The Eunuch: How Deep Is Your Love?

Poor Ja-ok (Yun Jeong-hie)! The man (Shin Seong-il) she loves has been castrated by her power-hungry father and she's become the number one concubine for the lusty king (Won Namkung). The king, for his part hopes she'll provide him with a male heir to thereby help him usurp his conniving mother, the queen (Yun In-ja) — who's got an active sexlife of her own. For a movie called The Eunuch, Shin Sang-ok's historical drama sure has a lot of genital action, from state-santified rape to MIA erections to exhibitionism and enforced voyeurism.

The head eunuch (Park Nou-sik) knows all the gossip. The medical eununch (Park Sang-ik) spills the tea on the most illicit court behavior in the castle. But this period piece doesn't culminate with savage whispers. Instead, there's mass murder and a battle that reaches its luridly reddest peak when the unexpected hero gets an arrow shot right into his left eye. After all the shafts to the heart, this deadly wound reminds us that love may hurt but weapons kill. That and poisoned drinks served by the bowl. Abortion, you have found your agit-prop movie.

Dream: Waking Up Is Hard to Do

Anyone well-versed in children's fairy tales knows that getting your wildest wish granted is ultimately a nasty curse in disguise. For Jo-sin (Hwang Nam), the dream is leaving the religious brotherhood and spending the rest of his life with the beautiful Dal-lye (Choi Eun-hie). But living a commonplace existence with his ideal woman isn't the fantasy that he'd imagined. And it's not this his newlywed bride is a shrew or stupid or narcissistic. Despite his eventual physical abuse of her, she's a loyal companion, as pretty as ever, and as deeply in love with him as he is with her. He hasn't chosen his lovely soulmate unwisely. The problem is, basically, life.

In Shin Sang-ok's Dream, leaving the monkhood is going to mean being on the lam, murdering a rapist, then murdering an envious former holy man, too. Admittedly, Jo-sin gets a gloriously thick head of hair in his post-priesthood existence but otherwise, his day-to-day outside the temple is far from the ideal he desperately craved. Perhaps, his wish wasn't specific enough. Maybe he should've insisted that Dal-lye's fiancé would've stopped loving her. Maybe he could've have stipulated that his romance would last into eternity. He did not. So his bliss is temporary. And temporary bliss leads to temporary pain. What's to learn from this sad turn of events? Maybe that enlightened Buddhists must relinquish their attachments to earthly pleasures and earthly gains. That's the kind of epiphany that rarely lasts the time it takes to count the 108 wooden beads on your Buddhist bracelet. Or to put it in Karmic terms, better luck next time.

Traces: War Dance

The Japanese leadership's inability to fathom why a Korean wouldn't want to pretend to be Japanese during occupation could be viewed as dimwitted patriotism. Yet as one savvy soldier notes: Why would a Korean want to adopt a Japanese name when "Japan is using Koreans as human shields"? In Shin Sang-ok's Traces, the resistance to this arrogant oppressor gets personal, too, once Korean gisaeng (Mun Hie) discovers that the Japanese artist (Oh Yeong-il) painting her portait is the son of the soldier that killed her dad.

She's not wrong to think less of him. He's one of those guys who believes that love allows him to compromise the safety of everyone — and so he stalks an independence activist (Lee Dae-yeob) who owes him a favor which he keeps cashing in. When said activist gives him a lecture on the purpose of "the movement," you almost expect him to say, "Yes, that sounds like an important cause but can't you help me win back my lady?" Luckily, he doesn't have time to say that, because there's a raid...followed by a rainstorm and a drawing class and a prize for his oil painting (which is withdrawn since he won't change its name). The draft propels him towards the front line. Desertion won't bring him any closer. "36 years of pain won't go away that easily."

Romance Gray: Two Old Men, Two Young Ladies

The movies of Shin Sang-ok are the cinematic equivalent of summer stock: You see the same actors over and over: sometimes with bad age makeup and powdered wigs; more often in typecast roles they've played before. Here Shin regulars Han Eun-jin, Shin Yeong-gyun, Kim Seung-ho, and Choi Eun-hie are all back on board for Romance Gray (a.k.a. Love Affair), a lighthearted melodrama about a pair of philandering husbands, who get caught by their dowdy wives, in affairs with two women who hustle at the local bar. The initial advice proffered at the sewing bee is that cuckqueans need to spend more time on their appearance. But these two ladies escape a fate worse than divorce by unexpected means outside the powder room.

