indeed, writer-director Kim Soo-yong's refusal to cast one as villain and one as victim is what makes Mist such an intriguing film. This is a movie more about mood and psychic states than action and conflict.

It's also exquisitely shot. Jang Seok-jun's black-and-white cinematography is a marvel to behold, especially the longshots in which we see the protagonist crossing an empty lot or moving in and out of a night fog with his love interest or witnessing a funeral procession passing by on a hilltop. Mist is a film comfortable with art for art's sake, with the idea that a picture can tell a story as well as dialogue. Watching a liquor bottle empty out on the floor thereby ruining a nearby paperback is a quick, concise way to show us someone is tired and drunk; just hallucinated ants on a work document lets us know someone is sick and tired of their job. This confident artfulness really elevates Mist to classic status. I'd watch it again. Won't you watch it once?

Uprising: Directorial Signatures

Park Chan-wook co-wrote Uprising and there are times when you can definitely feel his signature touch on this historical epic of class rebellion: the sadistic whippings of a young boy's calves, the repeated motif of a knife piercing a hand, the final bloody duel in an engulfing fog — a swordfight that involves three men, not two. But Uprising is actually a Kim Sang-man movie which means if you're hoping for the intricate and delirious perversity that inhabits so many of Park's film, you're going to be a little bit disappointed. In truth, I found Uprising sometimes confusing for whereas Park always manages to juggle multiple storylines effortlessly, Kim's interweaving of tales had me repeatedly having to resituate myself as to whether I were in the present or the past.

The central story is compelling, however. Two childhood friends — one a mid-ranking nobleman (Park Jeong-min / Jin Jae-hee), one a slave (Gang Dong-won / Lee Yoon-sang) — are unable to truly meet as equals in a society ruled by an insensitive king (an especially effective Cha Seung-won), despite the BFFs repeated attempts to do so. Instead, they're often pitted against each other even when a common enemy emerges: the nose-hacking Japanese general (Jung Sung-il) whose Joseon-era brutality is like a harbinger of the 20th-century horrors to come. The final resolution isn't a predictable one. Which I credit to Park who's always full of surprises.

Luck-Key: So Many Favorites

The worst part of picking a favorite actor is suddenly you've demoted all the others to "not favorite" status. Anyone who reads this blog knows I'm a huge fan of Song Kang-ho. But do they know that I'm also quite enamored of Yoo Hae-jin, too? If not, let me set the record straight. He may have a more uneven resume than Song but he's been unforgettably hilarious in Pirates, amusingly creepy in Fatal Intuition, and irresistible in The Secret Mission. When Yoo is on, he's nothing short of fantastic. And Luck-Key might be Yoo at his very best. The story of an amnesiac pseudo-assassin who after a knock to the head thinks he's a failed actor with a talent for carving vegetables, Lee Kae-byeok's comedy thriller finds Yoo making the most of every moment. I dare you not to adore him. Really, I dare you.

His counterpart — a suicidal puppy dog (Lee Joon) — has the flashier new life, post-injury. There's plenty of takeout, lounging in a luxury apartment, fancy clothes, and getting protective of the pretty star witness (Lim Ji-yeon) who lives on the floor below. When the two worlds converge, it's ridiculous but Yoo's so entertaining that when you learn what his real job is, you're like "Okay. Whatever. What happens next?" Maybe marriage with the EMT (Jo Yun-hie) who brought him to the ER? Don't tell me she's too young. She's 32 to his 46. Love is for risktakers!

Officer Black Belt: What a Crime

Kim Joo-hwan definitely has a workable formula. In previous and much better movies like Midnight Runners and The Divine Fury, he presents a pair of likeable guys (rookie cops in one; demon chasers in the other) who decide to join forces in order to seek justice (legal or celestial, as the case may be) then end up becoming best friends forever in the process. Why doesn't it work this time around? Once again, he's got a naive protagonist (Kim Woo-bin) knee-deep in a endless fight for the good. Once again, he's got a truly evil villain — this time, a serial child molester (a hulking Lee Hyun-geol) devoid of remorse. There's even a charismatic mentor (Kim Seong-gyoon)...for the good guy, not the bad.

What Kim doesn't have is any characters with nuance. Or particularly thrilling fight sequences. Or a female character with a purpose. Or a compelling back story. Or a sense of someone growing as a person over the course of the film. Not with the hero. Not with his gamer sidekicks. Not with his dad. The biggest change we witness in Officer Black Belt is the young martial artist's decision to go from being a punky bleach-blonde to a raven brunette. That his beautician must do double-duty as the movie's almost-rape victim and the hero's stand-in auntie will give you an idea of how contrived it all feels. Officer Black Belt, you're looking tired.

Inside Men: He's Got the Look

Does an actor have to be beautiful to hold your attention? No. But it helps. Case in point: Lee Byung-hun. Woo Min-ho's Inside Men may have enough plot twists for a Hallmark mystery miniseries, but the real pleasure comes from seeing the many photo-ready looks of Lee who, despite a detachable prosthetic hand here, is eternally ready for the runway. Part of the time he looks like a retired surfer, his long black hair slicked back like a simulated mullet. Later he looks like he's auditioning for a sequel to the musical Grease. Still other times, all cleaned up with a feathered coif, he's practically walked out of a Thierry Mugler '80s lookbook — broad shoulders included. All this strutting and modeling may sound distracting but to the contrary, the visuals simply add another layer to Woo's political thriller which, for the record, is lavishly shot. And it's not as if Lee can't act!

He's got a time-tested track record to prove it too: Joint Security Area (2000), A Bittersweet Life (2005), I Saw the Devil (2010), The Fortress (2017)... Plus, he's in excellent company with a surrounding cast providing him with rich scene partners, especially Lee El as a glam old flame willing to sacrifice everything (for a price) and Cho Seung-woo as an always suited prosecutor frantically trying to get out of the trenches. One could argue that Inside Men is actually Cho's movie since so much of the screentime is devoted to his aspirational quest. But his life dream's success would be impossible without Lee, and frankly, so would the heart of this movie. Beautiful!

The Terror Live: Glib Newscaster Hears the End

Movies about radio show hosts always feel like they could be repackaged as one-man-shows. And Kim Byung-woo's The Terror Live is no exception. A thriller about a demoted anchorman who hopes his comeback has arrived in the form of a terrorist who's blowing up bridges, this modest movie takes place entirely in a recording studio with characters entering the sound booth and broadcast in via video while our antihero, Yoon Yeong-hwa (Ha Jung-woo) "negotiates" with the crazed caller (Lee Da-wit) who somehow has managed to plant explosives in a nearby bridge and in a nearer-by earphone. Hang up on this guy at your own risk!

