Love 911: Sirens Will Lure You to Your Own Destruction

Beautiful people can't resist beautiful people. That's a cruel certainty to swallow. Yet what else to ingest after watching Love 911? Jeong Gi-hoon's rom-com of destiny pairs off a big-hearted, widowed fireman (Go Soo) with an understandably single amoral woman (Han Hyo-ju) whose one effective hook is her looks. And why? Because character defects are so "whatever"!

It doesn't matter that our ingenue's impressive paychecks as an ER doctor are about to end because of her callous negligence. It doesn't matter that her negligence almost cost her best friend (Jin Seo-yeon) her job as well. It doesn't matter that her disregard for others has landed a possible victim of domestic abuse in a coma. It doesn't matter that she lies about her own mother's death to score points with her intended. She's cute. She's flirty. Her susceptibility to fainting spells shows that she's vulnerable too. What else could you want?

Okay. Okay. Our petty lady doctor evolves through Love 911. She does learn to cry for her sins; to share a true personal tragedy about her dad; to invest in saving lives, instead of making cold hard-won won. By the end, when the fireman's finally hot for her, we know why. She's a fully rounded person! But it's hard to believe she'd go from ice-cold to caring or that he'd have kept doing shots with her until she'd grown a heart.

Wait a second. Is this movie about drunk goggles? Is that it? Is it about how alcohol impairs our judgment of character as well as of beauty? Or does attractiveness simply wear us down? An equally handsome fellow firefighter (Kim Seong-oh) is quite immune to the charms of his female coworker (Hyun Jyu-ni) until she shows up wearing a skintight dress. One imagines that ultimately Love knows no logic but the attraction of heels — the high kind, and the despicable.

The Man From Nowhere: An Action Movie to Answer My Prayers

God, I love a good serious-faced kid actress (Kim Sae-ron) who's got a drug-addicted mom (Kim Hyo-seo) who calls her "garbage" when she's not working as a stripper or getting slapped around by her no-good boyfriend/pimp. And God, I love an emotionally numb but physically sexy assassin (Won Bin) who develops a fondness for little, helpless waifs without ever losing his ability to disarm and maim a whole gang of thugs even if they're equipped with knives, pipes and guns and he's got nothing but his flying fists and feet. I just love him! Especially, when he stands shirtless in front of a mirror and gives himself a stylish haircut with a bare razor blade and a handy electronic clipper that just happened to be lying around. And while I'm at it God, I also love a skinny, effeminate villain (Kim Seong-oh) who gets wigged out when blood unexpectedly splatters on his white Dolce & Gabbana ensemble even as he's torturing someone for his less-pretty-but-just-as-amoral brother (Kim Hee-won) who specializes in donor harvesting. I even love a greedy, guilt-free hag (Baek Soo-ryeon) who kidnaps motherless children then pimps them out to run drug deals or credit card scams. And while I don't necessarily love the assassin's soul mate (Thanayong Wongtrakul) who really just wants to have a fair fight with our hero because his mirror image is so hotly efficient, I can at least get into the homoerotic aspect of their brutal embraces and animalistic sparring. Oh, maybe I do love him, too, God. Maybe I do! And because of that, I definitely love Lee Jeong-beom's The Man From Nowhere. Thanks God! I really appreciate it!