For the wife of the college professor, the plot will involve extortion, a fake mustache, an instant photo, and some martial arts moves. For the wife of the company president, the resolution will follow a forgotten pajama top, a righteously smashed-up apartment, two boozing broads, and some runaway kids who may or may not return. Yet despite all the drinking and shouting, most folks do get back together. Just not all... And that one loose thread is what makes this a pretty darned good genre picture.

Footnote: Romance Gray's screenwriter Lim Hee-jae also wrote the scripts for Madam White Snake, My Mother and Her Guest, and Seong Chun-hyang. Kudos to him!

A Reluctant Prince: The Man Who Shall Not Be King

Watching A Reluctant Prince can be somewhat like channel surfing except each time you change the channel, you've got most of the same actors involved with a different plot. The opening section feels like a comedy about two tight-knit brothers (Shin Yeong-gyun and Kim Seung-ho) pointlessly persecuted by the government. Then when, fairly early on, the younger sibling (Shin) gets suddenly promoted to king because of his bloodline, you think it's going to be a Pygmalion story. But the king never masters the ways of the court and the focus shifts to a forbidden romance — that between him and his hometown girlfriend (Choi Eun-hie). Then even that story line gets abandoned after she comes to realize that it's best for the nation if she weren't around. Which leaves the king to go on a Leaving Las Vegas bender that lasts for years (during which he toys with falling in love with the queen).

So how do you classify Shin Sang-ok's 1963 movie? A bromance? A romance? A period piece? A tragedy? Well, it's definitely not the last option because A Reluctant Prince is played in a broad style that forbids you to inhabit its more serious moments — and there definitely are some — for very long. In fact, scenery-chewing of the highest caliber may be what holds A Reluctant Prince together. The cartoon-like glee exhibited by Choi and Shin when stitching up a pair of torn pants that has left his privates exposed or the exaggerated childishness they parody while running around the palace courtyard at night may ring as false but it's also incredibly fun so why begrudge them the pleasure they're apparently having. A Reluctant Prince is a movie that wins you over for all the wrong reasons. Or makes you realize there are times to abandon "what should be" or "what could be" and simply embrace "what is."

Evergreen Tree: My Favorite Teacher

I'll admit this right up front. I'm a total pushover for movies about idealistic teachers who move into poor and/or working class neighborhoods and go on to become valued members of the community — films like the classic To Sir With Love and the all-but-forgotten Sing. So I'm definitely the target audience for Shin Sang-ok's Evergreen Tree which focuses on young educator Yeong-shin (Choi Eun-hie) who has taken her pedagogy to the countryside where she's about to inspire an entire small town to help her build an elementary school from the ground up.

And she's got a love interest too: teetotalling, charismatic community organizer Dong-hyeok (Shin Yeong-gyun), a fellow high-minded graduate who's working to better another coastal village through his own brand of rural activism. The stars may have destined these two for each other but first there's some serious work to do. For Yeong-shin that means farm work, fundraising, hands-on construction, and dealing with the local Casanova (just back from Tokyo); for Dong-hyeok that means fieldwork, aerobics, choral singing, and managing the farmer's guild. If all goes as planned then it'll be at least three years until these two love birds get married. A bran-new wedding bell that doubles as a school bell? Why not!

But when did any two-and-a-half hour movie spotlight a romance in which all went according to plan? Problems are bound to arise like a bad case of appendicitis, an alcoholic relapse, and a well-timed bribe. (Man, you can always count on the self-serving rich people to foil the collective betterment efforts of the poor!) But romance isn't the only reason for living. Good works have their place too. And if there's a drought in your neck of the woods then this movie can overcome that with its final waterworks.

Madame White Snake: Succubi Are Hot

At last! A supernatural story! Shin Sang-ok's fun fantasy Madame White Snake is all about a white snake disguised as a woman (Choi Eun-hie) who seduces the sweet-natured brother of a pharmacist's wife following their meet-cute encounter on a boat during a rainstorm. It's easy to see why he'd fall for her. Her elaborate fan dance alone — executed when he swings by her palatial house to retrieve an umbrella he'd lent her the day before — is about as irresistible as one can get. Plus, she's always throwing silver coins his way and has a ready excuse for every strange occurrence. Sticklers may point out that none of her excuses are particularly believable but that's the power of love: Even the preposterous seems reasonable.