Yoon isn't that sympathetic. He's betrayed his wife, a fellow reporter (Kim So-jin) whose life is endangered; took bribes from his slimy boss Cha Dae-eun (Lee Kyoung-young), and tossed his new crew aside without blinking an eye when opportunity arose for a better job. I wouldn't go so far to say as he should be executed for such actions but most of the film you're wondering how he's going to redeem himself. The answer may leave you shocked... but not as much as the Police commissioner (Kim Hong-pa) whose guest appearance on the impromptu interview show takes a bloody turn.

Fatal Intuition: The Pharmacist Needs a Chill Pill

From the moment he appears on screen, you just know that actor Yoo Hae-jin is going to be the killer of Fatal Intuition. There's something sinister about the way he interacts with the young girl (Ryu Hye-young) who hangs out in his pharmacy and then he's got the right sneakers and the right type of head twitch. How could he not be the one? And who cares? Yoon Joon-Hyeong's thriller isn't that concerned with keeping us ignorant about who did it. This movie's more about whether the latest victim's older brother (Joo Won) is going to get some form of justice, either via an incompentent cop or with the help of a neuorotic psychic (Lee Yoo-young). But if you've already figured out who the killer is, you probably can predict the ending in advance too.

Don't get me wrong. Fatal Intuition isn't a slog. There's a kind of tension that inhabits this movie because you're not sure who'll die next. And you know it's going to be someone. And then someone else. Everyone's a possible victim: the simpleton (Lee Joon-hyuk) who steal young women's panties, the old guy (Son Sung-chan) getting a haircut at the senior center, the businesswoman (Son Ji-na) who hangs out with the local guys... And in a small town that's clearly in the midst of hard times, you suspect that murders aren't so easily solved. Unless you point a finger at someone new in town. And in this case, you can and you can't. No one wants to think that nice unlicensed pharmacist is evil!

The Huntresses: Charlie's Angels in Korea

I can hear the elevator pitch for this one:

Remember Charlie's Angels? The TV show. Not the movie. Yeah, I know it's been done before. But this time, it's different. How so? Well, they're all Korean. And the Kate Jackson part (Son Ga-in)... Yeah, the one with the short hair. This time she's gonna be the youngest and an expert in explosives, too. Sure, we can give her a love interest (Song Sae-byeok). No, she won't be the brains. That'll be the Jacklyn Smith role (Ha Ji-Won). I told you this was different! Yes, exactly. The one with the prettiest hair. Plus, she'll have PTSD. And she's sweet on a swordsman (Joo Sang-uk) who happens to have PTSD, too. I'm sorry. Did I forget to mention it's set during the Joseon Dynasty? Anyway, no Farrah. More Cheryl Ladd (Kang Ye-won). With a husband (Lee Hee-seok) instead of a sister. Of course, we'll have a Bosley (Ko Chang-seok). No. No Charlie! Why? Because it's NEW! We want to keep it fresh.

Naturally, the movie gets made. And it's cute, thanks to some funny bits like a makeout session between the youngest angel and her virgin love interest; and some martial arts moves involving a pair of lethal yo-yos. If the CGI wasn't so expensive, I bet they would've made this the pilot of a TV show. One can only hope for a sequel. If Drew Barrymore's Angels merit a second feature then Park Jae-hyun's The Huntresses does as well... But who will prove to be the Aaron Spelling of Seoul?

Missing 2: Not a True Sequel

I'm not sure what Cho Sung-kyu's Missing 2 shares in common with Kim Sung-hong's Missing. The two movies have different directors, different writing teams, and — from what I can tell — entirely different casts. There's not even a repeat of the plot which last time concerned a serial killer who chained up his female victims and made them act like dogs. Instead, this "sequel" finds everyone playing the murderer: the corrupt police detective (Lee Won-jong) who's come to claim some unlawfully acquired money from his doublecrossing partner at a secluded cabin; a pretty boy actor (Seo Jun-Young) who's resentful of his manipulative agent (Kim Hye-na) and desperate for his big break; and an unemployed hiker (Hahm Eun-jung) whose storing incriminating evidence in her spotless pink backpack. The good guy, if you've got to have one, is a bespectacled goof (Bae Ho-geun) who's giving off serious stalker vibes.

So with all these killers on the loose is Missing 2 the least bit scary? Not one bit. You'll see people wielding knives, scythes, golfclubs, pistols, and treelimbs; you'll see heads slammed, ankles caught in bear traps, and people choked with bare hands. None of it registers. To the contrary, Missing 2 — like one of its characters — is life on celluloid when you're sitting around waiting for something better to happen. Cigarette, anyone? Got a match?

Mission: Cross: A Bulletproof Husband and Wife

Don't give up on Lee Myung Hoon's Mission: Cross too soon. For what first seems like an irritating thriller about an invicible cop (Yum Jung-ah) whose sudden conflicts with her subservient husband (Hwang Jung-min) could be solved pretty quickly if they'd simply have a honest sit-down talk ends up being a playful action pic celebrating the virtues of commitment in marriage. I'm trying to remember the exact point in which the movie went from kinda bad to more-than-pretty good. Was it when the real identity — and the upscaled wardrobe — of the villian (Jeon Hye-jin) is revealed? Or when the heroine inadvertantly gets ahold of the USB drive at the secret hideout? Or when husband and wife reaffirm their marital vows to each other with gunware? Whenever it happens, that change suddenly transforms Mission: Cross into a highly improbable and entertaining romcom.

Lee's movie also has a veiled homoerotic subplot involving two of the lady cop's subordinates. Alas, the script only hints at this narrative via some overly defensive comments one officer (Jeong Man-sik) make about his sexuality, followed by a car with floral-crocheted seatbelt-covers that are likely the work of his squad colleague/lover (Cha Rae-hyung). But the movie only alludes. Too bad! You also get the feeling that another secondary story involving the demented torturer (Kim Byeong-ok) and his heavily tatted assistant (Kim Kyu-baek) somehow ended up on the cutting-room floor. What's left for the projector room is enough, though. Microwave that popcorn. Showtime has arrived.

Don't Buy the Seller: Target

I'm really enjoying these identity theft movies coming out of South Korea right now. Citizen of a Kind (2024) pits an energetic factory worker against a Chinese scam syndicate; Unlocked (2023) finds a spyware expert moonlighting as a serial killer; and now, Don't Buy the Seller (2023) turns Craigslist secondhand shoppers into easy targets for bloodthirsty hackers. All are B-movies that you can't easily disregard because they're dealing with our now-universal fear of losing control of our lives via our phones. Don't Buy the Seller may not go as far as as the terrorized set-up in Call (2020) with its supernatural elements but maybe that's why this movie works. Identity theft, cyberbullying and cybertheft are scary enough.

