Noryang: Deadly Sea: So Much to See

I don't want to write a pan of Kim Han-min's war pic Noryang: Deadly Sea. I'd rather watch the movie again with the sound off so I can relish the stunning range of stylish battlewear. You'd think the military costumes of a movie set entirely on ships along the Southern coast of what's now South Korea would grow repetitive or look somewhat bland. How wrong you are. To the contrary, the 16th-century military clash of couture depicted in Noryang is runway ready, with impeccable uniforms representing three countries with no shortage of fashion finesse: Korea (f.k.a. Joseon), Japan, and Ming China.

The good guy is Admiral Yi Sun-Shin (Kim Yoon-seok). The bad guy Admiral Shimazu Yoshihiro (Baek Yoon-seok). And the one who's hard to pin down is Admiral Chen Lin (Jeong Jae-young). All look fabulous. Yi wears a snake-scaled leather bolero jacket with fur trim and a metal helmet topped by a trident and flanked by generous ear flaps; Shimazu wears a boldly striped armor tunic with an open vest with exaggerated shoulders, his own intricate headpiece a constant source of wonder; Chen's helmet may be simpler yet it frames his face with leather flames, a millinery choice so exquisite that the rest of outfit becomes irrelevant. In fashion terms, Noryang is unending splendor, right down to one POW's leather eyepatch flawlessly stitched down the middle. Yes, there are fascinating-looking ships. Yes, there are theatrical explosions. Yes, a national hero's acchievements are being replayed by history buffs with fashion fetishes. But Noryang never serves dialogue that's ever quite as memorable as the wispy beards worn by its major characters.

Recognition: FeedSpot's 24 Best Asian Movies Blogs to Follow in 2026

In 2018, FeedSpot ranked Korean Grindhouse in 29th place in its list of Top 35 Asian Movies Blogs on the web. Last year, this humble blog rated even better, landing at 14th place in a list that had been pared down to -- and renamed -- 24 Asian Movie Blogs and Websites. This fall, Korean Grindhouse jumps even higher. We're now in seventh place. Which puts us in the Top 10, although still (appropriately) behind third-place finisher HanCinema and sixth-placed Asian Wikiblog, both of which I use constantly as resources. Also, shout out to ninth-place finisher EonTalk.com which is also devoted to Korean cinema.

The Priests: It Takes Two to Exorcise

With Halloween this coming Saturday, I felt compelled to see a couple of K-horror films in preparation over the past week. The first, Suddenly in the Dark, has "cult movie" written all over it. Solid freaky fare. The second, The Priests, is even more tailored to my tastes. An exorcism movie! You see, I'm easily entertained by a young innocent possessed by one of the "twelve manifestations" (if you know, you know) who only the most devoted can cast out. Oh yes, Jang Jae-hyun's well-executed thriller is one in a long line of ex-communicated holy men stopping at nothing to rid our sinful world of total evil, inner demons be damned.

In The Priests, the religious duo committed to saving the soul of a schoolgirl hit-and-run by a couple of Italians are Father Kim (Kim Yoon-seok) and Deacon Choi (Gang Dong-won). Kim's been down this road before, although his former mentor has been taken over by a minor demon, leaving Kim to search for a willing if inexperienced collaborator/assistant/sidekick/mentee. Choi, for his part, is a rebel, a novitiate who cheats on his exams, sneaks out of the seminary to buy beers, but at least was born in the Year of the Tiger which apparently is an important credit on his resume. Together these two men in priestly collars must go through the never-tired ritual of crosses, holy water, projectile vomit, salt, rats, cats, and crows in order to get that nasty spirit to release the soul of poor unfortunate soul trapped inside the shaven-head and tortured body of the victim (Cho Flora). Seasonal perfection with a toothpaste mustache.

Suddenly in the Dark: Old-Fashioned Freak-Out

In your standardized horror movie, when the pretty young housemaid (Lee Ki-seon) moves into your home, the wife is immediately jealous. That's not exactly what happens in Young Nam Ko's Suddenly in the Dark, however. Here, the mistress-of-the-house (Kim Young Ae) seems positively aroused by her new family servant. The first assigned chore to this simpleminded domestic? Strip and step into a hot bath where the water is tinted the color of urine. "You have a nice body. How old are you?," boss lady coos while splashing the nude girl's shoulders. Later, the wife confides to her butterfly-collecting husband (Yun Il-bong), "Even a woman would be attracted by that body." And she would know!

