Reviews

The man who desires after that girl is Lee Jeok-yo(Park Hae-il with lots of make-up). He is a poet who has been revered by many people as one of the giant figures of South Korean literature, and the people even consider building the memorial museum for his achievement. He does not like being treated like an artifact, so, except accepting invitations from time to time, he lives alone in a cozy country house somewhere outside Seoul.

Although he is surrounded by many books in his library, his career as a poet looks like having been terminated for a long time. He has been assisted by one of his pupils, Seo Ji-woo(Kim Moo-yeol). Ji-woo becomes famous because of his first novel which is not only critically acclaimed but also commercially successful. As his mentor, Jeok-yo should be proud of his pupil's success, but he does not seem to be pleased a lot when he receives the book. None the less, Ji-woo keeps coming to his mentor's house, and he works for his mentor as an unofficial housekeeper and secretary; he cooks the meal, and he takes care of the daily appointments for Jeok-yoo.

On one day, their daily life becomes a little different when they find a young high school girl waiting for them when they arrive at Jeok-yoo's house. Her name is Eun-gyo(Kim Go-eun), and she says she just comes to the house to get a part-time job. Jeok-you reluctantly hires her, but, while watching Eun-gyo's innocent beauty, Jeok-yo begins to feel something stirring in his heart. At one rainy night, she comes to his house due to her personal reason, and he lets her into his house. Though nothing much happens on that night, he sees that he really wants Eun-gyo – but he also knows that he is a guy too old for the relationship with the girl idolized by him.

As several local critics pointed out, I have to admit that it was awkward to see Park Hae-il as the aging character after watching his virile physical performance in South Korean action film "War of the Arrows"(2011) in last year. He is currently 35, so it is rather hard to accept him as a man around 70 in spite of the make-up on his face and upper body. In fact, he looks more natural when he plays the younger version of his character in the wistful fantasy sequence imagined by his character.

But, despite this undeniable awkwardness, Park Hae-il gives an adequate performance as a man who pathetically remains young at heart. Some old men do not learn much even after they become quite old, and Jeok-yoo is one of those silly examples. Maintaining its serious attitude, the movie approaches to the hilarity of Hong Sang-soo's films sometimes, and there is a funny scene where Jeok-yoo almost risks his life just because he wants to look good and nice to Eun-gyo.

If he were not an artist, he would look merely silly. Struggling with the carnal yearning created many good works in the history of literature, and the same thing can be said about Jeok-yoo's circumstance. Maybe his body remains old and wrinkled, but, what do you know, his aesthetical creativity in his heart is rejuvenated at full mode, so his desire is sublimated into his new work which is probably as good as that famous Nabokov's novel.

With his new work, the situation gets more complicated due to the reason you should discover for yourself while watching the movie. While all these things happen, Ji-woo is not particularly happy about what is happening between his mentor and a girl. Though the movie is not successful in handling this triangle relationship between its main characters(I heard the book, written by Park Bum-sin, did a better job), we come to understand the true nature of the relationship between Jeok- yo and Ji-woo, who are bound to each other by the jealousy and admiration not in the way you expect.

Between her co-actors, Kim Go-eun gives the best performance in the film as the character who is a lot more than the object of the desire. While radiating unadulterated charm around the screen, Kim Go-eum makes us believe her obliviousness to her effects on the other characters, and then she is convincingly transforms her character into a more active player in the story. She and Park Hae-il have a wordless scene when her character starts to sense the feelings inside the man she endearingly calls 'grandpa', and this eventually gives little poignancy to the bittersweet feeling of the last scene.

Hawyi(Yeo Jin-goo) looks like a normal high school student on the surface, but he has a dark secret shared with his five 'fathers' in a nice house located in some country area outside Seoul, and the tense opening sequence shows us how his life got involved with these people when he was very young. I will not describe it in details, but let's say this taut moment has some good surprises under its suspenseful mood including where young Hawyi is kept by Seok-tae(Kim Yoon-Seok) and his gangs.

They could kill young Hwayi after their plan to collect the ransom was botched in the end, but he was instead taken under their wings, and that was the beginning of a strange alternative family. 14 years have passed, and Hwayi is now their loving son, and all of them are his dads while Yeong-joo(Lim Ji-eun), Seok-tae's wife who was a captive just like Hwayi at that time, is like a caring mom to him. Although he has never gone through any proper education in their isolated world, Seok-tae and his gangs have taught Hwayi lots of things including driving and sharpshooting, and, as revealed later in the movie, he is a very good apprentice to make his criminal fathers proud.

Because Hwayi is approaching to adulthood, Jin-seong(Jang Hyeon-seong), the thoughtful and sophisticated member of the bunch who manages their dirty business, thinks Hwayi deserves to have a life better than theirs. While he can lead a fairly good criminal career with his learned skills, Hwayi also has a considerable artistic talent(we see several good sketches in his notebook at one point), and Jin-seong is willing to help him in any possible ways.

However, it seems that Seok-tae, the leader of the bunch(while casually calling other fathers 'dad', Hwayi always calls him 'father'), has the other idea. Hwayi was frequently terrorized by the monster in the basement where he was locked in, and, though it is apparently a pigment of his imagination possibly fueled by his horrible situation, the monster keeps haunting him, and Seok-tae takes a drastic measure to solve Hwayi's problem once for all; he is going to push Hwayi more deeply into the dark, ruthless criminal world of him and others.

The movie gets darker and bloodier after Hwayi directly participates in his dads' works and then accidentally(or fatefully) learns about himself more than he imagined, and the movie drives its story to the destined point with a vengeance through its volatile mix of family melodrama and crime drama. Some of its surprises can be easily predicted in advance, but they strike us hard with emotional impacts, and that accordingly pushes its main characters to their inevitable conflict calling for blood and revenge.

The director Jang Joon-hwan, who made a long-awaited comeback with this film, shows here that the potential shown in his exceptional debut film "Save the Green Planet!"(2003) is not eroded at all. While it does not have that loony raw power of his debut film, "Hwayi" is a compelling genre piece packed with good action/suspense scenes and accompanying gray ambiance. There is always a foreboding sense of fatalism at every corner of the screen, and it is effectively manifested through its gloomy spaces including the certain crucial characters' lone residence surrounded by demolished houses.

Things get complicated as the police and other underworld figures come into the picture, but the movie stays focused on the love/hate relationship between Hwayi and Seok-tae, and the performances by Kim Yoon-seok and Yeo Jin-goo ably carry the movie even when the plot become shaky at times. As shown in "The Yellow Sea"(2010), another dark South Korean crime thriller drama driven by the darkness of human heart, Kim Yoon-seok is good at conveying the steely brutality behind his plain but commanding appearance, and young actor Yeo Jin-goo does more than holding his own place amid the adult co-actors. The movie is essentially his character's coming-of-age drama, and Yeo Jin-goo is believable in every step as his character is transformed from a boy fearing his own monster to a man finally engulfing it. In that aspect, the movie reminds me a lot of David Michôd's "Animal Kingdom"(2010), which was also about the sad loss of innocence in the criminal world.

While it loses its steam around the ending, "Hwayi" is a gripping noir drama supported by its skillful direction and convincing performances. Like several notable South Korean films, the movie also reflects the dark sides of modern South Korean society through its gritty tale, and there is an interesting aspect associated with social class issues when hidden motives and connections are revealed during a chilling encounter between two contrasting characters. Its view on the modern South Korean society, which is still dominated by Confucian patriarchal ideas and haunted by the history of violence during the 20th Century, is ultimately pessimistic, but its somber ending comes with a small glimmer of hope none the less(There is a tiny but crucial scene after the end credit, so don't leave the screening room too early).

If you want me to recommend any other South Korean cites besides Seoul to visit for sightseeing, Gyeongju is one of several good places coming to my mind instantly. As a city which was once the capital of the ancient kingdom named Silla(57 BC ~ 935 AD), it has so many interesting archaeological sites and cultural properties that it is sometimes called "the museum without walls", and, once you go around this wonderful city for one or two days, you cannot possibly agree more to that nickname. Things have changed for more than 1000 years since the fall of the Silla kingdom, but you can encounter its remains here and there in the city, and that imbues the city with a certain distinctive quality to remember.

Zhang Lu's new film "Gyeongju" is mainly about its hero's one long day in this city. After leaving South Korea, Choi Hyeon(Park Hae-il) has been a professor of Northeastern Asian Studies in the Pecking University for several years, and he returns to his country for attending the funeral of one of his old friends. As he talks with the other friend who also comes to the funeral, something comes into his mind, and, out of a sudden impulse, he decides to go down to Gyeongju.

As soon as he arrives at the train station, he goes to a little traditional teahouse where he and his dead friend visited during their trip seven years ago. He remembers seeing a traditional erotic painting, called chunhwa, drawn on the wall during their tea time, and it looks like he just wants to know whether it is still there. When he enters its gate, the teahouse looks same to him as before, but several things are changed, and as being served with a cup of tea by its new owner Yoon- hee(Sin Min-ah), he finds that the painting in question is gone now.

After leaving the teahouse, he meets Yeo-jeong(Yoon Jin-seo), a woman he was close to before he left for China. After called by him, she comes from Seoul to Gyeongju, but, for some reason, she says she will go back to Seoul after around 2 hours, and the awkwardness between them is palpable enough for us to sense that there are still unresolved feelings between them. Regardless of whatever happened between them in the past, they are now more distant than ever to each other as leading their own lives separately, and it is apparent that both of them are not very happy with their respective lives at present. As listening to their conversation, we learn that Hyeon married some Chinese woman, but it seems he does not want to talk much about his wife. In case of Yeo- jeong, she is not so glad to see Hyeon, but she has something to say to him, and that leads to a small bitter moment during their lunch.

Hyeon goes back to the teahouse, and he and Yoon-hee become a little closer to each other as a revisiting customer and the owner. Although she initially thought of him as a weirdo when they first met, Yoon-hee treats him a little more nicely during his second tea time at her place. While they plainly interacting with each other as two civilized human beings, the movie wonderfully captures the tranquil mood surrounding them and the teahouse, and it even inserts one brief imagined moment into this part as its stable camera just simply pans from one side to the other side of its space. We also get an amusing scene in which two Japanese visitors mistake Hyeon for a South Korean movie star, and this deadpan moment will look funnier to you if you know that Park Hae-il is one of prominent South Korean film actors.

As the evening approaches, Yoon-hee invites Hyeon to a drinking meeting with others, so he goes to the meeting with her and her friend Da- yeon(Shin So-yul), and he meets Professor Park(Baek Hyeon-jin) and Mr. Kang(Ryoo Seung-wan). Professor Park, who is an expert on North Korea, recognizes Hyeon instantly when he is introduced to Hyeon, and that results in a comic situation of embarrassment while Professor Park is trying to impress Hyeon in his pathetic drunken attempt reminiscent of Hong Sang-soo's films.

And we are also introduced to Yeong-min(Kim Tae-hoon), a detective who comes late to the meeting and then is gradually revealed to be carrying a torch for Yoon-hee. He quickly regards Hyeon as a possible romantic competitor, but, as a guy who does not know well how to express his feeling while trying not to hurt the feeling of the woman he loves, he just stays besides them as long as possible.

The problem is, Yoon-hee and Hyeon do not seem to know what to do with something felt between them, either. They and Yeong-min eventually end up spending some private time together as their late night goes on, but this scene is not played out as you would expect from such a situation, and that brings another amusement to the story. As suggesting the feelings beneath their reserved attitude, Park Hae-il and Sin Min-ah do not overplay whatever may be going on inside their characters, and Kim Tae-hoon holds his place well as the third guy who somehow becomes more understandable and sympathetic despite his blunt behaviors.

Unlike the recent South Korean period dramas, the movie has a notable anachronistic feeling. It seems its background is the Joseon dynasty(1392-1910) considering the design of architectures in the film, but there is also the influences from the Goryeo dynasty(918-1392) in the characters' costumes and other details. They behave like the people living during the Joseon dynasty, but, as far as I know, there was not any incident during that period which can possibly inspire the lurid story of the film, and I have never heard about the king's mother presiding over the copulation ritual of her son and daughter-in-law in the next room.

