Epitaph

As ghost milieus go, haunted hospitals have mileage. Spiffy come-on for something possibly classic . . .or possibly a pile of dog poo. Director's a newbie who's done time with Park Chan Wook so we can worry less. Let's just hope those hair strands near the end are just design elements.

Tonari No Totoro

Yummy fur.

Tonari No Totoro
Directed by : Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away)



The whimsy's there if that's your thing and there are days this is like a down blanket for me, something to keep warm in - - -that bus stop vignette and my wanting to play it over and over again as if looping would somehow enable me to cross over, there's no way you can break that down to a science, no way to peg why it works in the way it does, no way to do it again, not even Miyazaki himself tried. Could be the wet, shimmery palette's what makes it - - -and the whole piece ,really - - - so immersive, a kind of hush. Also the absence of anything going on in the usual sense of anything going on - - -two sisters billeted in a country house, their mother in a hospital and oh, next door lives a family of snuggly tree spirits that help them plant a tree, take them on a bus ride and later flying through the night. It's ambient, almost. The magic circle aura holds until you get the sense that the supernatural never overwhelms the natural, that there's a certainty to the creeping uncertainty in its peripheries- - -and you get it. Miyazaki would go on to do more ornate work - - - wiser, prettier,better. But what he nailed here that he won't nail again to such a degree is what Erice nailed in El Espiritu De La Colmena : that blinding headrush of what it's like to be a kid - - - and the sense of wonder and threat that come with it. And he nails it not because the magic he taps into makes those wisps of foreboding go away, like they do in neo-Disney mollycoddle. But precisely because it doesn't. * * * * *





Post Written for the Ghiblogathon.

Saibogujiman kwenchana

Crazy in love

(Saibogujiman kwenchana) I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK
Director Park Chan-wook
Stars Rain (Full House) / Lim Soo-jung (Tale of Two Sisters)


Not entirely a surprise for PCW. Lady Vengeance already had the funnies, Old Boy the fantastic. But I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK doesn't have the cohesive narrative of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. Understandably so, the movie is about a girl who has delusions that she is a cyborg, Terminator-lite with machine gun for fingers, built to decimate the Initiative, well, the home, who took her grandmother. In the institution, Young-goon (Lim) refuses to eat human food and she is dying. Il-soon (Rain) who "steals" itches, ping-pong tricks and memories from the other crazy folks makes it his mission to help Young-goon eat. And this is where PCW takes his time to animate the sagging middle with explosions of surreal quirkiness. Booster socks. Sing-along mirrors. A whole bunch of crazies. I had fun with these, but I did hit the pause button a couple of times to make a sandwich and grab a drink. This is a long movie with a thin plot with too many detours. Still, there are scenes that remind you what PCW is all about. In this movie's case, it's the quiet ones. That bit at the basement, where Il-soon carefully upgrades Young-goon, the confusion of the trembling touch. Love at first byte. ***

Two By Pen-Ek

Last Life In The Universe (Ruang Rak Noi Nid Mahasan )
Director: Pen-Ek Ratanaruang (Ploy, Invisible Waves)
Starring: Tadanobu Asano (Ichi The Killer, Cafe Lumiere), Sinitta Boonyasak (Bite of Love)


Boiled down, this is about opposites attracting - - - chaos and order, scatterbrained and anal, free spirit and suicide fetishist. The arcane physics of desire. Also, the milk of every other hackneyed formula love story. It pushes the same buttons: the soft electricity of attraction, the sweet endorphin of emotional rescue, the wistful possibilities of happiness. But the (mis)matching of Tadanobu Asano’s bookish nerd and Sinitta Boonyasak's flighty hostess is bonded more by ghosts of shared regret than anything sexual (but we get there eventually) or romantic, stranding them in a hermetic world of their own design , speaking in fractured tongues as they fumble to master that inarticulate speech of the heart, the last lives in an impossible universe that isn't forever but, for a brief shining moment ,is magic. * * * * *

Mon-rak Transistor
Director: Pen-Ek Ratanaruang (Fun Bar Karaoke, 6ixtynin9)
Starring: Supakorn Kitsuwon (Tears of the Black Tiger, Suriyothai), Siriyakorn Pukkavesh (Adventures of Iron Pussy)



