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 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 as to say that he should be executed for such actions but most of the film you're wondering how he's possiblly 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.

Ashfall: Disaster as Reality

It occurred to me when watching Kim Byung-seo's and Lee Hae-jun's Ashfall that there are only two kinds of movies worth making right now. One concerns exposing the truth on an at-least-somewhat-political scale. The other involves confronting catastrophes on an international level. In the first category, we've got movies like Dark Waters and even First Reformed. In the second group, we've got films like... well, like Ashfall. This action-packed disaster film involves a series of volcanic eruptions — inevitably caused by mankind's ongoing decimation of the planet — that threaten to destroy about fifty percent of the Korean peninsula. That the explosions are all taking place in North Korea, naturally makes any potential intervention that much more complicated.

Who will save the day? Certainly not the arrogant American industrial-military complex! So can anyone? Or, counter to the one hero saves all narrative, are a whole bunch of people going to be called upon to work together in order to pull off one risky solution? If you're hoping for once it's the latter, good news: Ashfall involves a whole crew of people — a reluctant professor (Ma Dong-seok, cast against type), a political prisoner (Lee Byung-hun), and a bomb-defuser (Ha Jung-woo) as well as a number of women in important roles like a high-ranking government official (Jeon Hye-jin) and a particularly effective female soldier who sadly does not currently get a credit on IMDb. Each of these players must dig deep, break some rules, jeopardize their careers, and risk their lives in order to potentially accomplish what's a long shot to begin with. And no, not everyone survives.

The Client: Did He Do It?

Watching The Client is like listening to a certain type of well-told short story. The carefully constructed narrative builds, scene by scene, without ever needing you to re-evaluate your interpretations of "the facts" (like a mystery would) but instead judiciously doles out the details so that you're only able to decisively answer its central question at the very end — In this case: Did that cool cucumber Han Cheol-min (Jang Hyuk) murder his wife or not? The accused isn't particularly sympathetic. The dead woman (Yoo Da-in) has barely any screen time. So what we're left with is a battle of wills between the public prosecutor (Park Hee-son) and the defense attorney (Ha Jung-woo). Nothing wrong with that!

Their efforts to outwit each other is what generates most of the tension in Sohn Young-sung's effective courtroom drama. Will the client's team be able to retrieve the videotape shot in the hall and why won't the police turn this evidence over? Will the cranky five-and-dime owner (Yoo Soon-woong) confess what he saw the night of the crime? Does his mute son have anything pertinent to add? To its credit, The Client never feels like its withholding evidence or dragging things out despite running over two hours. Sometimes, it simply takes time to tell a good story. That's something which The Client most assuredly understands.

Side Note: This movie is a huge improvement over Sohn's earlier flick The Pit and The Pendulum. Credit in part must go to Sohn's co-screenwriter Lee Chun-hyeong.

Along with the Gods: The Last 49 Days: What the Hell!

A movie can take its inspiration from anywhere: a great book, a bad book, a play, a graphic novel, or in this case, a webtoon. As you might guess given this particular source material, Along With the Gods: The Last 49 Days isn't exactly realistic. Director Kim Yong-hwa's episodic tale of the underworld is instead a combination of video game action, Medieval redemption, and modern-day dramedy.

It's a complicated plot full of flashbacks and flashbacks in flashbacks, a story in which you may struggle to reconcile financially struggling humans on earth with costumed judges in the Hells of Filial Impiety, Indolence, Deceit, Betrayal, Injustice, Violence, and Murder. So many hells! So many green screens!

None of these hells are scary, mind you. The ravenous raptors and the firey Go-Bots, much like the CGI wolves and the animated tiger, are creatures more likely to surface via your PG-rated Xbox than by way of your worst nightmares. The closest thing this flick has to a real threat is the dwindling value of the mutual funds which the caretaker-grandfather (Nam Il-woo) and his guardian angel (Ma Dong-seok) pray will provide for the future of their young charge's future. As for the corny jokes and silly gags we've come to expect in action pics, one grim reaper (Ju Ji-hoon) does drink a chamber pot of urine. But overall, the comedy is more tonal than actual. So what's the point? "No one is innately bad. There are only bad circumstances," quips someone near the end. You could say the same about many movies.

Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time: Buoyant Slime

Choi Min-sik's career encompasses a rogues' gallery worth of tough guys: the serial killer in I Saw the Devil, the title character in The Admiral, the washed-up pugilist in Crying Fist, and — perhaps most hauntingly — the vigilante/victim in Park Chan-wook's messed-up masterpiece Oldboy. Yet as tough as all these guys were, Choi's character in Nameless Gangster could probably beat them all. It's not that he's physically stronger, more intellectually limber, or naturally bloodthirstier. It's simply that he's a shameless slime-ball who backstabs like nobody's business, an evil Everyman with a chip on his shoulder. Never has an ingratiating laugh felt more like a secret weapon.

Indeed there's something so believably sleazy about Choi Ik-hyun, the wheeling and dealing gangster played by the actor, that your disgust rises and rises each time he gets out of another jam by screwing somebody else over. His one-upmanship of a younger, more seasoned gangster (Ha Jung-woo) is ingenious; his self-serving coercion of his brother-in-law (Ma Dong-seok) into a life of crime is heartless; his outmaneuvering of an ambitious prosecutor (Kwak Do-won) is infuriating. When you're loyal to none, evidently, there's no place to go but up! As the old adage goes: "Poop floats."

Writer-director Yun Jong-bin has presented us with an uncomfortably cynical point of view of every level of society: the judicial system, the police department, organized crime, the workplace, your family, your hometown, you name it. And yet, despite Choi's continual deceits, at no point do you feel, "Oh this could never happen" or "someone would have caught on by now." We've all lived with and/or worked with reprehensible success stories like Choi's double-dealer. He's our relative, our boss, our elected official, our next door neighbor, our social studies teacher. Humanity is horrible.

Tunnel: Buried But Not Forgotten

I might be a little claustrophobic. Such was the realization I had while watching Tunnel, a relatively effective disaster pic about a kind-hearted salesman (Ha Jung-woo) whose car is buried deep in the earth after a poorly constructed tunnel suddenly collapses while he's driving home for his daughter's birthday. With boulders and dirt all around him and little more than a tin can with windows as his shelter, our Everyman is really caught between a rock and a hard place. Do you conserve energy? Do you strategize an escape? How do you stay sane alone? Such is his dilemma. At least at first. Eventually, he discovers another person and her adorable lapdog are also buried, and can be accessed via a large pipe conveniently connecting the two vehicles. Then later, I guess as further rumblings cause the rocks to realign, he's suddenly got a cave-like living-room right beside his car so he can get out an stretch, let the dog out to pee, and collect water dripping of a random bit of wire.

Why writer-director Kim Seong-hun undermines the initial, heart-stopping entrapment probably has a lot to do with how difficult it would be to sustain drama with little more than a birthday cake, two bottles of water, and a cellphone with a battery doomed to run out. Those above ground have an even harder time maintaining the drama as the rescue team leader (Oh Dal-su) drills a hole in the wrong location (couldn't they have pinpointed the location of the cellphone?) and the well-meaning wife (Bae Doona) sniffles, sulks, and fries eggs. But here's the thing with B-movies about life-threatening disasters. They don't have to be perfect to be perfectly fun.

What a disaster movie needs to do is pick a catastrophe and run with it. Pandora did it with a nuclear power plant malfunction, The Tower with a skyscraper going up in flames, and Tidal Wave with... well you can guess this one on your own can't you? Generally speaking the title gives it away. Next up: Flu!

The Handmaiden: Woman Is the Future of Man

Lady Vengeance marked a turning point in Park Chan-wook's career, being as it was, his first feature film to have a female protagonist. He'd had important female characters before: the radical girlfriend in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, the unfortunate daughter in Oldboy, even the special investigator in Joint Security Area. Yet, as you can see, these women were largely defined by their relationships to men. Once Park put a woman front and center, however, his female characters got a hell of a lot more interesting. The insane young woman in I'm a Cyborg, But that's Okay and his variation of Therese Raquin for his vampire flick Thirst are much more complicated than the various women who came before. I guess, Park simply realized that he couldn't get Song Kang-ho for every movie he was making.

