Archive for the 'Review' Category

Sector 7 opened yesterday. A 3D-optional, action/adventure film featuring Ahn Seong-gi, Ha Ji-won and Oh Ji-ho battling a monster-from-the-deep aboard an offshore oil rig, this movie seems to have the recipe for success. What could go wrong?  Apparently, quite a bit…

Perhaps I should start with the good.  The special effects were very well done.  Now, I did not see the movie in 3D, so I cannot comment on that aspect of the film, but the CGI monster was very realistic..in appearance anyway. In fact, it reminded me a lot of a water bear (pictured right).  Water bears are extremely hardy, primitive animals found in the deepest oceans and in the highest mountains. Nasa sent some into the airless vacuum of space and not only did they survive, but they reproduced. The hardiness of a water bear is pretty much the only way to describe the durability of the monster in this film. You can shoot it, chop it, burn it and crush it, but it just keeps coming. The only difference is that water bears are less than a millimeter long while the monster in the movie seems to be about 4 meters. (and it is a little sad that I would rather write about water bears than this film…)

While the look of the monster was good, we had to look at it far too much during the movie. Once it makes its official screen debut in all its slimy glory, we can’t get rid of it. It would have been nice to have some time with it offscreen to give a chance for the script to develop some of the characters. Nor did we need to see each killing as it occured. It would have been just as effective to view the aftermath of the monster’s attacks once in awhile.  In fact, the only place we do not see the creature is on any of the posters advertising the movie.  I can fix that with the aid of the photo of my friend the water bear above. 

There we go.. that’s a more accurate depiction of the film…

The actors do what they can with this movie, but the script does nothing to help them. Hae-joon (Ha Ji-won) is inconsistantly written. At times she is a tough, no nonsense laborer who is ready to fight at the drop of a hat and chase down a suspected murderer. But other times she seems screams like she’s in a slasher flick.  I also found her reason for staying on the oil rig unrealistic and detracted from my opinion of her. But at least her character had a personality. Did Oh Ji-ho’s character Dong-soo have any lines that strung more than 10 words together? I can’t remember. I do remember Ahn Seong-gi’s mid-movie revelation. It comes out of left field and marks the point I would identify as the downward turn of the film.  Oh–now that I’m thinking about it, that point might have been where we are given a montage of things that I am sure you are not supposed to do on an oil rig. I won’t say too much about it except, if you don’t want to shell out cash for the motorcycle-action film Quick now doing fairly well in theaters, this sequence is probably the next ‘best’ thing. The worst part of all comes when the film tries to force sentimentality on us at the very end. At no point did I have an emotional response to the characters or identify with their feelings.

Actually, I have no doubt that Sector 7 will be number one at the end of this weekend… and I would have seen it myself even if  after reading a review like this–but it is hard for me to recommend this movie unless you are just looking to watch a film where you can turn off your brain and just watch events unfold. Heavy on action, light on plot..att the very least, you won’t be bored.

Pick one!   One link is a short Youtube video about Water Bears!  The other is the website of Sector 7.  Choose wisely.

The following review was originally written for the August edition Asiana Entertainment, the in-flight magazine of Asiana Airlines. Now published, I am able to post it here as well. As it is an airplane magazine and not a film journal, the reviews must be kept positive. Sometimes, like when I wrote about Dragon Wars and Hearty Paws 2, it was quite difficult and definitely felt like selling out. But in this case, it was not difficult to give the film a good review.  Officer of the Year is a comedy..not my favorite genre.. however it is not a bad film and it turned out that I did not mind watching it. You can view the original article if you are flying on Asiana in August… In September, you can read my review of Mama.

Officer Hwang Jae-seong uses his experience and keen instincts to bring criminals to justice in style. He prides himself on his ability and his arrest record is second to none. However, he may have some unlikely competition in a young rookie from a nearby, rival precinct.  What Officer Jeong Ui-chan lacks in experience, he makes up for in luck and determination.  Trying to fulfill his own ambitions as well as trying to impress his future father-in-law, Jeong attempts to overcome his limitations and innate klutziness to earn the coveted title of ‘Officer of the Year.’

The laughs come thick and fast as the two cops compete to collar the most criminals. However, Jeong and his compatriots at their under-funded, overworked station are outmaneuvered at every turn by the elite forces of Hwang. But then the comedy comes to a halt as a crime, so heinous in nature, changes the atmosphere of the film and forces the two stations to cooperate. Hwang and Jeong reluctantly come to an understanding and form an uneasy alliance as they track a serial rapist who has been slowly amassing quite a list of victims. Although their very different styles of detecting seems like it could cover all angles, it may not be enough to bring a supremely confident criminal mastermind whose modus operandi may leave him immune to detection.