My one gripe with Park Hee-kon's dial-a-doom is that its heroine (Shin Hye-sun) starts off as a savvy young woman unwilling to take flack from her harrasser and diligent enough to track him down online. But when her cyberstalker pranks her then hunts her down, she loses her autonomy completely. Don't we all hate when a Final Girl stand to the side while the hero-detective (Kim Seong-gyoon) gets the hell beaten out of him by her tormentor (Im Sung-jae), simply as a cliched plot point. How long does it take to find the nailgun or a plank with a nail in it or a shard of glass? I guess long enough to drag the scene out to justify a feature-length movie.

Title Variations: This film is also known as Target.

The Wild: Backstabbers

Betrayal is in no short supply in Kim Bong-han's The Wild. Just out-of-prison pugilist Woo-cheol (Park Sung-woong) can't trust his buddy, the crime lord Jang Do Shik (Oh Dae-hwan) who can't trust the conspiratorial druggie cop Jo Jeong-gon (Joo Suk-tae) who can't trust the philosophically inclined drug trafficker Gak-soo (Oh Dal-su) whose probably the wisest of the bunch when it comes to knowing whom you can and can't trust. He's certainly savvier than femme fatale Bom (Seo Ji-hye) who's life is especially complicated as she used to date the guy (Bin Chan Uk) whom Woo-cheol punched to death in the boxing ring seven years ago. Or did he?

The Wild is the type of movie that keeps the characters — and the audience — guessing. Whom will Woo-cheol align with? Can you ever trust a drug addict's word? Would a Korean cop throw in his badge and learn to speak Thai from a paperback guide as prep work for international escape? Not all the questions will keep you on the edge of your seat. But one of the performances will. As a jaded North Korean whose unlawful import business is a source of fascination for all, Oh Dal-su relates street smarts and strategic thinking. Although he's hardly the lead, his character is the one any sane criminal would seek out for allegiance because he's so quick to understand motives and modus operandi. But can you trust him?

Emergency Declaration: Airborne Virus

What do you look for in disaster movies? A single, superhuman savior? A diabolical villain who doesn't get killed 'til the very end? A populace rallying to support the surviving victims desperately trying to survive. Han Jae-rim's heartstopping Emergency Declaration has none of these components. Who cares? From its opening scenes, this one's a nail-biter. Credit Im Si-wan as a terrorist with a high creep factor. Once you've seen him stitch poison capsules into his body in the airport bathroom, you know this guy's major trouble! Credit Lee Byung-hun as a divorced dad trying to remove the stigma from eczema. How fortunate this man's got a history as a heroic pilot. Credit Song Kang-ho as a detective who'll go to any extreme to bring his wife home to safety. When isn't this actor great?

Oh yes. Everyone's in top form in this movie which also defies expectations by creating a believable narrative in which collective self-sacrifice feels noble but not far-fetched. Running at 2 hours and 21 minutes, Emergency Declaration isn't a slow-burn but more like a brush fire that keeps getting bigger and bigger and scarier. Block out some time to watch it. You're not going to want to hit the pause button.

2037: Prison Ingenue

Life behind bars can be downright cute when you're a pretty young thing (Hong Ye-ji) who has bludgeoned her rapist (Hyun Young Kyun) to death as a way to protect her deaf mom. Your cellmates will paint the walls of the bathroom with your favorite flower, protect you from sexual predators in the prison yard, and sew baby clothes using stolen scraps of fabric should you happen to end up pregnant. Additionally, the warden (Jeong In-gi) may brew you chrysanthemum tea while a guard will put aside some sticky rice buns. Even the judge at your retrial will dramatically shorten your sentence because you find life in prison scary. Will you appreciate all the attention? Not if you're in Mo Hong-jin's girl-bonding flick 2037.

All you wanted from life is a government position. Your dreams are modest. You career goals momentarily derailed. But you didn't ask for special treatment from your fellow convicts. You didn't ask your the prison doctor for an abortion or work relief. What you did do is stockpile painkiller pills and keep to yourself, banned your mother from visits and wrote appreciative letters. Some might say you were not appreciative enough. Others would say you were suffering from PTSD. I would say, I wish you'd been in a different women-in-prison movie that really tested your mettle and got you to toughen up. Would the Roger Corman or Jonathan Demme of Korean cinema please step forward already? In 2037, we've got a Korean Kathy Bates (Kim Mi-hwa).

Asura: The City of Madness: Politics as Usual

Watching this movie, as I did, the day after Trump got a bloody ear at a rally, Asura: The City of Madness lent credence to conspiracy theories that our former president staged his own assassination attempt, dead bystander notwithstanding. For somewhere early on in Kim Sung-su's political thriller, an equally corrupt, avaricious mayor redirects the attention of the media by having his head clandestinely sliced by a box cutter to salvage his rah-rah conference of self-promotion. That self-directed mutilation is especially creepy because Mayor Park Sung-Bae (Hwang Jung-min) — like DJT — emerges bloodied and defiant, using the injury as a way to paint himself as a martyr. Like Trump, too, he's surrounded by thugs with fear-based loyalty and questionable sense. The only thing saving (dis)grace for Park is that the justice department — represented by Special Prosecutor Kim Cha-in (Kwak Do-won), Chief Prosecutor Oh (Choi Byung-mo) and a hunky detective (Jeong Man-sik) — only ever-so-slightly less slimy.

Stuck between the two feuding parties is Han Do-Kyung (Jung Woo-sung), a dirty cop willing to turn traitor on his boss if it means making money for his wife's costly medical treatments. The compromised morals of his cheery BFF Sunmo (Ju Ji-hoon) have more to do with career opportunities with a long game in mind. Eventually, both characters go off the deep end: one on his way up; one, his way down. Neither have luck on their side or as someone says at one point they're probably "trying to be clever with an inadequate brain." Recurring thought: Stay out of behind-closed-doors-with-a-knife politics.

Alienoid: The Return to the Future: ET2

If you missed my earlier review, I thoroughly enjoyed the first Alienoid movie last year. Why that flick didn't land on my top ten list for 2023 may be simply because I sometimes make faulty judgments in my annual "best of" roundups. And so, I was excited about the return of this sci-fi franchise: A world where human bodies double as ET prisons and robots work for good. Did I want to see more of the star-crossed lovers (Kim Tae-ri and Ryu Jun-yeol), the humanoid cats (Lee Si-hoon and Shin Jeong-geun), and the two comically cocky sorcerers (Yum Jung-ah and Jo Woo-jin)? You bet I did. I even welcomed the addition of a blind swordsman (Jin Seon-kyu) and the expanded role of his equally skilled descendant, a customs-officer/auntie (Lee Hanee) who's been waiting her whole life to fight alien invaders on behalf of our planet Earth.

