Tag: Korean

Killing Romance was watched as part of the Seattle International Film Festival 2024! It had its showing on Saturday, May 18th as part of the festival, and it was the Seattle premiere of this film!

First, Hwang Yeo-Rae (Lee Ha-nee) gets famous! A viral person, a superstar singer, and an actress, and she is everywhere. She rises so fast, she gets put in the lead of the most expensive film of all time, and it is a dud. Her acting falls flat, she is a laughing stock. Sure, people love her for this, but she thinks this is a tragedy and her life is over.

Then she meets Jonathan Na (Lee Sun-kyun), a very rich, powerful man, who helps her out of a jam, and seems to like her. Perfect. They live away from Korea for so many years, and eventually return, Hwang now a house wife, with the world forgotten about her.

But then she meets Kim Beom-Woo (Gong Myoung). No, this is not a love thing. This is just a guy who happens to be a super fan of her work. Apparently there is a lot of them ou there. Kim is stuck in a house hold where he cannot pass the college entrance exam, and cannot go to Seoul University like everyone else in his family has ever done. He is a disappointment. But he is able to get a script to Hwang when the couple moves next door.

A script? For a musical? Can this be Hwang’s next big break? Well, no, because Jonathan says no. He cancels the whole thing. He is powerful. He is strong. He is rich. He is controlling over Hwang. He can get people killed. Hwang realizes she needs out of this relationship, it is toxic. But to do that, either Jonathan will have to die, or she will have to kill herself.

Also starring Bae Yoo-ram, Pierce Conran, and Shim Dal-gi.

Gosh, I am already in love with this guy myself. I need to of course start this section talking about Lee Sun-kyun, who tragically passed away in December. I won’t go more into the story and circumstances of his death, but they were very tragic from almost every standpoint. He was famously known as the rich dad in the Parasite movie from a few years ago. I don’t know if this is his last movie, but it is certainly now one of the last ones. And it is tragic that this is a movie where the main plotline is to actually try and kill his character.

And he destroyed this role as the toxic mean husband.

Killing Romance is certainly a movie that is indescribable in many ways. It is a BIZARRE film. It is wacky. It is strange. It is an experience.

I think the offput nature of the film, the switching aspect ratios, the switching of quality, the terrible background scenes, the zany nature of Jonathan’s character, are all just certain features that highlight the absurdity of cinema. I know this isn’t a negative of Korean cinema or anything like that. This is just a movie that wants to do its own thing, and is unapologetic in the process.

Is Killing Romance itself a good film? Honestly, hard to tell. I did enjoy my watch overall, and I appreciated the creative output. And again, if this one is Sun-kyun’s swan song, it was certainly a cherry on top.

2 out of 4.

I haven’t had a big chunk of foreign films to review at my disposal this year, but honestly, that is probably my fault. The fact that I haven’t yet seen RRR is a goddamn travesty. I assume that because of what everyone has said about it.

For Emergency Declaration, I was finally given a big foreign release film to review ahead of time! And its a plane disaster film! Great. I am sure subtitles isn’t enough for me to call it uniquely different than other plane movies. I hope the plot really feels different as well. But I don’t think there has been a lot of plane movies either, since the pandemic.

I wonder if the Big Plane industry has been controlling Hollywood, to prevent plane movies from being released. You know, to build up trust in the airlines again after the pandemic and those scares. This conspiracy probably doesn’t have legs because I am sure there have been quite a few plane movies released recently, that I just don’t remember.

Dude its raining. Protect your phone man. The rice thing is a myth. 

Planes can be fun. But they can also be…not fun. In-ho (Song Kang-ho) is a detective! His wife (Woo Mi-Hwa) loves to travel, but In-ho does not and always cancels on planned trips, so she decided to go to Hawaii with her friends. Oh well. But it turns out in this area, there was someone posting a threat to kill people on a plane soon. In-ho found himself investigating these events, and found a really gross and deformed body in the potential terrorist’s house. Including experiments and data on rats, about some biological weapon.

But the terrorist is nowhere to be found! Shit, he is on a plane. And we even get to see him to buy a ticket and get on the plane. He just wants to go somewhere far, with a lot of people on board. Somewhere like Hawaii.

And now, with bioterrorism in the sky, and let lose on the plane, how are they going to help those passengers who don’t have a place to land? How will they navigate the geopolitical landscape when people wouldn’t want to help them if they have an unknown, deadly, and contagious virus on board? How will they find a cure in a small amount of time? And how many will die along the way?

Also starring Lee Byung-hun, Jeon De-yeon, Nam-gil Kim, Si-wan Yim, So-jin Jim, and Park Hae-joon.

“How do I fly this plane with people bleeding everywhere?” “That sounds like a real sticky situation you got there.”It turns out, I loved Emergency Declaration. And it is hard for me to really point out which moment or scene sealed the deal for me.

One notable component about this film is that it is pretty damn long for a plane disaster movie, rocking in at 2 hours 20 minutes. A lot of plane disaster films can’t get a runtime like that, while keeping up the tension. And yet, this film keeps up the tension.