Veteran comedic actor Park Joong-hoon has proven over the decades that he is not merely a master gagman, but also able to handle scenes and scripts that require intense drama. This movie demanded that he call on both of his demonstrated skill sets as Officer of the Year alters its tone from light police comedy to a serious crime/thriller. Park’s co-star in this film is Lee Seon-gyun, who plays the earnest yet inexperienced Officer Jeong, is charged with performing more of the comedy of this film than Park, which is rare for him as he usually appears in dramas and romance flicks. Yet Lee handily shows that he is up to the task and naïve and fumbling portrayal of Jeong is one of the highlights of this film and is warmly endearing.

There is one supporting character that may actually outshine the main actors in his few scenes. It is the character of the harmless but undeniably insane Ko played to perfection by Lee Won-hee.  In any movie Lee Won-hee appears in, no matter how large or small the role, he brings with him an enthusiasm and passion that is a joy to watch as he chews up the scenery and steals the scene. In Officer of the Year, his role is a just a bit part but he shows up sporadically at the police station throughout the film confessing to crimes he did not commit.

Korea cinema has had the reputation over the last decade or so of producing quality, genre-blended films and Officer of the Year is another fine example of this phenomenon. It is a comedy that will bring a smile to your face while it simultaneously proves itself to be a satisfying thriller.  You will definitely find it worth your time!

There is really only one word that can be used to describe master director Im Kwon-taeks’s 1973 war film Testimony and that is ‘ponderous.’  It is a case where the topic of the film being too big for the actors and actresses. Their personal stories really do not seem to matter in the big picture and they are overshadowed by the events of the war. The  movie sets out to be told from the perspective of Soon-ah played by Kim Chang-sook.  Living in Seoul at the start of the Korean War on June 25, 1950, Soon-ah does not flee the city ahead of advancing North Korean forces due to her elderly mother being unable to withstand such an arduous journey and the fact that her lover, Lt. Jang (Shil Il-ryong), will be staying to fight.  However, Seoul falls quickly and Soon-ah is arrested and interrogated for her known connection with an southern army officer. Unable… and unwilling… to provide information to her captors, Soon-ah and a number of other prisoners are herded into the back of a small truck and sent to Pyeongyang where they expect they will either be placed in a prison camp or executed upon arrival. Either way, they believe they will never see Seoul again and, in the case of everyone but Soon-ah, they are right.   The truck comes under fire on the north side of the DMZ and the prisoners take the opportunity to escape.  All of them, save the film’s heroinne, are gunned down as they attempt to scatter throughtout the bombed out city the truck had stopped in. Her persuers also killed in a plane strife, Soon-ah is able to escape and begin her long, difficult and dangerous trek homeward.

Up until this point, most of the movie has been told through Soon-ah’s experiences. However, around this time, the narrative loses focus. A voice-over comes out over scenes of war explaining the horrific events and indicating the passage of time.  It is a little jarring and frankly not a very good story-telling technique. We do eventually catch up with Soon-ah again where she meets farmers or the ocassional deserter heading south towards Seoul, but you would never want to travel with her because all of her companions wind up dead. The movie loses focus again as we watch scenes where other refugees attempting to head south and escape the war and communism come up against North Korean forces.  These have little connection to Soon-ah’s story, although she does eventually stumble across the tragic aftermath and scrounges some food from the packs the corpses hold.  Instead, they seem solely designed to depict the North Korean officers as evil.  I suspect this was necessary. 

Back in 1965, director Lee Man-hee was fined and imprisoned by depicting a North Korean soldier as being compassionate in his film The Seven Female POWs.  The South Korean government at the time had very strict anti-communism laws and the humanizing of the soldier was a crime.  Censors during the sixties and seventies even objected if the actor playing a communist soldier was ‘too handsome.’  However, in Testimony, Im Kwon-taek actually goes a long way towards showing pity and humanizing some of the enlisted–or rather–drafted men of the North Korean army and, because of this, I suspect he needed to make the officers and true communists that much more evil to satisfy the censors and to keep himself safe. Im shows many of the soldiers fighting for North Korea as having no choice. They were drafted off the side of the road as they tried to flee or were captured in Seoul and forced to fight. The most touching scene of the film is that of the Seoul baseball player who dies in Soon-ah’s arms. It is not often that old war movies can have an affect on me, but that scene brought tears to my eyes.

Testimony is not on DVD. I watched it on KTV which has been showing Korean War films throughout the month of June.  However, since director Im is one of the most famous names in Korean cinema even today, there is a good chance that it will be released on DVD sometime in the future. When it is, you might want to pick it up and have a look.  Although the movie lacks polish, it is still watchable and has several good moments.