Now, time travel movies are tricky. But time travel sequels that recount the exact same story while incorporating different elements are even trickier. Meaning Alienoid 2 does get confusing and redundant depending on who you are as writer-director Choi Dong-hoon flips between the 14th and 21st centuries. New viewers will never truly understand all this business about the red gas bubbles. Old viewers are left to utter joyously "Oh, that's right..." as memories of A1 plot-points get triggered. Like Park Hoon-jung's The Witch: Part 2, A2 doesn't quite blow the door of its predecessor via a reorienting return. But a fresh coat of paint on something you like can sometimes suffice for an evening's pleasure.

Wonderland: Love Never Dies

After you died, would you want to live on as a SIMS character? Or, perhaps more importantly, is there anyone who's dead whom you wished you could still contact for videophone consultations? Kim Tae-yong's fascinating fantasy Wonderland explores the lives of a handful of characters for whom the answer to these questions is a troubled yes. A grandmother (Sung Byoung-sook) and her charge get to talk to dead mommy (Tang Wei) while she lives out her posthumous fantasy as an archaeologist. A simulator executive (Choi Woo-sik) seizes the chance to converse with the dad he barely knew before an awkward funeral he attended professionally. Even the flirty stewardess (Bae Suzy) gets to chitchat with her comatose lover (Park Bo-gum) as if he were spending time on a space station instead of in a hospital. [I'm assuming she had to get extensive paperwork signed allowing her to create a faux version of her boyfriend despite his continued existence on earth.]

As we watch the various characters struggle with the unreality of losing someone who is technologically kind of within reach, Wonderland poses interesting questions about the nature of existence and the price that comes with not dealing with grief head on. To its credit, Kim's curious scifi scenarios repeatedly reveal that maintaining pseudo-relationships exacts a toll as the interpersonal relationships in the here-and-now warp out of shape. I wouldn't classify Wonderland as a horror movie but the AI substitutions are subtly, unmistakably scary.

Exhuma: International Exorcisms

Anyone who believe that just because I've watched all the Omen movies — including the laughable made-for-TV fourquel, the 2024 prequel, and the 2016 series Damien — means I'm a sucker for most movies involving demon possession would be... 100% correct. And so when my boyfriend asked me what Korean movie I wanted to watch next, once Exhuma had been presented as an option, I was deaf to every other candidate, awards be damned. Director-writer Jang Jae-hyun apparently shares my obsession: His 2015 fright flick The Priests concerns two holymen investigate a potential demonic assault; his 2019 follow-up concerns a cult tied to serial murders.

With Exhuma, the horror auteur largely ditches Christianity for homegrown shamanism to great effect. Choi Min-sik plays a geomancer enlisted by a matrilineal shaman (Kim Go-eun) to exorcise a familial spirit whose tormenting his descendants, across the Pacific and across three generations (including the newborn heir). The feng shui of burial gets complicated when these two and their two wingmen (Yoo Hae-jin and Lee Do-hyun) unearth a casket too big for a human and wrapped in barbed wire. What happens next? Hell breaks loose — with a decidedly Japanese pedigree. And so Korea's efforts to get Japanese to leave them alone now extends to the spirit world too.

The Secret Mission: Mal-Mo-E: Word Gathering

Language reflects culture, as writer-director Eom Yu-na's The Secret Mission thrllingly points out. The story of the creation of a Korean-language dictionary in defiance of Japanese rule, this historical film turns what might've been a very dusty topic — the collection of words, definitions, and regionalisms into a stirring rally cry not only for Korean independence but for the very existence of different cultures as reflections of ways of being and thinking worldwide. It's also a buddy pic in which uptight scholar Ryoo Jeong-hwan (Yoon Kye-sang), and illiterate single father Kim Pan-soo (Yoo Hae-jin) must get over their differences to acchieve the greater good.

Once they've ironed out their difference, they've got help, thankfully: a drunkard poet (Woo Hyeon), an old teacher (Kim Hong-pa), a woman (Kim Sun-young) with her husband in prison, a man with his wife in prison, and all Pan-soo friends from prison, too. Unfortunately, their leader's dad is a traitorous professor who's aligned himself with the conquerors. Don't worry: He'll get his! A sub-plot involving Pan-soo's kids — Soon-hee (Park Ye-na) and (Deok-jin) Jo Hyun-do — leads to some serious tears at the end. Why? Watch the movie and find out. You'll cry but it's worth it.

Be With You: Stormy Weather for the Win

The romance Be With You isn't labeled as scif but it could be. It's a time traveling tearjerker in which an amnesiac mother (Son Ye-jin) comes back from the dead, only to fall back in love with her husband (So Ji-seob) and child (Kim Ji-hwan) again. The rebirth of affection for the kid is easy to understand: He's quick, conscientious, loving, and adorable. The return of warm feelings for the dad is tougher to fathom. He seems to be cursed with bad luck, made worse by an inability to act responsibly despite being the sole caregiver for their orphaned child. Upon returning to earth, she might've been better off being smitten with her husband's best friend, a baker (Ko Chang-seok) with a better job and a sweet willingness to take on parenting duties, no questions asked.

Well, there's no explaining love. And to his credit, Be With You's father is handsome, earnest, and hasn't lost his swimmer's build despite dropping out of competition years ago. (Is it all the bike-riding?) He's also devoted if a bit dim. Some people prefer a partner not as smart as them, I guess. I only wish he wasn't telling all those little fibs all the time. Honesty is such an important part of a relationship — especially if it's only going to last the rainy season, no matter how often the cars get washed and how many four-leaf clovers you paste to your window.

Devils: The Details

The majority of suspense movies grip you with one of two questions: "Who did it?" or "Will they get away with it?" But Kim Jae-hoon's insane thriller Devils prompts other queries. Like "How did those cops go from running after a car on foot to chasing that same car while in their own vehicle?" And "When will there be brain transplants that don't involve the shaving of the head?" If you suspect that I'm knocking this Grade A B-movie then you're wrong. Because the central plot twist here — a killer and a cop swap minds/bodies/roles — gets the other particulars down splendidly. Devils had me wondering repeatedly: "Does a movie need to make sense to be thoroughly entertaining?"

The manipulation. The scheming. The alliances. The betrayals. The psychological warfare. The desparate attempts to prove who you are. Oh yes, when it works, ye old Devils positively excels. The acting is superb — especially between the two leads, who each convince you they're playing two parts in tandem. As the body that once housed the police officer and now houses the serial killer, Oh Dae-hwan exudes creepiness and cruel confidence. His counterpart Jang Dong-yoon relates demented disorientation. As for their "partner" in blue, who must discover what's real in this unreal new world, Jang Jae-ho brings just the right amount of wide-eyed bafflement. Admittedly, as previously mentioned, there are holes: The whole notion that extreme torture gets you a reliable confession is pretty sick. But maybe mind-swaps are like other organ transplants: You develop a taste akin to the original owner's... In this case, the predilection is sadism. But who had it first? The cop or the criminal?