Sapphic fantasies shift to hypersexualized fears of being replaced. Is her husband having an affair with this orphaned housemaid? Are her kaleidoscopic visions of the two's entwining naked bodies real or induced by the pink pills prescribed by the local pharmacist? And how much is that plaster voodoo doll possessed by the young woman's late shaman mother responsible for the escalating chaos that ensues? The truth is either way, she's going totally bonkers. Even her best friend tells her that she needs to see a psychiatrist. But sometimes being crazy means thinking you're capable of making sane decisions about insane scenarios. And that's just what's happening here. To my eternal delight.

Sunrise/Sunset: Filmmaking as Tourism

As a former New Yorker, I have a soft spot for a film that features familiar NYC locations. Whether writer-director Ougie Pak shot Sunrise/Sunset in Times Square, Washington Square Park, Madison Square Park, the Lincoln Center courtyard, the glass-boxed Apple store on Fifth Avenue as well as on The High Line and the Columbia Univeristy campus, and the brooklyn Bridge for ease or symbolism doesn't matter to me. Even seeing signage indicating Broadway and 76th Street feels quietly significant. A walk to the Queensboro Bridge even more so. Do it all in black and white and I'm that much more nostalgic.

Sunrise/Sunset's story is admittedly slight: A young Korean man (Lee Kwangmin) -- still wearing braces -- comes to NYC to visit his girlfriend (Kim Woohyun) who's moved abroad with the hopes of getting into an American college. During his weeklong visit, their relationship begins to unravel as his spontaneous fantasy of attending Columbia University is frustrated by a matriculating student (Paik Tobee) who advises him that he'll need to prep for his SATs, not just TOEFL. (His school tests in Korea didn't go so well.) A self-directed crash course at the Barnes & Noble culminates in his prompting Google translator to speak the English equivalents for curse words from his native tongue. At 47 minutes, this doesn't qualify as Pak's first feature. I'd call it a long novice short. You can grade it accordingly.

Clytaemnestra: Trauma Drama

I signed up for the Criterion Collection last month because I wanted to watch two Pasolini movies: Medea and Oedipus Rex. Then I failed to cancel my subscription. So I thought I'd check out their holdings re: Korean films. Frankly, it's not extensive. But among the few movies that popped up in my search results were a handful by Korean-American Ougie Pak. Unfamiliar with his work, I decided to watch Clytaemnestra, an hour-long film about a Korean troupe of actors rehearsing Aeschylus' Agamemnon in Greece. (Notice a theme?) More specifically, the movie focuses on the woman (Haru Kim) cast in the lead female role then demoted to Cassandra then demoted further to the chorus.

Her ongoing humiliation is painful to watch. And it doesn't end with losing increasingly smaller roles either. Interestingly, Pak's Clytaemnestra works not so much because of the anguish emoted by the female lead. Credit instead the performance of her foil played by Jongman Kim. As the director of the film's experimental production abroad, this dynamite actor sustains intensity whether he's telling his cast to increase their energy, drunkenly exiting a post-rehearsal drinking binge, or berating his former leading lady for bad behavior. Even a handwave dismissing the fired and disgraced actress feels loaded with meaning and attitude. Is the play within the movie any good? Is the replacement actress (Kim Taehee) any better? It's questionable. Which makes this film's effectiveness that much more mysterious. I knew the end from the start. Isn't that how it always works with Greek tragedies? Isn't that part of the pleasure?

Through Korean Cinema: A Well-Spent Hour in the Archives

I'd noticed Through Korean Cinema in the lineup of Kanopy, the streaming service of the public libraries both in Connecticut and New Jersey. I wasn't enticed. I figured this documentary would simply present information I already knew. Boy was I wrong. Not only did this hour-long film — produced, directed, edited, and scored by Italians (!) — skip over any movies made during the Japanese occupation because, as one critic put it, they weren't truly representative of Korean culture given the oppression, but many of the directors I'd expected to see featured in this movie were not: no Kim Ki-duk, no Bong Joon-ho, no Shin Sang-ok, Im Sang-soo. As for Hong Sang-soo, he gets a passing reference but nothing more. What's going on here!? Well, clearly, I'm about to get educated.