Easily the best film I have seen so far this year, Sunny is the right blend of comedy and drama & nostalgia and realism.  Admittedly, the ending threatens to derail the aforementioned realism, but it was so satisfying that I am not going to complain about it. Watching the film last week, I was happily surprised to see that the average age of the audience that attended the screening I was at seemed to be in the mid-forties. This makes it the second film this year that has appealed to, and likely made for, more mature audiences (the first being Late Blossom –formerly listed as simply I Love You). I don’t mean ‘for mature viewers’ as in a porn flick, by mature I mean viewers who have been out of high school for more than 10 years and where looking back at that time is like looking back in history. Although historical events are glanced, such as the clashes between riot police and pro-democracy demonstrators, they have no real meaning or importance in this film as they are the memories of a woman who was a high school student at the time–and she was dealing with issues of more personal importance to her.

The main character of the movie is Na-mi played as an adult by actress Yoo Ho-jeong and as a child by Shim Eun-kyeong.  Shim, who you may remember from 2009’s Possessed, gives an impresive performance–and even gives a nod to Possessed when she pulls trick of pretending to be possessed by a spirit and saying afterwards that she was hungry–similar to her most chilling lines in the 2009 film. Na-mi has just moved to Seoul from Jeonbuk and entered a new school. However, she is finding it hard to fit in between the dialect she spouts and the fashions and would-be sophistication of her classmates. But between the friends she makes and her natural charm, she soon find herself at the heart of her group of friends.

Like when I was in high school, the classes are divided into cliques. Her group of friends call themselves ‘Sunny’ after a popsong that they plan to perform at a school festival. Their rivals are cleverly named Girl’s Generation and Finkl predating the actual singing groups of those names by two decades.  However, no matter how close people are in their school days, time has a way of separating friends.  Now and adult, Na-mi has been reunited with the former leader of their group, Choon-hwa, who charges her friend with finding the rest of their classmates.  Na-mi sets about doing just that and in doing so is able to reconcile some past issues as well as re-examine how she is performing her duties as a wife and mother. 

As I write this, Sunny is still in theaters and may see five million tickets sold this weekend. It is an excellent film and I highly recommend seeing it at the first opportunity!

Over the weekend, I happened to catch Lee Won-se’s The World Without Mom on KTV. I enjoyed the movie very much and, knowing that I had the DVD set which contained not only that movie, but the sequel as well, I decided that is what I would watch on the upcoming holiday which I knew from the weather forecasts would be a good day to stay home as we were going to be hit with heavy rains that will last throughout the week.

The World Without Mom is based on a diary by Kim Yeong-chool and that is indeed the name of the main character. He is a young student, approximately ten years old living in a southern coastal village where the main industry is salt farms. He lives with his father, mother and two younger brothers; Yeong-moon who is about 7 and Yeong-ho who is an infant. They are happy, but life is hard for the family and, as the title suggests, the mother exits the world early from, as Yeong-chool put it, ‘overwork.’ 

Her death leaves the small family devestated. Yeong-chool’s father turns to alcohol to assuage his grief, but it is not enough and he slowly loses his grip on reality and becomes mentally unstable. Afraid to leave Yeong-ho at home or at work with his father, Yeong-chool starts taking his youngest brother to school with him, making him the butt of cruel jokes by his classmates. His teachers, however, are more understanding and soon all the students come to respect Yeong-chool. His father becomes more unstable and, after attacking a man and nearly killing him, he is institutionalized, leaving his young sons on their own.

Yeong-chool tries his best to keep his family together as both his mother and father urged him to do, but there are many problems. The salt farm owns his house, and as his father is no longer working harvesting salt, it seems likely they will wind up on the streets. Well-meaning neighbors try to help, but Yeong-chool is too proud to fully take advantage of what they could offer. The villagers worry about the children and make arrangements for their welfare. Two of the children are set to be adopted while another will be sent to an orphanage. This does not sit well with Yeong-chool who knows they are not orphans. He decides he will fight to keep his family together. Yeong-moon comes to the same conclusion and runs away from the orphanage. The first movie ends with the brothers meeting again on the road outside their home. Their futures are uncertain, but at least they are together.

The World Without Mom 2, made and released the same year as part 1, picks up right where the other left film left off after a short recap.  The children are told by the owner of the salt farm that they can continue to live in the house and wait for their father to return from the hospital.  They receive food aid from the government and bags of rice from the villagers. Yeong-chool takes on full responsibility as parent, taking care of his younger brothers and becoming responsible for budgeting their meager savings. He receives some money from publishing his diary and a lot of donations are made to him and his family, but he misunderstands and refuses the money as he does not want people to think he is a beggar.  When it is revealed that his father’s hospital bill is late, he stops school to work harvesting seafood from the mudflats. And when his father escapes from the mental hospital, it is responsible Yeong-chool who makes the call to report his location.

