The Great Flood: Rain, Rain, Go Away!

An asteroid has hit earth. There's flooding. There's rain. There's less panic then you might expect. Will anyone survive? Weepy Dr. Gu (Kim Da-mi) has a shot since the robots are focused on rescuing her and shooting her into space. But if humanity must depend on this scientist to survive then we might be better off extinct. Gu has been doing work on implanting emotions while the robots have been working on making human bodies. Time for teamwork, in theory. But how empathetic is our heroine? When disaster strikes, she seems pretty quick to pass by other people to save her child which is, as she knows, a robot. Other kids in need? Pretty much a passing concern. An elderly couple in an apartment? Not even worth a second thought. Looks like Gu is ensuring the future of robotkind, not mankind. Valid to some.

The robot child (Kwon Eun-sung) isn't esppecially endearing. The special effects, I mean the tsunamni-level waves, look unlikely to survive. Not that this is real life. It's a movie. Or a video game. Or an apocalyptic fantasy (with antiquated walkie-talkies) intended to appease the A.I. overlords? Their representative here, bossy — none-too-bright Hee-jo (Park Hae-soo) — has been sent by some agency to ensure she survives, or maybe to ensure they survive, or maybe to forge a bond. He claims he can't feel emotions so I'm unsure how to interpret his irritability. System malfunction? Or how so many people can hold their breath underwater for so long. Or how a cellphone can survive extended time underwater. Or the idea that guns are the answer. Or how many lives I'd have to live to get it right. (It's a relevant thought related to Kim Byung-woo's loopy scifi movie that I won't explain because... Spoiler: Deja vu.)

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 David versus Goliath story. Our poor nameless waif is being chased down by genetically engineered and scientifically 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 your average, regular Joes. The people of the future are total animals.