Village kid meets village girl, they fall in love, she gets pregnant, he gets drafted, she gives birth, he deserts the army and becomes a pop star. Then their troubles begin. Screwball for the way it crams surfeits of melodramatic incident that could bloat two telenovela seasons then plays them for absurdist pleasure. Satiric for the way it harbors a nostalgic fondness for such overwrought soap opera tropes at the same time appearing to take affectionate digs at them. But there are genuine emotions fueling these soap opera tropes we malign. It's what makes them persist. Those flitty-tatty feelings we're all oh-so ironic ,or probably just too chickenshit, to express. And later, all artifice and agenda is dropped. A picture on the wall speaks volumes of regret. A damburst of tears and a tentative hug speak of a love that's too scared to come out of hiding. And the climactic ,inevitable reunion disarms then stabs me with the flitty and the tatty, full-on, guard down, right through the heart. Pow. And I'm a mass of blubber. Nice trick, Pen-Ek. Crafty bastard.
* * * *

Haepi Endeu (Happy End)

High Infidelity.

Haepi Endeu (Happy End)

Starring: Choi Min Sik (Oldboy), Do-Yeon Jeon (No Blood, No Tears)
Directed by: Ji Joo Chung (Sarangni, If You Were Me 2)


The ferocious shagging has grab. Another time and place, it might've amounted to softcore jollies, ticket bait. Here, it amounts to emotive brunt. Here, it means to hurt. And does it. To the soap opera potboiler of meek salaryman Choi Min Sik losing his job and his headstrong careerist wife Do-yeon Jeon getting it on - - -way, way on - - - with her high school sweetheart behind his back, it butters the melodrama with harm, like saltwater to fresh wounds. Infidelity not as moral abstract but as messy object ,the shadowy taboo forming into familiar bodies - - -so yeah, things get sticky and prickly. And makes your belly knot - - -at how much of a dork meek salaryman is,at how much of a bitch headstrong careerist wife is, at how much you want that title to be ironic for her. You grasp the economic subtexts , and the chill of its repercussions , but it's the primal urges - - yours and the piece's - - - that make this throb. The female of the species is more deadlier than the male. Right.
* * * *

Gwoemul (The Host)

Here Be Monsters

Gwoemul (The Host)
Starring : Song Hang-Ko (Memories of Murder, The President's barber)
Directed by: Bong Joon-Hop (Barking Dogs Never Bite)

It's a given that you imprint the monster in monster movies- - - that corrosive interloper that usurps and upsets the status quo and rallies humankind to restore order to the universe - - -with whatever you want its intrusion and threat and carnage to stand in for. The slime-black Lovecraftian reptile here comes encoded with toxic dumping and not a little wary xenophobia for intrusive Americans. But when it abducts a young schoolgirl ,and her bickering family of four - - - grizzly grandpa, buffoon dad , stoic archer aunt, hairtrigger drunk uncle - - - grudgingly coheres into a combat unit , it's the dysfunction of the family dynamic that full-hogs and heightens the drama. It's no crawl , mind, as it's steeped in another monster movie given: set piece upon set piece of rampage - - - glorious, gorgeous and (here's the killer blow) emotionally resonant rampage at that. But this creature feature's ultimately about fatherly love and the lengths blood will go to to keep its own from harm. * * * * *

Sutâfisshu Hoteru(Starfish Hotel)

Hey! It's the rabbit from Donnie Darko! In Japan!

Sutâfisshu Hoteru(Starfish Hotel)

Starring Koichi Sato(Samurai Resurrection), Tae Kimura(The Sinking of Japan), Kiki (Vital), Akira Emoro (Memories of Matsuko)
Director: John Williams (Firefly Dreams)


Emits Donnie Darko freakout , does that rabbit suit ,shapeshifting to slippery aura of Alice when we get to the Wonderland brothel ,as a fictional world bleeds into the real. Uh huh. Like the Lewis Carroll cop-out, it could all be so much headnoise for preoccupied salaryman Koichi Sato. Guilt pangs ,because he's a dork who prefers reading mystery novels over getting it on with hot wife Tae Kimura and who does get it on with hotter stranger Kiki and her mineshaft of skeletons. Then hot wife disappears and - - - curioser and curioser? You wish. Gorgeous, yes. Muted and gauzy and proper, right. None of which computes as the palpable hallucination it's aiming for. Or should, if it isn't. No grasp for confusion,then. The mystery bland where it wants to be viscous. The plot thins rather than thickens. And the tacked-on coda comes too late to up the ambiguity. And doesn't anyway.* *