However, things finally start looking up when the father does make a full recovery and is released from the hospital. He works hard for his family and the children are all happy that things are back to normal.  But the well-meaning neighbors once again interfere and tell the father that he cannot raise the children on his own and needs to remarry. They even know the perfect woman, a recent divorcee who cannot bear children but wants desperately to have a family. Yeong-chool is all for it and believes his mother would feel the same. Yeong-moon, who has been acting out all through the film, is not so sure…especially when the woman who will be his stepmother comes between him and his father with whom he is very close.

Both films are heavy on the drama and strive to make the viewer cry, and the way they go about this makes them feel a little dated. However, they are very enjoyable films and there is a lot to be said in their favor. The strongest points come from the acting of the two elder brothers Yeong-chool and Yeong-moon.  The former was played by Kim Jae-seong and the latter by Lee Kyeong-tae. Neither of these two continued in acting after the 70s but it was certainly not because of their performances here. They are naturals in the parts and the interaction between them, especially in the second film, is very believable. There are also some very artistic shots with the director highlighting the bleakness of the landscape while making it quite beautiful at the same time.

world without mom 3: festival of chicks

Their story did not end there. There is a third chapter called The World Without a Mom 3: Festival of Chicks made by director Lee Won-se in 1978.  However, it is not included in the DVD set nor have I seen it on tv. Just reading about it, I can tell that it does seem to differ from the first two quite a bit. For one thing, the title does not make sense as they now have a mother and father who love them and takes care of them. This in itself removes the feeling of tragedy from the film. Also, the family moves out of the village and into a larger town or small city taking advantage of low-income housing provided by the government. It does not seem to have Yeong-chool as the central figure as in the first two films. Rather it is Yeong-moon who learns at his new school that he has a passion for baseball but his talent does not match. He tries out for the team and winds up as a bat boy. The film apparently is his struggle to find the confidence and drive to succeed in his dreams… not at all the same as their previous two films where they fought to keep their family together and struggled to survive on their own.

If you can track down the DVDs of the first two films which were released together by Dreamix in 2006 with English subtitles, I highly recommend you do so. I liked these enough that if the third film ever becomes available, I will be picking that up as well.

This past Sunday, I made a discovery. After almost twelve years of watching Gag Concert every Sunday night, I suddenly realized that I was tired of it. The show started back in 1999 and I loved it at the time, although over the years it has had high and low points. Maybe it is this current batch of comedians and it will improve in a few months again when they move on but, right now, I don’t want to see it. Instead, I wandered into my DVD room to pick a movie to watch.  There are many that I have not seen yet and, after browsing around, I pulled Plastic Tree off the shelf. I had been meaning to watch that for a while…since 2003 actually. But as I started to go, the bright green spine of another DVD case filed nearby Plastic Tree caught my eye.  It belonged to Foolish Game which I also had not seen. The color looked so bright and enticing, especially compared with the dull, light tan of the cover of Plastic Tree. Poor Plastic Tree wound up back on the shelf and I walked out of the room with Foolish Game. 

Dropping the disc into the DVD player, I settled down to watch the film. I was quickly introduced to Hyeon-tae and his friends, Jae-cheol and Gu-bon, and their respective girlfriends, Mi-yeong and Hye-ryeon. Although the only unattached member of the group, Hyeon-tae does not seem or feel like a fifth wheel and he gets along with everyone. The role of odd-man out, or in this case–the odd-woman out, goes to Hye-ryeon who is far less gregarious and seems a little uncomfortable in group situations. But she must go along with the others as her boyfriend, Gu-bon, is the heart of the group and the glue that holds them together.

Even though he is not part of a couple, Hyeon-tae does not lack female companionship. He is something of a ladies man, able to pick up a date at the drop of a hat. So he is a little surprised that there is one woman he meets who shows absolutely no interest in him. Her name is Hee-jae and they first meet face-to-face when she double parks behind him in a parking lot. Unable to move his car, Hyeon-tae calls the number on the windshield for her to come and move it. That brief encounter with the distant woman is not enough for him and Hyeon-tae soon finds himself calling her again for a date. Oddly, we see Hee-jae dragging her key across the surface of her own car leaving a long white scratch in the black paint…

The mystery of Hee-jae deepens. She quickly cuts short her first date with Hyeon-tae. Promising to meet him at a movie theater, she keeps her word but goes there two hours earlier and watches the movie alone–meeting him outside the theater after the show, leaving Hyeon-tae out the price of two movie tickets. I was really wondering why Hyeon-tae kept trying to meet her– even I was losing interest in her. But then she does something interesting.  Heading to her apartment complex after one of her abbreviated dates with Hyeon-tae, Hee-jae goes to collect her mail. She pulls it out of her mailbox when the voice of the apartment security guard behind her asks, “Excuse me, Miss. Which apartment do you live in?”  The sound of his voice terrifies Hee-jae who takes off running before he can finish his sentence. He gives chase, but she hides outside, panting for breath and clutching the mail to her chest. We now suspect that perhaps her strange behavior with Hyeon-tae is not so much out of disinterest, but because she is hiding something.