Which isn't to say that Park has moved beyond the male gaze with his latest. To the contrary, The Handmaiden seems to revel in it. The more powerful his on-screen women become, the more sexual they become as well. This particular movie takes that idea to its utmost extreme. The love triangle that forms between an orphan-heiress (Kim Min-hee), the titular handmaiden (Kim Tae-ri), and a fraudulent Count (Ha Jung-woo) would in theory show three different pairings but when it comes to the kissing, stroking, fingering, nipple licking, felatio, scissoring, and the insertion of ringing balls, most of that's done by the two women to each other. Intercourse between a man and a woman is more likely to be threatened (or read via old smutty books) than actualized. But this it too titilating to be a feminist manifesto. Sometimes the sex is shown from a humorous vantage point (the crotch POV); other times, the nudity is highly theatrical (in profile atop a table). Park's often been criticized for the violence in his movies (and there's definitely some shockers here) but you've got to give him credit: He also knows how to compose a picture — admittedly with some serious help from Chung Chung-hoon, the brilliant cinematographer who'd worked with him on six other films before this one.

Kundo: Age of the Rampant: Our Friends and Family on Screen

I'm not above having imaginary relationships with movie stars. I may not put posters on my bedroom walls or gossip about my celluloid boyfriend but there are definitely performers I've enjoyed meeting and looked forward to seeing again; actor whom I wanted to be a bigger part of my life; actors who I miss after I haven't seen them for awhile and greet with pleasure when they reappear. Ma Dong-seok fells into this category: He's in my inner circle, I mean I frankly adore him, although that wasn't always the case.

Over the years, our paths had crossed numerous times: He played the gang boss in Rough Play, a section chief in New World, and an ineffectual detective in Azooma. So sure I kind of knew him but honestly, we didn't really get that close until just very recently. His role as a lovable lug with a pregnant girlfriend in Train to Busan and now his turn as a rebel-thief in Kundo: Age of the Rampant has really brought us much closer than I'd ever expected. People are funny that way. Mind you, he's not the lead in Kundo, Yun Jong-bin's crowd-pleasing, action-packed historical drama about revolutionaries fighting a corrupt government in 19th-century Joseon.

That honor (or responsibility) falls to Ha Jung-woo who plays a politically enlightened butcher with a debt to settle and two cleavers to do it with. And Ha's great. He really is. So are co-stars Yun Ji-hye (as an archer with a low tolerance for bullshit) and Kang Dong-won (as the bastard son who takes his grudges a little too far). But I only had eyes for Ma. I guess that's just the kind of friend I am.

It's so nice to make new friends but you know what? Now I need to find out if Ma is in a film with my other buddy Song Kang-ho. It would be so great if there was a way for the three of us to hang out together for a night. Life is short. Way too short. So spend it with the people you love, right?

Assassination: Causing a Takedown

Although it's painful to admit, terrorism is the war tactic of the underdog. Unable to compete in terms of the number of bodies or the power of military hardware, the little guy is left to underhanded methods, stealth operations, symbolic massacres, assassination. So how you respond to Choi Dong-hoon's flick Assassination is probably connected to how you feel about the Koreans overthrowing their Japanese conquerors back in the day. Should you fall in the "by any means necessary" camp, the movie is as flag-waving as can be. It's uplifting! Should you subscribe to a "fair play" mentality in war, you may feel more conflicted. But does anyone not want to see the Koreans win here? Does anyone think these nationalists need to wait until they've organized a proper army? Or gone through the proper channels?

But when you apply that mindset to the current political climate, what happens? Suddenly, a movie like Assassination is playing on two distinct levels: the patriotic one and the insurgent one. Oh, it's easy to see that in this case The Cause is just, and that we're right to side with the sharpshooter (Jun Ji-hyun) and to revile the a-hole (Lee Jung-jae) who's infiltrating the revolution on behalf of the enemy. But in a weird way, as members of a capitalist country, we're probably most like Hawaii Pistol (Ha Jung-woo), the mercenary who has to re-evaluate his personal ethics in order to make the noble choice: the right of the people and not the reward of the dollar. There's an underlying appeal to Assassination that has to do with the pleasures of seeing the dark horse win. (That it's set in the past also makes it more clear cut.) But what happens when you're a part of the all-engulfing power? part of empowering the big guy? Surely, size isn't inherently corrupt. And if it is, what can we do about it?