Bu San (Goodbye Dragon Inn)

The Last Picture Show

Bu San(Goodbye Dragon Inn)

Starring Kang Sheng Lee (What Time Is It There?), Xiangqi Chen (A Brighter Summer Day)
Director: Tsai Ming Liang (What Time Is It There?, The Wayward Cloud)



The architecture has bearing, our elliptical romance with cinema is our elliptical romance with the cinema,too - - - haunted house, repository of stories, cave of dreams, spaces where anything can happen. Not entirely the girftwrapped valentine to the movies Tsai loved that it at first seems to be, but more a soft-spoken elegy to the fading glories of the moviehouses he watched them in. Naturally, nostalgia flavors things. Particularly resonant, though, is how the moviehouse comes off as an ecology ,with its interior sociologies , its modes of conduct. Everything's here, familiar as secret handshakes. There is a thin smattering of people who converge, on this sad and rainy night, at the rundown Taiwanese moviehouse showing King Hu’s Dragon Inn one last time before closing its doors forever. Each has a story to tell. So, too, the ticket booth girl with a game leg and the mysterious projectionist. And in this space where anything can happen, many things do. All bouncing off the movie , the moviehouse and the ramifications of the night , eventually revealing themselves funnily, wistfully, poignantly, beautifully, always deliberately. At just 80 minutes, this is still Tsai’s slowest movie. You know the immersive long take is his discipline, the risking of ennui to tap into epiphanies. Pointlessly argue at this juncture and you’re probably out of his reach. Slowness doesn’t always connote torpor,after all. Sometimes it connotes grace.* * * * *

Chinjeolhan Geumjassi (Sympathy For Lady Vengeance)

Revenge Is A Cake Best Eaten Cold

Chinjeolhan Geumjassi (Sympathy For Lady Vengeance)

Starring Lee Yeong-ae (Jewel In The Palace), Choi Min Sik (Oldboy)
Director: Park Chan Wook (Sympathy For Mr.Vengeance)


Parts of this lose me for want of a hook. The key to confronting Park's specific brand of shock cinema is always that empathic nag that sucks you in - - -the politically corrosive murder in JSA, the kidnapped girl of Sympathy For Mr.Vengeance, the captivity a la Kafka of Oldboy. The hook here's old school Charlie Bronson get-even with not much meat in its spindly bones. Lee Yeong-ae's injured ex-con Geum ja's a cipher. Choi Min Sik’s fuming heavy's a cartoon demon. And the narrative fractures until it breaks down to the emotional consistency of a blackly hilarious sketch comedy. The carpet-bombing of the abstract-expressionist eyecandy and ravishing carnage and absurdist sweeteners Park's getting more and more psycho for counts for visceral joy but it removes me even more. All traumas converge on the overextended schoolhouse finale but has to bristle with it to raise crucial hackles. My heart's not in it by then so it's all so much preening designer ultraviolence to me , like a decapitation under neon. * * *

Ssawoomeui Gisool (The Art of Fighting)

The art of posing.

Ssawoomeui Gisool (The Art of Fighting)
Starring Jae Hee (3-Iron) / Bae Yoon-sik (President's Last Bang)
Director Sin Han-sol

Karate Kid on steroids. There's more reason to the punches here than some homoerotic ringside action, it's the survival of the poorest where people risk getting beat up for bread. There's also less mush and more street zen; Bae Yoon-sik's miyagi is gangsta cool and the coin-throwing wrist action is believably fatal. Expecting more though would ruin all the fun. This is engrossing predictability at its glossiest with unpredictable bone-cracking in gravity-defying decibels, and a surprising hint of sadness at the futility of the struggle. With wit that bounces off walls and a subtle handle on irony, The Art of Fighting could have aspired for more but it seems to be content with being just entertaining. ***

Orora Gongjoo (Princess Aurora)

No, I'M Lady Vengeance!