Released in 1960, Madame White Snake keeps the special effects simple and strange: thick globules of smoke signal magic ahead and a light fog allows the snake-woman to fly to another dimension occupied by a judgmental monk and the Goddess of Deadpan. But the real magic here is Choi Eun-hie who's always been a creature of hidden powers. At times vampiric, at other times witchy, she's constantly casting spells as she slowly entraps her prey in a romantic fantasy that may have some serious repercussions. (The villagers have been dying at the rate of a dozen a day!) That's when the "quack shaman" enters.

He's the black snake to battle her white snake. Evidently the world is full of snakes — probably the worst reptile being the governor snake who forces our leading lady to drink alcohol so she'll pass out so he can rape her in bed. The rufey has been around forever! Well so have women who get revenge.

Red Scarf: War Hurts Women

After watching her early sloppy-drunk scene in Shin Sang-ok's war pic The Red Scarf, you're reminded how much actress Choi Eun-hie was restricted by the material provided to her throughout her career. To her credit, in many performances, she periodically pushes against the "lady" stereotype in which she's been straitjacketed but she's never quite as exciting as she was when she played that amoral hooker in the brilliant A Flower in Hell. The Red Scarf isn't a bad showcase for her talent, mind you, it's just that she'd be that much more compelling if she could rail against the military-industrial complex instead of serve it.

How does she serve? Basically, she's condemned to being a soldier's wife, not once but twice — first to a one-screw-loose pilot (Nam Kung-won) who proposes shortly after meeting her; then to his much calmer replacement (Choi Mu-ryong) who unlike his comrades has not been burdened with a nickname like "Sissy" or "Nerd."

How she gets from one man to the next is all due to the machinations of a brusque, alcoholic major (Shin Yeong-gyun) who doubles as the local matchmaker with a kind assist from the bar's good-time madam and bartender (Han Eun-jin). Yet as the adrift young woman becomes domesticated a second time, she also becomes less fascinating; and as insanely preposterous as the rescue of her second husband from behind enemy lines might be, you secretly wish the leading man had been killed so his wife could move on to husband number three or at least descend into a world of boozing and whoring and drugging and thieving. Or jumping in an airplane and becoming the first female fighter pilot in South Korean history.

Women of Yi Dynasty: Some Shorts by Shin Sang-ok

"A Woman Must Obey Her Husband"
The opening short of Shin Sang-ok's Women of Yi Dynasty omnibus is the South Korean equivalent of a Roger Corman fright flick. The acting is amateurish; the camerawork, erratic; the lighting, flickery; the script, clunky. Character development takes second place to a morbid plot worthy of Edgar Allan Poe: A chaste young woman is married off to a rich family's crybaby son then must suffer in silence when her young groom dies on the wedding day. Her one attempt to escape to see an ailing mother does not end well.

"The Seven Sins of a Wife"
Film number two continues the "woeful woman" theme as well as the drab cinematography. Married to a sterile man, a fruitless first wife (Choi Eun-hie) coerces a simple-minded, gnome-like servant into having sex with her so she can pass off their offspring as a legitimate heir. The catch is that she's not fooling anyone but her husband and he's the only one who gives a damn.

"Forbidden Desires in the Palace"
The final entry in this trilogy has a much brighter palette with its vibrant blues, lurid yellows, and overripe reds as well as a much more upbeat ending: The main woman, a court lady who is raped outdoors then suffers through various attempts to induce an abortion (like throwing herself down a snowy hill, bathing in a freezing river, and ingesting poison scraped off a stone), ends up leaving the palace alive — if in a casket — with her baby safe beside her. As for the baby's father, well, let's just say this mother's friends are overprotective.

It's Not Her Sin: She's Got Her Finger on the Trigger

Shin Sang-ok's not-quite-noir-but-close It's Not Her Sin is a movie that parcels out its info in very small packages since neither husband Sang-ho (No Neung-kyeol) nor wife Seong-hui (Ju Jeung-nyeo) nor adopted sister Yeong-suk (Choi Eun-hie, the Queen of Sighs) nor her boyfriend Myeong-chil is initially willing to talk about why a married mother might pull a gun on her recently engaged best friend on a staircase inside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This reluctance to speak also leaves the prosecutor the difficult tasks of figuring out why someone was trying to pawn off a wedding gift to raise one million won in quick cash and how a couple with no issues could possibly only have one child after eight years of marriage. To him that's strange! So if he doesn't get some answers fast, something terrible could happen. Not jail time exactly but a fate much, much worse... namely, divorce!