The Roundup: No Way Out: Here He Goes Again

The Roundup movie franchise so far seems to get less plausible and more habit-forming with each new installment. No Way Out, the third entry, has made its hero — Detective Ma Suk Do (Ma Dong-seok) — a cardboard cutout containing infallible intuition and insane physical resillience. He can figure out where the bad guys are going, where they're hiding the drugs, what kind of punch is about to be thrown on the spot, more often than not. And he can be hit in the head by a lead pipe repeatedly and come up swinging. His most fearsome opponents this time around are the Japanese "fixer" Ricky (Munetaka Aoki) and the stylish sociopath Joo Seong-Cheol (Lee Jun-hyuk). Ma's support crew is neither as fierce nor particularly memorable because The Roundup movies are ultimately about a one-man-operation committed to JUSTICE while wearing a tight shirt.

From its opening scene in which Ma takes down a cluster of thugs on the street right on through the final fistfights in which knives aren't merely ineffective but broken with a punch, Lee Sang-yong's entertaining action pic is ultimately a corny vehicle for Ma's undeniable teddy bear charm. I certainly cringe at the notion that people are more likely to confess or cooperate with a cop if met with physical violence but No Way Out is unapologetic about its messed-up politics. Maybe this is what the fascists want: a bulky do-gooder who instinctively knows right from wrong and beats the latter into a pulp then acts like a little boy until the next crime comes up on the police radar.

The Ghost Station: Scratch That

Did you know that "ghost station" is actually a term? I didn't. It refers to a train station that's no longer in use as a stop but still in use for its tracks. So I suppose those stations below stations inhabited by mole people but devoid of trains have a unique term of their own. Anyone know what that is? But I digress. Jeong Yong-ki's The Ghost Station about a subway station where children ghosts are causing the deaths of passengers and conductors is not looking to redefine the horror genre. This film settles for a formula which, frankly isn't a bad thing when done well. And The Ghost Station qualifies.

Na-young (Kim Bo-ra) is a cub reporter whose first viral contribution to the rag where she works misgenders the It Girl of summer, a trans woman with long hair and a longing to litigate. In order to save her job at the rag where she works, Na-young needs a scoop. Her best buddies, two transit workers — played Kim Jae-hyun and Oh Jin-seok — tell her about a spooky recent death where they work. Suddenly, her career is back on track! Her boss (Kim Soo-jin) still hates her but the office is buying her a birthday cake, even though it's not her birthday. That part's easy to explain. What's harder to figure out are the mysterious scratches that are appearing on the back of people's hands and on their necks. By the end, The Ghost Station has made that clear enough for the general readership to understand.

Haunters: Control Issues

When we first meet cursed Cho-in (Gang Dong-won) in Kim Min-suk's Haunters, we're not sure if this abused little boy (Yang Kyung-Mo) is going to end up the hero or the villain of the story. We know that his mother hopes to protect him from his own worst self but his childhood is brutal: physical and verbal violence that can't be hidden by the dirty blindfold he's forced to wear. But from such origin stories, superheroes are made, right? Um... Not this time. As we'll soon find out, once he's grown up, Cho-in will have been warped into pure evil, engaging in petty theft and mass murder, as the situation demands — assisted by his eye-engined superpower: Mind-Control.

His nemesis Im Gyoo-nam (Go-Soo) is, fittingly, quite the opposite. Unable to brainwave people into action; immune to the the time-stopping telepathy of Haunters' hellraiser, he's counting on his upbeat attitude, managerial promotion, and his two best friends — one Turkish (Enes Kaya), one Ghanian (Abu Dod) — to help him fight Cho-in when the latter's enraged. Gyoo-nam's gift for miraculous recoveries will come in handy, granted, but when your opponent can puppetmaster every other living human on earth (except babies), the odds are definitely not in your favor.

Citizen of a Kind: Incoming Call, Outgoing Swindler

Everyone knows you don't give out your social security number or your bank account digits or your password codes over the phone. But old people forget. As do people in dire circumstances — like those with a burned-down house and no substantial savings. Citizen of a Kind's Deuk-hee (Ra Mi-ran) falls into this latter category. A homeless mother with two children and no money for daycare or rent, she's scammed on her cell during a shift at the laundromat where she works (and sleeps illegally at night). When she temporarily loses custody of her kids, she's propelled into action to track down the top of the Ponzi scheme: a menacing sadist (Lee Mu-saeng).

How she manages to get to the bucket-hatted mastervillain involves a number of impulsive actions that had my boyfriend going: Why did they do this? Why don't they do that? To which I could only reply, "It's a movie." I'd further add, it's a pretty entertaining one. Under Park Young-ju's direction, Citizen of a Kind propels its heroine through hard-to-resist comedy and hard-to-watch violence without ever feeling forced or flimsy. Basically a chick flick in which one unlucky laundress gets to solve a crime with three gal pals (the uptight Yeom Hye-ran, goofy Jang Yoon-ju, new kid-on-the-block Ahn Eun-jin), this is one feel-good movie with a get-real message: When the real-world woman upon whom this movie is based caught the head swindler, she got neither the promised reward nor an out-of-court settlement. In life, doing the right thing sometimes has to be payoff enough.

The Childe: The Chase Is on

Coming from the poorest side of town in the Phllippines, streetfighting gambler turned big-time heir Marco (Kang Tae-ju) naturally has no one to turn to once he gets to South Korea. His newly discovered, snarky half-brother (Kim Kang-woo) wants him dead, his long-missing father (Choi Jung-woo) on life support wants him dead, and his conniving little half-sister (Jung Lael) wants him dead — universally for uniquely self-serving reasons. The other new people in his life are a pair of kidnappers — a man (Kim Seon-ho) and a woman (Go Ara) — working independently from each other yet sharing a desire to keep him alive long enough to turn in him (or his body) for millions of dollars. Given The Childe's reality, Marco spends a lot of time on the run. But where to?

The two competing kidnappers may be a better bet since they buy him some time. But which one? One's a femme fatale who hit-and-run him with her car as a form of entrapment; the other's a Cheshire Cat dandy who seems psychotic in his clarity of purpose. Korea's current auteur of adrenaline Park Hoon-jung doesn't give Marco much of a choice. Instead, Marco ends up wherever he ends up as a matter of bad luck and narrow escapes. His ailing mother (Caroline Magbojos) desperately needs an expensive operation but how can Marco secure any inheritance to save her when he's simply trying to survive. Thrilling!