But, despite its fictional world, the ruthless pursuit of power in the palace is a familiar story you have encountered in other stories. The king is dead due to an unidentified cause, and the king's mother(Park Ji-yeong), who is actually his stepmother, now holds the power to decide who will be the next king. She quickly puts her own son, Prince Seong- won(Kim Dong-wuk), on the throne, and she also swiftly eliminates her opponents including the previous king's father-in-law.

In such a circumstance like that, the previous king's wife, Hwa-yeon(Cho Yeo-jeong), naturally has lots of worry about not only her future and but also her young son's future. He is just a child at present, but this innocent kid is already deemed as a potential threat to the kingship, and he can be killed at any time if the king's mother and her followers have a chance to get a good reason for that. Some of South Korean audiences have never heard of Lady MacBeth or Richard III, but they will be reminded of several bloody incidents during the Joseon dynasty or other dynasties preceding that. King Danjong of the Joseon dynasty was dethroned by his uncle, who became the next king, and then this young boy was killed later when he was thought to be too much of trouble(believe or not, it was said that this horrific decision was strongly supported by his great uncle). In case of Prince Young-Chang, he was murdered by King Gwanghaegun of the Joseon dynasty just because he was a more legitimate heir to the throne than the king himself. Anything could be committed for absolute power in those days, you know.

Unlike his ruthless mother, Prince Seong-won has other thoughts about his sister-in-law, and we know why. While he was merely a prince, he met her in her father's house, and he has been obsessed with her since then. His mother already sets him up with the other woman as his queen when he becomes the king, but he still wants Hwa-yeon in spite of his mother's warning. It may be not that bad to sleep with the deceased brother's wife(well, he is the king, isn't he?), but it can be fatal to sleep with someone who can threaten the power.

The situation becomes more complicated after another player of this dangerous game of palace intrigue appears in the palace. His name is Kwon-yoo(Kim Dong-wuk), who was Hwa-yeon's former lover in the past. When he tried to elope with Hwa-yeon before she was sent to the place as the previous king's new wife, he was captured and castrated by Hwa- yeon's father, and now he enters the palace as one of new eunuchs. While he is quickly promoted enough to be near the king, he becomes also a little closer to Hwa-yeon though he lacks a certain body part crucial for rekindling their feelings in the past. Can she trust him as a close ally? And does she really have some feelings for him as he guesses?

You never can be sure about them because of the understated but competent performances by Jo Yeo-jeong and Kim Min-joon. Revealing real feelings in the palace can be a fatal blow to your fate, and they must hide their emotions and thoughts as much as possible to survive. Jo Yeo- jeong is good as a woman who gradually becomes as ruthless and cunning as her enemies through her need to survive. When she comes to know that the king wants her, she see it as an opportunity to win the game, and she is determined to manipulate him to turn against her devious mother- in-law.

Meanwhile, clueless and reckless Guem-OK(Cho Eun-ji), a maid who has served for Hwa-yeon, finds herself in a serious situation way over her head. She is forced to copulate with the king when he is very frustrated over his desire toward Hwa-yeon, and we can say that she is virtually raped, but, what do you know, she feels a lot better to see her changed position as one of the king's concubines. Unfortunately, while intoxicated with her newly gained power, she does not have the slightest idea about how dangerous the power game can be between the women in the palace.

The king's mother is the most powerful and dangerous player in this perilous game, and Park Ji-young gives a juicy villainous performance which ably supplies grand gestures whenever they are required. The king's mother has probably done many terrible things for protecting his son and making the throne ready for him, but it is not easy for her to resist the power behind the throne – and now her dear son is becoming one of the major blocks in her grand plan.

The movie starts with a sensational serial killing case shocking the whole nation(this is probably the third or fourth time I encounter the serial killing in Korean movies in this year). Recently having a prime suspect get killed, the police have lots of pressure from the citizens, the media, and, above all, the President who demands that the case be solved as soon as possible. They must find a way to solving the case or any other ways for retaining their public image.

They choose Choi Cheol-gi(Hwang Jeong-min) as the new chief of the special investigation team. He is a cop with the good record, but that is not the main reason he is chosen for; he is chosen due to his lack of personal connections. If the investigation is failed, his discharge will not hurt anyone in the police. Cheol-gi knows that well when one of his superiors personally asks him to take the case, but he accepts it. He has been always denied promotion(mainly because he did not graduate from the Police Academy) and is willing to bet his career on this murder case.

However, the movie is not about solving the murder case. Under his superiors' silent consents, Cheol-gi does a risky cleaning job. With his men he trusts, he assembles the other possible suspects and analyzes them for sorting out the most plausible suspect. It does not matter whether that suspect is guilty or not. All Cheol-gi has to do is asking Jang Seok-gu(Yoo Hae-jin), a mob boss who has been associated with him, to get the suspect and 'persuade' him to be the serial killer the whole nation is looking for. Their scheme ends up being successful and everybody goes happily along with it. However, the things get messy for them when the case is handled by prosecutor Ju Yang(Ryoo Seong-beom), who also has his own dirty business to be taken care of.

With the original screenplay by Park Jeong-hoon(the writer of "I Saw the Devil", the most controversial Korean movie of this year), the director Ryoo Seung-wan("The City of Violence"(2006)) carefully maps out the positions of his three main characters and others from the start with the subtitles informing the date, the time, and the names. As the plot thickens, the details about their complicated relationships are succinctly delivered to us and we come to understand how they affect each other as well as their motives. Their interests are so entangled with each other that one conflict of interests logically results in other conflict. Or, the one is solved, and then here comes another one. This seems endless until someone is pulled out from this power game.

While closely observing the dynamics between them, the movie looks far more widely at the system and its excruciating mechanism in the Korean society. It is not different from what you saw in HBO TV series "The Wire"; the system is adamantine and the individuals are usually helpless in front of its effects – especially in case of the ones occupying the lower strata. Although there are some shifts in the power game, it is eventually clear that who has the power to wield and who is the nearest at the top and who will remain no matter what happens. Although Ryoo Seung-wan said he was not intended to make the movie as a social critique, the Korean audience will feel lots of familiarity to the society shown in the movie thanks to the recent big scandals associated with the Public Prosecutor's Office. They probably have gut-chilling feeling at the end of movie because they know too well that this is how the system works not only in the movie but also in their reality.

Regardless of whether the movie is a social critique or not, Ryoo Seung-wan makes a compelling urban noir movie. Compared to his previous works, "The Unjust" is a more controlled work with lots of confidence as usual. The pace is brisk in most parts, the humor is well-integrated into the story, and the characters are solid. The world they inhabit is presented realistically as well as stylishly from the filthy garage disposal factory to the luxurious gallery party. There is only one notable short action scene in the movie, but, even with that scene, Ryoo proves again that he is very good at making effective physical action sequence; you can really feel the desperation in their struggle.

Many brutal deeds in the film are committed by its unlikable hero Kang- do(Lee Jeong-jin). Kang-do('Kang-do' means 'robber' in Korean, by the way) works as a debt collector for some loan shark, and he is someone you don't want to mess with especially if you happen to borrow the money from his boss. Even if his poor debtors really have no money to pay back, he gets the money back by any ruthless means necessary. These unfortunate debtors usually work at the metal shops located on the narrow alleys of Seoul, so they are forced to get their hands or feet injured by their machines for paying him back through the insurance money they will acquire. During one comic but cringe-inducing moment, one debtor nervously asks him to cut both of his hands instead of only one hand because he needs more money to pay his debts and support his baby to be born.

Kang-do's life is as barren as his debtors'. While his home looks a little more comfortable, he has lived alone in his apartment. He cooks for himself, and he usually brings live animals to his home for his dinner. Seriously, I do not understand why he prefers to buy a live chicken and then butcher it instead of just purchasing a dead one at a supermarket, but I guess this savage behavior solely exists for representing his beastly nature.

On one day, his life is disrupted by the sudden appearance of one mysterious woman(Cho Min-soo), who claims to be his mother and apologizes to him for abandoning him not so long after he was born. Resentful toward his mother he does not remember, he does not believe any of her words and brusquely rejects her, but she keeps coming to him. She slowly insinuates herself into his daily life while behaving like a mother who tries to compensate for her unforgivable fault in the past. Though he harshly treats her, she sticks to him while doing what mothers usually do for their dear sons. She cooks for him, and she says genially to this detestable man who has probably never experienced love or kindness for a long time.

Revealing or saying little about themselves, the characters of Kim Ki- duk's films are usually fascinating to observe for how they behave rather than who they are. The characters of "Pieta" are no exception; we do not know a lot about them, but what happens between them is a darkly compelling drama. There is quite a disturbing scene where Kang-do cruelly attempts to violate her with his own twisted logic, and you may wonder how much she can tolerate him, if she is indeed who she seems to be. Induced by her love without condition, Kang-do slowly reveals a vulnerable child with lots of hurts inside him; he eventually finds himself depending on her care, and they momentarily have a nice time together as a mother and her son.

Is she really his mother? I don't dare to tell anything about that matter for not spoiling your entertainment, but let's say that I did not lose my interest while the movie changed its direction in the middle of the story for the reason you may easily guess in advance. Its second half is less engaging and less focused because of that, but the director/writer Kim Ki-duk provides a very realistic background for his relatively unrealistic story, and the gray, destitute underbelly of Seoul is vividly conveyed to us through its shabby metal shops and dirty alleys. His films have been well-known for their unflinching attitude to brutal violence, but "Pieta" thankfully takes a restrained approach to its equally savage violence while retaining its emotional impact intact. When I watched gleefully over-the-top violence in "The Expendables"(2012) right before watching this movie, I could have some chuckles, but I discovered that there was nothing laughable about the frighteningly realistic violence in "Pieta" even when it does not present it on the screen.

The tension in the drama largely depends on the simple but fearless performance by Cho Min-soo, who deftly maintains the elusive side of her character even at the most emotionally anguished moment. You can feel the genuine emotions from her face, but you can never be sure about where they come from. Although Lee Jeong-jin feels strained and miscast compared to his co-actress, at least he supports her well during several tough scenes between them. Their characters may look silly when they behave like a mother and her little son, but we come to accept the emotional bond forming between them.

Although he recently went through a rough time, Kim Ki-duk remains as one of the most interesting South Korean directors along with Park Chan- wook, Bong Joon-ho, and Hong Sang-soo. I have watched most of his works, and I admired many of them while recognizing their disturbing side. The unforgettable scene involved with fish hooks in "The Isle"(2000) still makes me flinch whenever I recall it, and "Bad Guy"(2002) was another disturbing relationship between a violent man and a woman who is suffered and degraded by him while stuck with him. After his best work "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring"(2003), his subsequent films became a little more gentle, but they are still the movies tough to watch. I did not like his previous work "Arirang"(2011), a self- portrayal documentary which can be called his version of "I'm Still Here"(2010), because I found it both painful and embarrassing to watch him on his supposedly bad days, but I hoped everything would be soon all right for him.

I know how the hero of South Korean film "Dangerous Excited" initially feels about the disturbance he has to live with. During my undergraduate years, I always spent my time at the campus library in the evening after the lectures were over, and I frequently heard the noise from the basement level of the building right next to the library. We had one or two campus rock bands at that time(we still have, by the way), and they kept making lots of noise whenever they were practicing with their instruments. When I came out of the library to buy some snacks or drinks at the store on the first floor of that building, it was common to see the building vibrating with the noise from the below. I was sort of curious about what exactly they were doing on the basement level, but I did not want to go there because it was already quite loud enough to annoy my eardrums on the first floor.

Han Dae-hee, deftly played by Yoon Je-moon, finds himself surrounded by such a noise problem like that after when he comes across the members of a college rock band named '3X3=9'(don't ask me what that name means). At first, he comes to them as a public servant taking care of the petitions from neighbourhood due to the noise they make during their practice, and they look like just another work in his daily life. He notifies them that they are making too much noise and they can be evicted because of that, so they try to find another place for their practice.

However, they get swindled by a broker, and they come to Dae-hee for help, and he reluctantly lets them into their house. He soon finds that it is nearly impossible to sleep during night because of their constant practice in the storage room below his bedroom; even with the ear plugs in his ears, he can hear and feel the noises generated from their practice.