Which leads to the extended flashback that in turn leads to its own series of gnarly questions like... What's the sin referenced in the film's title? Is it pre-marital sex with a sleazy ladies' man (Jeon Taek-yi) or a coerced abortion with an unlicensed physician? Is it smuggling goods out of Japan or having a baby boy out of wedlock? Is it chain-smoking or bribery? Adultery? Lying? I personally think it's the sin of omission that haunts these characters. Speak up, people, and you may taste the delicious freedom that comes with living honestly.

Some particularly memorable moments outside the flashy open: adopted toddler Sik shoots at his birth mother with a toy machine gun then refuses her loving embrace; a slick-haired buyer of goods says, "Money is like a woman. It gives birth to more"; two women embrace after one shoots the other because girls gotta stick by each other!

Confessions of a College Student: Family Scam

One of the pleasures that comes with binging a bunch of Shin Sang-ok movies from the late 1950s and early '60s (a time when the director was cranking out two to five movies per year) is seeing certain actors reappear alongside his wife and muse Choi Eun-hie. Here, in Confessions of a College Student — a women's picture of Sirkian proportions, Shin regulars Kim Seung-ho (Dongshimcho, Sister's Garden, Lee Seung-man and the Independence Movement) and Choi Nam-hyeon (The Youth, Prince Yeonsan, Tyrant Yeonsan) show up as a big-hearted politician and a lecherous landlord respectively. Kim especially shines as his character, a teddy bear if there ever was one, journeys from overworked statesman to doting father.

As for Choi, her turn here as a destitute student who stumbles into a rich family thanks in part to the machinations of her mystery-loving gal pal (a budding novelist) is quintessential chick flick fare. She's vulnerable but determined, scared but resourceful, desperate but smart — and ultimately a young woman of integrity whose final confessions of her wrongdoings finds her unexpectedly in a better place than she could've ever possibly imagined. She's got quite a few plot-turns to execute before she gets to that final happy place such as fending off sexual harassment in the workplace, getting hit by a car then landing in the hospital, and finishing up her law studies before taking on her first case (a feminist murder trial!) — all while living a lie. And to think this all started with her last surviving grandmother's funeral. Well some say, every time the door of a casket closes, the window of opportunity opens. That and the truth will set you free to make oodles and oodles of money.

Rice: Communism for Non-Communists

Rarely do you see a movie so unapologetically histrionic as Shin Sang-ok's stridently socialist drama Rice. How exaggerated does this one get? How about a man sobbing while banging his head against a bamboo stalk then saying "I'm not crying"? Or a woman who confesses her deep feelings while flames from a fire lick the space between her and the camera? Or a politician who says to a war veteran, "Do you think I'll even consider a cripple for my son-in-law" to a daughter (Choi Eun-hie) who wears pigtails until she finds her true independence as a woman?

The camera shots can be equally grotesque: a point of view from within a casket; a face framed by a hole in a rock underground. And yet despite how Rice traffics in exaggeration with agit-prop dialogue that may have set the groundwork for the eventual kidnapping of Shin and Choi to North Korea, there's still some powerful moments that occur in this oddball flick. Your heart goes out to the movie's hero (Shin Yeong-gyun), a disabled war vet who goes from one government department to the next in search of backing for an agricultural project that all agree has worth but none will fund. You also get a certain rush when one townsmen calls his fiancee out for asking him to compromise his integrity during a manufactured red scare.

Indeed this movie abounds with relevancies to our current cultural crises by showing examples of women who side with a patriarchy that oppresses them; illustrating how the wealthy will undermine the working class's attempts to become autonomous; revealing the complicity of a religious institution with corrupt power as well as how that eventually backfires; and detailing the sacrifices real changes entails — which sometimes necessitates forsaking your own father! You may snort derisively of the sub-plot involving the rolly-polly figure but in Rice, as in life, you simply have to take the good with the bad and make the best of it.