For Through Korean Cinema does showcase five homegrown auteurs of import. Two I confess I did not recognize by name: Park Kwang-su and Lee Myung-se. Checking out my own archives here at Korean Grindhouse, I see I've actually watched one film by the first Park (Meet Mr. Daddy which made me cry buckets). I've also seen a few by Lee, although none I particularly liked. Through Korean Cinema makes me want to give him another shot! As for the directors I did know immediately, Leonardo Cinieri Lombroso's interviews had me seeing these men anew. I had no idea of Im Kwon-taek's prodigious output with well over 100 movies to his credit; or of Lee Chang-dong's self-punishing apprenticeship as an A.D.; or of Park Chan-wook's very first film which was a box office dud. In a little over an hour, my list of "films to watch" has grown quite a bit. Now how do I track down Chilsu and Mansu?

The Point Men: Pointless

Why in the world would a busload of holy roller missionaries from South Korea choose to "vacation" in a Middle Eastern country ruled by Islamic extremists in the midst of a war? "There are no tourist sites in Afghanistan," says one bearded, turbaned, gun-toting local, and I, for one, believe him. Also, my sympathies do not lie with Christian colonizers who are long on bible quotes and short on compassion. Welcome to The Point Men, Yim Soon-rye's not-so-thrilling thriller based on real-life events but devoid of real-life people.

When 23 Koreans are held hostage by the Taliban, smug Director Jung (Hwang Jung-min) sticks to the book, with no cultural insights while NIS Agent Park (Hyun Bin) plays by his own rules with greater success. A clownish Korean ex-pat Qasim (Kang Ki-young) is the only translator fluent in both languages but they inexplicably drop him from the team pretty quickly. Sound like a typical movie negotiating set-up? Now add cryptic leaders, shameless journalists, neverending traffic, and suicide bombers. "Our aim is to prevent killings, not protect our reputation," quips Jung. Neither objective will be fully met in this film.

Beauty with No Neck: Die of Laughter

It's been awhile since I've seen a film involving disfigured ghosts, a cave of hidden gold, and venomous spiders that can only be killed by fire. Thank goodness for Beauty with No Neck, Lee Yong-min's absolutely cuckoo B-movie about the lengths one greedy man (Lee Ye-chun) will go to become "the richest man in Korea." The plot makes no sense until the last 20 minutes at which point everything is explained. And then... it still makes no sense. But in between a dying man tattooing his baby with clues to the gold's whereabouts and a villain trapped on an island surrounded by a river of acid called "aqua regia," there nuttiness never stops. Here in no particular order are some snippets of absurd dialogue:

1. "I made this myself. Liquor brewed with animal blood."
2. "You're both the killer and the witness!"
3. "I thought you wanted to buy a haunted house."
4. "A devil in human form!"
5. "Your skin's so fair even women would fall for you."
6. "There's definitely some kind of secret in that box."

For the record, that box ends up not containing any significant secret. That animal blood liquor might possess a venom serum. Some femme fatales have sapphic longings, only when they're ready to kill. In Beauty with No Neck, when a character says, "I'll never die," he means it. Even if he dies. And he'll be right!

Influenza: Intentionally Short and Not So Sweet

Watching a short film as my Korean movie of the week can feel a bit like cheating as if, by not dedicating a full two hours to the experience, I'm somehow coming up short myself. Yet, it's hard to argue against "Influenza" as a this week's pic when you consider the director is Bong Joon-ho, the most famous director from South Korea. Initially commissioned for the Jeonju Digital Project omnibus (which also includes Yu Lik-Wai's "Dance with Me to the End of Love" and Sogo Ishii's "Mirrored Mind," Bong's contribution to the trilogy is more an experimental sketch than a full-blown flick. Yun Je-mun stars as a petty criminal who robs old people at bank machines, often accompanied by his thug girlfriend played by Go Su-hee.

All the action is taken from CCTV footage, grainy images ostensibly from Yanghwa Bridge, a parking lot, various ATM foyers, and city street corner. Dialogue is at a minimum since most of the "found footage" is without sound. Occasionally, the violence is unsettling: an attack in a parking lot with a pipe and a hammer is especially unsettling. Same for an elderly man hacked in a vestibule. Better are the scenes that verge on the absurd, like when the two crooks gently trip an old woman then carefully lower her to the floor before making off with her cash, her bank card, and her code. A curio more than a must-see, "Influenza" is strictly for Bong Joon-ho superfans.