He is annoyed, but Dae-hee is a rare case of South Korean male – a man of calm, contented life style. In South Korean society, you can often come across many unpleasant sights of guys openly letting out their anger and stress to others, and Dae-hee and his co-workers sometimes encounter such people like them while working as public servants. Dae- hee always deals with them with courteous calmness, because he knows that it is a waste of time to be angered by these angry jerks. When one of them shouts at him on the phone, he quietly asks him to say less loudly("When you lose your temper, you lose", he says to us). In addition, he is a very good employee; he is very talented in preparing presentations with Microsoft Powerpoint program, and, as a graduate student who has to make a presentation for weekly lab meeting, I would be glad if he told me one or two valuable lessons on making a good presentation file.

His private life is nearly insulated from outside. His house is quiet and barren except few furnitures and some books for gaining trivial knowledges to impress his co-workers. But he is not that lonely, and he has been satisfied with his life style. He sometimes has a drink with his close friend who works in the same department, but he prefers to spend his free time at his house when the work time is over, and he usually enjoys watching TV shows in the living room, where only furnitures seem to be his big sofa and TV.

When his comfortable life is getting disrupted by the noise from his unwelcomed guests, Dae-hee tries to find a way to deal with it while maintaining his usual calmness. But the noise keep emanating from the below, and something is gradually excited somewhere in his mind. He studies rock music in his own way through those cheap encyclopedic books you can find at bookstores in South Korea, which can tell you many trivial things about Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan while not teaching you anything about music itself. He finds old rock music records owned by his younger brother in the attic and attentively listens to them. When the band is on the verge of being broken up, he becomes their unlikely supporter – and their bassist, though he knows nothing about how to play instrument.

As a man who finds the possibilities outside his daily life, Yoon Je- moon, who has been a supporting actor in several South Korean films including "Mother"(2009), gives a wonderfully nuanced performance at the center of the story. Dae-hee is an interesting character to observe because he has his own way of living along with a funny view on his society and its people, and I enjoyed the insightful observations in his narration. Yoon effectively conveys the small changes inside his character to us while rarely emphasizing them; his life is not changed a lot in the end, but we can sense that he is a little happier than before.

I must say the music in the film is not that impressive, but that is intended as another funny part in the movie. The band members may have passion toward their music, but, to be frank with you, they will probably be bound to be a second-rated rock band if they fail to improve themselves(Spinal Tap looks not so lousy compare to them). Some of them are hopelessly naive about their future, and others know how mediocre they are as a group. Dae-hee is no big help to them except helping them as a substitute bassist; he knows a lot about the famous rock singers thanks to his 'study', but he really has to learn how to play bass in an adequately presentable way in the concert they will participate in.

Living in the big house with a swimming pool in some unknown remote place, this family is shut off from the world outside. They are not only surrounded by the big plants in the garden but also the big, tall fence blocking their view. The family is affluent, and the house is mostly clean, and they do not see any problem with being stuck in this isolated place. They do not watch TV or read newspaper(but they have some books), and only signs of the civilization outside are the planes which fly across the sky above from time to time.

How do they come to have such a bizarre lifestyle? The movie never explains the motive, but it seems that the father initiated this lifestyle probably a long time ago. He is the only one who can go outside with his car(he seems to be the manager of a big plant), so it is his job to supply anything his family needs in their life. He seldom talks about his family in front of other people(he just says that his wife is too ill to meet people), and he blocks anything that may interfere the family life. When he buys foods and water, he painstakingly removes the labels for not giving any outside information. How thoughtful he is.

His wife obeys to him as a good wife(she is physically not ill at all, by the way), and so do their children. They have two daughters and one son. Though they are in late adolescent years, they behave as if they were still little children under the protection of mommy and daddy. They have several strange games to spend their daytime, like "a game of endurance": they test themselves who can stand longer when they dip their fingers in hot water. In case of their other private game, they anesthetize themselves with chloroform to find out who will wake up first.

They have been leading a good life at least in their view, but it is gradually revealed that something unstoppable is being emerged while their abnormal behaviors, including barking like a dog on their knees when they believe they are threatened by a cat, continue. Though he cannot block everything, the father is determined to stop that by any means necessary, and there are several bursts of violence to shock you mainly due to the clinical, objective attitude of the film.

The film, which won Un Certain Regard Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010 and was nominated for Foreign Language Film Oscar early in this year, has a lot of cold, distant feelings, but it is also interesting and, sometimes, amusing to watch. The director Giorgos Lanthimos, who wrote the screenplay with Efthymis Filippou, keeps everything straight throughout his film with the wry, subtle sense of black humor. The aforementioned twisted vocabulary is used several times in a funny way, and there is also an outrageous scene depicting the way the children celebrate the anniversary of their parent's wedding. The actors in the film play as seriously as possible to make the twisted reality of their characters mundane – even when they cross the boundary of our ethics out of necessity, they never look self-conscious while supporting the detached tone of the film.

Maybe because of the death of Kim Jong-il two weeks ago and the following response of North Korean people shown on the media, these bizarre human behaviors in the film are not that weird to me as I remembered. I and other South Koreans know too well about how twisted North Korean society have been while shutting up itself from the world and brainwashing its people with the crooked ideas just like the family in the film. One savage scene in the movie reminds me of how severely North Korean people are punished if they are found watching South Korean TV shows.

I remember well when Kim Il-Sung, the former dictator and the father of Kim Jong-il, was dead in 1994. Even we South Koreans were flabbergasted to some degree to see the hysterical mass mourning even though we had been well aware of that he had been literally worshipped as the big daddy of North Korea. Now his son is dead, and his grandson becomes a new leader to be worshipped without much trouble, and we do not find the recent behaviors of North Koreans under this wacky dictatorship particularly weird, mainly because we have seen this before. Compared to this insanity, "Dogtooth" is like a mild fairy tale.

By the way, what is the point of the movie? It does not express its opinion while firmly holding its austere attitude, but I think the lesson from the film is that the kids are bound to grow up no matter how much the parents try to restrict them with their stringent home schooling. Maybe it works for a while, but it cannot last forever. No wonder some North Korean people escape from their country in spite of the constant brainwashing and the possibility of severe punishment.

The director Aki Kaurismäki's films are so dry that I may only describe the characters and their situations if I try to talk about his movies in my writing – and I might get away with my delinquency. His deadpan approach is so simple that you probably do not understand why it is funny until you see it for yourself. For instance, one character in his new film "Le Havre" buys a certain fruit in the middle of the story, and then he walks into the bar to have some conversation with a bar owner. The camera does nothing except simply observes the man sitting on one of the tables and the fruit placed on the table right next to him, but it somehow made me smile.

Kaurismäki's films are usually set in the urban area of Finland, and his unhappy characters are stuck in hard time while yearning for the escape from the ennui and dreariness of their daily life, as shown in "Shadows in Paradise"(1986) and "Ariel"(1988). But this time, it is a little different. Set in Le Havre, a French port city in Normandy, he presents us a middle-aged couple content with their poor lifestyle and happy to be together – and he makes a movie warmer and more accessible than before.

Marcel(André Wilms) is a shoeshine living in Le Havre(I am curious – how many cities in the world are called "The Harbor"?). He moves around the different places in the city for earning money, but it is not so easy for him to work on these days(the opening scene made me to be conscious about what I was wearing on my feet). While watching him working, I thought he would envy the shoeshines I saw in Seoul, who usually occupy the booths on the streets as their workplace for doing other things besides polishing the shoes. I remember that I once needed my shoes to be polished as soon as possible when I was about to attend the lab colleague's wedding; I went into one of those booths, and the guy did a marvelous job with my old shoes I seldom wore.

Anyway, let's get back to the film itself. Marcel does not earn money much, but there is always the place waiting for him whenever the day is over. There are his good working-class neighbours, including the bakery owner who demands Marcel to pay off his accumulating bill while well aware of that he will probably never do that. He tells her he will pay it all when a good chance comes(he mentions about "the inheritance" of his wife), but it is a lie, and both know that. The grocery shop owner across the alley chooses a more direct way – he shuts down the store instantly when Marcel walks to the store, though, as we learn later, he is a nice man, after all.

Marcel was once a free-living bohemian who wanted to be a writer when he was young, but now he is settled with his wife Arletty(Kati Outinen – do you remember her far younger self in "Shadows in Paradise" and "The Match Factory Girl"(1990)?) and their dog Laika in their shabby house. We do not know much about how they met in the past(I guess they started as "the best roommates"), but the low-key performances of Wilms and Outinen succinctly conveys us a dry but loving relationship between them.

Meanwhile, a group of illegal immigrants from Gabon, who tried to go to London, are found by the police at one of those huge containers at the port after locked in there for days due to their bad luck. One of them, a boy named Idrissa(Blondin Miguel), manages to escape. When he goes to the riverside to have a lunch, Marcel comes across him hiding from the police. He gives Idrissa the food later, and Marcel soon finds himself taking care of him at his house while the newspapers make a big fuss about this shy, quiet, and nice boy.

Marcel does more than that to help Idrissa. He goes to Calais to find and meet Idrissa's grandfather who was with him in that container. He even concocts a secret plan to send Idrissa to London where Idrissa's mother lives. While Marcel is absent, Idrissa can take care of himself well, and Laika, who deserves to appear with others in the movie poster, is always near him.

Marcel's neighbours also help him, too. Except one petty guy(Jean- Pierre Léaud – remember Antoine Doinel in "400 Blows"(1959)?), his neighbours do not tell anything to the police. Captain Monet(Jean-Pierre Darroussin, very serious with a black suit, a black coat, black shoes, black gloves, and a black hat) seems to be determined to do his job, but Darroussin gives us a subtle hint that Monet does not like what he has to do. Monet can be flexible, and the loose suspense of the film depends on how much flexible he can be.

While Marcel is busy with helping Idrissa, Arletty is in the hospital. She knows she has been ill, and she hides that from her husband, but she can't hide it from him any more now, except that her days can be counted. She is sent to the hospital early in the film, so she does not know much about what is going around her husband, but, when Idrissa comes to her at the hospital to deliver the message from her husband, she accepts the message from the boy she barely knows. Outinen expresses little in the face, but this scene is one of the warmest spots in the film along with its charming soundtrack. Later in the story, there is an illegal concert promoted by Marcel and his Vietnamese colleague(Quoc Dung Nguyen) to gather the money for helping Idrissa, and a singer named Little Bob(Roberto Piazza) gets a little showstopper moment with his live performance.

The movie observes the four stages of life on the earth as thought by Pythagoras. First, we meet an old shepherd in a rural town in Calabria, Italy. He goes to the wide field on the hills with the goats herded by him everyday. Surrounded by beautiful green mountains seen from the distance, everything is quiet except the wind, the bells attached to his goats, and their constant bleats.

We see him milking one of the goats. We see him going to some house in the town to give something. He goes to the church, where the dust on the church floor is collected, packaged, and given to him by some middle- aged woman. At home where he lives alone, he mixes it with water in bottle and drinks it every night before he sleeps. Even though he does not speak, we can easily surmise that he thinks it is sort of medicine to him. To me, it is more like drinking a batch culture of bacteria, but never mind.

With his minimalistic approach using repeated scenes accompanied with static, unchanged compositions, the director Michelangelo Frammartino shapes the pattern in this slow daily life without much change. From time to time, the camera calmly watches its subjects without movement. Nothing seems to happen at first in its wide shots, but there are small things happening around the screen and our eyes are drawn to them. We get some small information, including where the old man lives, along with the amusement coming from subtle humor. There is a shepherd dog prancing around an old shepherd and his goats, and it has a funny role in the impressive long take sequence where the camera slowly pans back and forth between one point to the other point while observing the progress of the religious ceremony in the town(I learned later it is Easter Procession).

We later see the old man dying on his bed, surrounded by the goats accidentally released from the stable. His funeral is soon followed, and a baby goat is born. Like any newborn kids, it has a sticky beginning right after coming out of its mother's womb. Still covered with mucus, it struggles to stand on the ground with its four feeble legs. It is not so easy at its first trial, but it eventually succeeds, while it looks less sticky than before.

The focus moves from the man to the goats at this stage. After the old man is gone, they, including that kid, are now herded by the other men barely shown to us. The goats look pretty much same at first, but, when the camera looks them closer, you can see the notable differences between them besides the fur colors and the small tags attached to their ears. I especially noticed the various shapes of their horns. Some goats have those horns in smooth shape familiar to us; the other ones have the ones of more curious shapes. Sometimes it looks like they have overgrown the branches on their head.