Dongshimcho: Young Mother in Love

Shin Sang-ok's preposterously pulpy Dongshimcho had me reflecting on the difference between melodrama and soap opera, kindred spirits to be sure. Well, in my mind at least, the second genre distinguishes itself with its bounty of complications and coincidences, mostly if not entirely of a romantic nature. Here you can see that impossibly insane intricacy in a minor character like Mr. Kim from Busan (Kim Seung-ho) — who is at once the business associate for Seoul publisher Kim Sang-kyu (Kim Jin-kyu), a rival for the latter Kim's secret love Mrs. Lee (Choi Eun-hie), and a potential buyer of Mrs. Lee's house — as well as in another relatively secondary role like Ok-joo (Do Kum-bong), the main Kim's fiancee who is also a high school acquaintance of Mrs. Lee's daughter Kyung-hee (Eom Aeng-ran) and the daughter herself of Company Chairman Lee (Kim Dong-won) who has funded her beloved's business enterprise which is in jeopardy now because of a loan made to Mrs. Lee so the lonely widow won't lose her house which for various reasons she doesn't want to sell to the earlier mentioned Mr. Kim from out of town (who just happens to be a merry widower).

It's hard to explain but it's not hard to follow though it is hard to believe. Such is life? Well, maybe. I was more interested in period details like phone calls that are received in the local pharmacy, open train windows that frame brokenhearted passengers tearfully looking out in search of the cause of their distress, and various stacks of 8½" x 17" paper which signal accounting and serious work. There's also a surprising amount of screen time spent on watching people get in and out of shoes as they enter various houses. I, for one, wasn't bored. And if the ever-so-friendly realtor looks familiar that may be because you recognize him as the bullying boss in The Hand of Destiny which is more melodrama than soap but similarly so-so.

Bound by Chastity Rules: Two Movies for the Price of One

There are two stories being told in Shin Sang-ok's Bound by Chastity Rule a.k.a. The Memorial Gate for Virtuous Women: One is a tale of forbidden love between a virgin widow (Choi Eun-hie) and a field hand (Shin Yeong-gyun); the other concerns an ultra-conservative sister-in-law with a troublingly masochistic relationship to honor. The same characters drive both stories but the two tales' contrary viewpoints only sometimes align. Regardless of screenwriter Hwang Sun-won's intents, you're neither feeling the love nor understanding the honor. The problem with the pseudo-romance is that our heroine has been raped by her supposed love interest and clearly wants to abort the shameful (to her) baby that comes of the attack. She may admire the worker beforehand; afterwards, she seems legitimately scared. The problem with the tale of honor is that the family that she's married into comes across as undesirable from the get-go: her child-groom leaves her with a stumpy finger; her mother-in-law — who wears poorly done age makeup — advises her to stick needles in her thighs as a way to fight off sexual longing.

Holding the movie together is none other than Choi Eun-hie who rather than try to make sense of it all allows simple moments — from the exuberant joy of a rainstorm following a drought to the domestic satisfaction of stitching a shirt for her well-meaning father-in-law (Kim Dong-won) — to segue into aftermaths of inner conflict. She is a woman on shaky ground pretty much all the time. Like other Shin Sang-ok melodramas from the period, the "happily ever after" coda is rife with unhappy possibilities. A life led in self-abnegation seems unlikely to end with heartwarming familial bonds with a stranger, lush soundtrack or not.

Sister's Garden: A New Lease on Life

Like any good melodrama worth a toilet paper roll's worth of coarse tissue, Shin Sang-ok's Sister's Garden finds its emotionally distraught characters collapsing on the floor in tears multiple times. Who can blame them? They've got a lot to cry about, the rent first and foremost. Turns out the widowed father (Yu Chun), a beloved doctor dying of a disease he once cured in others, is going to leave some serious debts behind. Once the martyring eldest daughter (Choi Eun-hie) figures out a way to make some money, she's suddenly saddled with a second IOU after her impetuous sister (Choi Ji-hie) opens a not-so-popular dress shop with her not-so-successful painter-husband (Nam Gung-won). What's a girl to do?