Anything that could go wrong does go wrong in the plot. When there seems like a reasonable out for them to get help, there becomes good plausible reasons for that to not work. When the plane at one point has to turn around to head back home, the look of absolute defeat in the characters eyes as they feel the turn and see the sunset change sides of the plane just really reaches deep into your soul. Speaking of soul, one moment near the end, when plane riders are finally able to get usable signal with their devices to video chat with their loved ones is completely heart wrenching. Did it make this movie reviewer cry? Of course it did.

And honestly, the plot outside of the plane, with our detective discovering initial clues with his fear building up, to the dealings with the Biotech company, and other countries government responses to their plight, along with various types of protests at home, all helped extend the tension in new and wonderful directions.

In terms of how topical this film feels, of course this film would make people think of COVID. People traveling, getting sick from an airborne virus, and people around the world trying to protect themselves from getting this virus as well. Because it is a weapon, it acts very fast, and is pretty deadly, and strangely enough, this film was written and started some level of production before COVID was a thing. So good on them finishing it anyways, even if one would assume it was inspired by recent events.

A lot of the side plots in the film will feel like clichés potentially. But if you have enough of them, and cram them all in, it gives a really compelling picture, with a large interesting cast, of various personalities all trying to do one thing. Survive.

4 out of 4.

Bong Joon Ho is a pretty big deal right now in the Korean cinema world. His last two movies before Parasite were Okja (which was a big deal at the time to be on Netflix) and Snowpiercer (the best film about apocalyptic train rides ever made).

His film Parasite has been hitting big waves and, before I saw it, the word on the street was I needed to know as little as possible going into the movie.

And you know, so I watched it and wrote a review on it so I could tell you about it! For shame!

Spoilers: It features Koreans!

The Kim family is living in rough times. Both parents (Hye-jin Jang, Kang-ho Song) are out of work. The two kids (So-dam Park, Woo-sik Choi) are adults, but haven’t got jobs either, weren’t able to make it to college, and they all exist in a shitty below the street house where they mooch off of free WiFi and find out ways to make money.

I mean, shit, the economy is tough. Hundreds of people are graduating and can’t get jobs, so what are the chances of an older couple? They can only do odd jobs or con people.

The good news is, our boy has a gracious friend who is about to study abroad. And he wants to recommend him for his job of tutoring a local family’s oldest daughter English. He is qualified, even if they have to flub parts of it, but it ins’t super bad at that point.

However, once he has an in with the family, he realizes he can lie and get his other family members into jobs for additional sources of income. And from then on? Well, things just get really weird.

Also starring Hyun-jun Jung, Myeong-hoon Park, Jeong-eun Lee, Sun-kyun Lee, Ji-so Jung, and Yeo-jeong Jo.

Paper is for losers, give me the recommendations!

Parasite is over two hours long, and at times feels like it is way longer and shorter. I felt so hooked only 10 minutes into the movie, and at that point, very little had actually happened. By 30 minutes into the film, it is clear some bigger plot is afoot. After an hour, it was like a train wreck, and I was shocked. And after about 75 minutes, I couldn’t believe that there was still so much more movie to go.

Where could it go from the pits it dragged me to? How could this story ever resolve?

Parasite is an unpredictable romp through class warfare, cons, and dirty little secrets. It is about what lengths one will go to in order to protect their family. It is about the little things in life, and how people perceive events.

It is about so many things, it is so hard to define and feels like the sort of film people will watch for decades to explore various themes. I loved this movie, and it is hard to find any real thoughts with the wild story that is told. It is not necessarily a film we need now, but by golly, I will take it and run with it.

4 out of 4.

I have been really behind on my foreign films this year. I can’t even think of what I have seen with mostly subtitles this year. Not including the beginning of the year when I was hitting up last years Oscar nominees. Basically, it would have been during WorldFest, when I was in a theater with them, and that was in April. I legit haven’t watched a foreign film since April, and that kind of blows my mind.

I know there has been opportunities, but a lot of it comes from my inability to cross stitch while watching a foreign film, lest I don’t really get anything out of it. But I took an exception to Burning for a few reasons. One, a lot of people were talking about it and I wanted to talk about it. Two, it seemed like one of those foregone conclusions of definitely an award winning film. And three, Steven Yeun.

Yes, don’t let star power be a bad factor. Yeun was on The Walking Dead, I liked him on that show, and now I want to see him in a purely non American film. What’s the harm in that?

Burning is a metaphor for his feelings. Inside.

Lee Jong-su (Ah-In Yoo) is a young man, trying to just live his life. He works odd jobs mostly, and would like to be a writer, he is just having a hard time writing. His dad is in prison and could get out if he was nicer and apologized, but he is holding firm. So Jong-su has to watch over the farm, their one animal, and just make sure life doesn’t fall to pieces, while trying to get his own life back on track.

