The Pirates: The Last Royal Treasure: Thievery at Sea

Before The Pirates: The Last Royal Treasure, I had no idea that seawater made Korean hair kinky too. Director Kim Jeong-hoon's action-adventure of pirate treasure-hunting is like a public service announcement for wavy hair: Self-assured captain Hae-rang (Han Hyo-joo) sports lush, loose, loopy tresses worthy of a romance novel's cover; doublecrossing Mak-yi (Lee Kwang-Soo) flaunts a long, tighter coil that relaying streetwalker realness; and lead rival Moo-chi (Kang Ha-neul) goes even further with a friz that simultaneously sun-damaged and salon-permed. The only bald character that shows up is a female monk who's shave her head and dies without uttering a single line.

And what would a holy woman even say if required to suck air underwater out of an inflated urine-flavored pig-bladder? What wisdom might she discover? She might say that material wealth shouldn't be the ultimate goal in your life. She definitely would proclaim that pirate garb tends to look like a themepark costume in every single movie. And with The Pirates, she'd recognize that there's no life-saving miracle as theatrical and outlandish as getting swallowed by a giant whale moments before you're about to drown. Except getting burped out afterwards.

The Carnivores: Unlikable Rapist Saves Rape Victim

God, how I wish Yoo-joon (Kim Jeong-hoon), the main guy in The Carnivores, had not raped his married girlfriend in the beginning of this movie. And I wish that he had not, shortly thereafter, become a Peeping Tom, who watched — albeit silently horrified — as a 20something villager (Cha Ji-hun) was sexually assaulted by multiple men night after night. But wishing can't make it so. Especially when misanthropic writer-director Ha Won-joon's wishes are so contrary to my own. Ha wants to create an antihero that's despicable, deplorable, dumb. Ha wants to present a rape victim (not a rape survivor) — giving her a knife and night blindness so that she can't use the knife when the men come to attack. The best you can say about this script is that no one has the cards stacked in his favor: All the characters are equally stupid. This uniform idiocy means that the "hero" has to retrieve a professional-grade camera in order to visually document any crimes instead of using his cellphone; that a pair of townsmen tracking the escaping couple needlessly trade weapons before splitting up in the woods, only to reconnect again not much later after one of the two townies is dead. (He got his foot stuck in a bear trap then his head bashed by a stone.)

This is a universe in which traumatized children euthanize their ailing mothers as a way to achieve closure, old waitresses are still subject to sexual harassment while pouring drinks at work, and drunk war vets sit in a circle and laughingly recount their most unforgivable crimes... People are heinous, aren't they? But for that matter so are some actors. How else to label a person who would accept a role in a movie that's so outrightly misogynist? No one went into this production hoping to make art so who do you hold accountable for the inadvertent message, gross as it is? The Carnivores is a low-grade fright flick that doesn't scare or care. It sickens. As B-movies go, Hera Purple this is not.

Cafe Seoul: A Multicultural Confection About Familial Love

Cafe Seoul appeals to the sentimentalist in me, the one who doesn't mind seeing a movie that makes me feel like I'm having an allergic reaction, what with this mucous-y lump in my throat, these teary eyes, and those involuntary exclamations of "Oh!" and "Aw!" Whether you'll have equally aggravating symptoms depends on how you react to to the small wins and losses in small-scale family dramas. My susceptibility in this case can partially be attributed to coming, likewise, from a family of three sons, each of whom has gone his separate way as an adult only to reconnect later, through unforeseen circumstances. More on that as it relates to the movie later.

Aside from that, this movie also appeals to me as a novice student of the Korean language. Since one of Cafe Seoul's main characters is a Japanese tourist/journalist, much of the dialogue gets restated and slowed down so he can understand what's being said. For me that translates as an opportunity to re-hear words/phrases and pick out the few I know. I appreciated that! That the Japanese guy and the Koreans he befriends use English as a Lingua Franca didn't hurt either.

For the viewer who doesn't give a damn about my family or my new tutor, Cafe Seoul has plenty else in its favor. As the roving reporter (Takumi Saito), the bespectacled baker (Choi Seong-min), a bad boy brother (Kim Jeong-hoon), and the old lady (Jeong Suk-yeong) who's the bakery's most faithful customer, the cast evinces a natural affection for each other. That warmth allows you to forgive some implausible plot devices, like why the youngest brother (Kim Dong-wook) is dead set on putting the family business out of business or how the mob boss (Kim Eung-soo) comes to leave the bakery alone. There's also nice supporting work by Jang Seo-won as a spikey-haired thug who wants to shut the bakery's doors even as he can't keep coming back to eat more rice cakes.