Orora Gongjoo (Princess Aurora)
Starring Uhm Jung-hwa (Crazy Marriage) / Moon Seong-geun (Virgin stripped Bare by Her Bachelors)
Director Bang Eun-jin

Princess Aurora delivers the chops, the stabs to the groin (I kid you not) and more importantly, a furious motive that (partially) eclipses Lady Vengeance's orchestrated arthouse-ready flamboyance. Uhm Jung-hwa seduces and shocks and carries the movie with sheer intensity. The violence seems random at first, from the first blood spray in a mall's bathroom to the ultimate scissor fighting match in a technoposh bachelor's pad, but the movie's last 30 minutes weave the loose ends together toward a logical, but a little too predictable end. If there's anything the movie lacks, it's humor, and some parts are laughable for all the wrong reasons (the breakdown bit while operating heavy machinery is just hilarious). But for every stumble, we are rewarded with moments of brilliant brutality that more often than not even the score. ***

Saedu Moobi (Sad Movie)

Dolls with big heads are my favorite type of women.

Saedu Moobi (Sad Movie)
Starring Jeong Woo-seung (A Moment to Remember) / Im Soo-jeung (...ing) / Cha Tae-hyon (My Sassy Girl) / Sin Min-ah (Volcano High) / Lee Ki-woo (The Classic) / Yeom Jeong-ah (Tale of Two Sisters)
Director Kwon Jong-gwan (S-Diary)

Not exactly a sad movie. With a cast of pretty boys and girls, how can it not be fun? Cute and cuddly puppy pieces --- the romcom parts made me blush and sigh like a school girl, fuck it --- cursed with sobby fates. Anything beyond that is just plain adoration. So let's just talk lighting. Filtering is luminous. Glowy. Mostly shot in available light, this movie's little world is literally bathed in dreamy softness, ultimately making the ending more pointless. More sad. **1/2

Sonnimeun Wangida (The Customer is Always Right)

The first cut is the deepest.

Sonnimeun Wangida (The Customer is Always Right)
Starring Seong Ji-roo (Super Family) / Seong Yeon-ah (The Intimate) / Myeong Ke-nam (Address Unknown)
Director Oh Ki-hyeon

A dark past is a bitch if you're a middle-aged barber who has a wife who would rather sell insurance than sleep with you. Especially if that deep dark secret involves screwing a minor and running her over at the end of the evening and a stranger struts in and bitch slaps you with blackmail. In turns funny and excruciatingly desperate, "the Customer is Always Right" rolls along interestingly enough --- with a few Park Chan-wook splices along the way --- until it reaches a satisfyingly surprising, twisted roundabout end. You know the razor will cut and the blood will spurt but the wait in between the sharpening and shaving is priceless. *** 1/2

Juemogi Unda(Crying Fist)

Fists of Fury

Jumeogi Unda(Crying Fist)

Starring Choi Min Sik (Old Boy, Happy End), Seung Beom Ryu(Sympathy for Mr.Vengeance)

Director: Ryoo Seung-Wan(Arahan, Die Bad)

Treading pugilist tearjerk maneouvers lightly but getting a perverse delight from indulging them- - - that frail grandmother evicting her sickbed for a ringside seat is the working definition of pushing it - - - this fighter melodrama was prone to ickiness from the get-go. It succumbs eventually - - - pulling its punches because Ryoo knows better not to. But sap laid on thin is still sap - - -that's my nit. Granted, there's a charge to its coarse sheen. And lower your defenses a bit and making friends with the movie becomes effortless. You don't come away empty-handed either. It makes enough of a case for both its underdog protagonists - - - Choi Min Sik's over the hill champion whoring himself out as a human punchbag for grub and coin while his family disintegrates and Ryu Seung-Beom's hothead punk languishing in jail who finds vent for his rage boxing in prison - - - so that when their parallel lives converge in the ring (you knew that), you not only feel for both , you root for both.
* * *

Salinui Chueok(Memories of Murder)

Good Cop Bad Cop

Salinui Chueok(Memories of Murder)
Starring Song Kang Ho (The President's Barber), Kim Sang-Kyung (Turning Gate)
Director: Bong Jun Hoo (The Host)

It’s the Korean Jack the Ripper. Just as gruesome, just as unsolved. Knowing that won’t muck things up. City cop and country cop partner to crack the case and it's their story mostly. And the serial killer they dog is a lash of panic that welts this investigation into smalltown hysteria , this tweaking of odd couple dynamics , this slapstick upending of the police procedural, this many things beyond dull roman a clef , with the throb of sinister goings-on. Soon, scenes achieve grace, some crackle and one - - - a set piece in the dead of a rainy night - - -had me picking my jaw up from the floor. Delicate balances are struck. Between placid milieu and seething underbubble. Between foreboding creepiness and broad comedy. Between truth and embellishment. Between invisible solution and tantalizing mystery. * * * * *

Jageop-ui jeongseok (Art of Seduction)

Slut machine.

