Countdown: The Surgical Date Has Been Set

Tae Geon-ho (Jeong Jae-yeong), the hero of Countdown, is a disturbed man — an unsmiling collections agent who desperately needs a liver transplant and is haunted by the death of his son whose particulars he can't remember. Yet despite all those details, he's infinitely less complicated than his primary foil, Cha Ha-yeon (Jeon Do-yeon) — a shameless grifter, just out of the clink, who was the lucky recipient of Tae's son's donated heart which makes her a perfect candidate to donate her liver. Does this qualify as karma? It might although Huh Jung-ho's thriller, let's you decide for yourself.

Because before the surgical date, Cha has her own business to attend to which leads to car chases, kidnapping, heists, extortion, and fisticuffs involving a taser. Given the protagonist's cold manner, you may be excused for not giving a damn whether he gets the life-saving replacement or not but your indifference has no bearing on the tension. If anything, the flaws of the two leads create an openness to whatever the future holds, a long as one of them proves victorious. The real enemies are bumbling gang-members, a sadistic mafia boss (Lee Kyeong-yeong), and a quack physician who thinks that the most reliable cure for a life-threatening disease is to laugh, laugh, laugh.

26 Years: Two Hours and Fifteen Minutes

One South Korean counterpart for the Kent State Shooting of 1970 could be the Gwangju Uprising of 1980 during which protesting university students and sympathetic citizens were shot — in the thousands! — by a military that had basically just staged a coup following the president's assassination. Was justice served afterwards? Hardly. So Cho Geun-hyun's historical fantasy imagines four traumatized children of the revolution who have grown up eager for revenge. It's a fairly small group of rebels: a sharpshooter (Han Hye-jin), a security officer (Bae Soo-bin), a rookie cop (Im Seul-ong), an older regretful soldier (Lee Kyeong-yeong), and a food-cart owner (Jin Goo) whose face has a cut that makes him look like a Harlequin.

The source of their ire is "The Man" (Jang Gwang), a politician who's apparently impervious to criticism and living a luxurious life devoid of any real socializing. What constitutes revenge varies from person to person. Does he need to issue a formal apology? Grovel and cry? Admit his crimes and go to prison? Or die? Eventually, most of these vigilantes realize that the only one they can make happen is the last one and that's going to be a struggle. An extended flashback in cartoon reveals the horrors that led them to where they are. But where they go after the final frame is anyone's guess. America might be one option. Purgatory, another. But with a run time well over two hours, you might stop conjecturing as to what lies ahead.

The Concubine: She Rules

Revenge is a dish best served Korean, apparently. And Park Chan-wook isn't the only one out there constantly illustrating this maxim. Thanks should also be given to Kim Jee-woon for I Saw the Devil, Jang Cheol-soo for Bedevilled, Kim Ki-duk for Pieta and Kim Yong-han for Don't Cry Mommy — fine and worthy movies all. Interesting side note: Three out of four of those examples feature vengeful woman as the leads. So Kim Dae-seung The Concubine is really part of a thriving tradition, a sub-genre of thrillers that's got no shortage of willful women here to remind you that Justice is indeed a lady. This time, however, she's cloaked in period garb. Set during the Chosun Dynasty, this particular woman out to right her wrongs is Hwa-yeon (Jo Yeo-jeong), a hardly helpless damsel who catches the eye of a potential successor to the crown — Prince Sung-won (Kim Dong-wook) despite her clear preference for the grungy her eyes set on Kwon-yoo (Kim Min-jun), a man of much humbler origins but possessing better archery skill. I mean, he shot that arrow of love right into her heart, my friends.

When her elopement with her favored choice is sabotaged and her man is castrated (troubling visuals ahead, people) she starts thinking "long plan," god bless her soul. No one is going to outwit this strategist — not the eventual king's duplicitous mom and the regent Queen (Park Ji-young), not the highly ranked court advisor (Lee Kyeong-yeo), and certainly not the prince himself. It's going to take a few years to get all her ducks in a row, but once she has, she's going to take them out one by one like the sharpshooter she is. This is one cool-headed mama. Furthermore, she's going to look fabulous doing so. The stylish hanboks worn by Yeon-hwa, as well as those worn by the nefarious queen, are beautiful to look at, although your heart goes out to these well-dressed women considering the corset-like heoreitti worn over the breasts. (And yes, I just learned those words.) But pity them not. At least, not the concubine.

Pandora: How Bad Can It Get?