The life of these animals is not changed much after their previous owner died. As usual, they get out of the stable in the morning and come back later. The kid stays with other kids in the stable, and these young, cute animals get along with each other pretty well. After some time later, they also go out along with the adult goats and see the world outside for the first time. However, the kid gets separated from the herd by accident. Left alone, it wanders around the forest. It finally finds its shelter under some big tree while the darkness falls.

The change of seasons follows. The snow falls in the winter, and then spring returns, and that tree remains in the same place. While watching it, I thought about how much the plants have evolved throughout its long history. Unlike animals, they could not move to more favorable environment, so they had to evolve more diligently for the adaptation to the changing environment they are stuck in from the start. They have quite been successful, while supporting many animal species including us.

After the spring returns, the tree is soon utilized by the town people. They cut it with the chainsaw, skin it, and then bring it to the town. Some town event is held, and the town is livelier than before with many people. For some purpose not explained, they use it as a pole with the branches on the top of it. When the camera watches it from the distance, it looks like a palm tree; a man actually climbs up to the top like the gardeners in LA do.

After the event is over, the pole is chopped into the pieces, which are sent to the place where they make charcoals. Their work progress is interesting to watch. Those chopped pieces are placed with other pieces of the woods. The workers assemble them into a big kiln step by step. Once the work is completed, it is covered with hays and black soils. They put the fire inside the kiln, and the smokes arise from the holes on its surface, which we saw in the opening scene. The circle is completed – it will begin again.

"Le Quattro Volte" means 'four times'. After watching it, I learned that it reflects Pythagoras' belief in "four-fold transmigration" of souls. Even if you do not know well about it(don't worry, neither do I), the movie is an absorbing experience on the cycle of life in nature. I do not believe in reincarnation, but aren't we all made of the atoms, which will, after we are disintegrated, go to the other life forms or the minerals in the world?

The terrible incident suddenly happens in one Canadian elementary school during the mundane but shattering opening sequence of "Monsieur Lazhar." While the students enjoy the free time outside the building, one of the schoolteachers is found dead, hanging herself up in her classroom. The other teachers quickly cover this tragedy from the kids as soon as they come to know what happens, but it leaves her students in shock and grief as a consequence even after some time has passed and the classroom has been repainted.

When the principal, Mademoiselle Vaillancourt(Brigitte Poupart), needs a substitute teacher for the deceased teacher's class, one man appears in front of her out of nowhere. He is an Algerian immigrant named Bachir Lazhar(Mohamed Fellag, who is credited as Fellag in the film), and he is willing to work as a substitute teacher. According to him, he was an elementary school teacher for 19 years in his country he has recently left from.

Lazhar is a gentle, likable man, so he is instantly hired by Mme. Vaillancourt, and soon he meets the kids in the class assigned to him. The start is a little rocky at first because he sets his standard a little too high for his young students(he uses Balzac's novel for the dictation test) and there is the cultural gap between them. But, after some few quick adjustments, everything goes pretty smoothly as before in the class; the students like him, and so do the other teachers in the school.

However, Lazhar discerns that there remain unresolved emotional matters beneath his class. He thinks his students should be more opened about how they feel about that incident. Although they get the periodic counseling sessions with a child psychiatrist, he believes he and other teachers should be more active about his students' problem. Most of the other teachers, including Mme. Vaillancourt, understand his point, but they are reluctant or object to Lazhar, because the rules like the zero- tolerance-for-touching policy have confined their roles so much that dealing with their students is like, as one teacher in the movie says, handling radioactive waste.

one small but important fact about Lazhar provides a little tension to the story. It is revealed early in the film that he was not a teacher as he said. As the matter of fact, he has not even been accepted by the Canada Government yet because he is currently under the examination for deciding whether he can be judged as a political refuge seeking asylum.

The movie suggests that Lazhar may understand what some of his students are struggling through as a person still in his personal grief, but it does not choose an easy way of handling this connection between M. Lazhar and the students, and neither does Mohamed Fellag, who gives a quiet honest performance as a humble decent man with lots of empathy. Though he is not really a teacher(but his deceased wife was), Lazhar has the right stuff to be a good teacher. He cares about the students, and he likes to be with them while helping them. Maybe he lacks some professional knowledge for teaching a class, but he can manage the difficult situations in his classroom tactfully with common sense. What he says to his students at one fragile moment is the universal truth that can applied to any school on the earth; "A classroom is a home for.. it's a place of friendship, of work, and of courtesy. A place full of life – where you devote your life"

It should be mentioned that the kids in the movies give the believable performance as a group under Falardeau's direction. Even you do not know all of their names, each of them is a distinctive part of the class, and, how they generate the mild but busy dynamics together under the cool gaze of the camera in their classroom is nothing less than natural.

Two young performers are especially notable as the crucial supporting characters in the story. Sophie Nélisse is a smart little girl more outspoken about the incident affecting her and others than her classmates. She is curious about her substitute teacher who comes from the other country, and she comes to like him probably more than anyone else. She becomes his close ally when he attempts to deal with the grief problem of the class, and Nélisse and Émilien Néron, who is also good as an anguished boy hurt a lot by the incident and the following guilt resulting from it, have a calm but intense scene with quiet emotional power.

Its simple premise does not seem to make sense much at the beginning. An Indonesian SWAT team is dispatched to one of the most dangerous places in the city. It is a shabby 30-story building somewhere in the slum area, and we are informed that this is the headquarter of a notorious drug lord named Tama(Ray Sahetapy), who lives on the 15th floor while filling the building with his violent gangs as the landlord. I do not know why he chooses the 15th floor, but I know the movie would be longer if he lived on the 30th floor.

And I do not understand why there are not more policemen to surround or infiltrate into this building. If they know that the building is not an easy place to attack at all, then why are only around 20 members of SWAT team sent to this place with only one riot van? Can't they accomplish their mission in a far safer way with more supports? The movie later reveals a hidden motive behind this mission, but I am rather amazed that the people incidentally not shown in the movie cannot think of a quieter way of taking care of their private problem with a far less body count.

But never mind, folks, because the movie is all about actions to be generated from this barebone premise, not the plausibility of the plot. Under the command of the team leader(Joe Taslim), the SWAT team members quickly go inside the building and move upward carefully while not being noticed. Everything seems to go smoothly at first, but the building has many eyes including the cameras in the hallways and little boys, so they are eventually exposed and all hells break loose upon them instantly. Tama shuts down the entire building along with the communication line(my god, doesn't any of SWAT team member have a cellular phone just in case?) and then announces the killing time for his guys in the building.

Once the first shooting starts inside the building, the movie hurls the characters into the series of frantic actions with no mercy. Besides the guns, the characters in the movie also use big knives and other objects available around them, and there are lots, lots, and lots of fights and killings happening here and there in the building. Out of curiosity, I checked my wristwatch, and I found at least more than 20 guys were already killed or injured during the first 30 minutes. And that was just a tip of iceberg; there were a lot more violence awaiting for me and the audiences during the rest of the running time, and I already felt numb with this continuing savageness when I watched in disbelief one character who kept fighting with two dudes while a piece of broken fluorescent light bulb was stuck in his neck. Ugh.

I was impressed by the rapid and ferocious energy pulsating inside the fight sequences in the film. Most of SWAT team members are quickly killed by thugs, and the rest of them, including the team leader and a rookie member named Rama(Iko Uwais), try to escape from the building by any means necessary. As our hero, Rama fights with the bad guys many times for saving himself and others, and, choreographed by the Indonesian martial art experts Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian(he played Tama's fearsome top lieutenant in the movie), these fights sequences feel real, electrifying, and sometimes scary. We can see that the actors on the screen are really fighting while using their body parts in spite of frantic camera movement, and, when the end credit was rolled, I was rather relieved to know that the movie hired 14 doctors and paramedics during the production.

Yes, I worried to some degrees about the actors rapidly going through these dangerous actions, but what about the characters played by them? Well, I have to say there is not much of characterization in the shallow plot which barely supports the actions in the movie. Rama is given some background at the start, but it is not so important to the plot except giving us the reason why we want him to survive through his plight. His wife is pregnant, so we do not want to see a baby without his killing machine dad in the photo, right?

It goes without saying that the other characters besides Rama are more or less than cardboards to be shot or stabbed or slashed or smashed or slaughtered or whatever. There is some melodrama element from the hidden bond between two characters in the plot, but there is no surprise in that. The dialogues are mostly perfunctory amid or between the sound and fury in the soundtrack, and the most memorable line in the movie will be "Ahhhhhhhhhhh!" or "Arrrrrrrrgh!". I was particularly amused by the cast list, which mostly consists of the nameless characters like "Special Force #16", "Carrying Bowo Fighter #18", "Drug's Lab Guard #21", "Hole Drop Attacker #8", and so on. Suppose you appear in the movie – can you boast to your friends about appearing as, uh, "AK-47 shooter #3"?

Should I evaluate the movie as a ruthless but exhilarating ballet of martial arts, or a well-made but pointless rampage of brutal action? My feeling remain ambivalent due to its inherent weak points, but the director/writer/editor Gareth Evans made a competent action movie, and Iko Uwais is fully functional and professional as its action hero. His character is thin, but at least we can see how he uses his brain as well as his body in the chaotic circumstances, and I liked his actions more than, say, "Transformers 3". However, I also remember what Roger Ebert wrote in his review for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragoon"(2000): "The best martial arts movies have nothing to do with fighting and everything to do with personal excellence."

As many of you know, the movie is the reboot of the famous SF series started with "Planet of the Apes"(1968), which was followed by four lesser sequels, and then remaked in 2001 by Tim Burton with a dissatisfying result. While there are several amusing small connections between the movie and the previous movies, "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" is an almost completely new story about how the apes come to revolt against the human society. There is a lot of the possibilities about the sequels in the end, and, if so, they will probably continue their story of their own.

How do the apes evolve enough to fight against humanity? The reason is something I and my colleagues in the biological science department will have lots, lots of amusement(and laugh) after watching this movie. The biologist Will Rodman(James Franco) is trying to find the cure for the Alzheimer's disease his father is suffering from. With his latest genetically engineered virus injected to chimpanzees, he seems to have a major breakthrough. However, his chimpanzee, which has gotten a lot smarter than before, becomes suddenly frantic due to a good reason and runs amuck in the laboratory building. Animal instinct is hard to control even with intelligence; we human beings know that too well.

At the same time, unfortunately, Will is doing the presentation for the board meeting which will judge whether his project should be continued or not, and this incident leaves a pretty bad impression on the board members, who are shocked by a sudden attack by his test animal. His boss immediately orders to terminate Will's project and kill every test animal. Will decides to keep a baby chimpanzee born in his laboratory and raise it at his house where he lives with his ailing father, while continuing his study in private.

The chimpanzee, named Ceaser, is played by Andy Serkis. Unlike the actors in the previous movies, Serkis does not wear make-up this time. Thanks to Weta Digital, Serkis' terrific performance is rendered into the CGI character on the screen, and it is marvelous to look at how his performance is effectively expressed through the performance capture technology which has been improved with more freedom than before. Serkis is no stranger to the performance capture technology; he already played the memorable CGI characters such as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and that unforgettable giant ape in "King King"(2005). His performance in the movie deserves to be added to his belt as another impressive acting juxtaposed with the special effects – too bad his performance is not eligible yet for the Academy Award.

While keeping impressing Will with his rapidly growing intelligence, Ceaser has a happy time at Will's home with the occasional visits to the redwood forest outside San Francisco. Soon he recognizes his lonely position as the outsider between the human beings and the apes. In Will's household, he is an equal family member, but he is still regarded as an animal with sharp teeth to the people outside. Because of the unfortunate incident between Will's father and the aggressive neighbor in next door, Ceaser is sent to the facility where he is abused by the sadistic guards and ostracized by the other apes who instinctively sense that he is different from them.

With Serkis and his fellow actors transformed into the apes, the movie does a very good job of giving us a bunch of vivid CGI characters to be led by Ceaser. Some of them are actually given distinctive qualities as the crucial supporting characters. I especially liked a gentle Orangutan named Maurice, who is wiser than others(except Ceaser, of course) and naturally becomes a confidant to Ceaser through sign language. His name is probably the tribute to Maurice Evans, who played an Orangutan character in "Planet of the Apes". As a matter of fact, there are some references from that movie, including that famous line shouted by Charlton Heston.