Become a madam at a disreputable inn, start drinking alcohol to please the crass customers, forsake her true love — a tight-lipped medical student (Kim Seok-hun), and consider the marriage proposal made by one Mr. Bang (Kim Seung-ho), a shady character whom her father restored to health but who nevertheless can't resist an opportunity to pimp her out to make a buck. Maybe this good-daughter-about-to-turn-bad wouldn't go to such extremes if she didn't have a much younger brother (Ahn Sung-ki) to take care of. But then again, maybe she's grown bored with the bourgeois life and isn't that crazy about becoming a doctor's wife. Whatever her reasons, you get the feeling that the nasty turn of events has awakened something inside her. When the swell of "Ol' Man River" is heard behind this movie's "happy ending," you can't help but recall the lyric "You and me / We sweat and strain / Body all aching / And wracked with pain." In other words, the potential for "good times ahead" looks doubtful. Perhaps "Get a little drunk / And you land in jail" isn't such a terrible fate after all.

A Flower in Hell: Servicing Servicemen

It's 1958 in South Korea. That means pretty much everything — or at least the cinematography — is in black and white, and nowhere more so than among A Flower in Hell's nattily-attired group of young thieves and prostitutes who are struggling to survive in an economy that seems to revolve around servicing — and ripping off — American servicemen. Some, like the married sex worker Sonya (a delightfully gum-smacking Choi Eun-hie), seem to thrive in this environment; others, like the war-orphan Julie (Gsng Seon-hui), don't seem to see any other choices. When a country boy named Dong-shik (Jo Hae-won) comes looking for his citified brother Young-shik (Kim Hak) on behalf of their aging mother, major trouble erupts among them all.

That trouble includes fisticuffs that nearly end in a knife fight, a train heist that culminates in a deadly shoot-out, and probably one of the best mud fights ever committed to celluloid. Directed by Shin Sang-ok, the film abounds in wonderful details like the shocking pelvic thrusts of the performer at the barracks dance hall and a discarded, filmy scarf trailing out of a car pulling out of the frame. The use of music is also striking as much of the film takes place in silence accented by the rare car horn or the sound of an insect while Sonya's theme song pops up repeatedly. No wonder Shin and Choi were abducted by the North Korean government. (See the documentary The Lovers & the Despot for further details.) Together these two were capable of making cinematic magic.

A Broad Bellflower: The Political Before the Personal

There's an icy cold heart at the center of the sad love triangle in the sad, political romance A Broad Bellflower, one of the movies credited to Shin Sang-ok and his wife Choi Eun-hie, the director-and-actress couple who were kidnapped by the North Korean government and forced to make movies during their bizarre imprisonment. (Check out the stranger-than-fiction doc The Lovers & The Despot.) And it's not just that our heroine Song-rim (Oh Mi-ran) puts her hometown before her husband-not-to-be; it's also that her selfish sister Song-hwa — played by Song Yeon Ock and Kim Hye-son — makes the doomed lover sign a note that will damn him to permanent exile. What's his crime? He has big city dreams. And no one should put personal desires before those of the community. Absolutely no one.

But what's particularly harsh about what transpires in A Broad Bellflower is that when the now old man sends his devoted grownup son to his hometown in hopes of forgiveness, nearly everyone is dead-set against him. Let bygones be bygones? Hell, no! The sister hates to even hear the name of that man; the sister's daughter reacts as if the son had committed this crime against humanity himself. Any sweet feelings that may have come from biking around the neighborhood and sharing a roasted chestnut are squashed the moment the truth is revealed.

As to the spinster who never got married but found her joy in dragging telephone poles through the snow, carrying slate across steep cliffs, and flirting over architectural drawings, her life was cut short by a mudslide that buried her while she was in the midst of rescuing some sheep. Once she'd spit the dirt out of her mouth, she was able to convey one dying wish: "Forgive him!" But you can tell by the way that everyone's acting that while they may let father and son return, they're still going to treat the two like crap.

The Lovers & the Despot: Live Large

Ross Adam's and Robert Canaan's crazy documentary The Lovers & the Despot tells the type of true story that makes you realize just how incredibly boring your life truly is. First there's glamour: Actress Choi Eun-hee becomes the muse of auteur Shin Sang-ok; together they make such Shin Sang-ok with whom she makes such classics as My Mother and Her Guest, Red Scarf, To the Last Day... There's drama: They marry, adopt two babies, he has an affair (with a younger actress) that produces two children so Choi and Shin get divorced. There's more drama: Choi gets kidnapped by North Korean agents while visiting Hong Kong; Shin gets kidnapped while looking for Choi who has officially "disappeared." Then Kim gets imprisoned for five years in North Korea while Choi's forced to pose for pictures as a model defector. There's more art: Kim's released from prison, the lovers reunite and they make 17 movies in three years while still held captive by dictator Kim Jong-il. (One of those films — Sogum — earns Choi the best actress award at the Moscow International Film Festival.) Then there's even more drama: They defect to the West and set up shop in Hollywood. There's a weird coda: He ends up creating the kid-friendly franchise, his last film being 3 Ninjas Knuckle up.