For now, regardless, I'm in complete support of this movie. Viva la revolution!

The Berlin File: The Bourne Identity by Way of Korea - North, South and Abroad

Ryu Seung-wan's The Berlin File feels aspirational. The goal? To break into the American movie multiplex. With more than enough English to excerpt for a mass-market trailer intended to dupe unsuspecting Yanks into buying tickets, this Bourne Identity with a North Korean slant hopes to appease its misinformed foreign audience with plenty of gunfire, big explosions, hand-to-hand combat and international politics (with a minimum number of subtitles). Yet while a savvy marketing strategy may fill The Berlin File's stateside seats on opening weekend, the word of mouth in any language is unlikely to do so thereafter.

Where does The Berlin File go wrong? Part of the problem may be that the star lineup is so lopsided. Despite its bilingual dreams, the only familiar faces (to someone who knows both Korean and American cinema) are the Korean ones. So while you've got Ha Jung-woo (The Chaser), Jun Gianna (My Sassy Girl) and Han Suk-kyu (Green Fish) on one side, the Europeans and Americans populating this Berlin are all no-namers. Personally, I think the addition of a Skeet Ulrich or a Joe Morton would've gone a long way to generate international appeal.

Especially when you consider the stilted delivery of the English dialogue by most of the Koreans here. Lines are uttered like memorized sounds, not words — never mind sentences. And let's face it: A convoluted plot about terrorism needs to be said with conviction. With the exception of Ryu Seung-beom (who appears to be relishing his role as a villain after years of playing comic cutie), the other Korean actors only appear at ease when speaking their native tongue. (That might be a problem for that aforementioned trailer!)

That said, I respect The Berlin File's aim. How crazy is it that despite Korea being a powerhouse in world cinema for a decade, it still has yet to garner a single Oscar nomination for best foreign film. What needs to happen to generate that level of respect? Kim Ki-duk's Pieta snagged the top prize at Venice in 2012. Let's hope American laurels lie ahead.

The Yellow Sea: If You Can Cut With It, You Can Kill With It

In The Yellow Sea, Yanji* cab-driver Ga-num (Ha Jung-woo) isn't your typical anti-hero. A gambler whose debts have driven him to agree to kill a professor (Kwak Byeong-gyoo) in Seoul, he's short on charm and lacks a moral code, however warped. Myun-ga (Kim Yun-seok), the crime boss who enlists his services, comes across as more likeable and laudable. At least initially. But after the targeted prof has been offed, everything's become so horrific — the planned assassination has domino-ed into mass murder — that Ga-num emerges as the sympathetic guy. (It's hard not to feel for a guy who got played.) Framed and uninformed, he's left to fend off Myun-ga's gang, the cops, and the thugs of Kim Tae-won (Cho Seong-ha), Myun-ga's slimy white collar counterpoint.

Na Hong-jin, who also directed the heart-racing thriller The Chaser, must have paranoia in his DNA. Once again, the thrills in The Yellow Sea come from "Somebody's after me!" scenarios; yet again the action is all pursuit/escape. As Ga-num flees Myun-ga, Kim and the cops, Kim flees and pursues Myun-ga, and Myun-ga chases and chases and chases. Many of the face-offs when someone finally catches up to someone else involve men with big kitchen knives or just-as-lethal axes hacking, stabbing, and sometimes even sawing into unlucky bodies. Many die quickly, dramatically. But the three main guys — Ga-num, Myun-ga, and Kim — bleed and survive, stopping only for the time it takes to fashion a tourniquet.

Their collective rapid recoveries push The Yellow Sea into comic book territory, where men bludgeon others with pots and pans and even the occasional animal thigh bone. Where else can a man with a twisted ankle outrun police cars and a whole squad of officers on foot? Since the superhuman powers aren't restricted to the movie's hero, fights are fair among the main three: Anyone could win. Whether anyone actually does or not is a question to answer over the many excited drinks sure to follow.