Fabricated City: Player One Ready or Not

A compulsive, unemployed video game player (Ji Chang-wook) gets framed for a murder. Sounds fun! Except Fabricated City also has a nasty prison rape and terrifying jailhouse beatings as well. Too real for you? Well, our falsely convicted young man is a former Tae Kwon Doh champ who can MacGyver a dart-thrower behind bars and protect his pressure points when under assault — as one sympathetic murderer keenly observes. Too preposterous? Okay, then you're really going to recoil when our ill-fated hero gets visited by the dead! As for me, Fabricated City is my kind of movie!

Strategic self-mutilation, ingenious jail-breaks, alternate online identities, intricate crime syndicates, and (finally) a cop who isn't trigger-happy... The juicy details keep piling up, including an adorable black couple who have come to Asia to backpack and bless the fugitive with a "shit car" before getting on a plane for happier trails. Yet for all its gloss, director Park Kwang-Hyun's crime thriller isn't mere escapist fare. Screenwriter Park Myeong-chan — an early collaborator of Park Chan-wook — has crafted a script that's making critical commentary on gender roles, universal surveillance, institutional power, and technology with every twist of its incredibly twisted plot. The final comeuppance is over-the-top, beyond the scope of the believable, even ludicrous, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Fabricated City is a fantasy of retribution (executed by a sweet group of misfits) against all the systems that routinely fail us.

Turandot: Popera From the East

The Korean movie Turandot has infinitely more to do with Broadway musicals than Puccini operas but it does call to mind those PBS specials (of both realms) in which live productions are recorded then televised for mass consumption. As such, choruses stand around idly when the principals sing; leads also hold poses in anticipation of their first lyric when a song begins. As someone who's spent a good amount of time in the theater, I don't mind these static moments but someone expecting an experience akin to Chicago or Cabaret might easily feel otherwise. But for those game for a Live From Lincoln Center-style experience...

Turandot (Bae Daehee) is a princess who heartlessly reigns in a kingdom of darkness; Prince Calaf is the heir of a neighboring realm brought to this doomed land by the search for his missing father. How Ping (Lim Choon-gil), Pang (Kim Dae-han), and Pong (Park Jung-pyo) came to be there, I've no idea. There are riddles to solve; marriages to propose; and ballads to croon or belt as the situation requires. The singing is universally strong. A little research suggests that South Korea has a deep interest in musical theater and with former K-pop stars Bae (Vanilla Lucy) and Yang Seo-yoon (The Pink Lady) among the cast, writer-director Kim See-woo's production has no shortage of vocal talent. I enjoyed some of the sparkly crowns as well.

The Witch: Part 2 - The Other One: Here We Go Again

I was thoroughly entranced by The Witch: Part 1 - The Subversion, a crazed mashup of evil scientists, ruthless assassins, and rebellious teens whose adolescence has been uniquely challenging. Yet even though The Witch: Part 2 - The Other One has all those elements to a degree, they're neither as prominent nor as playfully done. Writer-director Park Hoon-jung basically assumes we already know that Dr. Baek (Jo Min-soo) is a mad scientist; that the protagonist (Shin Si-a) is the counterpart to prior heroine Koo Ja Yoon (Kim Da-mi); and that a whole military industrial complex is funding the creation and the elimination of these two women warriors. What The Witch: Part 2 is missing, frankly, is a reason for being outside the introduction of a new character.

Luckily for us, this cinematic universe remains pretty entertaining. Once again, the set-up is a Davis versus Goliath story. Our poor nameless waif is being chased down by genetically engineered and genetically enhanced bounty hunters who are thirsty for mutant blood. There are a couple of narrative snags, like why go after your prey with weapons you know she's survived in the past when you could increase your chances of overpowering her if you simply doped her during one of her many food-binging episodes? But the history of humankind abounds with people making obvious mistakes over and over and there's nothing to suggest that the characters in The Witch: Part 2 are smarter so much as faster, stronger, and wilder than regular Joes. The people of the future are total animals.

CCTV: Someone's Always Watching

Now that we carry our phones wherever we go and sit at desks topped by computers with built-in cameras, our activities and whereabouts are pretty much monitored from dawn to dusk. Is paranoia inevitable? Or has this technologically invasive element turned us into performers 24/7? Either way, the news crew in CCTV is having a particularly rough go of it this particular day because their on-the-job recordings are being invaded by a murderous spirit, recalling the station's sordid past. Which seems to have little influence in inhibiting them from committing various distasteful acts within the workplace, supernatural be damned.

Indebted to The Ring (possessed videos), The Blair Wood Project (found footage), Poltergeist (soul-swallowing televisions), The Exorcist (demon possession), The Sentinel (whited-out eyes), and Terror Train (New Year's Eve setting), writer-director Kim Hong-ik's low-budget horror flick can come across like a skeleton assembled from random bones. The action — appropriately perhaps — takes place in some in between time where staffers work on cell phones and paper notepads with nary a laptop or USB drive in sight. And despite the murders piling up in the newsroom, everyone's hesitant to call the police. No one trusts authority. Not in this building! How can they when there are so many backstabbers around that you're hardly surprised when one character (Kwak Do-won) gets stabbed in the eye. The takeaway: Trust no one. Even if they've got the evidence on a VHS tape. (Which is another way of saying, I didn't buy this movie's late-in-the-game whodunit explanation.)

Seire: Murphy's Law for Babies

In Seire, superstitions aren't necessarily true but believing in them certainly shapes behavior. The big taboo in Park Kang's horror flick is doing anything unusual or untoward in the first few weeks following your baby's birth. Apparently, going to a funeral or — heaven forbid! — a burial can have disastrous consequences: Every apple you slice in half will be rotten to the core; your infant is going to get a sudden fever; you're going to start committing petty crimes — even stooping so low as to rob a homeless man in the streets. And then there are the nightmares.

Seire isn't exactly frightening but it does disturb. Because you sense that our antihero (Seo Hyun-woo), the young father who disregards the old school houserules of his wife (Shim Eun-woo), treated his last girlfriend (who he got pregnant) pretty abominably. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the suffering his infant child undergoes is karmic justice but you don't feel bad that the man's life is going to seed. Seire doesn't make the supernatural feel real, even if the presence of twins does conjure up our sense of natural wonder — especially when they look so alike they have to be played by the same actress, Ryu Sun-young. Instead, it makes a suspected power palpable... which can make for a good movie, too. Can you build your plot around suppositions, hallucinations, and bad dreams? Based on Seire, I'd say, "If you like."

My Name Is Loh Kiwan: Tough Life

You think you have it rough? Consider the life of Loh Kiwan, a North Korean refugee (Song Joong-ki) who flees with his mother to China, only to flee again on his own to Brussels where he's got no friends, no family, and very little money (which he loses soon enough). To stay he's going to have to prove his nationality but how do you do that exactly when your country of origin doesn't share birth records and your first second home has its own bureucractic complications compounded by the fact that you were — by necessity — living a secret life. There's more. You can't get a legal job. You don't know the language so you can't argue on your own behalf. The first non-governmental person you make that also speaks Korean is a pretty drug addict (Choi Sung-eun) with a criminal history and a massive debt tied to it. Still think you've got it rough?