All of this is fascinating even as we're told in periodic asides that skeptics out there question the veracity of Shin's and Choi's story. What if they made it all up? What if they purposefully defected to the North as a way to resume their romance and revitalize their careers? What if Shin never really was in prison? What if all those shots of Choi smiling are because she really was happy all the time? What if it's all a big lie? But even if that were the truth, theirs would remain a none-the-less fascinating tale. I'd like to say I totally believe Choi whose interviewed extensively for the film. But I have to acknowledge first that she happens to be a great actress. It's either the performance of a lifetime or a lifetime greater than any performance could ever hope to be.

Pulgasari: The People's Godzilla of North Korea

Looking somewhat like the love child of a minotaur and a dinosaur, Pulgasari is not you're typical, everyday movie monster. Molded from rice by a wrongly imprisoned blacksmith (Ri Gwon) then brought to life by a droplet of blood shed by his industrious daughter (Chang Son Hui), the North Korean cousin of Godzilla is literally "of the people, for the people, by the people." After quickly growing from cute-and-squeaky squeeze toy to a growling, towering creature thanks to a diet of stick pins and swords, he becomes the mascot and war machine for a village of farmers fighting the royal army which wants to take all their tools, pots and pans and turn them into weapons. Naturally, the king (Pak Yong-hok) and his cohorts try everything they can to bring Pulgasari down -- a cage of fire, rockets to the eyeballs, a hailstorm of stones, a cannon shaped like a lion, even sorcery -- but the big man in the rubber suit will not be stopped from fighting the good fight alongside Inde (Ham Gi-sop), the bare-chested leader of the rebellion against the greedy government. And yes, you do get to see Pulgasari smash a few buildings along the way.

There's an interesting back story behind Pulgasari, too, as it's one of the movies-in-exile directed by Shin Sang-ok, the South Korean director, who along with his ex-wife/actress Choi Eun-hee, was kidnapped by Kim Jong-il -- the same Kim Jong-il who went on to become President of North Korea -- in an effort to strengthen his country's film industry. As producer of Pulgasari, Kim's efforts didn't stop with getting a famous expatriate director either. He also hired Japan's Toho Studio to help with special effects and had none other than Kenpachiro Satsuma, a Japanese performer who'd previously costumed up for Godzilla and other Kaiju monsters in his homeland, to play the title role.

Intended as a polemic against capitalism, Pulgasari occasionally feels as though it's criticizing any totalitarian regime, which is ironic given Kim's role as executive producer. Even so this 1985 propaganda flick never screened outside the two Koreas until 1998 when it was finally shown in Japan. If you're looking for more of the late Kim's work as a film producer, check out The Schoolgirl's Diary, which -- like Pulgasari -- is currently available on YouTube of all places. You might not like his record as a "supreme leader" but as movie execs go, he's not half bad.

Seong Chun-hyang: Hey Sweetheart! It's Easier to Die for Love

I think you could safely call Seong Chun-hyang a tragedy. For while the title character (played by Choi Eun-hie) does end up with the governor's son (Kim Jin-kyu), she nevertheless suffers through a number of brutal beatings and more than a few days in the stocks before she gets him. Her final reunion with the careerist husband who deserted her doesn't feel romantic. It feels like a marginal improvement over the decapitation she would have undergone if he hadn't come back to town. As happily ever afters go, Shin Sang-ok's paean to purity conforms strictly on superficial grounds. She sacrifices selflessly for him; he comes across as a self-absorbed jerk. This imbalance allows the director to take a sadistic pleasure in documenting the price that comes with living a virtuous life—made especially difficult since her mom's a locally famous whore. It's a theme Shin and screenwriter Lim Hee-jae would visit again (and more effectively) in My Mother and Her Guest. That's not to say Seong Chun-hyang isn't good. It is. Very much so. And with its gorgeous costumes in eye-popping yellows, pinks and greens and lighting effects in even more-lurid shades, Seong Chun-yang is never dull to watch. Someone should turn it into a musical.