Disaster movies are especially satisfying when the world becomes an epic nightmare itself. As Trump and his congress of Republican a-holes work to strip the people of education, health insurance, equal rights, a livable planet, etc., seeing a nuclear power plant blow its top off feels like a form of justice. (That moment in Pandora when all the rats flee town is quite a cinematic representation of the animal kingdom finally saying, "Hey, mankind. We're outta here!") And since radiation doesn't favor the rich, the resultant catastrophe is egalitarian in a way that somehow feels right. Which isn't to imply that hierarchies don't still exist.

Cops and military personnel still get off on bossing people around and locking them up. Emergency personnel and higher-level technicians still wait for someone above to call the shots, regardless of what constitutes doing the right thing. Middlemen are afraid of getting in trouble. But it's the rule-breakers who save the day: the female motorcyclist (Kim Joo-Hyun) who hijacks a bus; the secretary who slips an alarming report about the plant to the President (Kim Myung-min); the plant worker (Jeong Jin-yeong) who's behind that report and just got demoted and continues to make noise anyway. For he knows that the ultimate sacrifices to be made will not be made by the avaricious, arrogant Prime Minister (Lee Kyeong-yeong) or the people who spend their lives worrying about rules. No. That will fall to the locals, the young workers for whom the power plant has always been the paycheck for a dead-end existence, whose bodies are already contaminated, whose livelihoods have never really been a concern of the leaders they've elected. Sound familiar?

And while the rebel Jae-hyeok (Kim Nam-gil) may be Pandora's hero because he's the only one who knows how to set up the explosives that will blast the plant to safety and himself to his death, really all the guys are heroes. The only difference being, they've got a few more days to live before their organs give out.

Venus Talk: Three Times as Depressing

When you're feeling down, you can listen to Bessie Smith, peruse Van Gogh's letters, read the poetry of Anne Sexton, that sort of thing. Somehow there's solace to be found in an artful blues song, a heartfelt complaint or a sublime turn of phrase even when it's rife with depression. Spending time with such work is a respectful use of the "misery loves company" philosophy that takes out the "saddling somebody else with your problems" component. Sometimes, you just need to sulk... alone. Is there any easier way to take your mind off your troubles then a really good "woman's picture"? So you'd think Venus Talk would be the perfect palliative for a case of the doldrums. But Kwon Chil-in girly gabfest, while comedic in tone, is a total bring down because the three main stories feel so doomed, even with their tacked on happy endings. My only question: Which one of these characters' lives is the most depressing?

Is it the one about the single mother (Jo Min-soo), whose insufferable daughter (Jeon Hye-jin) is eating her out of house and home, and whose construction-worker boyfriend (Lee Kyeong-hyeong) balks at marriage, right at the moment the mom's diagnosed with colon cancer? Is it the tale of the nymphomaniacal housewife (Moon So-ri) whose husband (Lee Sung-min) does not require Viagra with other women and whose one-night stand prospect ends up mugging her in an underground parking lot? Or is it story of the successful TV producer (Eom Jeong-hwa) who keeps helping men get ahead in their careers and can't get comfortable with a muscle man (Lee Jae-yoon) young enough to be her son? Before you decide, be forewarned: Things get worse for each — a burst bag of poop, a vaginoplasty, stitches in the head, a car crash and a case of scabies. What's working in their favor is really just a shared bottle of red wine. Apparently, life is worth living if you can drink a little booze then tell your besties lies like "age doesn't matter" and "you're getting prettier every year," despite the crow's feet, the sagging skin, the failing memory, the lost dreams, and the ever-growing pile of failures building at your front door.

Hwayi: A Monster Boy: Save the Green Mobster-in-the-Making

A crazily brilliant, intentionally twisted logic informs the mob pic Hwayi: A Monster Boy, an off-kilter sensibility that I was pretty sure I recognized about 15 minutes in. At least I hope I recognized it. I mean, could it really be that the creator of my beloved Save the Green Planet! had finally made another movie after all this time? Had that elusive director I'd long credited for my love of Korean movies finally reappeared? And is it truly possible to recognize an auteur's style that fast, based on one movie alone? Happily, the answer to every question here is YES.

Ten long years after Save the Green Planet! rocked the midnight screening of my soul, Jang Joon-hwan has returned with an exhilarating coming-of-age mafia movie in which the heir apparent (Yeo Jin-gu) must off his various adopted dads to rid himself of his inner demons. Each dad has something that makes him special: Seok-tae (Kim Yun-seok) is all tough love, Ki-tae (Jo Jin-woong) gives him driving lessons that include outrunning the police. Each dad loves Hwayi in his own special way but they’re also carrying a terrible secret, one that will make the son quite a bit less thankful for the sacrifices made.