Jageop-ui jeongseok (Art of Seduction)
Starring Son Ye-jin (April Snow) / Song Il-gook (Red Eye)
Director Oh Ki-Hwan (Last Present)

More like the art of Son Ye-jin's smile. She's purty but a seam-splitting seductress she isn't. Given that this movie aims for the funny more than fanny but still, light sweating should still be encouraged. Ye-jin's content with being cute and any licking of the lips (her own) is mechanical. Il-gook's suave grace dominates, the trophy practically handed over to him, in this lopsided battle of the sex machines which is too polite, too skittish and almost too charming. Everything a good roll in the hay should never be. Kid stuff. *1/2

Na-ui gyeolhon-wonjeongki (Wedding Campaign)

Odd couple. Odd place.

Na-ui gyeolhon-wonjeongki (Wedding Campaign)
Starring Jung Jae-young (Welcome to Dongmakgol) / Yu Jun-sang (Tell Me Something) / Soo-ae (A Family)
Director Hwang Byung-guk

Who looks for love in Uzbekistan? Apparently, Korean farmers. Desperate Korean farmers. (There's a short spiel at the beginning of the movie which explains why there are illegal Korean immigrants --- known as Koryo, I think --- in a far-flung Eastern Europe country, so believe it.) Man-taek's (Jung) naivete in women starts out funny, but in an alien land with cold art deco gold-leafed edifices, it's heartbreaking. The general rule: farmers play the rich man card and the Koryo play along for a visa back to motherland. But Min-taek falls for his handler, a North Korean who wants to defect to the South. I know it sounds complicated and too soap opera-ish but in the hands of the brilliant Jung, Min-taek's unraveling is a mosaic of flaws and shy first-steps that refuse to be anything but a man stubbornly fighting for his last chance at true love. ****

Sarangni (Blossom Again)

Swept away.

Sarangni (Blossom Again)
Starring Kim Jeung-eun (Marrying the Mafia) / Lee Tae-seong
Directed Jung Ji-woo (Happy End)

Love moves in mysterious ways. And it can go all Star Trek on you. Parallel universes overlap and asks you: would you love the same person all over again? A woman about to hit her thirties suddenly meets a younger reincarnation of her first love, a high schooler who doesn't know his math but oh boy, can he kiss (see above). Just like the way she remembers him. She believes. She insists. She loves. And there's no fighting that. When the real guy shows up for dinner --- all grown-up, forgetful and disappointing --- sideways glances do the talking. No explosions here. No Happy End irony. For those of us praying for that second chance, a possibility, small or miraculously obvious, is good enough. ****

Dalkomhan Insaneng (A Bittersweet Life)

Hurts so good.

Dalkomhan Insaneng (A Bittersweet Life)

Starring : Ro Ha Kim (Memories of Murder)
Director: Kim Ji Won (A Tale of Two Sisters)

It's fed the genre countless times before: henchman gets personal, gets backstabbed, gets even. Heroic Bloodshed jackpots when it regards itself as an apotehosis of pain. More blood shed, less heroism. The pain of impossible love. The pain of a knife wedged in your back. The pain of vendetta against friends. Pain - - - all makes and models - - - is the metatheme of the action movie. The chickenshit ones - - - hi-ho Joel Silver! - - - pull punches, strike poses, sugarcoat. The gutsy ones deconstruct the machismo, count the costs, lance the boil, let it bleed. The gutsy ones hurt. Like hell. Like this. * * * *

Yasu-wa minyeo (Beast and the Beauty)

Pretty on the inside.

Yasu-wa minyeo (Beast and the Beauty)
Starring Shin Min-a (Volcano High) / Ryoo Seung-bum (Arahan)
Director Lee Gye-byuk

A comedy of errors that has all been done before but with the comedic punch of Arahan. Blind Hae-ju (the effervescent Shin) is about to undergo eye surgery and can't wait to see Dong-gun (Ryoo). When there's not much to see, really. In desperation Dong-gun gets a couple of surgeries himself, which result in painfully funny bits --- the missing eyebrow, the sketched eyebrow. The drawn eyebrow over the drawn eyebrow. When a dashing cop enters the scene, looking exactly the way Dong-gun described himself to Hae-ju, desperation turns to pathetic. Laughing with tears in your eyes is always the best kind. ***1/2