Asura: The City of Madness: Politics as Usual

Watching this movie, as I did, the day after Trump got a bloody ear at a rally, Asura: The City of Madness lent credence to conspiracy theories that our former president staged his own assassination attempt, dead bystander notwithstanding. For somewhere early on in Kim Sung-su's political thriller, an equally corrupt, avaricious mayor redirects the attention of the media by having his head clandestinely sliced by a box cutter to salvage his rah-rah conference of self-promotion. That self-directed mutilation is especially creepy because Mayor Park Sung-Bae (Hwang Jung-min) — like DJT — emerges bloodied and defiant, using the injury as a way to paint himself as a martyr. Like Trump, too, he's surrounded by thugs with fear-based loyalty and questionable sense. The only saving (dis)grace for Park is that the justice department — represented by Special Prosecutor Kim Cha-in (Kwak Do-won), Chief Prosecutor Oh (Choi Byung-mo) and a hunky detective (Jeong Man-sik) — are only ever-so-slightly less slimy.

Stuck between the two feuding parties is Han Do-Kyung (Jung Woo-sung), a dirty cop willing to turn traitor on his boss if it means making money for his wife's costly medical treatments. The compromised morals of his cheery BFF Sunmo (Ju Ji-hoon) have more to do with career opportunities with a long game in mind. Eventually, both characters go off the deep end: one on his way up; one, his way down. Neither have luck on their side or as someone says at one point they're probably "trying to be clever with an inadequate brain." Recurring thought: Stay out of behind-closed-doors-with-a-knife politics.

CCTV: Someone's Always Watching

Now that we carry our phones wherever we go and sit at desks topped by computers with built-in cameras, our activities and whereabouts are pretty much monitored from dawn to dusk. Is paranoia inevitable? Or has this technologically invasive element turned us into performers 24/7? Either way, the news crew in CCTV is having a particularly rough go of it this particular day because their on-the-job recordings are being invaded by a murderous spirit, recalling the station's sordid past. Which seems to have little influence since no one is inhibited from committing various distasteful acts within the workplace, supernatural video be damned.

Indebted to The Ring (spooky VHS tapes), The Blair Wood Project (found footage), Poltergeist (soul-swallowing televisions), The Exorcist (demon possession), The Sentinel (whited-out eyes), and Terror Train (New Year's Eve setting), writer-director Kim Hong-ik's low-budget horror flick can come across like a creepy skeleton assembled from random bones. The action — appropriately perhaps — takes place in some in-between era in which staffers work on cell phones and paper notepads with nary a laptop or USB drive in sight. And despite the murders piling up in this newsroom, everyone's hesitant to call the police. No one trusts authority. Not in this building! How can they when there are so many backstabbers around that you're hardly surprised when one character (Kwak Do-won) gets knifed in the eye. The takeaway: Trust no one. Even if they've got the evidence on a cassette. (Which is another way of saying, I didn't buy this movie's late-in-the-game whodunit explanation.)

The Man Standing Next: Not The President's Last Bang

Will the multiple Oscar accolades for Parasite result in larger crowds for new Korean movies at the multiplex? Not immediately from the looks of it if a recent screening of Woo Min-ho's big-budget political thriller The Man Standing Next is any gauge. (A recent matinee screening had the usual six or seven suspects in attendance at Times Square's AMC Empire 25.) In this case, that's probably all for the best since this film about the 1979 assassination of South Korean President Park Chung-hee (Lee Sung-min) is neither as layered as Bong Joon-ho's latest masterwork nor as stylishly seductive as Im Sang-soo's The President's Last Bang which covers similar territory. Which means this one is truly for cineastes with a taste for "Hallyuwood."

In its favor, The Man Standing Next is more forthcoming with historical details than glammy The President's Last Bang; less fortunate is how belabored the set-up part of the movie is. I learned more and cared less since The Man Standing Next only kicks into gear when the action turns decidedly violent. There's a terrific scene in which a kidnapped Kwak Do-won fights his way out of a car, which leads to an exciting final scene in which the KCIA Chief Kim Kyu-Pyeong (Lee Byung-hun) orchestrates the killing with his hired thugs as well as the cooperation of the duplicitous Deborah Shim (Kim So-jin). Most interesting of all however is the archival photos and audio of the real-life men portrayed in the film, a short aside which pops up right before the end credits. Getting upstaged by reality isn't uncommon but as a stand-in for The Man Standing Next's anti-hero of a leading man, a former-revolutionary-turned-frustrated-bureaucrat, Lee Byung-hun has certainly done better.

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.

The Wailing: Taking Its Time to Meet the Devil

The Wailing is that type of horror movie that takes its own sweet time building its world and then doesn't back down from its supernatural elements by trying to write them off as psychological aberrations. No. Ghosts, shamans, satan, and zombies are all very much real in Na Hong-jin's small-town world. And what starts off as a series of disturbing deaths — are they murders, suicides, fatal-disease-caused-by-a-mushroom victims, who can say? — are soon revealed to be part of a larger battle between good and evil. Or, to be honest, us and evil, after acknowledging that we're actually not so good. When the teams are defined that way, evil feels like it has an unfair advantage. But isn't that what we've suspected all along? God help us indeed!