Hellbent on uncovering that secret is a wily detective, who – much like his counterpart in Save the Green Planet! – may be the smartest guy in the room but he also as no idea that the room he's about to enter is a chamber of Hell. It’s as if Jang is saying that even when a representative of The Law is working at the top of his game with the best of intentions, the cards are stacked against him. The survival of the fittest is not the survival of the smartest. Darwinism has nothing to do with being ruthless or crafty – as one mobster (Yoo Yeon-seok), one masseuse (Woo Dong-gi), one minister (Lee Kyeong-yeong) and one mayoral candidate (Moon Seung-geun) are about to learn in short order. Life's a total crapshoot. Or better yet, a game of roulette. And in Jang's case, that's Russian roulette, my friend.

Paju: Movies Can Have Their Own Language

Paju is a city located just south of the 38th parallel. In fact, it's so close to North Korea, that on clear days, you can see the North Korean bordertown of Kaesong from certain vantage points in the city. Given this proximity, it's no surprise that Paju is home to more than its fair share of military bases -- both American and homegrown. Yet none of this comes into play in Park Chan-ok's film of the same name. At least, not in the most obvious way.

I mean, there's militancy. But it's on the part of some housing rights activists/squatters who engage in actual warfare against unsympathetic developers. There's a very personal territorial battle -- specifically, over an inherited homestead that increasingly becomes a source of volatile contention. There's even border-crossing, if you're willing to stretch the meaning to include (as I am) an affair between a disoriented drifter (Seo Woo) and the man (Lee Sun-kyun) who may or may not have killed her none-too-bright sister (Shim Yi-young).

Holy smoke, that's a whole lot of metaphor. And to be honest, I don't know that this is Park's intent at all. Plus, I'm still stumped by the significance of the boiling water that gets spilled on the unattended baby, the silver fox of a nightclub owner (Lee Kyeong-yeong) who rides around in a fancy car and silently makes his backseat window go up and down or the final scooter ride to somewhere or other. All of these items feel laden with meaning.

I'm pretty sure that if you asked Park, she'd be able to tell you exactly what her intent is. Paju feels like a movie eager for interpretation and explication. Which isn't surprising when you learn that Park is one of Korea's few female directors. You just know that she had to work hard to get this — her second feature — made and she hardly seems likely to have gone to all that trouble if she didn't have something interesting to say. That it's not that easy to decode doesn't diminish the probability of wanting to watch it again. And maybe even, again. Isn't that what you do for a poem?

Be My Guest: This Proletariat Has a Bone to Pick

Be My Guest is atypical K-horror. For starters, it's a rude, crude slasher pic that glories in the bloodletting caused by axes, hedge-clippers, and scythes over the shivers induced by creepy succubi with veils of snarled, black hair. Clearly writer-director Park Soo-young is more enamored of American mega-franchises like Friday the 13th and Halloween than homegrown creepshows like The Evil Twin and The Ring Virus. I, for one, respect his choice. K-horror may be stylishly cool but it's not very scary.

And if you like gory shocks then there's a lot to learn from micro-budget pics like The Blair Witch Project and Night of the Living Dead, too — which I'm guessing Park has also seen — because you don't need an iconic location or name actors to scare the shit out of people out for a thrill. A good concept can take you very far and Park's concept goes the distance: A respectable businessman (Kim Byung-Chun) and his vacationing family are terrorized by a former employee (Lee Kyeong-yeong) fired some time ago despite being a hard worker. Nice start, eh? The disgruntled unemployed cuts the boss and his family up because he got cut. Hey, that works, too. The satire (and the laughs) escalate in the second half during which a sweet-natured delivery guy (Park Yeong-seo) is equally terrorized by the partially dismembered family who are now trying to frame him for a murder.

None of the actors are giving award-winning performances. None of the scenes are shot artistically. None of the lines in the script are memorable. (Parts of everything are god-awful!) None of that matters. Be My Guest is a lowbrow lark, a shameless bit of gratuitous gristle that turns your stomach even as it's giving you something to chew on. In South Korea, this kind of fright flick is rare, and by rare I mean you can see the blood. If Park ever makes a sequel, I'd definitely help myself to a second helping. I might even invite a guest over!

Random addendum: I really do regret having ever seen The Butcher.

Pirates: High Seas Hilarity

Some movies are elaborate meals, some movies are pure puke, and some are complete confections. Squarely in the candy category is director Lee Seok-hoon's deliciously silly Pirates, a salt water taffy of a movie if there ever was one. To extend this sugary metaphor, Lee's tasty adventure pic manages to be chewy and colorful as it stretches plausibility beyond belief. The individual ingredients may be neither good for you nor even particularly good but the sweetness here is undeniable. And yes, you will want more. Okay, enough toothsome metaphorical talk. On to the motion picture.