During the floundering start to Hyeon-tae’s romance, his friends lives continue. They go to work, study at language academies, drink and talk about their common passion– mountain climbing. Hye-ryeon does not join in on these conversations but sits patiently through them. Jae-cheol also joins in less and his body language is making it clear that his affections are changing from his girlfriend to Hye-ryeon. The five friends finally pick a time where they can all meet and go to Chiri Mountain for a few days. Hyeon-tae invites Hee-jae who, although she has no plans, lies and says that she is busy and will not attend. But that trip to Chiri Mountain changes everything. Tragedy strikes and one of the group is killed.  Not only is the entire group dynamic turned upside down, but there seems like there could be a connection between what happened and Hee-jae.

Sometimes when I watch romances, I think to myself that it was too long. However, that was not the case here. In fact, I think with a little better writing and by filling in the many time gaps—especially near the end of the film– this plot could well be turned into a 14-week tv drama. The three gratuitous sex scenes would have to be cut out, but that would not be a loss. These were among the least passionate sex scenes I have ever watched. There is just no chemistry between the participants–and I think I have to blame actor Lee Dong-gyu for this because he was the common thread in all of those scenes. The director is also to blame as his use of a static camera gave these scenes the feeling of being shot by a security camera.

Outside of their poorly done sex scenes, the acting was rather good–much better than a standard tv romance. The dialog also was realistic and the interaction between the friends was believable. However, when it was released in theaters, this movie failed and it has fallen into the category of forgotten films like the movie I reviewed last week. I think the reason for this, besides the lack of well-known actors, is because the movie does not go far enough in any one direction to attract a certain kind of moviegoer.  The budding romance between the two leads is not cute enough to pull in anyone interested in romantic-comedies. The rating of ‘ages 18+’ assigned to this film because of brief nudity (non-frontal) and sex eliminated quite a few potential viewers unnecessarily. The attempt at art that the director tossed into the film–namely the approximately one minute where the contrast on the film is turned up making everything either bright white or black– was interesting but poorly thought out and nowhere near enough to make this movie interesting to those who like experimental movies like are scene at film festivals.  In short, the movie falls through the cracks, which is a shame– a little tweaking one way or the other in the editing process would have made this film more memorable.

Back in June 2002, the Japanese-Korean co-production, Jesus Is My Boss opened in a limited number of theaters and quickly disappeared.  The subject matter did not particularly interest me and I, like most of the nation, did not go to see it. I did not think about it for many years until –October 2009 to be exact (I keep records of things like that)– I saw it listed on the site I buy DVDs. I ordered it along with R.U Ready, Turn It Up and Oolala Sisters… not one of my stellar moments. I then proceeded not to watch it until this past weekend.  I was informed that it was Easter… a holiday I haven’t really thought of in decades. As kids I liked egg hunts, chocolate rabbits and marshmallow peeps. We would have a duck dinner, watch Here Comes Peter Cotton Tail and the Ten Commandments. Come to think of it, I don’t why that latter film was shown annually on tv..it is religious but not very Eastery.  Anyway, after learning it was Easter, I thought I would watch an Easter-themed movie.  Going through my DVD collection, I quickly learned I have no movies about bunnies delivering colored eggs. While many of the movies I have contain religious plot elements–like Possessed or Untold Scandal– they did not seem to fit the bill. It appears I only have two movies that deal more directly with biblical themes; David and Goliath (directed in 1983 by Kim Cheong-gi, creator of Robot Taekwon V) and Jesus Is My Boss (directed by Koichi Saito, who never directed again). I tried watching Kim’s David when I bought the movie and not enough time has passed to make me want to attempt that again (It’s only been five years–were there bears in the Bible?–I have vague memories of David fighting a bear in that movie and even that, like the rest of the cartoon, was tedious)  So I went with Jesus Is My Boss.

Actually, this choice is probably more appropriate for the holiday. For one, just look at the above poster. A man carrying a cross from one end of Japan to the other and on to Korea in order to atone for his sins. Not only can’t you get more Eastery than that but the Korean titles is Mission Barabba, Barabba being the Aramaic name of Barabbas, the criminal who Pontius Pilate allegedly freed instead of Jesus in the cruxifiction story. 