*Footnote: Yanji is a Chinese city with a predominantly Korean population.

Beasties Boys: Boy Hookers, Girl Hookers and Not a Lot of Romance

Prostitution is a messy affair and prostitutes in love are even messier. So while you might think Yun Jong-bin's Beastie Boys (a.k.a. The Moonlight of Seoul) is going to be a salacious bit of peekaboo concerning as it does Seung-woo (Yun Gye-sang), the rookie gigolo who falls in love with experienced call girl Ji-won (Yun Jin-seo), while he's working at a host bar pouring drinks out to cougars, this depressing drama serves up a lot more domestic anguish than it does backroom titillation. That's because director Yun is super-aware that professional seduction is the art of the con and that if you make a living out of a certain type of behavior then that same behavior is going to spill over into all other parts of your life.

So since Ji-won makes a living lying to men (and laying men), her being a scam artist too is inevitable because she can't help thinking of a better deal, a better setup, a richer life, a quicker fix. It's all part of her daily thinking. Jae-hyeon (Ha Jung-woo), Seung-woo's mentor, has been in the business even longer and he takes the compulsiveness even further — gambling, double-dealing, cheating, and extorting self-righteously without even a trace of guilt. Get tangled up with one of these warper sex-workers, as Seung-woo's sister Han-byeol (Lee Seung-min) does, and you're going to end up fleeced and heartbroken.

But Beastie Boys' descent into degradation and despair isn't as straightforward as this might suggest. On screen the story plays out as first as a rocky bromance alongside a sweetly unlikely romance. When things fall apart, as they tend to do in social realist dramas, all alliances are off. And it's not just every man and woman for his or her self, it's also "vengeance is mine." Since no one has been dealt a fair hand in life, these characters are out to win at all costs, and if not win then get into a different game, and if not that then make sure the competition is wiped out and that justice is served, no matter how much it hurts. This is a world in which the conscience has been devalued, which also means that guilt is scarily absent. Not a great film, Beastie Boys falls into that category of not-half-bad movies that periodically seize your attention with unexpected force.

My Dear Enemy: The Dwindling Returns of Love Lost, Found and Lost Again

How far would you go to get $3,500 back from an old boyfriend who was a total slacker? Would you track him down at the horse track and drive him around all day as he tried to weasel smaller sums of money from a series of questionable sources? That's what Hee-su (Jeon Do-yeon) does and in Lee Yeon-ki's depressing drama My Dear Enemy she's about to pay a very different price.

She's going to have to listen to her ex (Ha Jung-woo) sweet talk and cajole money out of every female acquaintance they meet then suffer through hearing him recount all the sweeter parts of their past, memory by memory. It's painful watching a bitter young woman get sucked in by a scammer all over again but that's really what My Dear Enemy is all about.

For most of the movie, Hee-su looks like a woman deeply in need of barbiturates. She's bitter, morose, and prone to complain. Given that Yeon-ki dumped her over a year ago, her actions come across as confused at best. Who'd go back to a shared favorite restaurant in this scenario? You get the feeling that there's a part of her that's ashamed and so she's out to humiliate herself every step of the way.

If you did start, there are a number of moments in which you likely would have bailed. Like when he brought you to get hundreds of dollars from a prostitute. Or when you ended up drinking beers with his former college roommate who's husband constantly insults her. Hee-su almost backs out. Why doesn't she? I suppose her love is deeper than mine.

And so the day continues, and she's following him now to a biker gangs' rooftop layout where she'll get yet another portion of the owed sum, this time over pork chops and beer served by people in leather jackets. Then it's off to pick up the wayward teen of some of his friends. Then trudging through the rain to get your car back since it's been towed. It really just gets worse and worse!

In it own weird way, I guess My Dear Enemy is a romantic drama to help single people feel better about not being paired off with a cute loser who'd probably land you in debt, pregnant and homeless. Then again, maybe not since by the end Hee-su seems like a heartless bitch who just extorted thousands of dollars from a homeless man. Oh well.