While he endures the abusive treatment, Ceaser's story follows that of the leader who leads the uprising to shake the order of his oppressive world, so the third act of the movie is about their battle unfolded in the streets of San Francisco and, later, on the Golden Gate Bridge. Unlike that dreadful "Transformers 3″, it is exciting to watch the apes do lots of actions for their survival, because there is the story driving the apes to that showdown and we have accepted them as the real characters. In addition, they are a lot cleverer than mindless CGIs we have encountered in these days. It is kind of touching to see that CGI character keeps his decency while busy with fighting for his right – maybe the Earth taken by him and his fellow apes is not a bad thing after all.

While enjoying Ceaser and his comrades, I found the weakness of the movie is a little too transparent to be ignored. The human characters played by the good actors including James Franco, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, Brian Cox, Tom Felton, and David Oyelowo. They do their jobs as required, and they share the scenes with CGIs without any awkwardness, but their characters are mostly more or less than the plot devices or the obligatory bystanders. Lithgow has some poignancy as a senile father who gets temporary joy and happiness in his last remaining years, but he is limited by his character like others. Pinto, a lovely actress, is wasted as a veterinarian who becomes close to Will and Ceaser.

The movie is about the struggle of Tae Geon-ho(Jeong Jae-Young) for getting the liver from her character. Geon-ho is a ruthless debt collector working for some financial company. He is very good at finding people who do not pay the debt, and, whether it is a poor family with almost nothing to lose or a sleazy night club owner with goons, he shows no mercy or compromise while doing his jobs. It is not so surprising that no one has ever showed more excellent result than him in the company.

It can be said that the bright future is ahead of him, but, on one day, the unfortunate news strikes upon him; he has a liver cancer. He cannot believe it, but it is true and now he must have the liver transplant surgery within ten days. The problem is, he cannot find a suitable donor for him; he will be on the waiting list, but the time is not enough. His only family, his son, died several years ago.

But he has a nice idea. When his son died, his organs were donated to several people, so it is logical to think that these recipients might be his potential donors. After several trials, he finds a suitable donor, and that donor is none other than Cha Ha-yeon played by Jeon Do-yeon. She got his son's heart, but she is a devilish con artist serving her time in the jail since getting caught by the police. Luckily for Geon- ho, she is about to be released from the jail, and she demands Geon-ho to do something for her in exchange for her liver. She asks him to find Jo Myeong-seok(Lee Kyeong-yeong), the man responsible for her imprisonment.

Myeong-seok turns out to be a big time con artist who has managed to elude the investigation of the police, so Geon-ho gets some help from the others to search for him. While following Geon-ho, we see some amusing sights in the world of con artists. One funny scene features the pyramid scam involved with a bizarre chair seen to be believed. You will wonder who will buy such a weird thing, but, with the trial performance on the stage, everyone in the room seems to buy what a con artist explains to them.

It takes some time, but Geon-ho locates Myeong-seok, and he gives the information to Ha-yeon. However, things do not progress as smoothly as he wants. He soon finds that it may be easy to give something to Ha-yeon but it is definitely not so easy to get something from her. She slips away as soon as she gets out of the jail, and now he has to find her till the operation day. Plus, Geon-ho is not the only person who wants to catch her. Besides Myeong-seok, who becomes enraged after realizing that Ha-yeon ruins his recent scheme as her payback, there is also a Korean Chinese gang leader(Oh Man-seok) who wants to settle an old score with her. Furthermore, Geon-ho's health is deteriorating day by day.

With this familiar action thriller formula, the first-time director Heo Jeong-ho skillfully made a competent film with several exciting moments. The car chase sequence on the marker alleys is well-handled; though it is not so speedy, the movie effectively utilizes the narrow alleys to create kinetic excitement. Personally, I like a cutthroat way Geon-ho solves his trouble when his car is stuck in the cul-de-sac along with the car chasing after him and Ha-yeon their behind.

As the most interesting character in the movie, Jeon Do-yeon has many delightful moments. After several serious acting jobs in "Secret Sunshine"(2007) and "The Housemaid"(2010), it is refreshing to see her lightly gliding around the screen.. While everyone else in the movie is trying to get her character by any means necessary, she is usually one or two steps ahead of them, and it is quite a fun to watch her to manipulate or fool others with her impish but ingratiating attitude. Even without the flashback showing her past, you can easily see that she is an expert who can swindle money out of you even after admitting to you that she is fooling you. But you cannot help but like her, as long as she does not take your saving account from you.

I was very disappointed with his stiff performance in "Moss"(2010), and it is good to see Jeong Jae-Young back in his element again. He is basically a foil with no-nonsense for Jeon Do-yeon's care-free character, but he is a very good one for his co-actress. He is one of the rare South Korean actors who can almost perfectly deliver the humorous lines without a wink to us, and I had some good laughs with the audiences while he was acting with utmost seriousness as the man desperately chasing after his only chance to survive. None the less, catching Ha-yeon is indeed a serious matter to Geon-ho, and Jeong Jae- Youn manages to make us identify with him a little despite his callous, taciturn attitude.

By the way, I am not so certain about whether it was really necessary for the movie to drive the characters into the melodramatic third act. I do not think that works well. Though this direction does not entirely ruin the whole show, I don't think Ha-yeon and Geon-ho deserve that. They become less entertaining characters when their respective private lives are revealed to us, and the pace becomes a lot slower than before with a fairly predictable ending waiting for them, and the ending is too sentimental compared to the rest of the movie. But, what the heck, when a beautiful actress like Jeon Do-yeon is having a big fun while dazzling us, we can forgive lots of flaws like that.

What happened to the kids is something you hear from the media with disbelieving eyes. We usually ask ourselves; how could the people commit such horrible deeds? Can that really happen in our society? Though the movie is the fiction based on the bestseller novel written by Gong Jee- young, the novel itself was based on the real-life incident reported by the South Korean media in 2005. As depicted in the movie, it drew lots of attention from the people at that time, and there was the trial for this heinous crime later – but that was not the end of the story and there are still scars remained.

When we meet In-ho(Gong Yoo) for the first time, he is coming to the local area named Mujin as the new art teacher of the boarding school for the deaf students. While his daughter is taken care of by his mother in Seoul(his wife was dead), he lives alone in some shabby apartment. He does not particularly like his new job, but he needs a job for earning the money for his sick daughter. When the principle and the administration supervisor, the principle's twin brother(both are played by Jang Gwang), demand In-ho to pay the considerable amount of money as the contribution for "school development fund" on his first day, he accepts their demand without question. It is not right thing to do, but he has no choice if he wants to keep his job.

However, it turns out that is not the only thing he has to deal with while working at this school. He sees one of the teachers savagely beating one of his students in the teachers' office while other teachers ignore the abuse being committed right in front of them. At one night, he hears a strange sound from the ladies' room when he is about to leave. He tries to find out who is behind the bathroom door, but he is soon interrupted by the night guard, who assures him that nothing happens. Later, he witnesses the other teacher abusing the other student with the washing machine at the basement – while the washing machine is turned on.

If you have some knowledge about the South Korean society, you will probably have some good idea about what will happen next. In-ho and Yu- jin want these disgusting people to be arrested, but, as shown in his expensive office, the principle is a well-respected member of the local society. He is also an elder of the local church(that means we will see some unpleasant side of Korean Christians), and he has some powerful connections to the local authorities. On the day when he comes to the office for the giving the money for the school development fund, In-ho happens to see a local cop stopping by the school for his money. Even when they try to report this crime to the other local government officials, they ignore them with bureaucratic indifference while saying it is not their job due to the jurisdiction rule.

Eventually, after the kids' story goes out on TV, the principle and others are quickly arrested and the trial soon follows, but In-ho and Yu-jin find themselves more helpless as the time goes by. The kids are willing to testify what happened to them, and there are some evidences to support their testimonies, but it is possible that their abusers will not be properly punished in the end. The counsel for the accused, a former law official, is well-connected to judges and prosecutors; as a custom inside the South Korean justice system, they give some advantages to him because it is his first trial after leaving his office. The kids' parents are poor or disabled, so they can be easily persuaded to withdraw the suit on the behalf of their children. They even approach to In-ho, who has been in financially difficult situation.

The director Hwang Dong-hyeock wisely does not hurry his story. While providing the good atmosphere with the hazy fog covering the town, he effectively conveys the frustration inside the story. Though his character is rather bland and passive, Gong Yoo does a passable job as an ordinary man who tries to do the right thing while knowing that there is little he can do for the abused kids. Jeong Yu-mi is trapped in her flat character who mostly functions as the mouthpiece of the story, but she does as much as she can.

The movie is not free from its flaws. Despite its good intention, it sometimes stumbles with a heavy-handed approach. While the villains are played effectively by good actors, they are just mean and despicable in one-dimensional way. They seem to come from the other movie whenever confronting the other characters. The court scenes have some awkwardness although it is less stiff than other South Korean movies featuring the court scenes. The finale is overlong and a little too melodramatic while emphasizing the characters' bitterness they have to face at the end of their struggle.

Nevertheless, "Silenced" has enough power to draw you into its anger, and you will identify with its indignation toward the unfairness in South Korean society. As reflected in the epilogue in the movie, the abusers were only sentenced to light punishment, and they did not even go to the jail. How could they let that happen? Will such a horrible thing happen again? Sad thing is, it is really hard for us to prevent the world from changing ourselves, let alone change the world.

One thought came to my mind several days after I watched Hong Sang-soo's new movie "The Day He Arrives". I am a lot different from his characters, but, has been my daily life on weekdays monotonously repeated with little variations noticeable enough to help distinguish Monday from Friday, like 4 days and 4 nights depicted in the film? I get up in the morning, I go to my lab, and then, after work and some exercise, I return to my dormitory at late night for movies and sleep. It sounds boring, but small things sometimes happen in my mundane daily life, and, whether they are good or bad, I am not bored much thanks to them.

And I was also not bored while watching "The Day He Arrives". Like his previous films, Hong Sang-soo tells his story in his minimalistic style with his familiar stock characters. Their names are different, and the actors playing them are different, they are the same kind of men and women we have met from his other 11 works in the past. Again, they are associated with the filmmaking, and they spend their time with drinking and talking.

Seong-jun, played Yoo Joon-Sang, is a movie director who comes to Seoul for meeting his mentor/friend Sang-joong(Kim Yeong-ho), who works as a movie critic. It is not clear about what he is doing now, but it looks like Seong-jun is teaching movie in some university instead of making movie. While his movies were not particularly successful considering the conversations between him and others, the people he comes across know him and some of them say they like his movies.

Day 1 begins with Seong-jun trying to reach Sang-joong's cell phone in the afternoon. He does not answer. Seong-jun does not know what to do while walking around the streets and alleys of Seoul. He encounters an actress he met before and they have a brief conversation. After that, he goes to the bar and drinks some rice wine. Coincidentally, there are the film students who recognize him, and Seong-jun soon joins in their drinking party.

Late at night, in inebriated state, Seong-jun suddenly runs away from his bewildered juniors. He goes to the apartment where his former girlfriend lives. She does not welcome him much, but soon they have a talk with beer at her small place, and Seong-jun, still drunk, keeps telling her he is sorry with pathetic self-pity. It sounds embarrassing, but it is funnier than you think, and the audiences around me frequently giggled while watching how they eventually share the bed at that night and…

In the next morning, they behave as if nothing serious had happened during last night. Day 2 begins, and Seong-jun is wondering around the same area. He meets the same actress and has some conversation with her again. In this time, he meets Sang-joong, and they go to the bar named "Novel" together with the film school professor Bo-ram(Song Seon-mi). They have a long, jolly conversation while drinking. Seong-jun even plays a piano for them, though he is not so good as Sang-joon says.

When the owner of "Novel" appears in front of them, Seung-jun looks a little confounded by her appearance. She is played by Kim Bo-gyeong, who also plays Seung-jun's girlfriend. Are they the same person? No way, because there is a scene where one is with Seung-jun while the other talks to him through his cell phone. Are they related? Not so possible in my opinion.

When Day 3 begins for Seung-jun, we start to see that Hong Sang-soo is having a fun with the repeated situation for his characters; again, the drinking begins with another character joining the group. After having some conversation at the campus with warm cups of coffee in their hands, Seung-jun and Sang-joong meet Joong-won(Kim Ee-seong), a former actor who has recently come back from Vietnam where he did some business. Their drinking begins in the early afternoon, and, again, they go to the same bar with Bo-ram. And, yes, we are not surprised to watch Seung-jun play the same piece with the same piano.