The movie focuses on Yuji and Shima, member of rival branches of the Yakuza in Japan. These two share much in common. They both begin the film as ruthless killers loyal to their bosses, they both have Korean wives waiting patiently and praying fervently for their redemption and they both are eventually betrayed by the gangs they placed their faith in. Their reactions to betrayal are quite different, however. Yuji promises his wife that he will start over. After listening to another former Yakuza member give a sermon in church, Yuji gets the idea that he can attone for his sins by building a cross and carrying it from one end of Japan to the other. Along the way, he meets other gangsters and thugs who join him in his march. Shimi, however, wants to prove his worth to the Yakuza and decides that the only way he can do that is by killing his former rival, Yuji. 

This is really a terrible movie. The first half of the 139 minute film action. Gang fights, shootouts and general mayhem. That might be ok if done well, but it wasn’t. It was done more like a Korean action film from the mid 90’s.  Don’t know what I mean? Search out Charisma (1996), Unfixed (1996) or the unfathomable Underground (also 1996) and you will understand.  The scenes poorly edited, choppy and with laughable action. In this movie, their was a high gore factor with graphic dismemberments but, it was so over-the-top as to be unrealistic and did not change the films rating of ‘for ages 15 or higher.’  The second half of the film was not shy in its intention of promoting Christianity and was annoying me with it whole convert and be saved theme (I know, I know… I should have been expecting that and I was..I just have a low tolerance for it)  Both of those problems are simply a matter of tastes–someone else may have enjoyed them. However, the film had bigger problem I found even more grating. It seemed very anti-Japanese.

Every Japanese male in the movie was Yakuza or former Yakuza. Every Korean in the film was a kneel-down-and-pray-with-me Christian. There is a strange sugar-coating of hostilities expressed in the film. More than one character says something like, “There are many good Japanese people BUT…”  and the ‘compassionate’ Korean priest working in Japan scolds Yuji wife (a Korean) for marrying him. “Did your parents approve of you marrying a Japanese?’ he asks and upon receiving negative reply launches into a story of how he was forced as a young priest to do missionary work in Japan and how much he hated it. This made me question why he was still there– he clearly was has been out of the seminary for a good 30 years. It seems to me he could have asked for a transfer of parishes…

Then again, maybe he did. The film was primarily in Japanese and so I had to rely on the English subtitles. But these were horrible! They required translation in their own right for me to understand. And at several points in the film, the subtitles disappear for a short time as if the translator did not know how to change what was being said and just decided to skip it, hoping that it would not be important.

I really cannot recommend this film. It is an unknown movie for a reason..better it remains that way…

A television crew filming a weekly program that tracks down supernatural activity and ghosts is called to the house of Geum-ja. There they meet the tense woman and learn why she has come to believe her house is haunted by the spirit of her younger sister. During an interview, the crew learns that some time not too long ago, Geum-ja’s sister and husband were killed in a car accident.  The interview quickly sours however when the producer questions the relationship between the two dead people. Rather than continue and upset their host further, the television crew sets up cameras and mikes in the hopes of catching a ghostly visitor or hearing any unexplained sounds.  However, after hours of filming and sound recording, the team packs up without hearing a thing. As they pack up their equipment, Geum-ja is left alone with her dark thoughts and in a foul mood because of the insinuations and suspicians of the camera crew. Then she hears a sound.. a voice… and she knows that she is not alone. She recognizes the voice of her sister whom she feels has a message of forgiveness for her. However, she cannot make out the words. She screams for the television crew who answer her call and they immediately begin making EVPs– however when they analyze the sounds, they can only make out five syllables which apparently have no meaning. The crew gives up but leaves Geum-ja with a copy of the recording which she listens to..until she realizes that the syllables are actually the scrambled words. She quickly goes to work unscrambling the sentence not realizing the horror she about to unleash….

The English title of this film fails to take into account the full Korean title which, if translated, would be Invisible 2: Chasing the Ghost Sound.  What then was Invisible 1?  It was a short film made back in 2004 by director Yoo Joon-seok, who also created this film. It’s full title was Invisible 1: Chasing the Hidden Sound… it really was called Invisible 1. Apparently Yoo has been planning this sequel for quite a while.  The first movie screened at the 5th Jeonju International Film Festival and it was about a tape recorder found at the scene of a murder. The detectives attempt to unravel the crime based only on the sounds caught on tape. However, they learn that sound alone is an incomplete and inaccurate method of painting a picture and can easily be manipulated… as done by the spirit in Chasing the Ghost Sound. When Invisible 1 screened in Jeonju, critic Yoo Eun-seong called it ’stale’ as it relied on twists and reversals as seen in movies like Usual Suspects, but “the director’s witty way of dealing with images and sound is definitely something viewers will want to keep seeing.”  The same might be said for Invisible 2. It definitely lacked originality with its faux-documentary style filming that we have seen a lot of recently in horror movies since The Blair Witch Project.  However, the use of sound was very interesting and as Geum-ja was unscrambling the sentence, I found myself becoming increasingly engrossed as I was trying to unravel the mystery with her. 