Breath: Kim Ki-duk Makes a Musical (in His Own Strange Way)

I used to hate musicals. But that's because I used to think musical meant Oklahoma, Cats, My Fair Lady and Xanadu. But once I broadened my definition a bit, and started to think of any movie with a number of songs sung by the cast as being a musical, I realized that I actually liked some musicals very, very much. In that spirit, I'd call Kim Ki-duk's Breath a musical. Sure, there are only four songs -- and they're all sung by Yeon (Gang In-hyeong), the depressed sculptor who courts imprisoned murderer Jang Jin (Chang Chen) after she finds out her husband (Ha Jung-woo) is cheating on her -- but each of these numbers is integral to the story and three of them involve special costume changes and strangely elaborate sets. Since this is a Duk film, you can bet your bottom dollar that these conventions are executed in an unusual way. (Think less Busby Berkley and more performance art.) And since every Duk film has at least one mute character, you can also guess who is listening attentively while Yeon is belting out her pop tunes.

The first three numbers are set in the prison's visiting room where Yeon has painstakingly papered the walls with colorful scenery enhanced by well-chosen props like a vase of flowers, a fan, and a boombox which she uses as her karaoke machine. Her final song -- for which she's joined in a sing-a-along by her reformed, now-harmonious husband -- is performed in a car (the site of many an impromptu duet) and doubles as the soundtrack for Jang Jin's strangled death at the hands of three cellmates, including one who appears to have deeply passionate feelings that rival those of Yeon, who earlier tried to kill Jang in coitus but failed. In the immortal words of singer Pat Benatar (who really should write a musical), "Love is a battlefield."

Click here to see a list of Kim Ki-duk's Top Ten Movies.

The Chaser: The Kid Stays in the Crime Picture

The reveal and the capture of the serial killer come so soon in The Chaser that you might think, there's no likelihood of unrelenting tension in the hours ahead. Well, you're wrong! Director Na Hong-in and fellow screenwriters Hong Won-chan and Lee Shinho have made something more suspenseful than a standard whodunit; the mystery here isn't who did it, it's whether he'll get away with it despite his confession. What "it" is in this case is the attempted murder of a call girl (Seo Yeong-hie) whose morally compromised pimp (Kim Yun-seok) is undergoing a seismic shift inside as he searches for the lair of her last customer, a psychopath (Ha Jung-woo) held in detention by the cops. It's a wonderfully messy story with subplots involving police brutality, embezzlement, sex trafficking, auto insurance, church finances, and even a mayor who's been hit in the face with human feces. But aside from one glitch near the end in which a delightfully tough lady dick (Park Hyo-ju) inexplicably lets the murderer get away, the twists and turns of The Chaser keep you on your toes. Factor in that this is Na's first feature and an amazing performance by Kim Yoo-jeong as the prostitue's kid, and this movie is a super-impressive addition to Korean noir.

Time: Love Me. Love My Face

It took me awhile to come around to Kim Ki-duk. He can be pretentiously affected (Real Fiction) or ridiculously farfetched (Samaritan Girl). But Time, like The Isle and 3-Iron, reillustrates that at his best he's an almost-mystical storyteller. The inverted romance concerns a man and his girlfriend (Park Ji-yeon) who gets plastic surgery to find out if he loves her. Or to keep him interested. Or because she hates herself. Motives are inscrutable: Kim is no Pavlovian! Anyway, just when this nutty girl is about to reveal that the new her (Seong Hyeon-a) is the same person as the old her, the boyfriend (Ha Jung-woo) announces he's still in love with his ex, not knowing his new paramor is one and the same. She goes ballistic. He finds out then freaks out himself. In fact, he freaks out so much that he goes to the same plastic surgeon for help. What the confused loverboy looks like after that operation we never learn. What we do see is she's going crazy trying to find out. Is that guy at the scuplture park him? Or the friendly patron at the neighboring table at Room & Rumors coffeeshop? Or is he, please God no, the fatal victim in a car accident? Whatever! She returns to the beauty clinic for another new face to help her forget or to let her escape or because she's addicted to going under the knife. Hippocrates, where art thou?