Are they conscious of their days and nights of alcohol being continuously repeated to some degree? I don't know, but I was amused by the actors' droll, naturalistic performances. Hong Sang-soo repeats almost the same dialogues at the same places with the same compositions. The characters talk like they have never uttered the same words before. Lots of alcohol must have influenced their memory banks, I guess.

As a guy who knows several things about the drinking in South Korea, I was amused enough to like this pleasant movie. When you drink, you may embarrass yourself while talking a lot. You probably try to take care of your problem, but, with your brain influenced by alcohol, you just make yourself more embarrassing. In the end, the new day will begin for you – and there is always new night for drinking.

Its simple story is unfolded in Korea of the 17th century, the mid- period of the Chosun Dynasty. In 1623, Kwanghaegun was dethroned by the Injo revolt and immediately replaced by his cousin King Injo. Young Nam- i's father, a military officer, was killed being labeled as a traitor, and, as ordered by his father before his death, Nam-i managed to escape with his younger sister at the last minute. They went to their father's friend living outside the capital, who took a great risk by raising them as the part of his household while hiding their identities.

13 years have passed. Both Nam-i(Park Hae-il) and Ja-in(Moon Chae-won) are now grown-ups. Although still protected well, Nam-i has virtually no future except enjoying the hunt with his servants or polishing his archery skills, for it is impossible for him to enter the government due to his background. Meanwhile, Ja-in is happily going to marry Seo Goon(Kim Moo-yeol), the only son of their protector who has liked her since they were young, and Nam-i is happy for his sister.

However, in the middle of their wedding, the vast army of Qing suddenly invades their town. Unlike King Kwanghae-gun, King Injo made an unwise diplomatic choice of disregarding the rising power of the Qing Dynasty which would soon replace the Ming Dynasty in China. He paid a hefty price for underestimating Qing; he had to personally surrender to the Emperor in legendary humiliation while many of his people were taken to Qing as the prisoners/hostages. Ja-in and her groom are among them, and it is Nam-i's mission to rescue them from the Qing army and take them back to their country. He is willing to eliminate anyone standing on his way with his bow, but it won't be easy. While he is mostly alone, there is the elite force led by the Qing general Jyu Sinta(Ryoo Seung-yong), who notices Nam-i's uncanny talent right from their first encounter and recognizes him as a worthy opponent to him and his men.

The film relatively lags while establishing the characters and their situations during the first half, but, once everything is set and ready, it kicks into high gear to the full speed. You may find the use of shaky cam in period drama distracting, but it is right approach because it is necessary for the characters to move fast and think fast like Jason Bourne for their survival and win. While rarely losing the sense of the direction, the movie is filled with energy to tighten our attention to what is going on the screen. Being real is always important for this kind of action movies, and the director Kim Han-min and his crews do deserve the praise for their accomplishment. You can see the people in the movie are really running in the mountain forests, or, in one gripping scene, jumping over the cliff to reach to the other side across a ravine.

And I was very amused by how the arrows were used in the film. The arrows are more flexible than bullets, so some seemingly impossible trajectories are possible at least in the movie. While I believe the arrows on the screen are CGIs in many cases like the bullets in "Wanted"(2008), these arrows look real and destructive, and they are not shot mindlessly. The characters usually shoot their arrows based on quick calculations and their instincts – that makes the confrontations between them look like a deadly chess game between the expert snipers with rifles.

The characterization is broad, but the performers have strong presence to pull us into the plot. Although it is the national conflict at first, the story ultimately becomes the personal conflict between the characters determined to stop each other with their all hearts and brains, and we become involved in it. Park Hae-il is a believable action movie hero of the 17th century; you can sense he will even descend to the bottom of hell to save his sister and his friend. Moon Chae-won is also good as the bride who is as resourceful as her groom. In the action movies made in these days, the female characters no longer stand back from guys' actions, and Ja-in does not disappoint us with her quiet but defiant attitude to her enemies.

The villain is always one of the crucial factors determining the success of the action movies, and Ryoo Seung-yong, who was impressive as the leader of North Korean military unit in recent South Korean movie "The Front Line"(2011), gives a forceful performance with his penetrating eyes and steely will behind them. He and other non-Chinese actors are pretty much believable with their Manchurian dialogues at least in my view(Machurian has been almost a dead language since the Qing Dynasty engulfed China and then assimilated itself into the Han Chinese culture, so few will find faults in the movie). I find it interesting how the movie allows them to have some human sides. They are not vicious monsters, and they have an understandable reason for being a lot furious about Nam-i and others who meddle with their business. Though they are quite determined to kill our hero, you may feel a little sorry for them.

Sidenote: As some South Korean critic pointed out, there is a major historical error in the movie with Qing prince Dorgon, who is depicted as the character more or less than a petty bad guy. Unlike his fictional counterpart, he lived longer and did lots of thing to solidify the Qing Dynasty as the regent prince. That does not spoil the entertainment, but I think it is not bad to know about such a historical fact before watching the movie.

Like recent Hollywood films "Mirror Mirror"(2012) and "Snow White and the Huntsman"(2012), the movie tells us a variation of Snow White tale, and it is more refreshing and creative compared to other two films, which were not so terrible but flawed despite their respective good aspects. While retaining several elements in the original story such as that infamous poisoned apple, the movie incorporates new elements including bullfighting(no kidding) and other interesting things into its story, and it is entertaining to watch how it decorates the story with its own flavor while staying true to the light and darkness of its inspiration.

At the beginning, we are introduced to Antonio Villalta(Daniel Giménez Cacho), a bullfighter at the top of his profession – or the king of his profession, shall we say. We see him confidently handling five wild bulls one by one while his lovely pregnant wife Carmen(Inma Cuesta) and other audiences in the arena are grasped by the suspense and thrill on the field, and now he is going to confront the last and toughest one, which will be the grand finale for this event.

Unfortunately, to everyone's horror, it goes terribly wrong for Antonio. While he barely survives, his body becomes permanently paralyzed by his severe injury, and, to make the matter worse, his shocked wife dies as giving an early birth to their daughter Carmen shortly after her husband's accident. Devastated by this news, Antonio becomes morose and isolated while not caring much about his infant daughter, who is eventually taken care of by her grandmother.

And that is where nefarious Encarna(Maribel Verdú) comes into the picture as, well, the wicked stepmother. She initially comes to Antonio as one of the nurses at the hospital, and, as soon as she learns that he is rich and alone, she quickly works on him, and it does not take much time for her to become his personal nurse – and then his second wife. Not so surprisingly, she puts her husband into more misery while doing whatever she wants at his vast mansion, and the movie tickles us with the humorously perverted moments associated with Encarna's sadomasochistic side.

Young Carmen, played by amiably innocent Sofía Oria, has been away from her stepmother's evil influence while growing up under her grandmother's care, but, after the grandmother suddenly dies, she has no choice but to be sent to his father's mansion. Encarna certainly does not welcome her stepdaughter right from their first encounter; she greets Carmen with the hostile and sinister manner not that different from that of Mrs. Danvers in Alfred Hitchcock's "Rebecca"(1940), and then she immediately sends Carmen down to a dirty basement room. That is just the beginning of her many vicious treatments of Carmen, and Maribel Verdú clearly relishes her juicy villainous role in the film – especially during that deliciously horrible moment involved with Pepe, Carmen's feisty pet rooster.

In spite of all the hardship and cruelty inflicted upon her, Carmen never loses her bright, lively personality while having a brief but touching moment of reconnecting with her withered father, who saw the potential inside her and taught her some valuable things about bullfighting. Not long after he dies, Encarna tries to kill Carmen, who now becomes a young lady after several years, but her bumbling servant/driver/sex slave Genaro(Pere Ponce) fails to kill Carmen, and she is saved by a traveling troupe of dwarfs(they are six, not seven, by the way). Although she lost her memory when she was almost killed by Genaro, she soon shows her bullfighting skill to impress the dwarfs and others, and her popularity as "Blancanieves"(it means "Snow White" in Spanish) quickly rises while our bitchy stepmother is infuriated to learn that the girl is still alive.

The story itself is an engaging fairy tale with humor and heart, and the director/writer Pablo Berger effectively presents it through the painstaking recreation of the ambiance of the silent films during the 1920s. Compared to Oscar-winning silent film "The Artist"(2011), which cheerfully danced on the thin line between loving tribute and playful parody, the movie is a little more serious in its approach; its performances and technical aspects are mostly feel authentic, and only sound we hear on the soundtrack is the terrific score by Alfonso de Vilallonga, which fluidly flows around grand orchestral gestures and exciting dance music while coloring the black and white screen of 1.33:1 Academy ratio with various moods and feelings.

Some people may think silent films are merely artifacts to be studied by film scholars, but good silent films can transcend time and languages to reach to the contemporary audiences, and "Blancanieves" reminds us of their timeless power through its sincere homage. The movie also remains true to the dark, twisted spirit of the Brothers Grim tales, and the ending after its grand fateful finale is a rare moment which simultaneously feels sad, romantic, perverted, and, above all, poignant. After all, didn't someone say that perverts are sometimes much more romantic than us?

Some movies depend on very preposterous premise you cannot believe easily, and "Poongsan", one of the latest South Korean movies, is a good case. How can he cross the border between South Korea and North Korea so easily? How can he go freely in North Korea while not noticed by soldiers? If you cannot accept this outrageous ability of his, then you will not believe at all what this invincible guy does to his opponents later in the story.

Fortunately, the movie has enough conviction to make me accept the premise and be amused by his activities throughout the running time. Starting as an art house movie version of action thriller, it eventually turns out to be both melodrama and, unexpectedly, symbolic black comedy on a long, destructive relationship between South and North Korea for more than 60 years. All factors do not work in its flawed screenplay, but it manages to keep our attention until it is stalled in a predictable plot progression during the second half, and it has a compelling character who, like other supporting characters, deserves a little better plot.

Like many heroes of the films directed by Kim Ki-duk, who produced this film and wrote its screenplay, the hero of "Poongsan", played by Yoon Gye-sang, does not say anything. His name is never mentioned. We do not know anything about him – his past or how he comes to do his dangerous job. He lives alone in a shabby place somewhere in Seoul, and he seems to content with his solitary. Only one notable thing about him is that he likes North Korean cigarette named Poongsan, a North Korean canine breed.

There are many families separated by the division between South and North Korea. They desperately want to know where their loved ones are and send their messages to them. He is the guy they need. For delivering the messages, he secretly goes back and forth across the border heavily guarded and monitored by the soldiers on both sides. He carefully crosses the reed and the river with some preparations, including covering his body with mud to avoid being detected by the infrared cameras. And, at the last step, this is quite outrageous, he pole-jumps over the barbed iron fence. Don't even ask me about how the hell he finds the people to receive the messages in North Korea so quickly.

Sometimes, he also brings the people to South. It is riskier than usual, but he seems not to mind about that, and he is ready to handle the unexpected situation when the troubles occur during his operation. Thanks to his services, his clients are happy to correspond with their lost family members beyond the border, while saddened by the lost years between them. In one poignant scene, an old North Korean lady only looks at the video camera without saying anything; her dying husband in South Korea is heartbroken by her silent image.

One day, he gets the attention of people from South Korean National Intelligence Service. They contact him because they want to bring some woman from Pyongyang. While pressed by them to write the report based on his valuable information(we never know what it is), a North Korean defect executive(Kim Jong-soo) under their protection demands them to bring the girl he adored, As soon as they ask him to deliver the girl, he instantly starts to work. He finishes his job within 3 hours.

Wait a minute, how that can be possible? Maybe we can accept that he is very, very good at locating people and evading the soldiers on the border, but, can you believe that he can go to Pyongyang and then come back to South Korea only during 3 hours? He does not even use the airplane – he just rides the bicycle or runs or walks. Is that really possible? Maybe he is a Korean version of Captain America, I guess.

"Incendies" has a familiar plot used in many mystery fictions. The odd instructions are delivered to the characters with no explanation. The journey begins eventually, and the mystery is peeled away step by step. While following their path, we begin to sense that there will be the unexpected answer at the end of journey. Shortly after the death of their mother Nawal(Lubna Azabal), twin brother and sister, Jeanne(Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and Simon(Maxim Gaudettte), meet the notary Lebel(Rémy Girard), for whom Nawal has worked as his secretary for about 20 years. The request in her will surprises her children with her hidden past. Before dying in the hospital after suddenly fallen into some catatonic state, she left two letters. The one is for the twin's father; Jeanne is instructed to find him and deliver it to him. The other one is for the twin's hidden brother; Simon is instructed to do the same thing like her sister. Until their missions are accomplished, Nawal's body will remain buried without coffin or tombstone.