The Deal: Caught Then Cagey

You're going to have to set logic free as a jailbird for So Yong-ho's thiller The Deal. For how can the police be on the trail of a serial killer when all the female victims' bodies are missing? Does missing qualify as dead? Fortunately, lead detective Tae-soo (Kim Sang-kyung), b.k.a. as "Mr. Intuition," defaults to his feelings over the facts. Which means a hit-and-run accident one rainy night seems significant in his pursuit of the killer for reasons only some internal vibe can explain.

That sixth sense doesn't allow him to protect those closest to him, and perhaps he takes to drink partially to deaden this gift which has failed him in a crucial way. ("I cant live withouut a drink," he proclaims after his sister (Yoon Seung-ah) dies. His brother-in-law Seung-hyeon (Kim Sung Kyun) would like to see less of him. His boss Chief Choi (Gi Ju-bong) would like him to get back on track. The serial killer Kang-cheon (Park Sung-woong) smiles whenever anyone's having a hard day and is very good at keeping secrets. But why do movie cops think that punching leads to truth-telling?

Pavane: Resistance Is Futile

Lee Jong-pil's romance Pavance is a movie that sneaks up on you. Two department store laborers -- the gregarious Park Yo-han (Byun Yo-han) and the withdrawn Lee Gyeong-rok (Moon Sang-min) become best buddies for no other reason than they both wore David Bowie T-shirts one day. Weirder set-ups have led to lifelong friends, ultimately. Yo-han chases after life while running away from his past. Gyeong-rok finds an unlikely soulmate in Kim Mi-jeong (Ko Ah-sung), an awkward, grubby delivery person who is even more of a social outcast than him.

Eventually the three form an improbable trio with incongruent dreams: Yo-han wants to be a rock star who also happens to be a best-selling novelist; Gyeong-rok wants to be modern dancer and practices in an underground parking lot; and Mi-jeong wants to be a cool grandma who lets the kids get away with murder. (Not literally) Admittedly, Lee's film resorts to some extreme plot points (a coma, a celebrity father who disowns his kid, a vehicular accident, a snow storm) but everytime the story went off the rails, Lee managed to find a way to get it back on track fairly quickly. Pavance is one of those movies for which you feel compelled to make allowances because when it's good, it's very much so. The emotional truths keep coming up to the surface. The sentimental tears keep flowing from my eyes.

Wild Sing: K-Pop Reunion

The K-pop trio Triangle had a brief moment in the limelight. Breakdancing Hyeon U (Gang Dong-won), sugar-sweet singer Do-mi (Park Ji-hyun), and bad rapper Sang Gu (Um Tae-goo) all found their shared career in shambles once their hit song was revealed to be a Bulgarian tune plagiarized by their manager. Flash forward years later to a benefit concert which seeks to capitalize on the group's former popularity by reuniting them once again: Can these three embittered bandmates rediscover the crowd-pleasing chemistry they had once upon a time? And how will their former rival, crooner Seong Gon (Oh Jung-se), factor into the story, since he crashed and burned even worse than they did after a fateful night of drug experimentation? And what about up-and-comer Na Tae-poong (Kang Ki-young) who's carrying a serious grudge?

The material's hardly the most inventive yet director Son Jae-gon does infuse the proceedings with a spirit of fun so that I, for one, was surprised how caught up I got in Triangle's collective search for pop star redemption. So much so that I was willing to forgive tired tropes like the nagging, rich mother-in-law (Son Jae-gon) and the clueless truckdriver (Park Sung-hyun) who was a former fan of "Trombone." Ultimately, Wild Sing is sweet-natured with fairly catchy music. It may not rise to the level of personal favorite KPops! or global smash Kpop Demon Hunters but a three out of five isn't bad in the end. You could do worse.

Cobweb: Actors Acting, Actors Being

Movies about moviemaking can be so much fun. And there are so many ways to do it. Hong Sang-soo's The Novelist's Film takes a naturalistically deadpan approach from conception to creation. The documentary Yellow Door excavates the roots that led to Bong Joon-ho's career. The farcical Luck-Key makes the most of its amnesiac gangster-turned-actor (Yoo Hae-jin). Kim Jee-woon's Cobweb is the most direct of them all: A ridiculous comedy in which a pill-popping hack director (Song Kang-ho) decides he needs to reshoot some scenes in order to turn his latest dreck into a masterpiece.