And poor, unlucky Jong-goo (an excellent Kwak Do-won) definitely needs some help! Because he's just a local cop, a cheating husband, a doting father, and a scaredy cat. He's not ready to take on the devil when the dark underlord decides to take possession of the body of his daughter (Kim Hwan-hee)? If that's even what's going on! Definitely, the Japanese guy (Jun Kunimura) is creepy. As is that young woman (Chun Woo-hee) in white who keeps showing up and acting all strange. Yet does it go to follow that they're actually agents of Hell? Should he go along with his mother-in-law (Her Jin) and have an exorcism performed? Even if it drives the little girl crazy? Why isn't that skinny priest who is the cousin (Kim Do-yoon-I) of his partner more help? Can the shaman (a superb Hwang Jung-min) be trusted? I completely understand why he'd round up his friends to attack the enemy but next time, bring something more lethal than gardening tools!

This is only the third feature film by the director Na but man, what a great track record he's got. The other two are The Chaser and The Yellow Sea, both of which made my best of lists at the end of the years I saw them. This one is definitely going to be a contender for 2017, even if we are only one week in.

The Attorney: Let Justice Reign

South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun's life was certainly worthy of a movie. The youngest of five kids in a poor, small-town family, he often had to leave school to help out at home. Despite never going to college, Roh passed the bar and became not just a self-taught lawyer but a judge, although it was in the former capacity that he did the civil rights work that became the core of his career. Eventually he was elected to the highest office in the land, at which point he was indicted then reinstated. After leaving that office, he was embroiled in a few controversies around bribery and political corruption. Eventually, he committed suicide by jumping off a mountain. That's a pretty compelling life story!

Yang Woo-seok's The Attorney doesn't follow that biography to the letter of the law but even though the lead character is named Park Byung-ho (Song Kang-ho), and his backstory is somewhat recast as that of an apolitical opportunist who has an ennobling epiphany about his profession when the faultless son (Yim Si-wan) of a big-hearted cafe-owner (Kim Yeong-ae) is illegally held prisoner and tortured for being part of a harmless book-reading group, we know this is about Roh. But stripped of his official identity, the movie also allows us to embrace Roh's accomplishments without being burdened with the sad details that followed his ascent to the presidency. All of this helps make The Attorney a feel-good story.

We like seeing the self-taught litigator outwit his snobby colleagues to become a successful self-made businessman. We like seeing him move into an apartment that he helped to build back in the days when he was doing construction to make ends meet. We like seeing him rise to the occasion when injustice suddenly pops up in his inner circle. And we love his refusal to compromise when the insider deals are offered as if justice could be meted out that way by a stuffy judge (Song Young-chang) with no conscience! That may be the way, people like Park's greedy sidekick (Oh Dal-su) and his stone-faced nemesis (Kwak Do-won) want things to go, but in this Capra-esque tale, no can do!

Tazza: The Hidden Card: War Is a Card Game

No one's saying that you need when to know when to play the crane and when to play the butterflies in the card game Go-Stop in order to be able to follow the action in Kang Hyeong-cheol's Tazza: The Hidden Card. For someone like me (i.e., a complete ignoramus), each time a card was thrown down -- be it the cuckoo or the sake cup -- I had to wait for the collective onscreen reactions before I knew who'd won and who'd lost. Here's what I could follow.

Teen hustler De-gil (Choi Seung-hyun) only has eyes for the sassy sister (Shin Se-kyung) of a neighborhood boy (Kim In-kwon) until he sees a dancing cartoon character on the clean white panties of a femme fatale (Lee Ha-nui) who basically sells one of his kidneys for a big score which leads him to a life on the run where he encounters a small-time crook (Yoo Hae-jin) who's got big life lessons to share that come in handy when he's forced to face off with two master criminals (Kim Yun-seok and Kwak Do-won).

For clarity's sake I've edited out all the backstabbing betrayals and shaky partnerships that precede the final Go-Stop game conducted in underwear (which came as a let-down after a promise of nudity in the subtitled dialogue). By that point, you won't give a damn about how the actual card game works because you'll be too invested in the various players and how they're playing each other.

You might not know it and you'd certainly never guess it from watching the movie but Tazza: The Hidden Card is actually the follow-up to Choi Dong-hoon's immensely box office smash Tazza: The High Rollers. Though the two movies feature return performances by a couple of actors — but sadly not Kim Hye-su who was such a wonderful dragon lady in the original — the majority of the cast as well as the director (Kang Hyeong-choi) and his writing collaborators (Cho Sang-bum and Lee Ji-gang) are entirely new. If there were any major narrative callbacks to the original, I certainly didn't catch them. Nor did I miss them. Nor did I want them.