I had reviewed one of Yoo’s films earlier on this site, it was Coma: The Necklace, the third chapter of that story. At the time, I was disappointed with his effort on the film saying that it derailed the suspense and mystery set up by the two earlier chapters. I also said that the step away from the supernatural in that portion of the story may have been because the main character in that segment was not prone to flights of fancy and this theory was subsequently backed up by the fourth chapter which featured an unstable artist who saw ghosts everywhere she looked.

As far as the ghost in Chasing the Ghost Sound, I have to admit that she made me jump. However, there was nothing original or unique about her– I jumped more out of surprise than fear. I watched this film on Hana Tv–my internet tv provider –and it does not seem to be available anywhere else at this time. There were no subtitles and frankly I don’t know if it would be possible to provide subs on this film as the key to the mystery hinges on unscrambling syllables to form a sentence in Korean.  As a final evaluation, I guess I would say that this film is nothing new, but not a bad way to spend a spare 40 minutes.

It has been very hard for me to sit down and watch movies the past couple of weeks let alone write anything. I think I won’t be giving any more homework for a little while. I need time to catch up. I did, however, get a chance to see KTV’s offering of classic Korean cinema last week, director Kang Dae-jin’s Love starring Moon Hee, Shin Yeong-gyun, Kim Ji-mi and Lee Soon-jae. Any one of these great actors could carry a film–and Moon Hee was one of my favorite actresses. The plot, according to the Korean Film Archives, goes something like this: Love is permanent. An-min is in agony by the knowledge that his wife has an incurable disease. Nurse Sun-ok, who feels sympathy toward him, falls deeply in love. But An-min does not accept her love. At the end, his wife dies, and he only thinks of her. Accordingly, Sun-ok leaves the hospital for the sake of An-min with tears in her eyes.  Wait… what was that first line? Love is permanent? Ummm.. I don’t mean to sound cynical–and its not often that I do– but even I have a hard time swallowing that line.  Then again, within the context of this film, love does seem to continue without change for all the characters. That above synopsis also claims ‘At the end’ the doctors wife dies and the nurse leaves in tears.  What? Didn’t the person who wrote that watch the whole movie? That sad event happens at about the halfway point in the film. Here is what really happens…

The first part is right, Nurse Seo Soon-ok (her name is better written with double ‘o’s rather than a ‘u’ to get the right pronunciation) does indeed love Dr. Ahn. He in turn loves his slowly dying wife (played by Kim Ji-mi), the mother of his two children. And it is true that Ahn rejects Soon-ok’s love even though his feelings run deep for her. However, she does not leave him in tears. Instead, she sacrifices her feelings and volunteers to care for his ailing wife and act as a governess for his children (while maintaining her job at the hospital and studying to be a doctor)   But when his wife coughs her last cough and Dr. Ahn Min mercilessly fails to rebound into Soon-ok’s arms, the nurse finally has to give up. As she is rapidly approaching her mid-twenties, remaining single is not an option of course, and poor Nurse Seo is quickly married to a man whom she does not love.  He loves her with all his heart, but he has an even greater love. Alcohol.

Soon-ok’s wedding night consisted of getting scolded by a mother-in-law her hates her and forbids her to study medicine and waiting for her husband to show up. When he finally does finally stagger home, he is so drunk he passes out without ..er..performing his husbandly duties. In fact, it is strongly suggested that they never sleep together. But that does not stop Soon-ok from becoming a mother–which might seem difficult given the prior sentence. But it was relatively easy. While visiting the hospital she used to work at and talking with Dr. Ahn, a woman comes in with a sick boy. Soon-ok helps in the emergency and the woman thanks her and explains that she is a single mother, the boys father having disappeared long ago. But when the mother learns Soon-ok’s name, she realizes that this was the woman her old lover had been obsessing about for years and that she is now married to him. The mother slips away, leaving a note for Soon-ok to raise the boy with her husband/the boy’s father. One would think there would be a lot of implications and issues to be addressed here, but the movie does not touch on them. Instead, in the very next scene, Soon-ok’s entire family–drunk husband, hardened mother-in-law and stepson–are packing up and rushing to Manchuria as her husband is fleeing from some unsavory characters he had crossed.