The flick within a flick is completely preposterous: pure soap, as one older leading lady (a terrific Park Jung-soo) points out. But the over-the-top storyline — abounding with murders, doublecrosses, and histrionics — are perfect excuses for this talented cast to constantly switch from silly sitcom mode to affected melodrama whenever the story shifts from off camera to on. Everyone's having fun throughout: the cheating husband (Oh Jung-se), the pregnant ingenue (Jung Krystal), the dead studio owner's daughter (Jeon Yeo-been), the exasperated studio chairwoman (Jang Young-nam)... The joy these performers are taking in the shenanigans is contagious. You couldn't get sick of this buffonery if you tried.

Baseball Girl: Not a Hit

The trope is probably as old as sports movies themselves. An underdog overcomes insurmountable odds with a combination of talent and grit. The problem with Choi Yun-tae's Baseball Girl is it doesn't really highlight the talent of its star athlete -- pitcher Joo Soo-in (Lee Joo-young) -- or reveal a perseverance that's especially impressive: She snubs a teacher (Lee Chae-eun) in an amateur league, leaves the gym when a reporter approaches, and keeps trying to perfect a fast ball that's admittedly sub-par.

Once her new coach Choi Jin-tae (Lee Joon-hyuk), a former baseball player who failed to make it in the majors, takes an interest in her, the story gets marginally better. But Baseball Girl oddly never takes off in part because it lacks any love for the actually sport. We rarely see Soo-in in action during a game. Her training sequences are far from impressive. I, for one, kept thinking she needs to get a haircut to get her bangs out of her eyes as much as she needs to perfect her knuckleball. Teammate Lee Jeung-ho (Kwak Dong-yeon) may see potential. I saw someone who was delusional, selfish, petulant, and mean as well as insecure and undermined by sexism and an unhappy family. Of course, I want to see a woman win in a man's world. I'm just not that excited by this one signing a semi-pro contract.

Big Deal: Corporate Cruelty

Choi Yun-Jin's Big Deal is a pretty scary movie. Not because there are vampires or werewolves or a mad slasher on the loose. What's wreaking havoc and causing chills are corporate overlords who have only one thing on their mind: Money. Seok Jin-woo (Son Hyeon-ju) is the nepo baby who's inherited a thriving soju empire that he jeopardizes by making foolish wagers on the golf course among other places. Choi In-beom (Lee Je-hoon) is a business strategist who recognizes the faltering company as his chance to orchestrate a merciless takeover followed by downsizing and a profitable resale. Neither character can imagine a motive outside their bank accounts.

The only one in this cutthroat world who seems to give a damn is divorced, alcholic, all-too-trusting Pyo Jong Rok (Yoo Hae-jin), a high-ranking exec who is about to learn that CEOs, lawyers, judges, journalists, account managers, and so on do not share his code of ethics. Or any code of ethics. The only rule for sleazy powerbrokers like Gordon (Byron Kim), nasty double-crossers like Koo (Choi Young-joon) or backstabbing dealmakers like Mark (Daniel C Kennedy) is win at all costs. The ends justify the meanies! To its credit, Big Deal shows that sometimes a price is paid... but its not by the monsters at the top.

Road to Boston: A Run for Independence

For those who mistakenly believe that once Japan was pushed out of Korea, then South Korea immediately became an internationally recognized sovereign nation, writer-director Kang Je-kyu's Road to Boston may serve as a rousing corrective. The time is the late 1940s. Gold medal marathoner Son Kee-jeong (Ha Jung-woo) is an alcoholic nursing the pain caused by his crowning achievement being credited to the nation that once occupied his homeland. His buddy, bronze medalist Nam Seung-Ryong (Bae Sung-woo), is a running coach hoping to reassert Korea's place on the global stage. The two decide to team up to gain promising athlete Seo Yoon-bok (Yim Si-wan) a spot in the upcoming Olympics, only to find out that first their country must qualify via a sanctioned meet.

The good news is that the Boston Marathon is right around the corner. The bad news is that the American military, South Korea's latest occupier, is largely standing in the way. While the U.S. may not be as overtly oppressive as Japan was, Road to Boston does remind you that imperalism and colonialism come in many insidious forms. So does the underdog story. And this beauteous biopic recounting Seo's unlikely rise as a competitor of global ranking may have you shedding tears of appreciation by the final race. There's something truly heartwarming too in the mutual support club that can exist among "rival" runners, a bond that extends across oceans and languages. Shout out to American silver medalist John Kelly (Jesse Marshall).