Jeanne and Simon are confounded by this revelation. While living a new life with them in Canada for a long time, Nawal seldom mentioned about her past to them(the twins thought their father was dead during the war in their mother's homeland). Angry and confused for this, Simon refuses the request. In contrast, although she has been distant from her mother for a while, Jeanne decides to go to her mother's homeland to find their father after advised by her adviser professor in her graduate school not to ignore this matter.

The movie goes back and forth between Jeanne's journey and Nawal's long, hurtful journey. When she was young, Nawal fell in love with a Muslim guy, and she got pregnant by him. Her Christian family certainly did not approve of that; after their failed attempt to run away, her lover was shot by her brothers for the family's honor, and she had to leave behind her baby right after she bore him. Before separated from him, she promised to him she would find him again.

However, several years later, when she studied in the university, the sectarian conflict between Christians and Muslims got more intensified, and her hometown became a war zone. None the less, Nawal was determined to find her son for keeping her promise. Though well aware of the dangers, she went back to her hometown, and that was the start of a long ordeal she had to struggle through – it was impossible for her to stay in the middle in this conflict.

There are several striking moments to depict the horrors of war in the film. The director Denis Villeneuve, whose screenplay based on the acclaimed play by Wajdi Mouawad, handles the brutality in his movie with restraint and conciseness, as shown in the gut-wrenching scene where Nawal is forced to save herself in a shameful way from sudden brutal mass killing by a militia group. In the opening sequence crucial in the story, Radiohead's "You and Whose Army?" is effectively used in the soundtrack against what is shown on the screen, and this memorable moment is chillingly connected to the scene where the boys are attacked by a sniper not so older than them.

Villeneuve deftly moves the story between the past and present. Compared to the violent past, Nawal's homeland at present is relatively peaceful, but there is still the conflict, and there are still the shadows of the past which people do not like to talk about. Nawal's family members do not forget what she did even after so many years have passed. When Jeanne meets the former prison guard who knew her mother as prisoner, he is very reluctant to tell her what happened to her mother, while emphasizing that he has been a school janitor.

Later in the story, Simon finally joins her sister with Lebel. Their search is continued, and, in the end, there is the shocking truth waiting for them. Of course, I will not tell you what it is, but I have to say this; I already guessed what would be revealed based on some storytelling logics, but it was really devastating to see how the movie silently reveals that horrible secret to the characters with the emotionally shattering effect.

By the way, while watching the last scene, I wondered about the plausibility of the story because I was a little bothered by some small calculation based on the one tiny detail shown in that scene(Maybe I was wrong about that, but I cannot go into the details due to spoiler problems). In addition, the story relies on the coincidences a little too much. For instance, Jeanne and Simon's journey could be aborted with the dead end by any chance. Come to think of it, it is very lucky that there are enough surviving people and documents to lead them to the arriving point. I know it would have been really hard for Nawal to tell the truth, but could she just leave one letter to her children for explaining everything?

Nevertheless, the story works well on the emotional level with the haunting performance by Lubna Azabal, who is convincing both as Young Nawal and Old Nawal. Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin and Maxim Gaudettte are also good as the other half of the story, and Remy Girard gives an interesting performance as a kind, courteous man with the strong professional ethics he firmly sticks to.

Nawal can be described as a woman full of this complex feeling. Her heart was burned by so many pains and sorrows in her past - and her fate was as cruel to her as the Greek tragedy.

Clint Eastwood's new film "Hereafter" neither accepts nor denies the life after death, and that is a wise choice. Despite the supernatural elements in the story, the movie does not attempt to force us to believe what its characters believe. By dealing with its sensitive subject in a calm, honest, and thoughtful way, it sincerely shows us how their lives influenced by death are led by what they feel and believe. There are some questions and doubts left when the movie is over, but who can answer them?

My first question: is Geroge Lonegan(Matt Damon) really a psychic, who can see and communicate with the dead associated with the people he touches? Maybe he is just as instinctively talented as your average psychics you have come across in your life. But he looks pretty much convincing when he reluctantly shows his gift to others. He does believe his gift, but it can be said that what he sees and hears is just the aftereffect on his nervous system after the surgery in his childhood. But he is too correct to disbelieve. What he says to them really affects them emotionally in each case, but does it really come from the dead and their world?

Anyway, his gift is more like the curse to him, and he has been tired of "the life full of death". He once made some money through his gift, but now he gives it up, and he try to lead a quiet life alone in the city. But the life is still not so comfortable to him. There are people who want his service, and his brother tries to convince him to start their supernatural business again. He begins to like the girl he meets at the cooking class, but soon she becomes curious about his gift – a bad sign for their relationship.

We are also not so sure about what a French TV anchor Marie Lelay(Cécile De France) experiences during her vacation in Thailand when the tsunami devastatingly sweeps everything in the shore region along with her. In her near-death experience, she indeed saw something, but is it just a temporal vision created by her brain, based on what she(and we) often heard about? Still shaken by that experience when she comes back to Paris, she decides to quit her job and, for a book she's going to write, she delves more into what interests her after that experience.

In London, the third main character is also trying to find the similar answer. He is a young boy named Marcus, who recently loses his twin brother Jason(Both are played by twin child actors Frankie and George McLaren). Jason has been more than a big brother to Marcus at their problematic household, and, now in foster care, Marcus desperately wants to find a way to contact with his diseased brother for he somehow feels the unseen presence of his brother nearby him – but it may be caused by his grief.

Needless to say, their paths are bound to converge at some point, but the screenplay writer Peter Morgan handles their story lines in rather effortless way. Their journeys for the answer are more important than the unobtainable answer itself in his story, and its dramatic power plainly comes from how they struggle in their respective lives. Although he was inspired by the book "Before I Say Goodbye" to write his original screenplay, as he admitted in the interviews, Morgan does not believe in hereafter; he firmly maintains his skeptic view on the subject with the amusing but sad sequence where Marcus is quietly frustrated by a series of "experts".

Clint Eastwood is the last director you can imagine for this film(I know it's cliché, but, when I read the synopsis, I instantly thought of M. Night Shyamalan). As the director drawn by the producer Steven Spielberg, with whom he worked before in "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters from Iwo Jima", Eastwood does as little as possible in the movie with his restrained, succinct storytelling style. Like Morgan, he adheres to the objective view on the matter while respecting the characters in the movie. There is a crucial scene near the ending when George's gift is used again, but you are not even sure about whether it is, if it exists, really used. Eastwood only observes them, not answering that for us.

The casting is excellent. Matt Damon is good as an introverted man haunted and exhausted by the gift he does not want at all. He holds our attention immediately due to his star status, but, with his engagingly understated performance, he provides the space for other lesser-known performers, who are also as low-key and emotionally effective as him.

As you might guess from my questions sprinkled throughout the review, I am as skeptical as Morgan and Eastwood about their subject, as a biology major. My view may be far colder than theirs; I sometimes think we are no more than the machines organically made of flesh and bones that can be maintained for around 100 years in the best conditions. Death is probably nothing more than the switch getting turned off. I will probably ask and rebut the characters a lot, but "Hereafter" is a thoughtful and heartfelt movie that makes me understand them and care about them. That's what good movies usually do to me and other audiences.

Sidenote: The movie was surprisingly nominated for Oscar for its special effects in this year, but please don't expect anything spectacular. It is effective as shown in the tsunami sequence, but that is only a small part of the movie. Recently, the movie was pulled down from the theaters in Japan for the understandable reason, and that sequence reminded me that, as one of my friends said, the real disasters look quite messier compared to the ones depicted in the movies.

A 17-year-old-girl Ree Dolly(Jennifer Lawrence) lives in some rural town in the Ozark mountains of southern Missouri. She has already been leading hard daily life when her latest trouble appears. Her mother is ill, and her younger sister and brother are still too young and innocent to take care of themselves, so she has been laboriously taking care of her family instead of her absent father Jessup, who has been known a lot around the neighbourhood for his criminal activities including cooking methamphetamine. It is not a big deal to her or others because, like her father, many of her neighbors are involved in crimes in one way or others.

One day, the town sheriff visits Ree's house and he gives her a bad news. Her father recently put their house at collateral bail to get out of jail, and it seems he will probably not show up at the court date. After a week, Ree's family will be evicted out of their house with nowhere else to live if her father does not turn himself in. Ree goes around asking people who may know or have clues about his whereabouts, but there is little success. As time goes by, it is getting apparent that her father is possibly dead, but, if that so, she still needs to find him for keeping their house. The time is getting short, and she is desperate, and people who probably can help her, including her drug- addicted uncle Teardrop(John Hawkes), does not seem to be willing to do that for their personal reasons. She mostly gets unkind responses from them with hostility.

Through her journey, a small, tightly-knitted community where everybody is somebody's cousin is shown to us. If you do or say something, the words can be spread out quickly in this neighbourhood. Some characters in the movie likely know about the answer Ree seeks, but they do not trust her even though she is related to them. Although they may understand she needs help, they are more concerned about their circumstances and family loyalty. As one character says offscreen, "talking just causes the witnesses", and they do not want to risk their unstable position due to illegal activities. And they are willing to do anything for protecting their standings; that puts Ree in a very precarious situation as warned by her uncle and others.

The movie was first shown at the Sundance Film Festival in last January(it got two awards including Grand Jury prize), and then it was shown later in US theaters in last June. Like many other countries, overseas independent motion pictures usually arrive late in South Korea(For example, "Junebug" took two years to get released here, and "Frozen River" is still not released except in several local film festivals), so I did not particularly expect "Winter's Bone" to be released soon in South Korea. However, my prediction turned out to be wrong delightfully. Maybe because of recent Oscar buzz surrounding the film along with US critics' enthusiastic responses, the movie is released in South Korean theaters in this weekend – limited release as I predicted, but quite earlier than I had expected.

And what a good timing it is. Our South Korean audiences experienced the bleak world of "The Road", an excellent gloomy film based on Cormac McCarthy's novel in last January, and now, after a year in the same month with colder winter weather, we get another movie filled with bleak beauty evocative of that movie. Shot on the real locations, the film has authentic mood. I was not familiar with the Ozarks, but, like any good movies that transport us into the real worlds alien to us, I could instinctively sense that the movie showed a real world to me.

There is a certain sense of familiar hopelessness pervading its scenes. I am sure it is the 21th century (or near it) in the story, but this place looks like having unaffected by the influences from outside. They have cars, electricity, and a school, and a police station, but it is hard to find any sign of modern technology. Under the cold, gloomy weather, the woods around the town are shown from time to time to accentuate the desolate condition of this place. Useless objects are scattered around here and there with no one to use them. And it is hard for Ree's family to get the food. Because it is not season for deers, Ree shot a couple of squirrels instead and later we see her teaching her younger brother and sister how to skin them.

While learning how to remove guts from her, her brother asks, "Do we have to eat it?" Ree plainly replies: "Not yet". Based on Daniel Woodrell's novel, the director Debra Granik and the co-writer Anne Rosellini create a sad, honest story with no ostentation. Like Ree's reply mentioned above, the characters' situations, thoughts and feelings are conveyed through short, plain words. Despite tons of hardships and following desperation burdened on its heroine, there is no such a thing like showy melodramatic moment in the movie. Even in the most perilous situation, there is only her exhausting will talking quietly to others who have even thought about killing her for poking around them.

While the relationships between characters are not clearly explained and it is sometimes a little confusing to describe them, Granik and Rosellini compensate that flaw by filling their story with vivid characterization. Thanks to the wonderful cast, you can instantly accept that people in the movie have been through hardships for years and years while living there from tired, wrinkled faces. In their world, kindness is not something they can accommodate easily.

When I saw several equipments devised for saving the people mistakenly buried alive during the 19th century in some big, encyclopedic book, I found them quite amusing, but being buried alive is not funny at all. Try to think about it for a moment. There is only the darkness before your open eyes. You soon become very, very uncomfortable because you cannot move much in the coffin. You know the oxygen in the air is being decreased even if there is no measurement tool. There is probably no one to hear your desperate cry. And that certain dreadful feeling creeps into your helpless mind.