Life is hard in Manchuria  as Soon-ok becomes the sole bread-winner in the family. I have to assume that some time has passed as she opens her own hospital and people are now addressing her as ‘doctor.’  She gains the respect of the entire albeit small community she lives in and has a loving relationship with her son, but her home life is still miserable.  While I thought that Soon-ok’s suddenly becoming a mother was handled too quickly by the script, the next part made my head spin. In short order, her husband is murdered and her mother-in-law winds up dead. These two major events happen within three minutes of each other and it is impossible to meassure how much time has actually passed for the characters.  Soon-ok seems on the verge of giving up the ghost herself and winds up very ill in the hospital. Her spirits are lifted however, when her brother shows up to take her home and her will to live becomes even stronger when told that Dr. Ahn is dangerously ill with pneumonia.

And so, Soon-ok is reunited with Dr. Ahn and his children. The movie ends with Ahn Min, looking much older,  shuffling back into the house leaning heavily on Soon-ok who promises to nurse him back to health and never leave again while the three children play in the yard.

The movie had a skewed idea of what love should be and the ideal woman. Soon-ok was certainly depicted as the ideal– she was a virgin and a mother, nurse and governess, caring and nuturing.  Her own thoughts and needs took third place behind those of her true love and the duty to her family. The movie whitewashes the fact that she was silently lusting after another woman’s husband in the first half of the film by having Ahn’s wife wholely approve of Soon-ok–even inviting her on what she knows will be the last trip with her husband (who nixes the plan and does not allow Soon-ok to go).   What passes for love in this movie seems almost like obsession. Not merely Soon-ok’s feelings for Ahn Min– who keeps giving her false hopes as with the note he attached to a wedding gift he gave her which read ‘Think of me when you look at this.’ Is that what you really want to tell a woman on her wedding day? and one you have already told that you don’t want to be with?  Soon-ok’s husband also suffers from obsession for his wife. He would follow her around before they were married begging her to consider him and, despite all his faults, he genuinely did love her even though she could never return his feelings. Even in the end, the love Soon-ok feels for Ahn seems more platonic than the love a couple should feel–almost as if Ahn now has a mother-figure to look after him and care for him while he is ill.

This movie is far too heavy on the melodrama and the pacing is way off. The two-thirds of the movie crawl by as Soon-ok suffers in silence and then, in the last part, things go by so quickly we have no idea how much time is passing.  Time in general was an issue. The issue with the medical license I assumed Soon-ok earned and the fact that Dr. Ahn is very grey by the end of the movie implies that years have passed. But Ahn’s children do not age at all which makes it feel that mere months have passed and was very confusing. As much as I like Moon Hee, I think I will give this movie a pass if I ever have the opportunity to see it again…

When most people think of Yoo Ji-tae, the think of the actor who debuted in Bye, June back in 1998, made a name for himself in Attack the Gas Station in ‘99 and followed that up with major roles in a trio of films (Ditto, One Fine Spring Day and Oldboy) that landed him a permanent place among the top stars of Korea.  What most people don’t realize is that Yoo also has a passion for directing and has helmed a number of award-winning short films. The first of these was the 40-minute short Bike Boy in 2003 which won an Audience Pick award for short films at the Pusan International Film Festival where it originally screened and it went on to open in festivals Hong Kong and Japan.  It is the story of a boy named Min-soo who is in his final year of elementary school. He stands on the brink of adolescence but he is not quite ready to cross over. He is a child confused by forces within and people without that are trying to force him to change and to grow up. One of these forces in Ki-ran, a girl in his class. She also is experiencing changes in her feelings as well as she grows into young womanhood. She is also unsure how to express her feelings, but she seems to handle them in a more mature way than Min-soo whom she likes. Min-soo may like her as well, but he is unwilling to address how he feels and it makes him moody and sullen except when he is playing with his friends or riding his beloved bike.

The bike becomes a refuge, a way to hold on to the familar while setting new challenges for himself– such as attempting to outrace the bus. He takes time to train himself for this task, fixes his bike up, gets a haircut and even does something that makes him feel guilty and proud at the same time. When the time is right, he sets off to accomplish his goal without telling a soul and the finish of his personal race is timed to coincide with the arrival of Ki-ran at her home. However, her response to him and his new look completely robs him of any sense of victory and he walks home with a vague sense of having lost something.  However, that is not the end. The final scene of the movie and the dialogue spoken therein brought a smile to my face and sweetened the story, letting the viewer that everything is going to be alright and that he can remain a child for just a little longer.

That final scene is simple, but beautiful and shows Yoo’s potential as a director that would be better realized in some of his later shorts. What happened in that scene?  You’ll have to watch it yourself– I only give spoilers to endings of movies not available on DVD. You can see Bike Boy along with How Do the Blind Dream? (2005), Out of My Intention (2007) and Invitation (2009) as part of the Yoo Ji-Tae Collection.  Search for it. You will find that it shows another, unexpected side of a man we have come to know as a great actor.