I've lived in a bare-bones SRO with not much money to my name; I've survived off a diet of hotdogs, cornflakes and alcohol but I've never been this alone, this dependent on the kindness of strangers, this out of my element. Thankfully, there are some kind strangers out there: a Chinese-Korean meatpacker (Lee Sang-hee) and the father (Jo Han-chul) of the woman who stole his wallet then his heart... Sure, they're flawed and make his life worse at times but when there's so much bad in this life that taking the bad with the good isn't so bad because at least it comes with some good. My Name Is Loh Kiwan made me appreciate my life. It also made me appreciate some people's ability to salvage a stylish wardrobe from the discard bin.

Moon: True Blue, Not True

As of March 2024, South Korea has yet to send a spaceship to the moon but given that other countires have — the U.S., China, Russia, Israel, and India — I don't know if I'd classify Moon as science fiction so much as a speculative drama. In short... What if Korea sent three men in a rocket intended for a lunar landing but then it exploded? Then what if history repeated itself again, except the second time one (Do Kyung-soo) of the astronauts was the son of one of the old ones? As an added twist, you could always have the primary advisor (Sol Kyung-gu) be associated with the earlier disaster, too.

Director-writer Kim Yong-hwa doesn't stop there either. For drama, he adds meteor storms, a moonquake, an unhelpful, unsympathetic clique at NASA, and an arty bloody nose in which red globules float around the space capsule, gravity-free. The dialogue is largely descriptive: the astronauts describe what's happening as we see it; the space team on earth describes what they're seeing; the news reporters describe what's just happened. A Korean-American administrator may emerge as the closest thing this movie has to a hero; the white guys are definitely the enemies. It's hard to like people who have to be told, "Forget his nationality for now!"

Escape from Mogadishu: North and South Alliances in Africa

Aside from BTS and Bong Joon-ho, most Americans probably don't consider South Korea a major player on the world stage. As for North Korea, they've been designated as a longshot threat run by an insane leader with a hot temper and nuclear weaponry. I don't know if such hierarchical political views of the earth do us well. We all occupy the same planet and wars between two nations can assume global importance soon enough. Israel and Palestine, anyone? In truth, the conflicts, genocides, uprisings and dictatorships concern us all. As Toni Morrison once put it: "The function of freedom is to free someone else." If we're not moved my the decimation in the Middle East, the Democratic Republic of the Congo or the Ukraine, how civilized are we really? And so, a movie like Escape from Mogadishu, about South and Korean diplomats working together to find safe harbor amid a civilian rebellion in Somalia has plenty to say about governance, negotiations, police brutality, children with guns...

As the South's Ambassador Han, Kim Yoon-seok is morally slippery but well-intentioned. His stoic ounterpart Ambassador Rim, Huh Joon-ho brings a respectfulness not always accorded the neighbors from the North. (Each has a hot-headed assistant played by Zo In-sung and Koo Kyo-hwan respectively.) Once the two sides team up (seeking assistance from Italy and Egypt, not the U.S. and China by the way), Ryu Seung-wan's historical drama really gets cooking. I don't know whether the fleeing Koreans really wrote blood types on their children's arms or bulletproofed their cars by duct-taping hardcover books on the hood but it sure leads to one of the most exhilarating getaways in recent memory. Which isn't to say the survivors have escaped everything. Not by a long shot. And that acknowledgment makes Escape from Mogadishu not just good but very good.

Sinkhole: The Kids Are Far From Alright

Kim Ji-hoon's Sinkhole is a disaster comedy with one serious problem: The script introduces two children among the various residents who live in a doomed tenement about to get swallowed up by the earth then, like the other characters sharing their subterranean fate, abandons the kids for too long. I, for one, spent a lot of time impatiently waiting for the building's super (Cha Seung-won), the newest tenant (Park Dong-won), and two housewarming guests (Lee Kwang-soo and Kim Hye-jun) to stop griping about cell phone service and mud-covered chicken and to start searching for the two forgotten young boys, trapped in the basement parking lot with a senile grandma.

And unlike this director's previous — and highly gratifying — disaster pic The Tower, Sinkhole in undermined by jokes that never click, a love story that feels contrived, and muted tension buried under terrible CGI. Also, I realize that you have to cheat a little with lighting in a movie in which a half-dozen people find themselves submerged, miles below the earth's surface as few sun rays or moonbeams would reach them. But do you have to have your imperiled survivors scrambling around on what looks to be a multi-story stage-set? In which case... "Curtains!"

Past Lives: Seeing Yourself on Screen

Much is made of representation in the media for gays, women, POC, et cetera but you don't hear about it so much when it comes to interracial couples. And it's not like I can't think of examples in film: Anna Deavere Smith and Bill Irwin in Rachel Getting Married; Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard. Neither of those movies explored the relationships in racial terms, however. The ones that do — Loving, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner — often do so to the exclusion of everything else. Which makes Past Lives something special. For while the relationship between playwright Nora (Greta Lee) and her husband Arthur (John Magaro) isn't the central story, writer-director Celine Song does take the time to show the frictional sparks, related to the cultural divide as experienced by this married couple.

But Past Lives is much more than that. Something akin to a parable about what happens when your childhood crush (Teo Yoo) reappears in your life not once (digitally) but twice (the latter, in person). As you might guess, the results are poignant, passionate, and ultimately painful. For confronting the past (which inevitably contains the dreams of youth, and a look at our earlier, less corrupted selves) isn't easy. Any adult, whose done the internal work, isn't going to throw everything over to try to recapture what never came to be. But there's a cost that comes with this maturity, one which Past Lives details exquisitely.

Indian Pink: Bloodstains on Your Collar

It's not hard to tell something's up with unscrupulous businessman Dong Seok (Kim Hyun-joong) early on in Indian Pink. He's irritable on the phone with his best friend; he squeezes a glass shard until his hand draws blood. Then in case we haven't figured it out, he unsuccessfully drowns his sorrows in drink. What follows, for the first third at least, is really a one-man show, a monologue (with phone calls) masquerading as a movie, a nightmarish mishmash of regret — nay, remorse — for a tragic action that only the slowest of filmgoers won't figure out. Even the false, fantasized memories that constitute the flashback in the second act are easy to dispel, in part because ex-girlfriend is not particularly believable. Perhaps that's intentional?