I have seen many moments of people buried alive in countless thrillers and horror movies. Some of them were quite frightening, but "Buried" reminded me how mercifully short most of them were for us. By choosing to concentrate wholly on its subject, the movie daringly forces the rigorous limits upon itself. It willingly does that right from the beginning. It even never attempts to get out of its rigid boundaries while firmly staying on its cramped area throughout its running time. Despite such burdensome constraints, the movie succeeds in not only achieving its goal but also deeply terrifying us.

Let's talk about its horrible premise. After going down with the ominous main title sequence, we immediately meet Paul Conroy(Ryan Reynolds) in the coffin buried under the ground. It is somewhere in Iraq in 2006. Paul is a truck driver employed by some contracter company, and he remembers that his truck was ambushed right before he lost his consciousness. Poor guy, he only went there to support his family and he knew well about how dangerous place Iraq is, but he had probably never expected such a terrible situation like this.

Fortunately for him(and the audience), there are still time, space, and light sources, and, above all, the chances for his survival. Although it is quite limiting for his body movements, the coffin has some little extra space for Paul. That means there is enough oxygen to sustain him for at least several hours. His personal effects were mostly taken away from him, but he still has his lighter in the pocket. There are also a flashlight, a fluorescent lightsaver, a cellular phone, and a knife in the coffin.

Who put them there? It is apparent that Paul is being held as a hostage. The demand for ransom is delivered through the cellular phone. Paul will be left buried forever if the money is not delivered till the deadline. At least he can use the cell phone freely, so he calls 911, and then his wife, his company, and the Pentagon. However, ironically, the phone conversations with others only make him more desperate and frustrated while his precious time is running out along with the oxygen and the phone battery charge. He still finds himself as helpless as Barbara Stanwyck in "Sorry, Wrong Number"(1948).

By adamantly focusing on only one place, the director Rodrigo Cortés creatively maintains a high level of intensively dark, claustrophobic atmosphere. With several coffin sets and accompanying camera tricks and special effects, he only shows what happens in the coffin while never swaying from its straight and narrow path for any single moment. It is all about the experience with the utmost horror. There is no flashback in the movie. The people with whom Paul talks on the phone are not shown on the screen. We see and hear more and less than Paul can. We even cannot see what is happening directly above the coffin. And the effective use of widescreen emphasizes this extremely suffocating state.

With this setting and Chris Sparling's smart script, Cortés makes his movie simultaneously gut-wrenching and compelling. I will not go into details about how he did it for not spoiling your experience. Let's just say the movie mercilessly and realistically stacks up the dread on the screen a second by a second in the fashion of "The Pit and the Pendulum", one of those short stories written by Edgar Allan Poe that scared me a lot during my childhood. If you remember those terrifying ordeals forced upon the hero step by step in that scary story, you will know what I mean.

The movie is basically a one-man show that requires considerable talent from its actor, and Ryan Reynolds gives a credible performance that holds our attention from the beginning to the end. Despite being in the condition that is difficult for any capable actors, he convincingly carries the movie through every emotion imaginable in that trapped situation. It also should be mentioned that the actors providing the voices on the other end of the line are also important in supporting the drama and Reynolds' performance.

"Buried" is a gripping horror/thriller movie based. It sticks all the way with its simple premise to scare us, and, like any good horror movies, it works terrifyingly even when we do not see much from the screen because it lets our imagination to work by itself. To be frank with you, I had a memorable experience thanks to this movie. Several hours after watching the movie on this Wednesday night, I went to bed after turning the light out. It was all right at first, but then the images from the movie started to disturb my brain. Being buried alive is never, never, and never a funny thing to imagine.

"Candyman"(1992) is something we do not come across often. It is not only a scary movie but also an evocative horror movie with the intriguing idea about urban legends. We all know the urban legends have the roots in our collective fear of living anonymously in the cities, and the movie puts an interesting spin on it. What if some urban legend is real? And what if it's possible that it is real because it is believed to exist, rather than the other way around? What if it gets the power from the collective belief? If such a thing is possible, then what can be said of the religious or supernatural entities people believe in? Can the same thing be said of them? The movie deals with its idea in a clever way, and it leaves us something to think after we are reasonably scared by the things happening on the screen.

It is always welcoming to have the characters who are reasonable in the horror movies, and Helen(Virginia Madsen) and Bernadette(Kasi Lemmons) are well-qualified for that. They are the graduates researching for their doctorial thesis at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Their research subject is the urban legend, and the one that particularly interests them is about Candyman, who people say will come to whoever dares to summon him by saying his names five times while looking at the mirror and will leave the bloody carnage behind him.

Like any other academic researchers, Helen and Bernadette don't seriously believe what they hear from the interviews. But they become interested when they coincidentally come to know that Candyman is believed to exist by the people living in the Cabrini-Green Housing complex in Near North Side area of Chicago; they believe Candyman is living in one of those empty tenement. Helen thinks there are the materials worthy of their thesis, and she decides to delve deeper in this subject, despite Bernadette's concern.

Her concern is well-justified. Now it is fading into the history by the on-going gentrification process, but Cabrini-Green has been one of the criminally notorious housing complex in USA. Through the movie, made in 1992, we get some glimpses of the environment far, far worse than now. The gang members hang around the front entrance of those coercively looking buildings, and there are dark, dirty, deserted places you do not want to go inside in the buildings. And we see our characters bravely go into these places with the intellectual interest and purpose.

The director/writer Bernard Rose, who would make "Immortal Beloved" after this movie, focuses on the atmosphere at the first half. He knows how to visually mount the unease on the screen. Frequent overhead shots have a subtle menacing tone with Phillip Glass' effectively spooky score. The despair and terror are palpably felt in the corners in Cabrini-Green scenes, and, like Helen, we can see the real world is as horrible as the Candyman legend. This is the dangerous world in which terrible incidents happen and are neglected by the people outside including the police. People living there everyday may just choose to believe the boogeyman whom no one can stop is responsible for all these happenings.

But is it just an urban legend born out of the despair of the lower class? Helen seems to think so, but, unfortunately for her, the movie is based on the short story "The Forbidden" written by the executive producer Clive Barker, who was called "The Future of Horror" by Stephen King. Like his famous first movie "Hellraiser"(1987), Clive Barker's horror stories are gruesome and brooding tales of flesh and blood with the supernatural elements, and "Candyman" is no exception. As you probably guessed it already, it turns out that Candyman is real, and the truth behind him is a lot more intriguing while quite horrifying in itself. It seems that Helen's study makes Candyman piqued more than casually calling his names five times in the mirror.

Helen eventually finds herself in a big serious trouble with the police while the shocking incidents happen around her. She knows what's going on but she cannot say about it because nobody can believe her story. To make the matters worse, she is framed for the incidents and nobody believes her innocence – least of all her untrustworthy husband who never quite says he trusts her words. Following her ordeal, we see frightening things more than before. There is some blood to be shed, and Rose skillfully handles the violent moments while never losing the tension and dread piled upon from the start.

And he had the talented cast. Inexplicably, Virginia Madsen had never gotten the chance to fully utilize her talent till her Oscar-nominated performance "Sideways"(2004), and "Candyman" was one of few bright spots in her career before "Sideways"; she is good as a frightened but brave woman who tries to solve her impossible problem. Kasi Lemmons, who would direct "Eve's Bayou" and "Talk to Me", also makes a good impression as Helen's best friend and co-writer. Tony Todd is seductively menacing as a dreadful entity with his hulking presence and deep voice(he would reprise his role in the following worthless Candyman sequels).

Even 18 years after it came out, "Candyman" still holds well as an effectively creepy movie. After the success of "Hellraiser", several Clive Barker's works have been translated into the movies for years, but this movie still occupies the top position among others. I think it is a lot better than "Hellraiser", which just drones on the blood and other freakish things with some interesting ideas nearly untouched. "Candyman" has the interesting idea to explore, proceeds with it, and never loses the grip on the idea even when it goes bloody. In the end, even the expected horror movie cliché serves for its idea and provokes another thought in our head while the end credit rolls. Preposterous, yeah, but somehow it's logical in its philosophy.

Fortunately, "71: Into the Fire", officially released on last Thursday in South Korea, is not the bottom of the barrel. But still, it's near the bottom of the barrel. The movie is not as ideologically repulsive as I feared, but this is awfully hollow without any clear direction, let alone clear emotions. The result is one of the worst war movies since "Pearl Harbor" and one of few saving graces of "71: Into the Fire" is that it's one-hour shorter than that. The war is hell, the war is a mess, but the war movie must not be a mess at any chance.

After crossing the 38 parallels on June 25th in 1950, North Korean military relentlessly advanced toward the south while capturing Seoul and several major cities except Pusan within a month. They seemed to be near the victory, and South Korean military fought at all cost at the last front line of the Nakdong River to protect Pusan with nowhere else to step behind while desperately waiting for UN troops(As one commander points out in the movie, they would have had no option except jumping into the sea if the line had been broken down). The Battle of Pusan Perimeter was one of the most turbulent moments of Korean war, and many of South Korean soldiers sacrificed their lives. It's inarguable that our generation owed them a lot for our freedom and prosperity and more.

The movie is based on the one of the combats that actually happened during that time. Because other soldiers must go to Pusan Perimeter, the bunch of boy soldiers, freshly drafted by South Korean military, are left to defend the front line near the city named Pohang at the small school building of countryside. Soon, North Korean soldiers led by their ruthless, charismatic leader(Seung-won Cha) is approaching to their place for the strategic advantage. These young students, little experience and little resource, must secure their front line no matter how.

Before leaving them, The commanding officer(Seung-woo Kim) appoints one of boy soldiers, Jang-Bum(Korean pop star T.O.P), to be the leader of these young soldiers only because he has recently gotten the first taste of battle. Jang-Bum is not so confident about his new role, and so do other soldiers, including some antagonizing bully and his gangs. They cannot accept Jang-bum as the leader at first, but, with massive menace coming toward them minute by minute, they really have to stick together to protect their country and, maybe, to save themselves.

A good setting for war movie, but the movie ruins this in every possible way despite having lots of good things to utilize. Sometimes it reaches to the level of the amusement, mixed with lots of annoyance. I don't mind about simple black & white situation depicted in the movie, but the characters in the movie are the battalion of cardboards. They are mainly the pawns manipulated by the terrible script with awful dialogues, and no depth is given to any of them. Only Jang-bum is given some space, but that is usually decorated with cringe-inducing, yellow light-coated flashbacks about his mother. There is no convincing character development, and we don't care about the characters at all. In fact, I was glad to see some characters dispatched during the movie.

Above all, the movie is repulsive with its alarming shallowness. The director Ja-Han Lee seems to only care about making the movie look nice without any consideration to the story itself – if it ever exists. For example, there is the scene where the commander blows up the bridge while desperate refugees wanting to cross over it. My god, the movie cares far more about the big explosion than the desperation of common people. How spectacularly good it looks!

The massive budget behind the production is clearly shown on the screen, but, oh boy, how clumsy these action sequences are. It seems like to have been made with the thought that only explosions and shaky camera works are everything. I'm sure I can make a better experience at my mother's kitchen.

In the end, so-called big payoff comes as the entertainment, and we see two main characters(I don't have to tell you who they are) valiantly do Rambo things at the top of the building while North Korean soldiers become more like zombies. It won't be a serious matter if it tries to be like "Inglourious Basterds". However, when the movie sets out to be as serious as "Saving Private Ryan", that is just like the kiss of death.

Last week, I watched another Korean War movie "Tae Guk Gi" for the comparison, and I think I should have been more generous to that. There still are several things I do not like, but "Tae Guk Gi" is technically and emotionally engaging overall and, above all, has the sincerity behind it. "71: Into the Fire" has none of these virtues, although it has a miraculously(considering the bad script) competent performance by T.O.P., a scenery-chewing presence of Seung-won Cha, and lots of, lots of noises and explosions.

Right or Left, you can't deny that "71: Into the Fire" is insultingly paper-thin war movie made by hands as inexperienced as these young noble soldiers. You'll probably think that they will be rolling around in their graves for this. Believe me, if some of boys in the movie had shouted "Wolverine!", it would have been much more entertaining. What the hell, the movie will make money – that's a depressing thing.