Though there's a lady swashbuckler (Son Ye-jin) front and center, Pirates doesn't break new ground in comedy or gender-blind casting. To the contrary, it serves up stereotypes and cliches unapologetically. There's an evil, petty guy (Kim Tae-woo) with the requisite eyepatch, a despotic, vengeful patriarchal figure (Lee Kyeong-yeong) who drowns only to reappear having not drowned after all, a king who must learn life lessons from his patriotic servants, and a pair of mismatched lovers (Son and Kim Nam-gil) who find out they were meant for each other. Which isn't to say the film has no novelties. It abounds with them! A momma whale who bonds with a young girl? A tethered shark that can turn a sailboat into a motorboat? A drunken bandit-monk (Park Cheol-min) who drinks gasoline without consequence? Pirates is nothing if not full of quirks.

Quirks and gags, that is. A running joke about peeing in the ocean while standing next to your beloved gets increasing laughs as does a bumbling thief (a marvelous Yoo Hae-jin) whose promotions and demotions occur with every changing tide. The utter, unending preposterous is Pirates greatest asset. As stupid comedies go, this one does dumb jokes smartly. Something Lee did before with the high school comedy See You After School and the equally corny, campy Dancing Queen. But if See You After School and Dancing Queen are good examples of ridiculousness, Pirates is ridiculousness at its best. Practice makes perfekt.

Unbowed: Math Professor's Case Doesn't Add Up in Court

Jeong Ji-yeong's courtroom drama Unbowed starts off about the defense attorney, shifts to being about the defendant then ends up not being about anyone. What we learn about the lawyer (Park Won-sang) is that he's an alcoholic with a bumpy marriage, a flirty nature, and a strained relationship with his co-workers. He's not particularly likable. (Blame must be placed in part on Park who's drunk scenes are truly execrable.) But he at least knows he's fallible.

Not so his client, a mathematics professor (Ahn Song-kee) who, from what I can tell, was appropriately fired from his university job for not knowing the difference between perpendicular and parallel. After fleeing to the U.S. with his wife and son in tow, he decides to come back to fight for his position and ends up bringing a crossbow to the apartment building of a judge who dismissed his case. Does he shoot? Does it matter?

Far from being contrite, the teacher is sure he's getting the short end of the stick from the university system, the legal system, the police department, the media, and so on. He could be right but he's so damned arrogant that it's hard to rally behind him as he spits out every code that's being violated from his well-underlined law book to one smug judge (Lee Kyeong-yeong) after another (Moon Sung-keun). Like him or not, he's the most interesting part of the movie so when he temporarily drops out of the story after getting raped in prison, the film loses its preferred protagonist. By the time he returns, you forget his underdog status (which makes him somewhat sympathetic) and just remember his jerkiness.

Believe it or not, Unbowed is based on a real story. I don't doubt that someone could have the misfortune of facing a series of amoral judges or that an editor would shut down a story because he just didn't want to deal with the repercussions or that a woman would stay with her husband after he slept over another woman's place. What is hard to believe is that someone thought this particular trial merited a cinematic treatment. It doesn't. Or if it does, Unbowed needed a screenwriter with a stronger sense of character, actors who knew who to play drunk, and a cinematographer with a richer palette.

White Badge: Survival Is Not Always a Reward

Americans know all about the Vietnam War. They also know something about the Korean one. Yet they probably know nothing about South Korea's role in the former, a participation that was both alongside U.S. troops and at their behest. And if Vietnam remains a haunting conflict in American consciousness, it also appears to have wreaked havoc on the Korean psyche as well. In his allegorical fright flick R-Point, director Kong Su-chang equates that war's terrors to supernatural horrors; in White Badge, Jeong Ji-yeong takes a much more naturalistic approach by exorcising those same demons in a grimly nostalgic memory piece. Grounded by a terrific performance by Ahn Sung-kee as a heavy drinking journalist reluctantly writing a novel about his experiences in Vietnam, White Badge neither shies away from the absurdities of the battlefield (the troops mistake a herd of water buffalo for the enemy) nor minimizes the psychic damage to the soldiers who survive. (Pfc. Pyon (Lee Kyeong-yeong) is a basket case unable to salvage his relationship with a prostitute who was his wartime pen pal.) Children as scavengers, bulletproof panties, the paparazzi of the frontlines... White Badge's imagery is so rich, it really does insist on repeated viewings.