Once all the cards are laid on the table, writer-director Kim Seewoo doesn't have that much more to explore. Nefarious business deals still get made; a friend/associate becomes complicit in the crime; suicides are attempted and aborted; bodies must be disposed of; and our villainous protagonist is already on the hunt for a new girlfriend. So why does Kim Seewoo's psychodrama feel more lukewarm than chilling? Despite all the bloodstains on white linen in Indian Pink, this flick doesn't make much of a mark.

Deadly Kick: No Good Ninja Goes Unpunished

The best parts of director Ko Young-nam's and star Lieh Lo's martial-arts pulp-pic Deadly Kick are definitely when it gets strange: the scenes in which the anti-hero channels/hallucinates animals during battle; the plucking out of eyeballs or intestines; the blind woman's fight-training sequence replete with superhero uniform and a girl with directional sleigh-bells. In the long stretches between those bits of weirdness, the movie leaves us with little: a pair of overactive eyebrows and absurd moments like when one guy holds a pair of panties to his nose then comments "smells better than whiskey."

Outside of that, the action — which ranges from convoluted syndicate machinations to drunken nipple-nibbling — is infrequently amusing, frequently preposterous. What should make for drama, does not. Take the film's airborne assassins who can't quite hit the one moving car with their machine gun or their hand grenades. Not even when the car runs out of gas. Not even when its passengers are on foot. Because then helicopter runs out of gas, too. And if the movie itself isn't quite a gas, what it does have is one delicious fake mustache (on Bobby Kim, once known as the "Oriental Charles Bronson") and a couple of "school project" torture devices. At least, it's set in the '70s so there are aviator sunglasses for everyone!

Badland Hunters: Ma Dong-seok Survives the Apocalpyse

Everytime I see the words "co-produced by Netflix" (or words to that effect) in a Korean movie's opening credits, my heart sinks a bit. Having worked at a TV network that meddled detrimentally with their shows, I feel qualified to detect inept input — often about making things a little less strange and a little more generic. In martial artist-turned-director Heo Myeong haeng's Badland Hunters what might've been an above-decent zombie movie arrives instead as a fright flick that looks like a video game. And so, like most shooter games, this action pic reveles in bullets to the head, exploding skulls, blood splatters, and bones cracking. Players — I mean, characters — recover from injuries in record time while most of the people onscreen are scenery.

I don't know whether to blame leading man Ma Dong-seok (a.k.a. Don Lee) or bless him for Badland Hunters. He's definitely the film's saving grace, dominating every scene with a prime Bruce Willis persona that relates equal parts worldweariness and bemusement. He's also, like the title of his earlier film, Unstoppable. Whether his opponent is a body-regenerating mutant or a mad scientist with a machine gun, this loveable lug never blinks an eye. They have an arsenal, he has a butter knife? No problem. He's going to make them sorry they thought they had a chance. The human-testing in the post-apocalypse ends here!

Jazzy Misfits: Unbound Relations

Director Nam Yeon-woo's decision to pair an accomplished older actress (Jo Min-soo) with a TV rap star (Cheetah) pays off big time in the wonderfully silly mother-daughter comedy Jazzy Misfits. For while Jo chews up the scenery as a volatile, negligent, alcoholic mother who comes out of the woodwork only after her younger other child (Choi Jisu) robs her of the rent, Cheetah (a.k.a. Kim Eun-young) more than holds her own — outside her effectively deadpan reactions — via extended cuts of her crooning in the nightclub and at the recording studio. As such, these two convey deep emotional realities in different mediums: acting and music.

They're surrounded by a rich cast of characters, too: the mom's former suitor (Jeong Man-sik) who's now a policeman; the local food courier (Terris Brown) who's crushing big time on the singing daughter; and a random white tourist whose unexpected parkour skills hilariously come into play in the movie's best chase scene. With drag queens, lesbian girlfriends, gay tattoo artists, a trans bar owner, a sexy, shirtless downstairs neighbor, and a crewcut Heo Jung-do (from the addictive Kdrama My Demon) as a cheerful sound mixer in over his head, Jazzy Misfits is never anything less than ebulliently screwball.

The Last Princess: Elevating Royalty

There's a pretty powerful disclaimer at the start of The Last Princess: "Incidents and persons portrayed do not reflect historical facts." So then what are we to believe about Yi Deokhye, the subject of this biopic? Was she a royal rebel who bravely snubbed the Japanese emperor's dress code and rallied fingerless Korean workers to rise up against their Japanese oppressors? Did she try to escape her gilded cage and get back to Korea as an act of solidarity with her countrymen? Was she the first to discover the assassination of her father, the king? In truth, much of Hur Jin-ho's costume dram is conjectural; it's a pro-dynastic movie posing as a pro-resistance message. Considering the history we do know, for now I'm okay with that.

And Son Ye-jin makes a convincing princess, struggling to balance her patriotism with her desire to survive. She's got few people in her corner: an adoring servant (Ra Mi-ran), a couple of ineffectual brothers, and a soldier-spy (Park Hae-il) who also doubles as her devoted, sexless romantic interest. She's also got an evil Korean Benedict Arnold (Yun Je-mun) whose sole mission in life is to be her foil, derailing every attempt she makes to escape, to evade, to exalt. As fantasies go, if The Last Princess has any faults, it's that this heinous henchman never gets his just desserts. Director Hur may see this dark detail as a bitter dose of reality. Since so much is already made up, I'm not gonna quibble here. Finally, if Hollywood were more open to performances in foreign tongues, Son's lead turn would definitely have qualified as an Oscar-bait — as she ages from 20s to 70s while screaming, crying, looking fashionable, looking nervous, and ultimately going insane. I was crazy about her in the best way possible.

My Paparotti: Sing Out, Louise

Who you watch a movie with — or who you encounter any type of art with — can have a major impact on how you experience it. I remember hearing a casette of "Everything That Rises Must Converge" with my mother in the car after a particularly tense exchange between the two of us and let me tell you, Flannery O'Connor's bleak short story about an estranged mother and son has probably never had a pair of more attentive listeners — destination forgotten. Happily, my viewing of Lee Jong-chan's feel-good comedy My Paparotti was a less emotionally wrought exchange. To the contrary, this cinematic success story proved effervescent when seated beside by boyfriend who corrected subtitles, mimicked opera singing, and encouraged all my sentimental reactions.

So let others roll their eyes at this underdog saga of a young thug (Sung Yoo-bin) whose passion for singing provides a way out of "thug life" and under the prickly warm tutelage of a disillusioned teacher (Han Suk-kyu) whose music career was derailed by some ill-timed tumors on his vocal cords. And for anyone ready to dismiss this film outright as fantastical nonsense, know this: My Paparotti is based on a true story! Characters like the bossy high school principal (Oh Dal-su), the kooky love interest (Kang So-ra), and the brotherly, middle management mafioso (Cho Jin-woong) may register as pure cartoon but real life has a place for exaggeration, too, especially when it makes you feel this good.