The Girl on a Bulldozer: Inherited Mystery

Hye-yeong (Kim Hye-yoon) doesn't take the time to grieve when her unlucky dad (Park Hyuk-kwon) ends up "brain dead" at the hospital. Maybe her life has been sad so long that she's lost the propensity to do so. Understandable. Plus, her refusal to mourn ensures she's got plenty of time and energy to devote to solving the surrounding case -- investigated by cops and insurance company alike, and involving a wide array of people. Surely, her father can't be blamed for every crime: reckless driving, broken arm, construction site accident, striking a former employer, totalling someone else's car... His daughter knows her dad better than that.

Auntie (Yang So-min) knows some things, too. The voicemail on dad's phone details even more. But will this troubled eldest child ever be able to achieve justice, given her own public record of reactive violence. Park Ri-Woong's The Girl on a Bulldozer kicks off with a girl fight involving hair-pulling, punching, kicking, and a pair of scissors. Our anti-heroine's choice to slap the slimy politician who may be responsible for her dad's undoing is certainly an act with viral online potential but does she really think such an impulsive smack is going to work in her favor? In truth, Hye-yeong makes a number of choices that strain the viewer's credulity. And plot points like a lighter that malfunctions right when she's about to torch someone's apartment say much the same about this movie's screenplay.

K-Pops!: American-Made Korean Music Sensation

I have a few friends who work in academia and my lover just graduated from an MFA program so talk of syllabi is always in the air lately. Which got me to thinking: What films would I include if I were teaching an Intro to Korean Film class myself? Obvious choices such as Parasite (2019), Oldboy (2003), Bad Guy (2001), Stray Bullet (1961), and A Flower in Hell (1958) all come to mind. So do lesser-known works like Save the Green Planet! (2003) and Enter the Invincible Hero (1977). But I might include a movie like K-Pops! (2024), too. For this American film by multi-Grammy winner Anderson .Paak speaks to Korean-American identity, crossover Korean culture, and has plenty of dialogue in Korean too.

Set mostly in South Korea, this feel-good story concerns a Korean-American drummer-singer-songwriter (.Paak) who undergoes a maturation process after he lands a gig in the houseband of a televised competition show for pop vocalists -- only to meet the son he never knew he had in the process. Throughout, K-Pops! has a light touch even as it addresses matters of cultural heritage/exchange/cross-polination on both sides of the Pacific. The performances are universally enchanting, from .Paak's turn as the lead to Jee Young Han as his ex to Soul Rasheed as his talented son to Yvette Nicole Brown as his upbeat mom to Jon Park as his mom's potential love interest. The music likewise is irresistible. How this movie slid under the radar in 2024 is a mystery to me. So I'm hereby writing K-Pops! in large letters on the virtual chalkboard to ensure this fun flick gets your attention.

Husbands in Action: Bubbly, Bumbling-Buddy Comedy

Husbands in Action is straight up goofy. I say that appreciatively. For Park Gyu-tae's kooky bromantic comedy gradually ingratiates itself to the viewer by never letting its silliness falter. Ex-husband Hwang Choong-sik (Jin Seon-kyu) is the kind of supercop who uses his handcuffs like numchucks and will frame his frenemy for his farts; new husband Lee Min-seok (Gong Myoung) is a veterinarian who drives a van decked out with ears and a tail and can crack walnuts with his barehands; drug-dealing husband Ma Do-joon (Kim Ji Suk) is a dimwit with a strong inner dog and courts his brilliant scientist-wife (Lee Da-hee) by pummeling others. All three men must unite in order to save their loved ones from Kim Yong-gang (Yoon Kyung-ho), a behind-the-times ex-con who wants to get his turf back now that he's been released from jail.

The film abounds with silly details: a reporter (Jeon So Min) whose motives are more romantic than investigative; a police chief (Lee Soon-won) whose got a crush on his star detective. Well-executed character parts like one criminal second banana (Lee Hyun Kul) and Yong-gang's flashy wife (Lee Yoon-a) keep the laughs coming as does a delightfully absurd sequence in which the three main women defend themselves from a gang of attackers by using frozen fish as hammer-like weapons. A true knockout. Just the latest winner from Park who also wrote the touching A Great Chinese Restaurant.