And then he meets Shin Hae-mi (Jong-seo Jeon). Well, re-meets technically. Apparently Hae-mi knew him when he was a child, but he mostly ignored her. They have a past that Jong-su just doesn’t remember a lot of, and if Hae-mi’s story is true, then it totally makes sense. He ignored her, he might have been mean, and she got some plastic surgery.

Needless to say, they hit it off! And she is about to go away and needs someone to feed her cat. Oh. Sure. Because she is attractive, likes him(?), and he has only the other major things going on in his life. When she gets back, they might start a relationship.

Except she comes back…with him. His name is Ben (Steven Yeun), he is rich, mysterious, totally cool. A “Great gatsby” character in South Korea. And she has fallen for him. But Ben has secrets, secrets that Jong-su is going to investigate, or else bad things might happen. Maybe even Burning things might happen.

I don’t know, they just kind of look like best friends here.

Burning is a (heh) slow burn of a film, coming in at about 2.5 hours. It is very slow moving, and its direction can seem to be all over the place. But if you focus the film on just Jong’su’s point of view and trying to understand the strange world around him, the mysteries and suspense add up.

It is a gorgeous movie with very notable camera work. It isn’t displaying the sexy parts of South Korea, but regular fields and cities, but it has extreme attention to detail and really draws the viewer into the movie.

The ending very much ends at a climax, a climax that people will feel like might never come. Because unfortunately, some mysteries remain mysteries by the films end. And that is likely to trouble some viewers, given what we saw from Lost backlash some time ago. No actual spoilers though here.

Ah-In Yoo is a great lead, while still keeping that passive unsure nature. Yeun was fine in this movie, but I don’t think it required a lot of hard work on his part. This is Jeon’s only movie, and she plays the free spirited and weird quite well, and hopefully gains an acting feature after this film.

Overall, Burning won’t be for everyone. You have to want subtitles and be okay with not everything spelled out for you. It will likely make waves from the foreign film market, and will still likely lose to Roma for Oscars.

3 out of 4.

I first heard about Snowpiercer like a lot of people when I was getting insulted by people with a lot of money.

Despite making boat loads of money in South Korea where it debuted, The Weinstein Company wanted to delay its release in the US, like everything they grab. Why? To make cuts to the movie. The original movie is right at two hours, but Harvey said no, 20 minutes have got to go. Why? So that the film “will be understood by audiences in Iowa… and Oklahoma.” If you don’t get it, that means he is saying that the average American couldn’t handle this film and it has to be dumbed down. You know, to take out some drama and story elements and giving us a shorter film that is much closer to a regular run of the mill action story.

Fuck that. Fuck that so much. That is one of the most insulting things I have ever heard from a movie executive. He says Americans are dumb and won’t like the movie that way. Just how patronizing can a person be?

Well, it turns out, as much as they want because the American viewer cannot do a damn thing about it. The director, Joon-ho Bong, was able to hold out though. After months of arguing, he was able to get the full version released to the American market. The only issue is, it is now limited release instead of wide release. Well, sucks for those guys in shitty markets, but as long as I get the full cut, I won’t be mad.

Well, I guess I could still point some blame towards Harvey.

In the future year of 2014, Global Warming is scary. So scientists have made a chemical that can reduce the effects of the gasses and counteract the rise in the temperature. They released too much though, causing the world to go into a very quick ice age, killing most of the life on the planet.

The only survivors are the people who made it onto the Snowpiercer train. It is a perpetual-motion engine so it can run forever. It travels the entire globe and also takes a year to return to a past point. That last part isn’t plot important, just kind of cool.

But life on the train isn’t all peaches and cream. A caste system was quickly formed, with a majority of its inhabitants taking up cramped quarters in the tail of the train. They are fed protein bars and occasionally some kids are taken from them. They have to learn their place. Past riots and attempts to move on have failed. But this time? This time, they are ready.

It will be lead by Curtis (Chris Evans), influenced heavily by Gilliam (John Hurt) an old wise man in the train car. Their plan involves breaking into the train “prison” to release a man (Kang-ho Song) who helped make the security between the cars to help move them through.

Featuring a lot of people, such as Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, Ah-sung Ko, Ewen Bremner, Ed Harris and Alison Pill.

How cold is it? Flavor Flav has turned white!

For those that hate cramped conditions, you might feel a bit uneasy in a movie set entirely on a train. However, for those who like trains a lot, like Denzel Washington or that guy from The Railway Man, this would be the perfect movie for you.

For having an entire film set in a train, they did a real good job of not making it feel incredibly repetitive. The train itself is very long, housing a large number of people with quite a few amenities, so there are several different places we get to go.

I thought Snowpiercer was downright incredibly. It has some powerful themes that are pretty easy to relate too, resounding in the United States with the occupy movement still in recent memory. They aren’t anything new, but I really just loved how it was presented in this movie.

The issue with my review is that I just loved so many aspects of this movie, I am finding a hard time using words to describe just what made this movie so great. From the acting, to cinematography, to the action and drama, to the twists and turns. Just all aspects were phenomenal. Tis a good movie. Glad it didn’t get cut up.

4 out of 4.